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Tom Teepen: Rush Limbaugh was really done in by his own words

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12:49 PM Wednesday, October 21, 2009

As it began to look as though his past, um, let’s say “racial indelicacies” would cost Rush Limbaugh a shot at partial ownership of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, the right-wing radio hustler offered this interpretation:

“This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we are going to have.”

And sure enough, others in the bidding group did dump Limbaugh. National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell had said that Limbaugh’s popoff history was inappropriate for a franchise holder, and other NFL owners had declared their displeasure at the prospect of Limbaugh joining their club.

So according to Limbaugh he was done in by a tight circle of rich, white and, you can be sure, generally conservative guys because of his conservatism? A tidier example of Limbaugh’s odd mixture of preening grandiosity and wallowing paranoia would be hard to find.

Limbaugh was done in by Limbaugh. And it wasn’t his conservatism that tipped him up.

For my sins — which considering the punishment must be great and grave — I often listen to Limbaugh when I’m out and about in my car. This self-flagellation goes back more than a decade, and if I have ever heard him speak of any African-American figure with other than contempt and dismissal, and usually with a fillip of mockery, I can’t remember when.

Limbaugh accompanied the emergence of Barack Obama by frequently playing “Barack, the Magic Negro,” a ditty sung to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” He mimicks Jesse Jackson as speaking in a weird, stumbling, prissy voice. Whatever you make of Jackson, he speaks cadenced, sonorous English. The Congressional Black Caucus and its social concerns are frequent Limbaugh targets.

A fan of professional football, Limbaugh as a commentator for ESPN six years ago dissed Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb as a mediocrity over-hyped by white sports writers genuflecting to political correctness. ESPN canned Limbaugh amid the resulting listener outrage and two years later McNabb led the Eagles to the Superbowl.

“The NFL,” Limbaugh has said, “too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips ... ”

Small wonder then that a commercial sports league whose player rosters are about 65 percent black erupted — front office and field alike — at his proposed entry. There are, after all, standards.

Limbaugh fronts for far-right and — increasingly the same — Republican politics, but he has a lively sideline in selling cheap outrages. Thus feminists are “feminazis,” environmentalists are “wackos,” American Indians are “Injuns” and Obama, because of his mixed heritage, is a “Halfrican-American.”

The First Amendment’s right to free speech and press works well thanks in good part to the fact that while it protects writers and publishers, speakers and broadcasters from government interference, it doesn’t exempt them from the social consequences of their utterances.

There’s nothing in the Bill of Rights that says Rush Limbaugh gets bye.

Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Atlanta. His e-mail address is teepencolumn@earthlink.net.

Cox News Service

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