More Limbaugh Fallout

Rush Limbaugh gave a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters this morning in Philadelphia where he gave some more background on his departure from ESPN.

Some excerpts:

"In my opinion it was not a racial opinion ... it was an opinion about the media," he said. "The great people of ESPN did not want to deal with this reaction."

"This is the kind of media attention I've lived with for 15 years," he told the broadcasters group.

Limbaugh said he is accustomed to being described by his foes as "a racist, sexist pig and homophobe."

According to Limbaugh, just after his comments, ESPN officials agreed with him that he had said nothing wrong. But as the firestorm over his comments mushroomed, it became clear to him that the situation was getting too hot for ESPN, he said.

Limbaugh said his on-air colleagues felt uncomfortable after they were criticized this week for not responding to his comments during the show.

"The path of least resistance became for me to resign at ESPN," Limbaugh said.

As I said earlier, the story about Limbaugh and possible abuse of prescription drugs, news of which seemed to leak sometime late last night, couldn't have helped things at all.

Some other voices, beginning with Dan Ackman at Forbes:

On the radio, Limbaugh, who is ranked 36th on the Forbes Celebrity 100, runs his own show, syndicating it to over 600 stations. His popularity is based on his being edgy and different. Comments like his one about McNabb would be red meat for Limbaugh's usual audience. But it's his audience. On ESPN, a unit of The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), he was a hired hand and part of the mainstream. It has its audience with or without Limbaugh. Being different was a liability, as it took just four weeks for Limbaugh to find out.

Ackman goes on to say that this controversy will actually help Limbaugh burnish his reputation with his radio audience. I'm not so sure. The first thing that popped into my mind when the resignation was announced was that this could destroy him. Better for him to be fired than to collapse under pressure and quit. Ackman also says something about the market for NFL players that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, something which I'll deal with in a later post.

Bryan Westoff at The Agitator:

I don't think Rush Limbaugh is a racist. He is a white guy who doesn't know how to respond to the era of affirmative action where the many qualified black men and women walk amongst the products of diversity engineering. Limbaugh needs to be told he is an idiot. He needs McNabb's statistic put in front of his face for him to contradict. He does not need to be silenced. The issue should not be ignored as if it was never brought up. Doing that only provides it with legitimacy.

Ben Domenech:

McNabb is overrated in Philly for the same reasons that Jason Sehorn was overrated in New York - a skill position player with celebrity style who is playing in a role historically occupied by players with different ethnicities. In his last two years with the Giants, Sehorn was clearly slowing - he'd lost a step on the receivers, tackled like Deion, and was vastly overpaid. But the sports media turned him into the white man that could jump - and so he kept on starting, until the fact that he was running 4.9s finally got him kicked out of town.

I'm not going to argue with Ben on Sehorn, especially since it was clear Seahorn was done when Brandon Stokely burned him for a long touchdown in the Super Bowl a couple of years back. As for McNabb's deficiencies, I urge everyone to read Peter King's take on McNabb's ability. He's especially tough on his accuracy as a passer, something that would seem to buttress Limbaugh's claim that McNabb is overrated, yet King also supplies plenty of evidence burnishing McNabb's reputation.

Eric 11:53 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ericmcerlain.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2490

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference More Limbaugh Fallout:

» Rush is right... gone from The Blog of the Century of the Week
Well, the big firestorm today is over Rush's resignation from the ESPN pre-game NFL show. Off Wing Opinion has a decent rundown of stories here. Beth says she likes Rush and will miss him. I too like Rush, he does... [Read More]

Tracked on October 2, 2003 01:17 PM

» The great Limbaugh implosion from Off the Kuff
I was going to do a rundown on Rush Limbaugh's bad day yesterday, which included his resignation from ESPN and [Read More]

Tracked on October 2, 2003 03:19 PM

» The Bum's Rush from CC NHL Weblog
ESPN pulled the pin the Rush Limbaugh as football analyst yesterday, but the grenade had already gone off. Not only is Limbaugh under fire for comments he made about Donovan McNabb, he's made the front page of the National Enquirer... [Read More]

Tracked on October 2, 2003 04:25 PM

Comments

Posted by: at October 2, 2003 03:02 PM

Posted by: at October 2, 2003 03:38 PM

Post a comment