The Mau-Mauing of Rush

Rush took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to address the mau-mauing that scuttled his NFL dreams. Personally, I’m a little mystified why Rush would want to own part of a football team. Oversized, preening and pampered athletes set in strictly defined roles and running elaborately orchestrated “plays” designed by a full bureaucracy of coaches seems, frankly, I dunno…unAmerican.  Quite unlike the other football, where there are no plays, few coaches and wide latitude for individual initiative and improvisation. (How did we get stuck with the collectivist top-down heavy sport?) But, to each his own.

Of course the NFL is a private institution which can invite–or deny–whomever they’d like to join their owners’ club. But the manner in which Rush was sidelined is, at best, distasteful and definitely more than a little troubling. Alas, it was also utterly predictable. To wit:

Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse.

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