Even Rush Limbaugh agrees, socialism isn't all bad
Who’d a thunk? Rush Limbaugh buying into a socialist dream?Yes, Ditto-heads, it’s true. Limbaugh recently announced a bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams. A lifelong National League Football fan, along with being a short-lived NFL commentator and self-made multi-millionaire, Limbaugh certainly has the right to make a bid on the Rams.
There was one main issue against him, which I will get to in a moment. However, the main question, the real one, is why he would want to be involved in such a socialistic, anti-free market organization?
Anyone who has ever listened to his shows know of Limbaugh’s ultra distaste of socialism, especially when that claim can be smeared all over the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. However, there was Limbaugh, ready to dive into that socialistic pit called the NFL.
Yes, the NFL makes a lot of money and any capitalistic owner who was with the league in the early days of television left as millionaires, such as former Cleveland Browns’ owner Art Modell. However, no one can seriously believe the NFL could survive in Green Bay without being propped up by the spread-the-wealth philosophy the NFL espouses, can they? In St. Louis, for example, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch detailed how the Rams get more than $4 billion when the NFL takes over half of its TV revenue, which it steals from big-market teams such as New York and Los Angeles and gives to the Rams, Packers or Arizona, spreading all of those dollars equally among all of its teams. (Or do you believe that the largest TV markets in America are found in Jacksonville or Cleveland or Buffalo?)
And as for home NFL games, the home team loses 40 percent of its gate receipts and gives that to the visitors, in yet another of the NFL’s socialistic mandates and bylaws.
Horrible, isn’t it, how America’s most beloved game trashes the capitalistic, free-market system for such an anti-American system? And worse, the system in place is one that works and benefits the league so successfully.
One doesn’t have to look far to find similar leagues that struggle. The NBA, NHL and MLB all struggle financially because they adhere to the capitalistic system (although MLB has adopted a piece of the socialistic pie with a tax on the higher-paying clubs and redistributes it to the have-nots in MLB). It’s why small- and mid-market teams can’t compete on a yearly basis with the Bostons and New Yorks, as any Cleveland Indians fan can tell you. The NHL is in simply dreadful financial straits, and the NBA has had franchises in Seattle and Vancouver move this decade in a bid to make money.
Yes, one can say that Houston (to Tennessee) and Cleveland (to Baltimore) represented NFL moves, but in those cases the owners were still making money – just not enough to their liking. Al Davis’ moves from Oakland to Los Angeles and back to Oakland were all about money and not because he was losing any at either location. And, in both NFL cases, Houston and Cleveland fought – and were given – new franchises to replace those that moved.
The irony, of course, is that the NFL is arguably the most successful program in America because of its socialistic/capitalistic nature and the fact it has turned its nose up at a pure free-market system. The Cowboys certainly weren’t immune in going to the taxpayers to pony up $300 million of public money to prop up Jerry Jones’ $1.1 billion castle in Dallas.
Yet, Limbaugh wanted a piece of this.
Of course, that wasn’t what derailed his march into socialism. Limbaugh remained part of the St. Louis group attempting to buy the Rams until public outrage grew (and NFL player and owner opposition began to crystallize), in large part because the public and players used Limbaugh’s own words and belief system against him. If you were a black player for the Rams (or in the NFL), how could you forget this Limbaugh gem in 2007?
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
Or the one that generated the heat until he resigned from ESPN in 2003: “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. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well ... McNabb got a lot of the credit for the performance of the team that he really didn’t deserve.’’
Or the race card he played in 2008, all the while ignoring Chicago Bears’ quarterback Rex Grossman’s 66.4 quarterback rating: “The media, the sports media, has got social concerns that they are first and foremost interested in, and they’re dumping on this guy — Rex Grossman — for one reason, folks, and that’s because he is a white quarterback... They, they just want this guy not to do well ‘cause he’s a white quarterback.”
Now, Limbaugh – like any other media elite (and make no mistake, he is indeed a media elite) or multi-millionaire – has the right to purchase an NFL, MLB or NBA franchise. That said, the NFL, like any other business, has the right to reject Limbaugh or anyone else who doesn’t fit their business profile or citizenship rules. Limbaugh enemy Keith Olbermann correctly noted Limbaugh had the right to purchase the team, however tongue-in-cheek it may have been, but if Limbaugh thought his lightning-rod expressions had cooled, he was sadly mistaken.
That won’t be happening, though. St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts, who had brought Limbaugh onto his team in an attempt to purchase the Rams, dropped Limbaugh like a hot potato as the furor intensified, all the while claiming Limbaugh would not have had any input into the direction of the club “or in any decisions regarding personnel or operations,” according to an Associated Press story.
That may or may not have been true. What is equally clear is, he should have the opportunity to partnership. Shoot. If the Bidwells, the Al Davises and Art Modells have the right to poorly run NFL franchises for years, what logical reason is there to keep Limbaugh out?
What it comes down to is principle. However one wants to debate arguments over words and statements and those principles, Limbaugh willingly and unhesitatingly ignored his own principle as an anti-socialist. Just like his flip-flop on drug abuse (“Do as I say, not as I do”), Limbaugh’s ego and desire to become an NFL owner got the best of him and prompted him to ignored another of his edicts: Forget Socialism. It doesn’t work.
Even if the facts don’t back it up.