So investors dumped Rush? Did you think we actually won something here? Here’s what’s happened… Rush didn’t waste a lot of money.
Jeez, folks… get over yourselves! Do you understand all the hand wringing over Rush is exactly what keeps this guy on the front pages and upfront in the rest of the media? He is a classic case of “any media is good media.” The more stink, the better.
Don’t get too angry. For the most part I don’t blame you. I blame the dog chase car media that wallows in floating balloon boy stories filled with little but hot air.
“‘Would you like hear about that stupid balloon? Would you like to hear about that damn stupid balloon…’ one, more, time!”
(I really do need to add the sound of a 5th Dimension remake featuring those lyrics.)
Rush wanted to buy a team?
I don’t give a damn.
If he really is a racist, rather than one willing to use race either way to his advantage, imagine what would have happened if he had tried to clear out or demean players of the wrong color? His investment would have evaporated faster than tawdry media reports over Rush’s love for little boys and girls when he heads over the border. Odd how the corporate owned MSM has decided that more Left connected tawdry stories have “legs” and others don’t, mostly “don’t” when attached to Right Wing pundits and pols.
Most of this is expected, unfortunately. But what bothers me is, as with many Inspection topics, is the noise beneath all the noise that no one seems to hear. As one of the few human males who finds sports boring, mundane, even annoying, I may have a perspective the rest are deaf to. To me this is one more nail in a certain coffin.
Why do we bother with sports at all?
“But, Ken, don’t you support your home team?”
What “home team?” Most major teams are neither owned locally, nor have a majority of home town team members. This doesn’t mean squat regarding “home town,” unless you think slapping labels on stuff like “Nashville Titans,” or “New York Mets” is all that matters. It’s a marketing gimmick, folks.
Just how stupid are we?
Please don’t answer that, I’m not sure I want to know beyond all I already I realize.
“But, Ken, it teaches sportsmanship!”
To whom, Michael Vick? The coach who led his Little League-age baseball team to the other coach’s house and then burned it down with the other coach still in it? The cheerleader who beat a fan of the other team with a megaphone because he was rooting for the other team? To that great quote from the 70s: “winning is the only thing,” that has become so ingrained in our culture, our politics?
When I have to drive past a stadium on game day; always going elsewhere, I see the fans wearing their colors… eager to use their expensive tickets to spend lots of dollars on, often bad, beer and hideously priced snacks. Ready to rasp up vocal chords with screams for their teams, or more often other phrases too obscene and insulting to mention.
Hate sells.
A friend, and a fan, I know supports a team far away from where he lives: Pittsburgh Steelers. He told me he likes the way it’s managed and how they play fair. Of course I know squat, except, “How can any fan know exactly how a team is managed or how ‘fair’ they may or may not be in all games?”
A curious and obvious question.
And isn’t all this obviously; all too often, promoting the “hate anyone who isn’t us” meme’ in society that’s already far, far too prevalent? Is it all that far from those who cheered on every bite made by lions and other Flavian Amphitheater animals during the Roman Empire? (As in, “Coliseum.”) If we can hate someone or some team simply because they have had a local label slapped on them, is it a surprise that we nail Gays to fences or once took postcard photos of lynchings as if we just bagged a buck, or even that “pro” wrestling is so popular?
Once again…
“Hate sells.”
I fear that’s why sports sells so well: filling stadiums to the tune of multi-mega-millions. Politics have been sports-i-fied to the point that sports pale in comparison to politics these days. This explains why FOX, Limbaugh and Beck sell so well and, yes, a few Liberal pundits; though let’s not even pretend there’s some parity here. There’s not. No one sells more hate, and does a better job of selling it, than the Right and their sycophant MSM slaves. From Beck’s VapoRub driven, fake, tears, to Coulter’s/Limbaugh’s willingness to say anything, they have become the political version of WalMart: shelves filled with various hate “products.”
But I do not hate them. I admit: I am amazed and a little jealous at their ability to market. But I do fear the public’s outright ignorance when they so easily buy “Obama’s not an American,” labels that they have turned meaningless like “Socialist” and “Socialism” and “death panels.”
Why “fear?” Because some day I may have to listen to protesters outside a hospital window who are keeping the heart beating in my less alive than Frankenstein water for brain wife. I may be visiting a country that some president decides has WMD and be turned into mist by a bomb bought with my tax money. Or my rights may be gutted to the point I’m snatched off some street and I spend the rest of my life in some modern Inquisition hell hole with no due process: none. Guilty by less than mere accusation, maybe less than mere suspicion: maybe just convenience of those who sell such as necessary. How do they sell it? It starts when the public is told to hate “those who hate our freedoms,” and then told what we must do to protect those freedoms: throw them away.
Our politics and the media’s coverage have both become about as “in depth” as our support for certain teams: maybe even less so. When you can have people and pundits still ragging on Bill Clinton yeas later for doing less sexually, and being less of a scumbag, than say, Newt “tell my wife I’m leaving her for a young thing while she might be on her death bed” Gingrich, Joey “dead intern” Scarborough, Mark Sanford or John Ensign… that’s bad.
I’m no fan of rumors and this kind of politics.
I wish we didn’t even go there.
Look, as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to using rumors and sexual to beat down pols and pundits; our parents may have had it right. It’s pretty obvious, by now, that JFK had some serious unpublished at the time (for the most part) problems. But are we better off now that we think we know all; at least “all” (true or not) that those who want us to hate JFK think we have to know? Perhaps it’s better kept all off the table? Such will always be used by those who off have the loudest microphones to beat down those they disagree with the most, or who are politically convenient targets. Those who have such access are often the worst people we could give it too, especially in a culture that’s based mostly on “what sells.”
“Winning is the only thing,” obviously sells. But “what sells” isn’t always quite accurate or good for society.
This goes beyond my sports comparison. Now we’re not just “cheering on ‘our’ team,” with all the “shallow” that implies, we’re making up stuff: even more so than fictional “local” sports teams. I don’t hear people claiming Vick was having sex with animals, or the Serena and Venus are keeping opponents in their cellar and experimenting on them. Even Steve McNair’s story died faster in the media than magician’s flash cotton goes “poof!” Thank God. But we do hear on and on about imaginary death panels, Barack O Hitler, or even Vince Foster’s corpse being dragged into a park by Hillary to avoid having some fictional affair exposed. Unless she’s a lesbian. Oh, my, God! She’s a frickin alien from the planet Gettaf-inlife!!!
In fact an issue like “he’s buying a team” is so “Rush” in nature and so sports shallow. Inaccurate at best: he was part of an investment group. “He” wasn’t buying a team. Intentionally distracting: aren’t there far more important fish to deep fry with in depth coverage? Race baiting: unless he actually has enough power as an investor to fill the team with white robes; even racists have a right to buy and sell. Of course it would be great theater to see those team members trip over their robes, given head down pointy hat wedgies. Why they could be the Keystone Cop version of the Harlem Globetrotters! But to get a bit more serious for a brief moment: do remember; go here and the next issue will be “how dare you sell (anything like a team) to a known Commie?”
(But at least then Russia could form an international team called “The Sickles” who lose all the time because they’re getting… hammered.)
Limbaugh has a right to help buy any damn team he wants: invest where he wishes. When we publicly wring our hands over him buying a team we only fuel the Right Wing fantasy that the Left “hates our freedom.” Taking him out of the investment pool did the same thing. It got his name in the press again, helps him pretend he’s a victim again and it saved him bucket loads of money. And that’s exactly the kind of stuff Rush uses to pump up his phony numbers. No one plays “poor little me being picked on by the liberals” victim better than El Rushbo.
Thanks guys! Talk about us feeding their sick tendencies to project their own unstable mental condition onto everyone else. When did those who do such decide to become dittohead enablers?
How do you game Rush, rather than have him always gaming us? Easy. Stop giving him and his Yuck-so-lence in Broadcasting show free plugs. Let him naturally sink into the bog by virtue of his own massive bloat.
And I’m not referring to his weight.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved
I watch sports occasionally and one thing I can tell you, Ken: Like fishing, spectator sports are mainly an excuse for men to get drunk together.
That aside, the psycho-social aspects of sport are that it helps siphon off aggression from certain sorts of people. In that, it’s useful to prevent those types from taking out their aggression in other less seemly ways, so sports do serve some limited constructive social purpose.
I have to disagree with your premise, though; it wasn’t the hand-wringing from the left that brought Rush’s consortium to buy the Rams to the public — that was the MSM. All the liberal bloggers did was point out Rush’s history of racially-tainted comments, especially his attitude toward minorities in the game of pro football, and comment on the irony of Limbaugh wanting to be part of the ownership of an NFL team. In fact, no less than Keith Olbermann thought Limbaugh should be allowed to buy into the Rams group. (Since you didn’t provide specifics as to who was ‘hand-wringing’ on the left, or trying to prevent Limbaugh from buying a share of the team, I can’t respond to that.)
Actually, I laughed when I read that Rushbo wanted to buy into an NFL franchise — I guessed there was no way that would ever happen. How hard is it to figure out that in a sport where 70 percent of the players are black, the anti-Obama, race-baiting Rush wouldn’t be welcomed? (BTW, claiming you’re not a racist but exploiting racism for ratings seems to me to be a distinction without a difference.)
As far as giving Rush publicity, I think that’s the best thing that could happen — let the public hear his goofy contradictions, outright lies, and half-witted madness and decide for themselves if they want politicians who align themselves with Limbaugh running the country.
I suppose I’m referring more to the general hand wringing over many things Rush says and does, all obviously to get more attention. Though on Sirius Left there seemed a sincere amount of “wringing.” There were also Con callers doing the usual, “You guys don’t believe in freedom” BS. All of it seems nonsense to me, especially the latter.
One can be using race to one’s advantage either way and not be a racist in the Klan/skinhead sense: I guess narcissistic opportunist would be a fairly good description. I almost have a tad less disrespect for a true racist, which doesn’t say much. Kind of like Albert Speer who wasn’t a “true believer” but willing to deal with the worst humanity has to offer. These are the true enablers of evil IMO that give a hint of as more respectful face to fascists, racists… etc.
As bad as Klan type people are, they’re dangerous and we know it. The type of people I’m talking about will do anything, say anything that will get them where they want to be. I fear they are far more dangerous, individually. That’s what I think Rush is. If he thinks it’s to his advantage to be a defender of African American and make white jokes that’s what he’d do, until tomorrow it was advantageous to do and claim the opposite.
That, IMO, brings evil to a far more dangerous level, and this I think Rush has achieved. A true racist probably would never have gotten as far. Notice how smooth talking Duke has gone pretty much no where on the talk show carnival circuit in comparison. That’s probably why.
Rush enables and gives more respect to the worst of humanity. That’s what being a narcissistic opportunist achieves, far more than the worst of humanity would ever get without them.