Rush Limbaugh made two basic mistakes. One was giving Donovan McNabb too little credit. The other was giving the sports media too much.
Suspecting a social conscience in a sportswriter is like suspecting a political agenda in a porcupine. It is as laughable as Oscar Madison's wardrobe or Ray Barone's parents. If sportswriters think deeply about anything, it is about how to get a receipt for a free meal.
Like Limbaugh Republicans, we root primarily for our own convenience. For games to avoid overtime. For surly sluggers to speak to us before they flee for the training room. For hotel bars that stay open past final deadline. For teams facing elimination to be eliminated as soon as possible.
We are not entirely color-blind, but we are totally preoccupied. We are not quite apolitical, but we vote more often on awards than in elections. Our pet causes are eliminating the designated hitter and instant replay officiating. Our liberal bias applies mainly to expense accounts.
We didn't march with Dr. King. We munched with Dr Pepper. Didn't Limbaugh learn anything from Slap Maxwell?
In suggesting McNabb's stature in the NFL has been improperly inflated by the media's desire to see black quarterbacks and coaches succeed, Limbaugh betrayed levels of ignorance and insensitivity unusual even by his bumptious standards.
He failed to notice, evidently, that black quarterbacks now abound in the NFL and that their advancement, statistics and salaries are the product of their performance and not their press clippings. Seven black quarterbacks started last weekend's games and two others – Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper – were out with injuries.
All of them earned their positions through objective competition. To believe otherwise is to believe that coaches would rather lose than win; that owners prefer empty seats to ticket lines; and that anyone involved in this emphatically capitalist enterprise is motivated by anything except self-interest.
Unlike the realm of politics, where an unqualified actor with lecherous leanings can aspire to high office, sports is relentlessly merit-based. Unlike talk radio, which too often panders to prejudice and rejects balance as boring, the accuracy of quarterbacks is meticulously measured. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, who once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back," Donovan McNabb is not an unrepentant, incendiary bigot.
If McNabb is not the best quarterback in the NFL – and he's not – he is plainly in the top tier. He finished second in the league's Most Valuable Player voting in 2000 and has since led the Eagles to within one win of the Super Bowl in successive seasons. If he has been somewhat shaky this fall – and he has – McNabb has done nothing to detract from his previous successes.
Like all quarterbacks, his reputation fluctuates from one week to the next. This has nothing to do with his pigmentation and everything to do with his team's performance. Same as Kurt Warner. Same as Drew Brees. Same as Kordell Stewart.
Granted, there was a time when pro football needed some prodding on the race question. In October 1960, when the Washington franchise still practiced segregation, crusading columnist Shirley Povich observed, pointedly, that Cleveland's Jim Brown had successfully "integrated the Redskins' goal line."
Later, as teams practiced subtler forms of discrimination, stories appeared about the tendency to "stack" black players at certain positions, about the college quarterbacks who were redeployed as defensive backs based on racial stereotypes, about the limited opportunities afforded minorities in coaching and management, about San Diego's watershed Super Bowl XXII, when Doug Williams quarterbacked the Redskins to a championship.
If some sports media types were privately pulling for Williams that night – and some of us were – it was not so much out of righteousness as tedium. The notion that black quarterbacks somehow needed the validation of a Super Bowl victory was patent silliness, but oddly pervasive. If Williams' success represented a cultural milestone, it should have been that everyone would henceforth know better. Rush Limbaugh must have spent that evening with Al Campanis.
Limbaugh's comments on Sunday's "NFL Sunday Countdown" suggest that the man has paid less than passing attention to pro football the past two decades. The racial makeup of NFL quarterbacks is no more a hot-button issue these days than is Howard Cosell. If "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," that desire has been gratified for a generation.
In this particular case, Limbaugh's remarks were probably not as offensive as they were out of touch. The dynamic he describes may have existed in 1980, but so did disco. The media's attitude about Donovan McNabb is now determined by the quality of his quotes.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/sullivan/20031004-9999_1s4sullivan.html
Suspecting a social conscience in a sportswriter is like suspecting a political agenda in a porcupine. It is as laughable as Oscar Madison's wardrobe or Ray Barone's parents. If sportswriters think deeply about anything, it is about how to get a receipt for a free meal.
Like Limbaugh Republicans, we root primarily for our own convenience. For games to avoid overtime. For surly sluggers to speak to us before they flee for the training room. For hotel bars that stay open past final deadline. For teams facing elimination to be eliminated as soon as possible.
We are not entirely color-blind, but we are totally preoccupied. We are not quite apolitical, but we vote more often on awards than in elections. Our pet causes are eliminating the designated hitter and instant replay officiating. Our liberal bias applies mainly to expense accounts.
We didn't march with Dr. King. We munched with Dr Pepper. Didn't Limbaugh learn anything from Slap Maxwell?
In suggesting McNabb's stature in the NFL has been improperly inflated by the media's desire to see black quarterbacks and coaches succeed, Limbaugh betrayed levels of ignorance and insensitivity unusual even by his bumptious standards.
He failed to notice, evidently, that black quarterbacks now abound in the NFL and that their advancement, statistics and salaries are the product of their performance and not their press clippings. Seven black quarterbacks started last weekend's games and two others – Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper – were out with injuries.
All of them earned their positions through objective competition. To believe otherwise is to believe that coaches would rather lose than win; that owners prefer empty seats to ticket lines; and that anyone involved in this emphatically capitalist enterprise is motivated by anything except self-interest.
Unlike the realm of politics, where an unqualified actor with lecherous leanings can aspire to high office, sports is relentlessly merit-based. Unlike talk radio, which too often panders to prejudice and rejects balance as boring, the accuracy of quarterbacks is meticulously measured. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, who once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back," Donovan McNabb is not an unrepentant, incendiary bigot.
If McNabb is not the best quarterback in the NFL – and he's not – he is plainly in the top tier. He finished second in the league's Most Valuable Player voting in 2000 and has since led the Eagles to within one win of the Super Bowl in successive seasons. If he has been somewhat shaky this fall – and he has – McNabb has done nothing to detract from his previous successes.
Like all quarterbacks, his reputation fluctuates from one week to the next. This has nothing to do with his pigmentation and everything to do with his team's performance. Same as Kurt Warner. Same as Drew Brees. Same as Kordell Stewart.
Granted, there was a time when pro football needed some prodding on the race question. In October 1960, when the Washington franchise still practiced segregation, crusading columnist Shirley Povich observed, pointedly, that Cleveland's Jim Brown had successfully "integrated the Redskins' goal line."
Later, as teams practiced subtler forms of discrimination, stories appeared about the tendency to "stack" black players at certain positions, about the college quarterbacks who were redeployed as defensive backs based on racial stereotypes, about the limited opportunities afforded minorities in coaching and management, about San Diego's watershed Super Bowl XXII, when Doug Williams quarterbacked the Redskins to a championship.
If some sports media types were privately pulling for Williams that night – and some of us were – it was not so much out of righteousness as tedium. The notion that black quarterbacks somehow needed the validation of a Super Bowl victory was patent silliness, but oddly pervasive. If Williams' success represented a cultural milestone, it should have been that everyone would henceforth know better. Rush Limbaugh must have spent that evening with Al Campanis.
Limbaugh's comments on Sunday's "NFL Sunday Countdown" suggest that the man has paid less than passing attention to pro football the past two decades. The racial makeup of NFL quarterbacks is no more a hot-button issue these days than is Howard Cosell. If "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," that desire has been gratified for a generation.
In this particular case, Limbaugh's remarks were probably not as offensive as they were out of touch. The dynamic he describes may have existed in 1980, but so did disco. The media's attitude about Donovan McNabb is now determined by the quality of his quotes.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/sullivan/20031004-9999_1s4sullivan.html
