The Irony Of “Judgment To Rush”

I am about to discuss E.J. Dionne’s column today, “Judgment to Rush,” about the Rush Limbaugh/ESPN imbroglio, but I would like to preface my comments with the observation that I think E.J. is one of the best liberal columnists around, a judgment no doubt influenced by the fact that I knew him way back when (and in fact sublet an apartment from him for a while). He’s a fine fellow in addition to being a fine journalist.

As most of you know by now Rush was forced to resign from his ESPN pre-game football commentary gig because of the uproar he provoked by observing on air that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated, largely because “the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.”

E.J. is upset not only by Rush’s provocative comment but by his very presence, now former presence, as an ESPN commentator.

Limbaugh was a football commentator because of politics. ESPN was hoping to add to its ratings by drawing on the vast right-wing audience Limbaugh has built on his radio show. Did ESPN figure that the only people who like football are conservatives of the Limbaugh persuasion?

The issue here is not that Limbaugh is a conservative. Personally, I would not care if my favorite sports commentators — among them Jon Miller, John Madden, Bob Costas and Tim McCarver — agreed with Rush Limbaugh on every single political question. These guys are not on the air because of politics but because they are hugely knowledgeable about the sports they cover and are gifted at explaining to the less initiated what is going on….

By contrast, the Limbaugh hire so reeked of marketing and politics that it was an insult to all sports fans whose political commitments lay elsewhere. Most of us who love sports want to forget about politics when we watch games. Sports, like so many other voluntary activities, creates connections across political lines. All Americans who are rooting for the Red Sox in the playoffs are my friends this month, no matter what their ideology.

Politicizing everything from literature to music to painting and sports was once a habit of the left. The Communist Party’s now-defunct newspaper once had a sports column called “Out in Left Field.”

I think these points are very well taken. I certainly don’t care what Rush thinks about football (but then I don’t care what anybody thinks about football), and I agree that sports, like art and literature, should not be politicized.

The energy of E.J.’s comments is directed much more to Rush’s presence than to the substance of his argument, however, and thus I’m struck by the irony of a liberal objection to a diversity hire on the basis of its affront to meritocratic professionalism. True, the usually valued “difference” that Rush brings to football commentary — his conservative views — would not seem to be of much relevance to professional sports, but it is no more irrelevant than blackness or Latinoness are to many areas where they are, er, “taken into account” in hiring. Faculty hiring in such departments as math, physics, engineering, philosophy, etc., come to mind. E.J. is offended that anything other than professional competence would intrude to sully the purity of sports (I’m sure he would feel the same about players as commentators), but most of his ideological compatriots have no such qualms about compromising pure merit (as defined by the fields in question) in academia.

I have no opinion as to the substance of Rush’s criticism of McNabb and the media, which may well be wrong. (SLATE, by the way, argues that “Rush Limbaugh Was Right. Donovan McNabb isn’t a great quarterback, and the media do overrate him because he is black.”) But right or wrong, Rush’s point was ironically identical to E.J’s: that commentary about professional sports has been politicized — in Rush’s view, by an overly sensitive political correctness; in E.J’s view, by Rush’s very presence as well as his comments. This view is quite widespread. Indeed, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie accused ESPN of “institutional racism” for hiring Rush and for other “racial potshots” against the NFL.

E.J. to the contrary notwithstanding, the overheated response to Rush did not derive from a politically neutral commitment to the purity of sport but rather from a devotion to a version of “diversity” that is intolerant of certain kinds of criticism.

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  1. Cobb October 3, 2003 at 7:22 pm | | Reply

    some of the blanks have been very well filled in by commenter ‘pj’ over at yglesias, and the new scoop that tom jackson was primed to quit the show over rush’s hire in the vein that dionne speaks of.

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