Really, there’s no other explanation for this:
They [Democrats] have to have a villain to advance everything, because they cannot sell their ideas. They had to demonize me with false, fake, made up quotes. To protect their precious little — National Football League as an outpost of racism and liberalism, which is what it is.
The NFL is an outpost of liberalism? Who knew? Certainly not Roger Staubach, one suspects. The very idea is laughable. Ideally, the NFL would be – as all sports teams/leagues should be – apolitical. After all, we don’t expect our politicians to drop by and play a few downs at the Steelers game, why should sports teams be overtly political in any direction? Nevertheless, to the extent that such a thing is fantasy in the real world – because everyone has political opinions, and rich people (those who are rich enough, like Limbaugh, to consider owning an entire sports team) often tend to feel that because of their wealth, theirs is more important – or at least more worthy of being heard – the record of which party the league owners (which is who we’re really talking about here, not the players or the sportscasters, etc.) donate to is pretty clear (click through for full article and bigger chart):
They don’t bother adding up the total dollars, nor the percentage that would be for how much was given to each party…but I did (and you can too!). If you add it all up, over the last twenty years, the players and owners of the NFL have given $7,329,248 to politicians. Of that, $1,757,306 (or 24%) has gone to Democrats, while the other $5,556,292 (or 75.81%) has gone to Republicans. I think we can safely put any notion of the NFL being an “outpost of liberalism” to rest, Rush.
What’s really at work here, of course, is simple free-market capitalism. Rush Limbaugh belonged to a loose-knit group of investors who wished to buy the St. Louis Rams. The idea was not Limbaugh’s, nor was he the only – or even the first – multi-millionaire to join this group of investors. That honor goes to Mr. Dave Checketts, chief executive of SCP Worldwide, the New York-based investment firm. The entire roster of investors in this group isn’t important. What is important is that they are a bunch of very rich guys who are used to being able to use their money to get what they want. Limbaugh fits right in, on that score.
But part of what comes with being such an entitled, pro-business, deal-making rich guy is (supposedly) an understanding that, as they say in both the boardrooms of America and the pork stores of the Cosa Nostra, “it’s not personal, it’s just business.” If a deal doesn’t happen, it almost never was because people had some sort of personal grudge against one of the other participants in the deal. To these guys, money is king and everything else is secondary – sometimes a distant second.
Limbaugh’s on record many times (when his back is against the wall for any of hundreds of indefensible comments over the years) that he has no obligation to the political process; he’s just an entertainer, motivated by ratings and money. He repeated this line again recently in his hour-long interview with Jamie Gangel on NBC’s Today Show:
I want the largest audience I can get, because that’s how I can charge the highest advertising rate,” he said. “Which means what else do I want? Money. I am trying to earn a profit. It’s capitalism.
You bet it is, Rush. But for a guy who seems to understand – and wholeheartedly approve of – the machinations of capitalism as well as you do, it’s a little jarring to hear you petulantly whine about how the NFL are a big bunch of liberal racists. You know as well as anyone that what happened was that you – because of your high profile and history of incendiary rhetoric – were starting to become a distraction and a hindrance to those other rich-guy investors’ chances of buying the Rams. That’s all. As is often the case with businesspeople at the deal-making level, they don’t really care if it’s true, or if you’ve been unjustly maligned by “liberal character assassins” (or whatever your fevered little brain is thinking you’re being assaulted by – other than years of OxyContin abuse, LOL). All they know is, you’ve become a lightning rod that’s getting in the way of their goal: buying the team. So you’ve gotta go. It’s not personal, it’s just business.
But apparently, when it’s your ample, pilonidal-cyst-ridden butt on the line, suddenly, it all becomes personal and petty and unconscionable. And, apparently, reason to decry the dispassionate actions of a bunch of investors as something other than what it is: businessmen simply trying to conduct business in the most hassle-free and profitable manner possible. To hear Limbaugh talk the last couple of days, you’d peg him as some wild-eyed anticapitalist who wants to restrict the ability of businessmen to conduct their own deals and their own business how they choose. He appears to believe that his fellow investors should be prohibited (perhaps by law?) from considering his multi-decade record of public statements – and the public approbation they’ve engendered – when considering whether to continue to keep him as a partner in the prospective deal. They just want the best chance they can get of attaining their business goals, and they came to the conclusion, dispassionately, that your negative public profile was becoming (much) more of a liability than your financial contribution to “the team” was a benefit. Simple business decision.
Why does Rush Limbaugh hate the free market…and capitalism?
