Rush Limbaugh Not Welcome at ESPN, Says Sports Ilustrated Editor

si.com ^

[misterrob]

Oh, and the Affirmative Action chorus isn't a political issue?

[Vision]

Typical black racist jerk.

[Lost Highway]

In a reasonable world -- one in which Limbaugh and his ilk have the right to speak their views, and I have the right to tune them out -- I wouldn't have to listen to his Neanderthal opinions

Wonder if he feels the same way about John Saunders liberal opinions?

[Publius6961]

What gives?

Sports Illustrated?

Hello?
If this dingbat can't separate sports from politics how good can he be at whe he "does"?

Wait. Never mind.
I just answered my own question, and incidentally might have also explained why I have never subscribed to a jock magazine.

[Craigon]

If I had an SI subscription, I’d cancel it referring to this intolerant biggot. But…I don’t.
What’s he doing bringing up his bigoted politics in a Sports mag anyway. Rush has said he’ll do no such thing while he’s wearing his ESPN cap. That SI guy has no class!

[brownie]

Limbaugh doesn't seem to represent any NFL fan who believes in the value of varied cultures

What does this even mean? Lord, but I do hate the idiocy of liberals.

[billb]

Johnson's obviously a Knee-jerking Jerk! Sounds like he has imagined his own predjudces onto Rush. With a__holes like this on board no wonder they need to hype the swimsuit issue to sell the magazine.

[jimbo123]

http://www.namme.org/profile_johnson.asp


Roy Johnson, Assistant Managing Editor
Sports Illustrated



Roy Johnson is the assistant managing editor of Sports Illustrated. And believe it or not he does not claim the annual swimsuit issue as the most rewarding aspect of the job. Instead Johnson said, “what I like best about the work I do is inspiring a reader or viewer to learn something new, rethink their view or simply react – negatively or positively – to an article we’ve published or a television/radio appearance.” As the former editor-in-chief of Savoy magazine, Johnson is no stranger to innovation, creation and motivation. He finds challenges and rewards at SI in staying abreast of myriad sports and helping decide the proper context of the week’s events for readers. “It is important to stay informed, smart and engaged by the opportunity to tell the story first and best.” An industry veteran, Johnson is passionate about his profession and about doing what he can to see journalists of color gain greater access to the seats of power in the industry. “We are nowhere close to where we should be as a reflection of America, its diverse cultures and views - and valuing the talented men and women in many disciplines who come from those cultures. We weren't 25 years ago, and we aren't today.”

Job Title: Assistant Managing Editor
Employer: Sports Illustrated
Location: New York
Contact Information: (212) 522-0642

Last CDs listened to: Paid That Cost to be Tha Boss by Snoop Dogg; Run to the Water...the River Within by T.D. Jakes. (Hey, I'm just coverin' ALL the bases!)
Likes to brag about: Edwyn and Brooks (my kids!)
Likes to do for fun: Golf and movies
Other hobbies: C'mon, I have kids and play golf. You think I have time for “other" hobbies”?
Last vacation: Miami in January ‘03
Next vacation: Hilton Head in August ‘03
Hometown: Tulsa
First job: Work in dad's drug store for .25/hr
Last job: Editorial Director, Vanguarde Media/Editor-in-Chief, Savoy
Most rewarding aspect of current job: Working with great, talented people
Most challenging aspect of current job: Workng with great, talented people

Favorites:
Food: Whatever I just ordered/cooked, in that order
Restaurant: Too many in NYC to have one favorite
Place on earth: Home with kids or standing over a six-inch birdie putt
Radio station: 98.7 KISS-FM
TV show: ER and Sopranos
Book: Anything written by Stephen King or E. Lynn Harris
Movie: Psycho
Song: Thank You for Lettin' Me Be Myself
Sports team: Dallas Cowboys
Car: Jaguar
City: Pebble Beach
State: California
Country: U.S.A. or France if I am there sitting at a sidewalk cafe with a glass of Merlot

Best professional moment: Seeing the premier issue of Savoy

Favorite Quote: “I drink from my saucer, because my cup is always overflowing" (One of many, actually)

Other interesting fact(s) you want us to know: Please, a brotha's got to have SOME secrets!

[Interesting Times]

William Raspberry, a far more talented journalist than this clown, also called Rush a bigot back in 1993:

There are approximately 243 million Americans whose praise I'd prefer to Rush Limbaugh's. Not because he's conservative. I don't care about that. But I do care about the demagoguery he has perfected to a science. I care about his gay-bashing, his racial putdowns, his merciless caricaturing of feminism or any other cause he disagrees with. It bothers me that he is so good at what I grew up in Mississippi watching racist politicians do-- tossing the raw meat of bigotry to people who need desperately to feel superior to_somebody. Limbaugh does it as well as anybody I've ever heard-- does it so well and with such wicked humor that many people who can't stand his guts will miss lunch to hear him. Not coincidentally, he makes a ton of money at it. I don't need bouquets from a guy like this...

When Rush listeners asked Raspberry for some examples of Rush's supposed bigotry, he was embarrassed to discover that he didn't actually know of any -- he'd just based his opinion on the remarks of friends. To his considerable credit, Raspberry apologized in a subsequent column:

I recently wrote a column the point of which was that you shouldn't refrain from telling the truth as you see it just because somebody you don't care for agrees with it. What brought that on was a young man who was pained to inform me that Limbaugh had agreed with something I'd written. Twice. Then instead of just saying you shouldn't refrain, etc., I proceeded to take a couple of shots at Limbaugh. Gay-bashing and demagoguery were among the kinder charges. But what opened the floodgates of reader response was my implication that Limbaugh is a bigot. I confess now that, apart from a couple of accidental listenings (in someone else's car, for instance), I didn't know that much about Limbaugh. I still don't. My opinions about him had come largely from other people, mostly friends who think Rush is a four-letter word. They are certain he is a bigot. Is he? He's smart-alecky, no question of it. He loves to rattle liberal cages. He is unrelenting in his assault on the apostles of political correctness and the militant feminists he calls (as I remember it) "feminazis." He is a master of ridicule. Take this crack at an actor's support of environmentalism: "Didn't Tom Cruise make a stock-car movie that destroyed 35 cars, burned thousands of gallons of gasoline and wasted dozens of tires? Tom, most people don't own 35 cars in their life, and you just trashed 35 cars for a movie. Now you're telling other people not to pollute the planet? Shut up, sir." That might not be all that funny to an environmentalist who, however, might get a huge guffaw out of a similar put-down of, say, a right-to-lifer. Which is part of the problem. My sense is that Limbaugh wouldn't take a similar shot at a right-to-lifer or at any respectable conservative. He seems to use his wit, his acute sense of exaggeration and his (yes) intelligence almost exclusively to attack the positions of those my friends and I consider "good guys." And he seems to take himself less seriously than a lot of other talk-show types. Indeed, even when his audience is behaving as though his opinions were a matter of life or death of the republic, I get the impression that Limbaugh is mostly having fun. But does any of this make him a bigot? Don't Herblock and Art Buchwald exaggerate for effect? Of course they do. What is a caricature if not an exaggeration? Exaggeration, as every satirist understands, is the essence of humor. It's been done better, of course. Rush and Swift are not precisely synonymous. But what prompted my earlier piece was not the quality of his satire but its target. It's a lot less funny when the ox being gored wears my brand. When a caller asked me, quite reasonably, to give him an instance or two of a bigoted opinion of Limbaugh, all he got was my embarrassed silence. Sure, he's taken digs at poor people and rioters and feminists and the NAACP, but why should any of these be immune? Sure, he often brings up problems without offering solutions. But is this journalistic heresy? Limbaugh's is often (for many of us) the hated opinion, but that doesn't by itself make him hateful. Having spent long years holding forth against the various orthodoxies of the age, I ought to understand the difference. One more thing. If I thought I knew Limbaugh from my friends' opinion of him, I also thought I knew his audience from a handful of on-the-air responses. He was, I was certain, "tossing the raw meat of bigotry to people who need desperately to feel superior to somebody." There are, I don't doubt, such people in the Limbaugh audience. But the scores I heard from were more like this Floridian: "I am a frequent reader of your column, and I agree with much of what you say about society's problems and the solutions you offer. ... You obviously do not listen to Rush enough to know that he is not a bigot. He is one voice in the lonely land known as conservatism. "Do you not think that the American public has enough intelligence to discern what is meritorious in your column and on Rush's show for themselves?" Well, I guess I do now. Sorry, folks.

[cajun-jack]

I'm not a football fan but i'm a rush fan...but i won't watch just to hear him talk about football....i personally don't care if they ever put air in another one or put another in the air.

[GSWarrior]

Sports Illustrated is pretty useless, really. The only thing it has going for it is the photography.

[Phantom Lord]

Wrong. His decision was not based on the fact that Rush is white. He just doesn't like the political views expoused by Rush on his radio show.

Close. His decision was based on his not liking the views he has heard from others that Rush says on his show. He himself has not listened to the show.

[Beck_isright]

" Wonder if he feels the same way about John Saunders liberal opinions?"

I wonder if he feels the same way about Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante (D-CA) who actually used the dreaded N word and Rush never has on the air.

[Loose_Cannon1]

But hiring Rush Limbaugh is wrong for another, more fundamental, reason: Politics, no matter the slant, simply has no place in our sports arenas.

Funny, when they fined Detroit Lions President Matt Millen $200,000 for not at least INTERVIEWING a black person for the position left vacant after the firing of Coach Marty Mornhinweg, no black columinists I've read stated this was an injustice. But suddenly, NOW, when Rush Limbaugh is hired for a brief, once a week opinion it's an outrage??

The hypocrisy of the left is simply amazing.

[rdb3]

Ooops. Forgot a biggie. Rush also lets a black man (Walter Williams) guest host his show while he is on vacation.

Be careful. Many here at FR has called Dr. Williams a moron.

[wardaddy]

What a peckerhead...and SI gave him a job....geez.

[Beck_isright]

Me thinkst Mr. Battle Royale who signed up on August 18, 2003 is a lurker from DUmmy land looking to be ZOTTED.

[Corporate Law]

He probably sees nothing wrong with the bigoted Bryant Gumbel being associated with HBO Sports, oops, forgot that is a fellow Time Warner company.

[montag813]

I have never heard Rush criticize black people as a group

I've never heard Rush criticize anyone as a group, except liberals of all colors and creeds. This guy said "I don't listen to Rush..." and it is abundantly clear that he indeed does not.