Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service

Senior Fellow for Media Matters Eric Boehlert said that Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show radio host, has virtually no chance of the National Football League accepting his bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams, citing the league’s efforts to avoid controversy and Limbaugh’s “incredibly long track record” of “hateful, inflammatory rhetoric about African-Americans.”

“The comments this week from the commissioner, some of the owners, the players, the union reps... make it pretty clear that Limbaugh’s chances are basically zero at this point,” Boehlert said.

In 2003, Limbaugh tendered his resignation from ESPN’S Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show for saying NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb was not as the good as the media made him seem. “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,” he said in the pre-game show.

“Every couple of years [Limbaugh] sort of ventures out of his protective right-wing radio bubble into the mainstream culture, and the reaction is immediate and unambiguous,” Boehlert said. “Mainstream pop culture, in this case sports, does not want anything to do with Rush Limbaugh.”

Boehlert added that he was unsure if politics and sports can co-exist.

“Having an owner who spends his day talking about the president as a communist or a racist or hates white people ... doesn’t go over well in a professional sports community,” he said. “Larger sports culture ... has no patience whatsoever with mixing politics and sports. Sports fans don’t want anything to do with politics, they want to leave that stuff outside.”