RUSH: Rich in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, great to have you with us on Open Line Friday. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Great. Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, I just wanted to point out that I think the NFL has been racist prior to this. Back when they went to Detroit for the Super Bowl, they had the Rolling Stones band play, and I think they should have had Motown stars. I mean Stevie Wonder comes to mind right away and the rest of them. That’s tremendous music, and here they brought a bunch of Brits in and —
RUSH: Okay. Let me grab my NFL stack because I knew that this was gonna — by the way, I have a question. Would Obama be allowed to buy an NFL team, do you think?
CALLER: Oh, I think so.
RUSH: No. Not according to current standards. Look at all the racially tinged comments Obama has made in his very brief time in the national spotlight, all five minutes of it: the bitter clingers, grandmother being a typical white person, the stupid cop up in Cambridge. These are things he’s actually said, by the way, as opposed to quotes made up out of whole cloth. But since you want to go down this road I happen to be prepared for you.
CALLER: (laughing) All right.
RUSH: The caller has just said the NFL is racist because in Detroit they brought in the Rolling Stones rather than use a Motown group. Now, I wouldn’t look at it that way, but some people might. I don’t happen to look at things that way, but obviously some people did. Jack Cashill, American Thinker: ‘The NFL’s Diversity Problem.’ He quotes the Colts owner Jim Irsay: ”I, myself, couldn’t even consider voting for him,’ said Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay of accused thought criminal Rush Limbaugh. ‘As a nation, and as a world, we’ve got to watch our words and our thoughts.” How do we watch our thoughts, by the way? Have you ever seen one? Jim Irsay must see thoughts. Anyway, ”Divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about,’ agreed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. ‘I would not want to see those kind of comments from people.”
We can kill dogs; we can shoot ourselves in nightclubs; we can run over people while we’re drunk, but we don’t want to do anything divisive with some people who think a certain way. Now, Cashill writes, ‘Before these execs start doing their end zone dance about Limbaugh’s exclusion from the NFL ownership club, they might want to address a major diversity scandal brewing in their own house. I refer here not to the exclusion of women from the NFL, although I could.’ After all, we put them in fire departments. But the NFL steadfastly refuses to allow women in the NFL. ‘The difference, of course, is that fire departments can adjust their assignments to keep women out of harm’s way … Football teams have no such cover. Everyone is visible. What is difficult to justify, however, is the veritable exclusion of Asian-American and, even more incredibly, Mexican-American men from the NFL. An analysis of Irsay’s AFC South division reveals a shocking lack of genuine diversity.’
I didn’t know this stuff until I read this from Jack Cashill because I don’t look at things like this, but since they’ve entered it into the fray Cashill did the research. ‘Of the 208 players in the division, there are no Japanese or Chinese-Americans and only two players of any kind of Hispanic descent. According to the US Census Bureau, Hispanics make up 15.4 cent of the American population, but less than 1 percent of the AFC South and of the NFL in general. Asian Americans make up 4.5 percent of the American population and zero percent of the NFL unless one includes Scott Fujita, a Caucasian adopted by a Japanese family. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida gives the NFL an A- for racial hiring practices and a C on gender hiring practices, but these grades are largely for front office jobs. This would be like giving Goldman Sachs an A- for hiring minority janitors. The real money, in either case, is on the field.’ But then his analysis of the white dominant positions, the white-collar positions, quarterback and kicker are especially punitive to minorities.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, I want to get back to Jack Cashill here because both Jim Irsay (who sees thoughts, ‘watches thoughts’) and Roger Goodell (the commissioner of the National Football League) have both said, ‘We can’t have divisive people here. We’re, you know, diverse and so forth.’ So Jack Cashill at the AmericanThinker.com has broken down some of the problems the NFL has. No Japanese players except one adopted by an American family. We have very few Mexican-American men in the
National Football League, and what, Chinese players, zilch, zero, nada. Cashill has not tabulated the number of Jewish players but that wouldn’t trouble Sharpton and Jackson. Jackson, the author of the term ‘Hymietown’ and ‘hymies.’ So I’m sure the relatively few percentage of Jewish players in the NFL is all fine with Sharpton and Jackson.
But here. As it happens, the only white… Hey, look, they started this, folks. If they want to talk about diversity and having people who aren’t divisive and so forth, fine. ‘As it happens, only the white-dominated, ‘white collar’ positions of kicker and quarterback have rules specifically designed to protect them from rough play. Interestingly, all six of the kickers and quarterbacks on Irsay’s Colts are white. This is not to say that Irsay is a racist, but rather that he is insensitive to matters of race.’ He can’t even find one quarterback anywhere to put on the taxi squad? ‘The quarterback position presents a variety of troubling issues. As of this writing, the ten quarterbacks with the highest official ratings are all white. This can only indicate a racial bias in the design of the rating system. Ideally, these ratings should be based on job related criteria and be predictive of success.
‘The fact that the top four rated quarterbacks — and five of the top ten — play for undefeated teams means little. … What we know from the media and academia is that there are no genetic differences among races. Knowing this, we can infer that the testing the NFL does to choose its players and assign them to positions is flawed. Intentionally or not, this selection process has had a disparate impact on certain underrepresented groups, Hispanic Americans most dramatically. The token hiring of Mark Sanchez by the New York Jets does not begin to address this injustice. If our fire departments can ‘look like America,’ why not the NFL? Where is La Raza when we need them?’ Jack Cashill, the American Thinker. By the way, folks, we have at RushLimbaugh.com an ever-expanding list of links to some of the best stories, observations, reactions to this whole episode and we’ll be trying to update it throughout the weekend. It’s a long list and it’s great. You should check every link. We are updating them constantly.
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RUSH: This is Glenn in Downers Grove, Illinois. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Yeah, hi, Rush. First-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I have a philosophical question that may demonstrate the slippery slope that the liberals are on with this NFL situation. What would happen if conservative employers would hire only conservatives just because they don’t agree with their political views?
RUSH: Hmmmmm. If that were discovered, all hell would break loose.
CALLER: Yeah. Aren’t they kind of going against their discriminatory laws that they created?
RUSH: Well, I guess you’d have to ask Jim Irsay because Jim Irsay says we have to ‘watch our thoughts,’ and certainly some of our thoughts contain ideas, and some of our thoughts contain political ideas and some of our thoughts contain ideological ideas — and if it were found that we’re not watching our ideas seriously enough, watching our thoughts seriously enough and it was resulting in people being hired because of what they thought and not hired because of what they thought, I imagine the powers that be in political correctness would have a huge problem with that. But let me ask you a question, Glenn. Have you ever heard a liberal anywhere be called ‘divisive’?
CALLER: Uh, not really.
RUSH: I was thinking about it the other day and I don’t think I can recall one being called ‘divisive,’ either.
CALLER: It was just a thought.
RUSH: It wasn’t divisive when all these people were doing movies and books on how to assassinate George W. Bush. Michael Moore is not divisive. Some of these insane lunatics on the lib cable channels, they’re never called divisive.
CALLER: Yeah. That kind of demonstrates it. I just feel conservatives accept the philosophy that there is different opinions, and liberals do not accept any other opinions.
RUSH: Exactly. They don’t accept them and they try to destroy people who hold them. It’s even worse than not accepting them. All right, thanks, Glenn. I’ve always loved hearing Downers Grove, Illionis. It’s a great name for a town.