by Zev Chafets
While all this was going on, Rush Limbaugh was in the studio spinning oldies or selling tickets for the Kansas City Royals. When he emerged, blinking, into the harsh light of political combat in the mid-1980s, he came armed with the belief in color-blindness that had been in vogue twenty years earlier. Mort Sahl once said that anyone who maintains a consistent position in America will eventually be tried for treason. Or racism.
Race was on Limbaugh’s mind when I went down to Palm Beach to see him in the summer of 2009. By then we had spent hours together talking and exchanged more than a hundred e-mail messages; and, of course, I had listened to his show almost daily for several years. I had a pretty good idea of what he did and didn’t think on a range of matters. Including race. I told him that I thought he had a blind spot on the subject.
Limbaugh asked me what I meant by a blind spot, and I mentioned his unwillingness to see why American blacks didn’t share his narrative of America as a uniquely virtuous nation.
“The Constitution defined Negroes as property. They counted as three-fifths of a human for the purpose of the census. You can see why that might be a problem,” I said.
“The Framers had to accommodate slave states,” Limbaugh said. “Those were the actual politics of the situation. And the Constitution set up a process to gradually end slavery. That stuff legally has been washed away and dealt with.”
“Sure, but a lot of the early founders were slaveholders. Washington, Jefferson. Imagine how a black kid feels going to a school named after a man who owned slaves.”
Limbaugh was incredulous. “The founding fathers were not oppressors,” he said. “And at some point, you have to let go. We fought a war. And we’ve done what we can to level the playing field.”
“So, you don’t feel guilty?”
“No, not in perpetuity. That keeps the races divided. I plant myself firmly in reality. I want everyone to experience the greatness of this country. And they can. We have a black president now. We have Oprah. I’m bullish on America as it exists today. Negative people make other people sick. Stop thinking of yourself as a hyphenated American. We all have obstacles. I have, because of my size and my opinions. But I believe in individuals, everyone succeeding. I have never kept anyone back or subjugated anyone.”
The following day I got to the studio early and dropped in on James Golden. He was sitting in his office going over some mail, but he didn’t mind being interrupted. Since our first Huey Newton meets the Mainstream Media moment, we had developed an easy connection. We’re about the same age, like the same kind of music, and have some experiences in common. And I admired Golden for his willingness to stand up for his views. “After you’ve been called an Uncle Tom for the two millionth time, it loses its meaning,” he told me. “I’m a conservative, okay? That’s how I see the world. My mother is part of the Democrat machine in New York—she couldn’t understand how I could be a conservative, but I am one. And I was one before I went to work for Rush. I was already in the radio business in New York, and I saw a lot of so-called liberals who were real racists. And I can tell you, Rush isn’t.”
Golden has been screening Limbaugh’s calls and acting as his alter ego going back to the start of the national show. “When he came to ABC in 1988, the in-joke was that AM radio was going to be Muzak at the Hilton Hotels. Howard Stern was on FM. Imus was on WNBC, but he wasn’t even syndicated. Everybody ABC tried, all the big DJs from around the country, bombed. I wasn’t happy at ABC and I quit, which is when Rush hired me for his show. He had no idea what my politics were and he never asked.”
One day, early on, Limbaugh walked into the studio and found Golden in tears. He was broke and couldn’t pay his bills. The next day, Limbaugh handed him an envelope with five thousand dollars in it. “Rush wasn’t rich then,” says Golden. “Five thousand was a lot of money to him. He told me, ‘This is a gift, not a loan,’ and didn’t mention it again. At that moment I decided, anything I can do for the guy, I’m in. I hear people call him every name in the book, especially on race. They have no fucking clue who this man is.”
Golden is a voracious reader of history, and we were chatting about World War I when Limbaugh walked into the room. “James,” he said, “I want to ask you a question. We were talking yesterday and, let me put it this way, would it ever bother you to go to a school named George Washington or Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners?”
Golden laughed. “Well, I can tell you that when I was in school, I was the one who stood up in English class and gave a speech about why the Black Panthers are needed.”
Limbaugh look befuddled. “But James, you’re a conservative,” he said.
“That’s right, I am.”
“You’re an American patriot.”
Golden nodded. “I am. Absolutely. But I don’t celebrate the Fourth of July—that’s not my Independence Day. That’s white people’s Independence Day.” Something clicked, and I remembered Golden, as Bo Snerdley, riffing on how Michelle Obama was “frontin’ ” in her speech at the Democratic National Convention when she didn’t tell the nation that blacks don’t consider the Fourth of July to be their Independence Day. Evidently Limbaugh hadn’t been listening, or maybe he thought Golden was just kidding. Now he seemed shocked to discover that Bo Snerdley, the Official Obama Criticizer, Rush’s sidekick for two decades, a conservative in the very best kind of standing, didn’t celebrate the nation’s birthday. Limbaugh has an expressive face, and I could see him turning the matter over in his mind.
Our talk about race obviously made an impression. A few weeks later Rush brought it up on the air. “There’s a guy writing a book about me and the last time I sat down and did an interview with him, it was down here in Florida, and he said, ‘I don’t think you get it about race.’ ” Limbaugh described our conversation about the Constitution and slavery and his own experiences. “I told him some stories about growing up,” he said. “I told him about our maid that came in two or three times a week named Alberta. We called her Bertie. She was like a grandmother to my brother and me, and my mom and dad. My mother took her home and I’d drive in the car. I’m six or seven years old. I saw where Bertie lived and it made me sick. I talked to my parents about it. I said, ‘Why does this happen?’ They sat me down and they talked to me about the circumstances. It was my father that enabled Bertie to buy a house outside of that neighborhood and get her a job at . . . I think it was at Woolworth’s. I’m telling this author all this stuff and I don’t know if it’s registering at all—and I’m, frankly, angry I have to tell it. I’m angry that I have to say this stuff. Here’s a guy doing a book on me who I don’t know if he thinks [I’m a racist] or if he’s just asking the question because he thinks readers are going to want to know it.”
It was cringe inducing to hear Limbaugh defend his lack of bias by mentioning his housekeeper. Sophisticated people don’t say such things. Race talk in America is carried out in euphemism and politically correct code, a point Attorney General Eric Holder had made earlier that year when he said that Americans are cowards when it comes to candidly discussing race. Limbaugh has been conducting that sort of conversation, from the perspective of a traditional white integrationist. He regards black nationalism and black liberation theology as separatist, opposes affirmative action as a racial quota system, and sees multiculturalism as an effort to undermine a national American identity. These views are conservative, but they are not racist, and he sees the accusation that he is a racist as a form of liberal Kryptonite. “I didn’t become a racist until somebody called me one when I started this radio show,” he said. “I wasn’t a racist up until 1988, and then somebody called me one—and ever since I was called a racist, I’ve been one, according to the media. And yet I never was one and I’m not one now.” But Limbaugh is not quite as innocent as he sounds. He has known from the start that mocking Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as racial shakedown artists (“the Justice Brothers”) or calling the NAACP a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party were not likely
to make him a beloved figure in the black community. And he certainly knew that bits like “The Magic Negro” parody would be interpreted by his enemies as racist. Joe Biden could get away with marveling, during the 2008 primary campaign, that Barack Obama was “clean” and “articulate”; Senator Robert Byrd could muse publicly about “white niggers” without losing his honored place in the Democratic Party. Their reputation as liberals entitled them to racial get-out-of-jail-free cards. Limbaugh didn’t have one of those. He didn’t know it yet, but he would need one.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WELCOME TO THE NFL
From his early boyhood, Rusty Limbaugh has been sports crazy. Baseball was his first love, but his experience with the Kansas City Royals cooled his ardor. Besides, in Pittsburgh, in the 1970s, he fell for the “the greatest team of all time,” the Steelers. Football back then was the sport of Republicans. The anti-war left despised the NFL, with its long bombs and ground attacks and martial values. Richard Nixon, a frustrated college player, diagrammed plays in the Oval Office and sent them over to the coaching staff of the Washington Redskins. His successor, Gerald Ford, had been a football star at the University of Michigan, good enough to have received contract offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers (which he turned down). Ronald Reagan, another college player, starred in a biopic about Notre Dame football hero George Gipp and, in the White House, sometimes channeled the character.
Limbaugh was no Gipper. After his sophomore years on the Central High team, the closest he came to playing was in touch games organized by George Brett in Kansas City. But Limbaugh loved pro football, and as his fame and wealth grew, he was able to attend games all over the country, sit in owners’ boxes, chat with coaches and players, and discuss intricacies with analysts. Monday through Friday he devoted himself to the political area, but he had weekends off, and the thought of spending them combining his two loves, broadcasting and football, appealed to him. In 2000 he discussed the possibility of joining ABC’s Monday Night Football media team, but nothing came of it.
Three years later, ESPN hired Limbaugh as an analyst for its flagship show, Sunday NFL Countdown. The broadcast team also included Chris Berman and three former NFL stars, Tom Jackson, Steve Young, and Michael Irvin. There was plenty of professional football expertise in the group. Rush was hired, as ESPN itself said, to stir debate and bring in viewers. He did his job. In the first month he was on the show, ratings went up 10 percent. On his fourth (and as it turned out, final) appearance, Sunday NFL Countdown had its biggest audience in more than six years.
The discussion on that last broadcast focused on Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, an all-star who was in the midst of one of his weakest pro seasons. Up for discussion was the question: Is Donovan McNabb regressing?
Limbaugh didn’t accept the premise. “Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s [McNabb] been that good from the get-go. I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well, black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.”
Tom Jackson and Steve Young disagreed with Limbaugh’s assessment of McNabb’s ability, which was, obviously, a matter of opinion. But neither they nor Irvin disputed that the league and the football media (much of which is a mouthpiece for the NFL and its teams) were working for racial diversity. At the start of 2003, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue actually announced a policy, known as the Rooney Rule, requiring teams looking for head coaches to include black candidates among those they interviewed.
The only guy on a football team more visible than the coach is the quarterback, and for decades quarterback was considered a white position. Even the great Warren Moon had to play in Canada for six years before finding a team that would take him. By the 1990s this was an embarrassment to the NFL, as well as a marketing problem. More than half the players and a great many fans were African Americans. The league wanted and needed black quarterbacks, but there wasn’t much of a supply, mostly because promising black high school quarterbacks had been routinely converted into running backs, pass receivers, or defensive backs at the college level. But there were black quarterbacks at traditionally black colleges. In 1995 Steve McNair of Alcorn State was selected number three in the draft by the Houston Oilers; by 1997 he was the starting quarterback. His success opened the way for others. In 1999 McNabb was the first black quarterback to be taken number two in the draft; two others, Akili Smith and Daunte Culpepper, were selected in the first round. Michael Vick was the first overall pick in 2001. By the time Limbaugh addressed the McNabb issue, there were ten black quarterbacks in the NFL, seven of them starters.
Like all football fans, Limbaugh was aware of the racial change in the premier position. He was a social commentator and he made a social comment. It hadn’t been off the cuff, either. Limbaugh later said on the air that he had planned it. “I weighed it, I balanced it, but you know what I decided? Look, they brought me in to be who I am. This is what I think. It’s a sports issue. It’s a sports opinion.”
At the time, Limbaugh’s opinion didn’t seem to disturb or surprise his fellow analysts. Only Jackson questioned him: “So, Rush, once you make that investment though, once you make that investment in [McNabb], it’s a done deal,” he said.
“I’m saying it’s a good investment,” Limbaugh replied. “Don’t misunderstand. I just don’t think he’s as good as everybody says he has been.”
“Rush has a point,” said Michael Irvin, who, like Jackson, is black.
“Well, [McNabb] certainly hasn’t matured,” said Steve Young, who is white.
That was Sunday. On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Daily News published an interview with McNabb. “It’s sad we’ve got to go to skin color. I thought we were through with that whole thing,” he said.
At first, ESPN Vice President Mark Shapiro defended Limbaugh. “Rush was arguing McNabb is essentially overrated and that his success is more in part due to the team assembled around him,” he said. “Rush is also arguing that McNabb has been propped up because the media is desirous to have successful black quarterbacks, much the same as others have claimed the media is desirous to have Chris Simms succeed because of his father [ex-quarterback Phil Simms]. We brought Rush in for no-holds-barred opinion. Early on, he has delivered.”
Shapiro spoke too soon. Three Democratic presidential candidates—Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and Al Sharpton—called for Limbaugh to be fired. So did the National Association of Black Journalists. Tom Jackson said that he would no longer appear with Limbaugh. ESPN decided that it didn’t want controversy if it was going to be so controversial. On Wednesday the network issued another statement: “Although Mr. Limbaugh today stated that his comments had ‘no racist intent whatsoever, ’ we have communicated to Mr. Limbaugh that his comments were insensitive and inappropriate.” Limbaugh resigned and ESPN expressed its relief in a press release: “We believe that he took the appropriate action to resolve this matter expeditiously,”the league said.
When the controversy first burst, Limbaugh snapped back against his perennial adversary, the liberal media. “If you don’t say what the appointed, anointed superiorists and those who think that they are at the top of judgmentalism—if you don’t say what they want to hear, if you don’t say what they think is right, then not only are they going to disagree with you, then they’re going to demand that you not be allowed to say it, that you not be given a position or forum to say it because they don’t want to hear it. Now, that is discriminatory in itself.” But veteran Limbaugh listeners sensed that he wasn’t counterpunching with his usual ferocity. This impression was confirmed on Wednesday, when he left ESPN. Since when did El Rushbo throw in the towel? Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News thought it showed that Rush was all talk and no heart. “He did it because he couldn’t take the heat . . . He wants to be the r
ough, tough, truth-telling conscience of America. But the very first time he gets hit, he quits on his stool. Even some of the Democrats he hates so much can take a punch better than that.”
But there was something happening that Lupica and the other commentators knew nothing about. On the day he resigned, Limbaugh learned that the National Enquirer was about to publish a sensational scoop: Rush Limbaugh was a drug addict. Suddenly he had no time for football skirmishes. He faced personal, legal, and professional challenges that were far more important than the NFL. His destination was rehab. One thing it didn’t cure was his football jones. Five years later, he was still itching. After he negotiated his massive new contract, in 2008, he told me that he might want to get involved with the game again, although not as a broadcaster. “I’m more interested in owning a team,” he said. “Maybe I’ll buy the Eagles and make Donavan McNabb my quarterback.” I thought he was kidding but I mentioned his ambition in the Times profile.
Less than a year later, in May 2009, Limbaugh was approached by Dave Checketts, the former president of the New York Knicks and the founder of Sports Capital Partners Worldwide, which owns, among other properties, the St. Louis Blues hockey team. Checketts was putting together a group, with the aid of Solomon Brothers, to buy the St. Louis Rams. He invited Limbaugh to become one of the partners in the group.
“I was intrigued,” Limbaugh wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.”
Limbaugh’s warning was an understatement. When his connection to the Checketts bid was leaked, penalty flags fell all over the place. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who Limbaugh had been mocking for years as racial shakedown artists, struck back. Sharpton sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell asking him to block Rush.
