I just listened to R…

I just listened to Rush Limbaugh’s keynote speech at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. His description of his comment on ESPN, about how he thinks the media has been hyping Donovan McNabb because they wanted a black quarterback to succeed, is exactly how I took it; an indictment of the media for racism. And it was an opinion, and clearly stated as such. Instead, Rush is getting tarred with the same “racist” brush that knee-jerk reactors have been painting him with for years.

If you want to hear it for yourself, click here. Oh…wait. I’m sorry, that was a link to a sound bite, 3 weeks earlier, when Rush defended black coaches. Of course, that doesn’t get noticed by those who hate Limbaugh; they simply hear what they want to hear and no amount of evidence to the contrary will deter them.

(By the way, the actual McNabb soundbite is here.)

And did these same people react with outrage when Limbaugh said that the media was hyping Vinny Testaverde or Kurt Warner? No. Could it be because those players are white? So, according to these people based on their reactions, Rush can criticize white players but not black ones. Now who’s racist?

In any event, for those who are indeed willing to listen to both sides, and if you missed it on his radio show, Rush has a very detailed response those the whole tempest-in-a-teapot (gee, we’re seeing a lot of these from liberals lately) on his website.

UPDATE: JunkYardBlog has a great commentary on this as well.

UPDATE #2: Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative group) has some great examples of hypocrisy in the Limbaugh-McNabb issue.

“An ESPN spokesman said ESPN didn’t think Limbaugh’s comments were racially biased, yet ESPN released a statement saying Limbaugh’s comments were ‘insensitive and inappropriate’ and George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN Sports, says Limbaugh’s subsequent resignation from ESPN was ‘the appropriate action to resolve this matter expeditiously.’ Yet ESPN has posted on its website a poll asking visitors if McNabb has been overrated because of his race. Why is it inappropriate for Limbaugh to discuss media coverage of McNabb but not inappropriate when ESPN does it?”

Ridenour cited other instances of hypocrisy, such as the Washington Post’s Leonard Shapiro using the beginning of an October 1 column to approvingly discuss the importance of having more black coaches in the NFL and then editorializing against Limbaugh for noting that the news media wants blacks to succeed in football. Said Ridenour: “Shapiro’s article reads almost like a parody.”

Ridenour added:

“Several sports reporters went out of their way to attack millions of conservatives in columns ostensibly complaining that Limbaugh had injected politics into sports. NBCSports.com’s Mike Celizic complained that Limbaugh’s ‘fun isn’t in the game. It’s in inflicting his political agenda on a gullible public willing to subcontract their thinking to him. Part of that agenda is based on the basest xenophobic instincts of the human species. It’s about ‘them’ and ‘us,’ and the bad guys just happen to be foreigners and minorities.'”

“Compared to Celizic’s comments about conservatives,” Ridenour said, “Limbaugh’s comments were almost non-political, and certainly less intentionally offensive.”

There’s more, but you get the idea.

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