Rush, once Again 

Rush, once Again

I'm intrigued at how clean ESPN has come out of this whole Rush Limbaugh affair. Rush seems to have taken all the heat, and he really shouldn't have. Rush was just being Rush. In fact, Rush was just doing, as he noted, what he was hired to do; stir up some controversy. He didn't say anything worse or more outlandish than he says every single day on the radio and I imagine that he and his legion of dittoheads are truly mystified at the ruckus.

So why has all the focus been on Rush and not on his employer, ESPN? Is it because "they did the right thing" by constructively firing him? Sorry, that doesn't cut it. If they thought that was the right thing, they'd have done that by last Monday, at the latest. It was only after the controversy over his remarks sprouted legs that ESPN realized that it was time to cut their losses and cut lose Rush. From all indication, though, the other on-air "talent" found nothing offensive about his remarks and I imagine that initially the executives at ESPN were smiling. And oddly, they still are. A week later, they seem to have gotten away without getting any on their suits.