You Get What You Pay For...

...And ESPN has just discovered this for themselves. Having hired the motor-mouth conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh to inject some "controversy" into ESPN's Sunday night football pregame show, the execs who made that dubious decision got exactly what they paid for.

Seems they didn't like it much. Rush is a football illiterate, which begs the obvious question: What the fuck did ESPN expect him to contribute? Apparently, crappy analysis and cutting edge racist commentary was what they expected, 'cause it only took 4 weeks to get it.

The only shocking thing here is that Rush was hired in the first place. Afterall, his stock in trade on the radio and back in the day of DittoHead TV was exactly the kind of barely disguised code he employed in his comments about Donovan McNabb, who, regardless of what Rush may think, is so good he scares the shit out of opposing teams. Rush has built a multi-million dollar empire on fact-challenged so called "political" commentary rife with white middle class scare tactics: Black folks are taking your jobs, fucking your daughters, and the "liberalmediaestablishment" colludes to promote this agenda. It's all misdirection while Rush's masters loot the public treasury for themselves while telling the rest of us to work longer hours for less pay, and never mind the over time!

As for ESPN, well, they are in it now. Whoever hired Rush knew full well what they were getting, and it will be to their everlasting discredit that they pulled this stunt in a cynical ratings grab. Sports, despite the associated problems, has time and again been out in front on race issues, sometimes dragging a reluctant society with it. ESPN has taken a regressive step with this foolishness. One good thing to come out of this is that ESPN's football drama Playmakers is coming under some much needed scrutiny. Billed as a hard hitting, reality based show about a professional football team, it feels a lot more like a bad 1980's gangsta rap movie, all drugs and gold chains and no plot. I won't say it is racist, but it is absurd...