I almost feel sorry for the guy

Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN yesterday after he made a pretty racist comment on last Sunday's "Sunday NFL Countdown" show. Earlier he'd said that working on their football pre-game show was a dream fulfilled for him.

My play by play on how I found out about all this: At around 8.00 p.m. Wednesday I see on the muted TV at the Daily Texan some CNN story about something Rush said on ESPN that pissed some folks off. I read his justification on closed captions before I know what statement he's defending. He said:

All this has become the tempest that it is because I must have been right about something. If I wasn't right, there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community.

I go ask page designer Phil what the hell they're talking about and he says it was something racist. Surely, I think, Rush wouldn't say something that racist while talking about football, right?

I look up quote on ESPN.com:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in [Eagles' quarterback Donovan] McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

To quote Dave Chapelle, damn, that was racist.

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt for some reason, but then I realized this guy makes a living on what he says, so he knows that how you say things is just as important as what you say. So he didn't mean, "Well, Donovan McNabb entered the league during a time of excitement because a handful black quarterbacks were changing both how the position is played and the stereotypical image of a typical, white quarterback. Because of this the media was eager to embrace these new stars and may have overvalued their contribution to their teams." No, he meant what he said, which would not be hugely offensive in conversation. But this was national TV. People aren't upset because he was right, they're upset because what he said was stupid, just plain wrong, and unnecessarily offensive.

Bah, whatever, this post is already way too long. I've given too much time to a man who is allowed to dessiminate really ugly ideas through the guise of his guffawing, affable personality. Then again, the guy did spend his entire life in radio only to go deaf, and now he's lost this dream as well. No pity from me, though, because the question is, why does someone so undeserving get to live two dreams to begin with?

PS - If you haven't been following the debate going on in comments to the previous post, you should take a look. They're pretty entertaining, I think.