While a graduate student at the University of Georgia in the
early nineties, I had the privilege of attending a speech given by
William F. Buckley. The elder statesman of the movement amazed the
large crowd with both his wit and his wardrobe. To this day, I
remember his navy sportcoat, yellow shirt, khaki pants, and RED
belt. You’ve got to be good to pull that look off, but Buckley was
equal to the task.
At the end of his presentation, he allowed questions. The first
supplicant approached the microphone and hopefully inquired, “Mr.
Buckley, what do you think about Rush Limbaugh?” This was during
the time when Rush was still something of a rising star. His
rhetoric was bombastic, hard-edged, and wickedly funny. Members of
the audience shifted forward in their seats expectantly as Buckley
answered by telling the following story.
There were two Spaniards sitting in a bar. One asked the other,
“What do you think about General Franco?” Instead of answering, the
man gestured for his friend to follow him outside. Once on the
sidewalk, he motioned for the friend to follow him to his car. They
got in the car and drove to a forest. Deep in the woods, he parked
the car and beckoned the friend to hike with him down to a lake. At
the edge of the lake, he pointed to a boat which they boarded. He
grabbed the oars and rowed to the center of the lake. Finally, he
sat still, looked his friend in the eyes and paused for a moment.
“I like him.” Buckley told the story so brilliantly and created so
much suspense, the denouement brought the house down amid gales of
laughter and happy applause.
That moment conveyed the tremendous sense of affection many
conservatives have had for Rush Limbaugh through the years. Despite
all the efforts of liberals to demonize the king of talk radio and
turn him into a soft-around-the-edges Nazi, Rush managed to break
out of the conservative ghetto and eventually earned a respected
place within the broadcasting establishment. His long journey to
mainstream respectability culminated in the job he won as a Sunday
morning football analyst with ESPN after losing the Monday Night
gig to Dennis Miller a couple of years ago. And he did it all
without ever really compromising his beliefs.
That’s why it was so heartbreaking to watch “Sunday Morning
Countdown” and see Rush say something that was both substantively
wrong and politically radioactive. He said Philadelphia Eagles
quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated and has received too much
credit for the team’s success last season. He attributed the
supposedly inflated estimates of McNabb’s ability to media hopes
for black quarterbacks to prove themselves in a position many
people didn’t think they could handle.
The statement was substantively wrong because close NFL watchers
know the black quarterback controversy has been over for a while
now. Outstanding sustained performances by Steve McNair, Daunte
Culpepper, Donovan McNabb, and others have largely made the
quarterback-race issue irrelevant. At times, McNabb has
demonstrated he may be the most talented of the group. That’s the
first problem. If you’re going to go out on a limb, you’d better be
right. If former Pittsburgh Steeler Kordell Stewart had been the
object of Rush’s analysis, the broadcaster might have been on at
least semi-solid ground.
The second problem was that Rush ventured into excessively
sensitive territory by singling out a black quarterback and
criticizing both his performance and the level of respect he has
received. It seemed like an excessively personal attack,
particularly by a white fan/analyst on a black player. The bottom
line is that although Rush is indeed about 97.2% right, in this
case he was wrong.
By now, we all know the end result of the 20-30 second
soundbite. Rush resigned the new job he cherished in an attempt to
quell a firestorm that had the media in a feeding frenzy and
opportunistic Democratic Presidential candidates seeking to pile
on. No surprise there, Rush had been grudgingly admitted to the
dance based on his incredible star power, but it was only a
learner’s permit ready to be revoked at any time.
So it’s been a bad scene. But in the wake of the quick fervor of
judgment, the accusations of racism, and the essentially required
resignation, one wonders why it had to be this way. At the bottom
of the story, we have a famous man making a slightly intemperate
remark. Does anybody realize that? Rush didn’t get into
name-calling or vicious ad hominem attacks. He didn’t demonize the
black race. All the man did was suggest the operation of
media-sponsored affirmative action for a black quarterback. He was
wrong and maybe even a little boorish, but why does that result in
a full-fledged firestorm in which the speaker is banished from the
realm of reasonable people?
I have a theory about why Rush’s brief remarks have unleashed so
much antagonism. Many will believe it’s just about liberals trying
to bring a big conservative down. That’s part of the story, but
there’s something larger underneath. Every society must have
taboos. We need to know the difference between sins and virtues so
we can order our lives and live in community. In short, knowing
what is right and wrong is the key to social order.
America has witnessed a radical re-ordering of our conception of
what is good and bad. Socially useful taboos like unmarried
cohabitation, having children out of wedlock, adultery, consumption
of pornography, and divorce have all been transformed into
acceptable activities through a powerful shove from the cultural
elite and correspondingly widespread practice. G.K. Chesterton once
famously complained about the rich preaching their vices to the
poor and introducing them to ruin. He was right. The old sins
aren’t sins any more and we’ve paid a certain price for that. Just
ask any child of a single mother who hosts a series of transient
males in the home.
But sins don’t disappear and leave a vacuum. We have a moral
sense and we will exercise it on something. The ever-considerate
cultural elite did not leave us empty-handed. Commandments they
destroyed have been replaced by others more favorable to people of
fashion. The sin that now stands center stage is the improperly
crafted negative remark about anything having to do with race,
gender, sexual orientation, or non-dominant religions.
When some unlucky soul crosses that line, it’s over. I’ll never
forget the display of mass hatred and judgment I witnessed at a
game between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves when John
Rocker ran onto the field. The anger and disapproval that cascaded
from the stands was a palpable force that lasted the entire time
Rocker was on the field. Not surprisingly, the young reliever
(beyond redemption, apparently) performed poorly and left the game
fairly quickly. I was embarrassed to be there.
While the effect of this dynamic on individuals is devastating,
the implications for public policy are worse. We now seem incapable
of rational discourse. Instead, debate has been replaced by a
series of hostile encounters and gotcha moments. We don’t talk to
each other so much as we circle warily and look for a moment of
weakness so we can gain leverage.
The cost is too high. We should refuse to pay it and look for
another, more useful way to employ our moral judgment. The founders
envisioned the clash of factions and a marketplace of ideas where
truth would eventually emerge. Let’s have that instead of the
despicable elementary school game that seems to be the rule of the
day.
