Over at ESPN 

Over at ESPN

ESPN's hiring of Rush Limbaugh to join its Sunday morning "analysis" team intrigues me. It seems to have been sparked by the same type of thinking that prompted MSNBC to hire Mike Savage last winter and that is the interesting facet. MSNBC was a struggling network trying to find a niche, or at least to attract attention. To accomplish the latter it hired a hate spewing blowhard and sat back to wait for the firework, which sure enough, arrived right on schedule. MSNBC got wonderful (which is not to say favorable) publicity as a result of the flap.

ESPN didn't need that kind of publicity, but sought it anyway. People who want football analysis have several choices on Sunday morning. Although the network might wish to pretend otherwise, adding Limbaugh to the team did nothing to enhance the level of its football expertise. Limbaugh apparently knows nothing more about football than the average fan. We all can find that kind of analysis in any number of places. What Limbaugh brought to ESPN is his dittoheads. What Limbaugh drove away from ESPN are those people who loathe him, who will deliberately not watch ESPN on Sunday mornings because doing so would be akin to flaying their arms and pouring vinegar on them. The dittoheads might have found ESPN anyway. Those of us who have been encouraged by ESPN to watch CBS or FOX won't be back.