Rush Limbaugh
Yesterday I started a diary about Rush Limbaugh's "take" on the NFL's replacement referee fiasco. After trying a couple of different angles, I gave up on his analysis as too bewildering to decipher. Even Rush
described himself in rather schizophrenic terms: "I come down a whole bunch of different ways on this."
A day later, I discover that I'm not alone in my befuddlement. Rich Chandler of NBC Sports made a noble effort to decipher Rush. His review of Rush concludes,
After checking my Limbaugh-to-English translation app, I believe what he’s saying is that the final play of the Monday Night Football game was all Obama’s fault. I suspected as much! Carry on.
–Rick Chandler: Rush Limbaugh: ‘The NFL has never been better’
So we know the underlying intent of Limbaugh's NFL blathering. However, Limbaugh sure goes about it in a curious manner. Here is my second attempt to get a handle on Rush and the NFL.
Rush once sought to become an NFL owner, joining a group bidding on the St. Louis Rams. The players' union explicitly opposed his bid. They had good reason:
Rush Limbaugh's Long War On American Workers
Yet until reminded by a caller, Rush entirely forgot about the union aspect of the NFL replacement refs story. Unlike Paul Ryan's demand that the "real refs" be returned, Rush doesn't see that as a preferred outcome.
To continue the gymnastics theme, anti-union Congressman Ryan did a back-flip in attacking scabs, and calling for the union refs to be re-instated. It was simple, crass opportunism as a result of the general dismay of sports fans. Ryan was following the example of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who tweeted:
No simple back-flip for Rush; he's intent on doing an entire gymnastics floor show. Far more important to have the incompetence remain on display, for this simple circumstance may be bent to instruct the general public on so many favorite Rush themes. Here are some of those themes:
Obama likes to reward incompetence in the name of tolerance (according to Rush), and the replacement refs are an example. On the other hand, Rush argues that the veteran referees make the same sort of mistakes. He concludes at one point:
Those refs are fine. They're no different than the regular refs.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
The chance incompetence of the replacement refs is symbolic of the (alleged) willful partisanship of the mainstream media.
To Rush, the NFL is a "little microcosm of" America. A threat to "the integrity of the game" can thus be used to besmirch "the integrity of the presidential election" and (threats to) the "integrity of the American way of life". A presumed example – welfare recipients have it easy in Obama's America:
If you're a welfare recipient just getting up and joining the program, you probably watched the football game last night. It looks great on your plasma, on your flat screen.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
The replacement refs disaster (somehow) helps to prove that both the sports media, and the mainstream media are liberal, and therefore in favor of "rigged and stacked decks". To Limbaugh, that means pro-Democrat, and anti-Republican.
The last thing the left wants -- in fact, the left opposes meritocracy. Meritocracy is discriminatory. And you know why? Because there are some people who are better than others, and that's not fair.
Everybody should have the same outcome. That's what's fair. Nobody should have any advantages over anybody else, nobody should have any greater opportunity than anybody else, and if somebody does, we gotta penalize 'em. We gotta raise their taxes if they have more money. If they're smarter than other kids in a class, we gotta slow them down so that they don't humiliate the dumber kids in the class, rather than try to speed up the education of the slower kids. No, no. Bring everybody down to the mediocre level. That's what liberalism is.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
So according to Rush, the replacement refs are OK because now "we've got referees who look like America!" Rush elaborates,
We got woman referees, we got Hispanic referees, we got black referees. We got white referees. We got brown and green. We've got fat, we got one-eyed, we got blind. We've got everything in there. The way liberals judge things, it's all good. We got referees that look like America. We have some that are good at it and some that aren't, but everybody's getting a fair shot.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
So Rush has gotten this far into his analysis when he takes a call. The truck driver dittohead reminds Rush that there is another aspect to the veteran refs/replacement refs controversy, and that is UNION. Here's a snippet of that tortured conversation:
RUSH: Right, and the sports media is lined up with the corporate billionaires and against the 99%?
CALLER: No. The sports media's lining up with the 99%. That's what the media is.
RUSH: No, they're not. The sports media wants to kill these refs! The sport media thinks the refs, the incompetent refs are killing the game. They're siding with the owners.
CALLER: No, I'm... They're -- they're... I'm talking about the unionized refs that are locked out. That's who they're fighting for --
RUSH: Oh, oh, oh, oh.
CALLER: -- and against the corporate America.
RUSH: They're "siding with the unionized refs against --"
CALLER: Yes!
RUSH: "-- corporate America, the owners."
CALLER: Yes. Exactly. It's all... We got --
RUSH: Well, I see why I didn't think of that. It's not that good.
CALLER: Oh, boy.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
The conversation gets even worse, but I'll spare you.
With the caller dispatched, Rush summarized by throwing in even more hot-button issues:
The only difference is that the refs here are just incompetent. They're not purposely cheating. The Drive-Bys purposely cheat. The American media has chosen sides. There is nothing incompetent about what they do. These refs, obviously they're not qualified to be doing what they're doing. But it's interesting. So you have racism on top of this, 'cause the black referee got it right but he's overruled by the old white guy. What woulda happened if a female referee had signaled touchdown?
Whoa!
I shudder to think. You start throwing other liberal factors into this, the way they judge people and who deserves a break and who deserves an advantage and who doesn't. You know, who deserves to be discriminated against because of the color of their skin or because their sexual orientation or whatever. That's the way they do things.
What if we learn that the black referee was gay and is Muslim, and he got the call right but he got discriminated against? Oh, my gosh, folks! Whew! It could be bad, the way libs look at things. But see, now they're confronted -- now they're forced to look at things -- only on merit, which they refuse to permit throughout the rest of culture and society. I love it. I just love it. They're being gored by their own ox.
–Rush Limbaugh: The NFL Has Never Been Better!
It is nice that Rush has
something to obsess about other than Sandra Fluke. But it is telling that no matter how tortured the logic, Rush turns every incident into a partisan lesson about race, class, and liberalism. In Limbaugh's world, there is only black and white, good and evil, with no shades of grey. Thus, if something is bad, it behooves Rush to move it over to the liberal side of the political spectrum where all the nastiness belongs. Such thinking could be
a sign of a cognitive disorder. Very strange world we live in, where having an apparent personality disorder can make a person obscenely wealthy.
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