A CBSSports blogger, responded, saying this was a "Rush Limbaugh type rant", and then going on to refute Hopkins statement.
Unfortunately, this was a couple of days ago, just when I was hit with my migraine, so now when I go back to CBSSPortsline I can't find that blogger's entry.
Nevertheless, it was there, and so I will take it and run with it.
What exactly did Rush say about Donovan McNabb?
It was in 2003. Rush's Wikipedia entry has the complete quote:
"I don't think [McNabb's] been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."
So, on the one hand Rush said that McNabb wasn't that good. Nothing racist there. Go to any sports website and you'll find dozens of lists of players who are under-rated, over-rated, etc.
So, what got people upset was Rush's claim that the media was hyping Donovan for no other reason than that he was black.
So how is that racist on Rush's part? He was merely criticizing the media, not Donovan.
But it all got conflated together, especially with those 47% of inner city people who are functionally illiterate (meaning they can read individual words, but they can't put all those individual words together in a sentence and understand what the sentence means, especially if someone is being ironic or sarcastic, or just obtuse) and all of a sudden everyone believes that Rush said that Donovan wasn't a good quarterback because he was black.
But is the media so pure? Don't they cover for everybody? (The mainstream media, that is?)
Take Michael Jordan, for almost a decade the face of the NBA. Didn't the media cover for him? Not in the sense that he didn't deserve all his accolades, but on the private side - his womanizing and more importantly, his gambling. When Jordan retired for a year (1993-1994) ...he didn't do it voluntarily, he did it because he was suspended because he was gambling. Did the media report on this? No, it didn't. They were covering for Jordan, and for the NBA.
Take Tiger Woods. For almost a decade the face of golf. Then one day he has a car accident. (His wife allegedly hit him with a golf club, although they both deny this.) Well, that was news that had to be reported...and so the flood gates opened, and all of a sudden we we that Tiger Woods was not the paragon he was always painted. More than that - the media knew he wasn't. They knew he gambled, and always with a couple of blonds on either arm. But they never reported it because they always had a vested interest in seeing Tiger do well...and because they knew if they did report it, they'd probably be kicked off the golf press tour.
So it is really time for people to stop bringing up the Rush-Donovan statements as if that proves that Rush is racist, when all it really proved was that the media had a demonstrable bias (and still does) toward those who pay their salaries, either directly or indirectly.
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In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
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