The One About Even A Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day.

[Toriach]

(This article originally appeared at The One About...)

So, out of a clear blue sky, comes the news that Rush Limbaugh had been hoping to invest in the St. Louis Rams, and was turned down by the NFL for one or two off the cuff comments that he might have made in the past, that some people were choosing to interpret in a negative fashion. Poor, poor, innocent Rush.

Now before we go any further, allow me to establish my bonafides. I am officially on record as a proud member of the Rush Limbaugh Anti-Fan Club! I have written in the past about my loathing for the man. He is a divisive bigot, and worse than that I am quite certain he is disingenuous. What he says would be loathsome enough if he truly believed it. However, I am quite certain that he says what he does because he knows it gets him attention. Media attention, audience attention, and in the last couple of years Government attention. If the man thought there was more money to be made in carrying on about the joy of cooking, he'd be wearing an apron and wishing us Bon Appetit at the end of every broadcast.

Having said that, I will admit that I was initially in total agreement with the people who were scratching their heads in wonderment over how in the hell dog murder/torturer/rape facilitator Michael Vick gets to slide right back into the NFL, while Limbaugh (who odious though he might be) has done nothing worse than a little prescription drug fraud, and some lite hate speech (from the same people who brought you lite beer and lite FM no doubt) has been shown the door. Then it suddenly dawned on me. This situation is greatly paralleled by the very neat (and yes I know very apocryphal) story about North American native peoples and the first European boats.

The story... Yes, yes the totally made up, popularized by What The Bleep Do We Know?, story in short is that when the Europeans first showed up, the natives were not able to see their ships, because they had nothing in their experience to draw from so they just couldn't process what they were seeing, so they “blanked” it out.

Great story. Full of holes, I know. But that's not the point. The point is that the story is a metaphor and as metaphor it's a darn good one. It's a metaphor for the way that when something is outside of your experience range, you are usually less able to deal with it than if it had been inside of your experience range.

“So what in the hell does this have to do with Vick, and Limbaugh?” I can hear you asking. Good question and I'm glad you asked it.

In short, the NFL really doesn't quite understand the danger, both present and potential, that Vick represents. For one thing, opinion is divided enough that they know full well that there will never be enough of an Anti-Vick movement as to hurt their bottom line. Further more, the victims of Vick's actions were dogs. And while I'm sure many at the ownership level of these teams “Love” animals, they probably really only view them as pets and status symbols, the way many do. Plus I strongly suspect that they have, over the last several years, grown rather jaded with the antics of various NFL players. As a result I suspect that most of them see Vick's actions as just more of the same. Maybe a little more extreme than most, but nothing to get too bent out of shape about. Plus of course Vick is black, and the downside to the greater awareness around racial issues that has grown over the last several decades, is a fear by many white people in positions of power and authority that any move taken against a black person, even a wholly legitimate move (like denying Vick an easy return to the NFL) will be seen as racist. An appearance that they all avoid like the proverbial plague.

And then there's Rush. A rich, fairly powerful white guy, saying a lot of fairly backwards crap about a lot of things, especially lately black people. Now this is a threat that the big white wigs in NFL Land can immediately recognize and understand. In fact the only way the danger would be more obvious to them, is if a large bubble headed robot were standing nearby, it's arms flailing wildly as it shouted “Danger! Danger!” The fine folks at the NFL know exactly what to do with a situation like that. Put the racist windbag down and run, don't walk, run away as far as you can, before the stink of racism gets on you.

Which is exactly what they've done.

And that is a fine thing they've done. Limbaugh frankly does not need to be rewarded for his bile spewing any more than he already has been.

Now if we could just get Vick on tape opining how dogs should sit at the back of the bus, maybe, we'll have a better chance getting the NFL on board with that situation too.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!