From: wes676767@aol.com
Subject: SNET: Rush And MNF
Date: 4 Jun 2000 17:11:01 -0400
To: snetnews@topica.com

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June 19, 2000
Block That Rush! 


I suppose it would be in my financial interest if Rush Limbaugh were to get 
his wish and become part of the broadcast team for ABC's Monday Night 
Football. My book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot is still backlisted, and 
Rush's presence on prime time would probably help sales by reminding millions 
of people who had otherwise forgotten what a smug jerk he is.

The thing is, I'm a football fan. I watch Monday Night Football. Please, 
please, pleeeeeeze, ABC, don't make me have to listen to Rush. See, when I 
was researching my book, I listened to Rush. A lot. And once I finished my 
research, I frankly hoped that I'd never have to hear his voice again.

By the way, it's not so much Rush's politics. If, say, Steve Largent quit 
Congress (which wouldn't be such a bad idea), I'd be happy to listen to him 
call Monday Night Football. Let me explain why: Steve Largent knows a lot 
about football.

Recently on a Fox News Channel program devoted to this subject, I made the 
point that Rush has absolutely no experience in pro football. The anchor, 
whom I will not embarrass by naming him/her, took issue by saying, "But he 
did marketing for the Royals." Rush did, in fact, work in group sales for the 
Kansas City Royals, the American League baseball team. As FNC says, "We 
report, you decide."

Rush did, however, play high school football. In fact, Limbaugh has said that 
he received his 4F physical deferment from the draft because of "a football 
knee from high school." Which is actually not true. In reality, Rush got his 
deferment because of a pilonidal cyst, which is a congenital incomplete 
closure of the neural groove at the base of the spinal cord in which excess 
tissue and hair may collect, causing discomfort and discharge. Not as sexy as 
a football knee, but a pilonidal cyst it was.

This is more to the point of why I don't want Rush on MNF. He's a liar. Not 
the Frank Gifford type, who merely lies about consensual sex, which, though 
an impeachable offense, gives me no reason to doubt a yards-per-carry 
statistic Frank might throw at us. (And unlike Limbaugh, Gifford does not 
call himself "America's Truth Detector.") In Rush's world, "there is no 
conclusive proof that nicotine is addictive." "All income groups paid less 
taxes as a percentage of their income during the Reagan years, but the poor 
received the most relief, the middle class the next and the rich, the least." 
And "there are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus 
discovered the continent in 1492." I had considered titling my book Rush 
Limbaugh is a Big Fat Hypocritical Liar. But I thought that was just too 
confrontational.

Which brings me to the "big fat" part. When Rush was last on TV regularly, he 
was very, very, very fat. And that, I think, is one of the reasons he wants 
the MNF job. Since my book came out, Rush has lost a lot of weight, and I 
don't blame him for wanting America to see that he is no longer, as doctors 
put it, "morbidly obese." The reality is, I saved the man's life, halting his 
slide into food-assisted suicide. Has he thanked me? No.

Besides being an ingrate, Limbaugh is also a lout. In 1993 he called 
13-year-old Chelsea Clinton "the White House dog." If he does MNF, I doubt 
he'll say anything as racist as Howard Cosell's "look at that little monkey 
go," referring during a 1983 Monday night game to Alvin Garrett, a black 
receiver for the Redskins. Rush takes great affront at being called a racist, 
though that didn't stop him from making this observation a few years ago: 
"Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted 
criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

Rush does like to accuse others of racism, particularly anyone in the Clinton 
Administration. According to Limbaugh, the "midnight basketball" provision in 
the President's 1994 crime bill was racist. "At a time when the black 
community is struggling with the notion that the route out of the ghetto is 
the National Basketball Association and a Nike pair of shoes, here comes the 
Administration...and they say to parents, 'Hey, we solved your problem. We're 
going to have your kids playing basketball midnight to 2 am... Wouldn't it 
just be simpler to expand the NBA to 500,000 teams?"

Presumably Rush on MNF will be driving home the idea that the NFL and a pair 
of Nikes is a better way out of the ghetto. Of course, Rush's real problem 
was with the federal government spending a few million dollars on a program 
that would provide supervised recreation and job training to poor teens and 
young adults. Better for taxpayers to spend hundreds of millions on stadiums 
with corporate boxes. (To be fair to Rush, I support all of the above.)

But again, in regard to the MNF job, it's not really Limbaugh's politics that 
I object to. For instance, former MNF commentator Dan Dierdorf is a member of 
the Socialist Workers Party. The fact that you probably don't know that shows 
how well he was able to keep it out of his color commentary. I just want to 
be able to watch my Monday Night Football with the sound on.

Al Franken 

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