Wow, this is a telling little light shone into the anxious masculinity that defines the conservative “revolution”. (Via.) Apparently, Brett Favre teared up at his retirement press conference, an understandable action considering the high emotions that have to be flying as you end a career as prestigious as his. And Laura Ingraham, who knows her audience very well, decided this was a good opportunity to call Favre a woman.
“All these years, and I didn’t know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL.”
“Brett Favre…we’re watching this in the studio, obviously retiring from the NFL, great quarterback, handsome 38-year-old man, he gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen.”
“That’s a great message for young boys. ‘Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby.”
Then, in her best impersonation of a crying toddler with its favorite toy taken away, she wah-wah-wah’s while uttering in a mocking tone, “It’s about me, it was never about me, but it is about me, bla, bla, bla” before returning to her regular voice and stating, “I could not believe what I was seeing.”
Unfortunately, the reaction from too many sporting outlets has been, essentially, “Nuh-uh! He’s earned the right to cry a little without having his masculinity taken from him. And you’re not a woman, so there!” Which really isn’t probably going to hurt her feelings, because clearly she doesn’t think much of women to consider it an insult to call someone a woman.
What the Yahoo sports blogger is buying into is the concept that masculinity is a fragile thing, always in danger of being infected by the feminine and immediately perishing. It’s this fear that drives so much of what’s fucked up in our culture, from war-mongering to date raping, this sense that masculinity has to constantly be shored up, lest it disappear completely.
From Stephen Ducat’s indispensable book on the subject, The Wimp Factor:
It suggests that being biologically male is not sufficient to confer or sustain masculinity. Instead, it must be asserted through repetition, words and actions. The everyday vocabulary and common-sense notions of gender remind us that in the majority of patriarchal cultures, the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman.
As you can see, the idea that masculinity is fragile and has to constantly be shored up is accepted not just Ingraham, but also the sports blogger who offered that Favre had some kind of masculinity bank, and he’d saved up enough to afford this feminine indulgence.
In order to be a successful right wing talk show host, you need to build up enough fear in your audience to keep them tuning in, but you also have to offer hope of some sort, or at least an ego boost, so they get regular rewards as well for tuning in. Considering the masculinity obsession, what this amounts to is telling a non-stop story about how American masculinity is dying under an onslaught of feminist and liberal do-goodery that infects one with the vagina from the inside. Make your listener feel his dick is likely to fall off any minute. Even better, obsess about the dicklessness of young men these days, as if to say to the listener, “You have put up a successful show of masculinity your whole life, but now your son is going to swish around, limping his wrist at people and everyone will know that you weren’t really a man all along because your sperm couldn’t even make a ‘real’ man.” Sow these fears, but also give the listener reason to feel superior, by telling him that even though America is being “feminized”, he’s been a tough enough man to continue the hard process of having no real feelings outside of anger, hating women, hating foreigners, etc. If you can strike the right balance between fear-mongering about masculinity and ego-boosting, you’ll get your audience.
You can see both how Ingraham is a real pro at this, and how there was no way to pass up picking on Favre. The story is just too easy to fit into the model. You have the story about how the feminine menace is growing all the more powerful, turning even that icon of masculinity Brett Favre into a woman, a real “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers” moment. You have the “your son will grow up queer and then everyone will know you were shooting woman sperm all along moment” with the fear-mongering about how your boys will see Favre cry and decide that they can go just be women.
But the listener is not given complete reason to despair, because the underlying message is a big ego boost. “My god, what a manly man he-man you are! You’re even manlier than Brett Favre, because he’s up there crying and you’re not.* You know that beating Favre in the Manly Olympics is like getting the automatic gold.” Of course, you can’t hang your man gold on the shelf and call it a day. The Manly Olympics are perverse games, with every day starting brand new, and automatic revoking of your manhood credentials should you ever decide to sit one out. Or that’s what they hear. Everyone who plays in the Manly Olympics is to scared to find out what happens if you decide to just quit and find better things to do with your time.**
*Never mind that he’s up there and the listener is not. Fantasy manhood is just as good—ask any warblogger who won’t dare actually sign up to serve in Iraq.
**You’re happier and live longer, and your dick is still perfectly serviceable and you can even have more fun with it now that you own it instead of letting it own you.
76 Responses to “My god, Earl, they got football! They got football!”
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I hope, for Ingraham’s sake, my feminist, Green Bay Packer-loving mother doesn’t hear about this. Woman-hating and Packer-hating together might just drive her to do something rash.
I’d also suggest the dimwit steer clear of Wisconsin for the next 20 or so decades.
The Favre moment was the talk of the locker room at my manly sports club last weekend. Everyone to a man, from dimwitted older guys who think Nascar is a sport to younger guys who are mostly Iraq veterans, thought it was perfectly normal and natural that Favre teared up, given that he was retiring from his beloved game. Mostly, they were pissed at the media for making an issue of it.
Not sure what’s remarkable about Brett Favre’s show of emotion - male athletes cry at retirement, induction to the Hall of Fame, winning championships, etc. all the time.
I know this isn’t the point, but why did she choose this to go on about? It’s pretty standard. Surely she could base her rabid woman-hating bile on something more, um, newsworthy?
Players are allowed to grab each other’s asses, but they’re not allowed to cry? How perfect.
I wonder if Ingraham watches any top athletes? I seem to recall Wayne Gretzky’s eyes looking a little wet the night the entire league retired his number, and Mark Messier did the same the night Edmonton and New York retired his. And anyone who thinks The Moose is some kind of wimp is asking for a beating.
During the conference call when Messier announced his retirement, someone asked why he didn’t do a press conference and he said that if he had to make the announcement in person he’d turn into a blubbering idiot at the podium.
I was told by a reliable source from the NFL that it’s alright to cry. (And, from the same source, to do needlepoint.)
Perhaps if all these loser critics had that kind of passion and emotion and connection to their work, they wouldn’t be loser critics!
Hint: this has something to do with the guy’s ability to play the game at the high level that he has for so many years.
Why do I smell loser wannabees grasping at any opportunity to feel more manly?
What the fuck?
I mean, seriously, why can’t men cry or show emotion? Have we moved that far back that men have to be stoic Gary Coopers and emotionless robots?
The Terminator is sort of a perfect modern American man–Emotionless, strong, single-minded, unstoppable. Psychopathic, but manly.
Patriarchy hurts men, too, especially when their masculinity is so rigidly defined that they aren’t even human anymore.
I suspect that Ingraham has very little knowledge of football, or she would have probably never gone there. I think there’s some spaces where men are allowed to engage in some feminine behaviors without relinquishing masculinity, and sports is one of those areas.
The crying thing isn’t unusual at all, but it fits into the current anti-gay obsession by the Reichwing.
I honestly think it’s related to our continuing problems in Iraq (which symbolize failure, and may be attributed to insufficient manhood among Americans - in the minds of some people).
If we were winning / had won, I wonder how much traction something like this would get…
I seem to recall Wayne Gretzky’s eyes looking a little wet the night the entire league retired his number
hell, he bawled when he was traded from edmonton to la, and that was a trade that he wanted!
George Washington’s last speach as presdient reprotedly moved Congress to tears. Were early congresses full of women? Who knew?
No one, however, will cry when Ms. Ingraham retires . . .
Despite the obvious homoeroticism of ‘Merican sports, it is shocking that she would deride the secular religion. Obviously, she spend too much time with the Cheeto-eating chickenhawks.
Close, Amanda, close- you would have been 100% on if you had put a period after “knowledge”.
I am a huge lifelong Giants fan and saw this interview live. Brett Favre is easily one of the best to have ever played the game on so many levels and LI’s comments are straight-up disgraceful.
Wow, and it used to be a complaint among conservative Catholic beard-fetishizing he-manly-man intellectuals that Modern Men weren’t allowed to cry - I can remember when it was all the rage inside the movement to point out that Arthurian knights were always tearing up, and how come they couldn’t get away with doing that nowadays?
So the party orthodoxy narrows down, turn by turn. Poor crunchy cons.
For a first-rate take on this, go to Teh Portly Dyke’s post at Shakesville, Robbing the Hearts of Men. Absolutely splendid.
Also fascinating is the discussion thread below the post. There’s an awful lot of feminists who think like Laura Ingraham but think they’re not; they are actually the same type as her, every bit as intolerant of male emotion or “femininity”, but the sneer isn’t “be a man!!” but rather of the “what, do want a fucking cookie? who asked you!! variety. Complete failure to grasp the reality that variants of “oh, just fuck off about your emotions!” are no more welcome or helpful if they come from your allies as well as your enemies.
(Hang on, I just checked. Where’d the thread go? It was hundreds of comments long! Oh well. Sorry. But the article remains splendid.)
It’s my understanding that it’s also very common for children who have been abused to react to sadness or tears in others with overwhelming anger–instead of comforting they freak out and verbally and/or physically attack the child who’s crying.
Wonder if Miss Ingraham has issues beyond wishing she didn’t have a lady-brain.
I think that the analysis offered here, about what Ingraham is going on about, is essentially correct. What I get from the article itself, however, is less of an understanding of Ingraham, and more of a bemused realization that some people really are this petty. I have felt this before, but somehow it amazes and confuses me every single time.
And her follow-up post, “I’ll Do It” .
I love how that piece is written with the full understanding that some people just live to be internet naysayers. A blogger could write, “The sky is blue,” and expect to have at least 2 or 3 people, eager to start a flamewar say, “Nuh-uh! At dusk, it’s various shades of red, and at night, it’s black!”
Brett Favre has always been an emotional guy. I’ve seen him cry on camera at least once before. The man loves football (so much so that he played the day after his dad died, iirc). And that — maybe even as much as the fact that he’s broken, like, every quarterback record there is — is why we love Favre. His willingness to show emotion (happy emotions too) never made him less of a man in anyone’s eyes. Laura Ingraham is delusional.
And I concur with witless chum. Ingraham just lost all her friends in Wisconsin.
To be more accurate, it was a trade that his wife wanted. Gretzky was enough of a man that he was willing to try take the reaction of the enraged Edmonton fans for wanting out to be a good spouse and help his wife’s career. (Lucky WG, though: EVERYBODY blamed Oilers owner Pocklington, so comparatively little flack came Wayne or Janet’s way.)Good spotting, Ms. Marcotte. I am new to her work but she’s got her head and her wit screwed on very right indeed.
Brett Favre? Brett Favre!? He is one of the toughest SOBs to ever play the game. No quarterback has ever started as many games as he has, despite both physical and emotional pain. Frankly, if Brett Favre did something, it would be by definition, “manly.”
Kids should look up to Brett as someone they should try to emulate. No, he’s not perfect. No one is. But most folks could do worse than to try to do their jobs as well as Brett did his.
Why yes, I am a Packer’s fan. Why do you ask?
Way to buck up those ratings in your Wisconsin markets, Laura. That’s good business sense.
As a former Bears fan, like so many others I cringed whenever Favre came out on the field to play Chicago. But there’s no doubt he’s first ballot Hall of Famer, in addition to being a very nice, genuine guy who played the game of football for the sheer joy of it.
Forget Ingraham.
Does anyone seriously believe she’ll be remembered in 50 years? Brett Favre, on the other hand, will be remembered without a doubt.
And, yet, if he were to take some hormones, don a dress, and get some surgery, she would insist he was just a man in a dress.
Yeah, talk about missing the point. I love how the guy in the yahoo sports link admits to an initial reaction to hold all women responsible for Ingraham’s comments:
My initial reaction is to become angry with women, and say, “One minute, you want us to be sensitive and in touch with our feelings, and the next, you’re calling us women if we cry. Not fair, ladies. Please make up your mind … because the next time an ex-boyfriend of yours calls you a naughty word, I won’t know if you’ll want me to defend your honor and beat him to death with a tire iron, or if you’ll want me to go home and have a good cry with you.”
Because we’re all the same, right? And he is entitled to know what the Official Female Reaction to any given scenario is, right? Of course, he recants this initial reaction — but only because Laura isn’t a real woman, so she doesn’t count.
Margaret,
What do you want from us? There are two kinds of people in the world. Hard-drinkin’, hard-fartin’, sports-watchin’ MEN, and the ones who walk around lookin’ all hot at Hooters, bringing us stuff. Followers of the Man Laws, and Readers of Cosmo. Anybody who wants to keep track of more than that is CLEARLY some kind of new-age hippie.
“That’s a great message for young boys. ‘Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby.
Yes, Laura. Because woman = baby. Good call and thanks for letting me know.
A better message for young boys would, undoubtedly, be, “You wanna cry? I’ll give you something to cry about!” Followed immediately by beating with a stick.
What a shit.
I noticed that too, Margaret. How nice of him to blame 3 billion women for the dumb comments of one.
What would Ingraham say if Bush cried?
That it was patriotic dust in his eyes, and why aren’t YOU crying as well??? Why do you hate America???
“What would Ingraham say if Bush cried?”
Well, we all know IOKIYAR…
Besides, Bush had that manly-man flightsuit-codpiece moment that that proves once and for all how manly he is…
It will always boggle my mind that conservatives can say shit like this and then turn around and claim that feminists are the ones who really hate men.
As a Bears fan who resents how Favre has owned my team throughout his career (except this past season–:)), ordinarily I’d happily join in any disparagement of the man. But this is too stupid even for me.
Well, as another life-long Packer fan, I’d say Brett Favre could do whatever the hell he wanted to. And I teared up just watching his press conference.
Probably the best advice I ever received (from a book, no less) was this: If I’m doing something, by definition, it’s masculine. In other words, there are NO masculine or feminine jobs. It is what YOU make it.
I remember this every Saturday as I clean house, wash clothes and give my wife (who also works) the weekend off!! (Oh yeah, I like football, grease, computers, NASCAR and all those other “manly” things too.)
@ #8:
And of course, grabby.
Terminator’s very first words in the movie?
“Your clothes. Give them to me.”
And then, not being accomodated with a Pareto-optimal exchange whereby the Latino guy just voluntarily surrenders them and slinks away, the Terminator kills him and his buddies standing by and takes them.
Caren, you ask:
It’s an evolution of the basic dominator paradigm, which is based fundamentally on the possibility of exploitation. By no means is it strictly necessary that suitably militarized men purge all emotions–the fundamental mechanism is to channel them instead. However, emotions are tricky things, being a form of intelligence, and the more sophisticated forms of dominator paradigm therefore value terminating them–at least ostensibly, because a vital remnant, distorted, remains in the form of sullen anger and paranoia.
This has its own set of psychological time bombs and self-subversion, but that’s what a properly conditioned dominator type accepts as normal and sane.
Real people tend not to correspond to the “ideal,” but then a major part of the dominator mechanism is instilling shame and guilt for not matching these unattainable and undersirable ideals.
And then, not being accomodated with a Pareto-optimal exchange whereby the Latino guy just voluntarily surrenders them and slinks away, the Terminator kills him and his buddies standing by and takes them.
Fun fact: the punk with the blue mohawk who gets his heart ripped out by the Terminator is played by Bill Paxton in one of his first speaking roles.
I think femininity and masculinity are both “anxious” at this time in history. There’s a sense that the roles are blurring, because they are, as they should and as is inevitable in the course of human events — but it makes a lot of people anxious. After all, gender roles were so clearly prescribed through most of human history. Now, you have to decide for yourself what makes a man/woman. (Or so they bemoan.) It’s the erosion of all human endeavor, it’s the end of the world, it’s the greatest threat to my marriage [!], etc. People don’t know how to be a man/woman without clear cultural imperatives (which in reality are substantially still in place, of course; but if you let Brett Favre cry, next thing you know we’ll have a cunt in the White House and men will marry their dogs. That one’s in the Book!).
I don’t think too many people here could give a happy fuck, but Laura Ingraham does.
We definitely need some male crying videos, with a voiceover - preferably by a well known football player -encouraging boys to let their emotions show. When you are hurt, show you are hurt. When you are happy, be happy. Hey, that Joan Armatrading song could be the soundtrack! Simply in order to drive the wackos over the edge. Or, actually, since they are already over the edge, just to torment them in their psychopathological hells.
On the other hand, I don’t believe for an instant that Laura Ingraham gives a shit about crying men. She has a product to sell - the outrage/outrageous brand - and she will sell it until the market dries up. For Ingraham to criticize others for being narcissistic is like … it is like the color black calling a pot black. It is like Alan Greenspan criticizing someone for not thinking enough about the poor. It is… hard to find comparisons to bring out the absolute self-oblivious hypocrisy.
Talk about tone-deafness. La Ingraham could certainly get away with talking that kind of trash about me, because I’m just a nobody, and she could even get away with it regarding most rich and/or famous male celebrities. But I tell you what, you go up to ninety-nine percent of the men in this country and tell them “Brett Favre is a girl,” and they will stare at you like you’re completely insane.
For that matter, you go up to ninety-nine percent of the men in this country and tell them, “You (with your dry eyes) are more of a man than Brett Favre,” and despite their discomfort at putting themselves down, they will say, “I wish, but no way.”
My gawd, if she’s upset over this then I’d hate to see her tirade after April 7th, when one team will be crying in defeat and the other will be crying in victory. Wonder which one she’ll call a group of whiny little bitches. (note: April 7th will be the NCAA mens college basketball championship game)
I remember this every Saturday as I clean house, wash clothes and give my wife (who also works) the weekend off!! (Oh yeah, I like football, grease, computers, NASCAR and all those other “manly” things too.)
A few years back, the local newspaper featured a beautiful townhouse as their “home of the week”.
The backstory on the place was that a big burly cop/detective bought the place when his wife died and renovated it for himself and his five children who still at home.
As a single father of five working long hours outside the home, he had grand plans for the basement. He put in a full home theater system before “man caves” were in vogue, complete with keg system and full bar/mini kitchen.
Oh, he also put in a nice laundry facility.
Come the weekend, his buddies would come over, grab a beer, watch sports in the man cave and … FOLD LAUNDRY.
Genius, pure genius … all for the price of getting past the anxious masculinity bullcrap.
Lucky WG, though: EVERYBODY blamed Oilers owner Pocklington, so comparatively little flack came Wayne or Janet’s way.)
no. i lived in edmonton for a while. you can’t hate on wayne, sure. but there is STILL plenty of hate for janet. it got revived recently too — when pronger demanded a trade for undeclared “family reasons”. some of the stuff directed at lauren pronger and janet gretzky was just hideous.
also, when the tocchet thing happened, all the newspapers up here went from calling her “janet gretzky” to “janet jones” or “janet jones-gretzky”. and plenty of people implied that she was sleeping around as well as gambling.
oh, and for those accessing the shakesville archives: the comments are still there, even if the counter widget says there are no comments. just click and they will pop up.
This proof that you just cannot satisfy some people. The guy just ended an almost legendary NFL career and she’s harping over him getting teared up? Men have been having emotional moments like this for ages. Just because you don’t see it in public all the time doesn’t mean its new.
I just hope this brings home to some of the dutifully sports-watching conservative males that their movement hates them just as much as it hates women.
Seriously, what the heck was she thinking? Brett Favre? Isn’t masculine enough for her? The woman shouldn’t try to date or marry men, she should just wait around until Greek gods take an interest in her.
As a Bears fan, I only wish Brett Favre had cried more often.
she should just wait around until Greek gods take an interest in her
Or put 300 on eternal repeat.
Dr. Laura can kiss my beautiful, bumpy, cellulite-ridden feminist ASS! I have been a Packers fan for years, and few NFL players, much less professional athletes in general, have been so human, honest, and loved as has Brett. I cried just as hard as he did when he retired, AND SO DID MY PANSY-ASS FEMINIST HUSBAND!!!
Dr. Laura, you need a roll of duct tape for your mouth and a dunce cap. You’d make a great lawn ornament. Other than that, you’re utterly USELESS!
My mother died recently and rather unexpectedly. My father, having lost his partner of 45 years (nearly 3/4 of his life!) has been breaking down in tears intermittantly ever since she was known to be terminally ill.
I’d like a picture and description of this wretch that thinks such shows of emotion from men are unacceptable under any circumstances. If she were to say so about my father, she might find out that construction worker’s daughters have inherited some of their brawn - the hard way!
Maybe Ingraham is just pissed at Favre in particular because he helped raise money for Katrina relief…
Laura Ingraham is a copper-riveted, cer-tan-teed, asbestos-lined, chrome-plated harpy. She saw a man going through a rather intense moment and figured that she could get in a gratituous jab at him, but only if she professed that her jab was delivered in the service of “manliness”.
(See, it’s okay if you some poor guy’s chops if the only reason you’re busting ‘em is to wake the sad sack up to the necessity of being more of a man. That’s, like, a higher ideal or something, which means that you can justify your crappy behavior as being in the interest of a greater good, which is extra special fun. Ideally this is a trick that ought to work even if the man you’re after is a winner in the masculinity-sweepstakes and even if you’re a blow-dried pundette with iffy taste in clothing: IOW, open season, all of the time. In that respect, I’d imagine, it’s gotta be lot like harrassing Democrats.)
May her teeth fall out and may her face fall in. Wretch. Twit.
“That’s a great message for young boys. ‘Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby.”
Why yes, that IS a great message for young boys. If every little boy (and girl) grew up hearing that crying is okay for boys and men, divorce rates would be lower and having a woman run for president would seem less horrifying for closed-minded asshats who think that PMS makes women push the launch button on nuclear missiles. I secretly wish that, when I procreate, I can have a boy so I can teach him that communicating emotion is what happy, healthy people do.
Also, Rosey Grier singing “It’s Alright to Cry” makes me cry.
Oh, and here’s a clip of Terrell Owens crying and telling the sports media to STFU. (Rock on, TO.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21KLynZRnc4&NR=1
Did any right-wing sissy-phobes call TO out on this? Or were they just relieved to see a big, scary black man taken down a notch?
This is exactly the kind of crap I worry about my son seeing as he grows up. And I don’t mean Favre, I mean Ingraham and her male counterparts.
It’s hardly new, of course. In junior high gym, whichever team that was losing dodge ball that week got renamed the Pansies, and if you hurt yourself on the field, you had to “man up” and keep running through the pain. Asthmatics got a waiver to keep out of our no-tolerance gym class, and I can’t blame them.
My generation of men has this blessing that’s turned into a curse, i.e. that we haven’t been pressed into military service, but to meet the culture’s demands for masculinity, we have to militarize ourselves in other ways. And they are fundamentally false ways, unlike actually living through severe (and emotional) traumas. Most veterans I’ve met don’t feel the need to prove their masculinity, it’s in their record. And some of them, like WWII survivor Kurt Vonnegut, will tell you that the whole thing’s bunk. Yet it persists, and civilian males my age who wish to belong in the mainstream feel they have something to prove, and are thus unbearable.
I’ve never been in a sports bar I didn’t want to leave as quickly as possible. They suck oxygen from the brain like a damned Dyson. They are full of those who believe that watching a boxing match makes them General Patton.
On a somewhat related note, has anyone seen the recent ESPN commercials advising men to “never let them challenge your fanhood”? I haven’t quite decided whether they’re poking fun at all this masculinity performance bullshit or reinforcing it. Either way, they’re kinda funny.
Reminds me of Umberto Eco’s piece on ur-fascism:
Most people eat up emotional sports moments. Jim Craig searching for his father when the U.S. Olympic hockey team won the gold medal is a classic example. Sports Center plays up the big emotional moments. That is why Farve’s press conference received so much media attention.
Does Laura Ingraham consider Rush Limbaugh (a man that bombed a football commentary) more manly than a future Hall of Fame quarterback? The answer is probably yes. If that’s the case then that says more about Ingraham than Farve.
Ms Kate, sorry to hear about your mom…hugs!
“Dr Laura” = Laura Schlessinger of “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” (among other rot), not Laura Ingraham. But equally dillusional.
God, she’s an even bigger asshole than I remembered. I thought she’d gone down the memory hole with Katie Roiphe. I’d forgotten how horrible Ingraham really is.
I’ll never understood why they hired Limbaugh as a commentator, since he’s one hood short of being full-blown Klan. You shouldn’t hire people like that in the first place, but especially when a solid number of the people they’ll be discussing on a regular basis are black.
I am a huge lifelong Giants fan and saw this interview live. Brett Favre is easily one of the best to have ever played the game on so many levels and LI’s comments are straight-up disgraceful.
Giants won the Superbowl woooooooooo!
I haven’t seen this interview, but I suspect it would make me cry. I always liked Favre (even when the Giants beat the Packers in the playoffs last year, I felt sorry for him, which is crazy talk), and I’ll miss having him around.
Is Favre a Democrat? Would she have dared to pick on him if he were a Republican? There must be some political angle to this.
I’ll never understood why they hired Limbaugh as a commentator, since he’s one hood short of being full-blown Klan.
Probably someone in the network that thought hiring Limbaugh could pull his audience. Limbaugh’s listeners are small compared to the NFL’s audience. It same brain dead thinking that led to Dennis Miller doing Monday Night Football. And yes, Limbaugh is a racist.
Football fans want commentators that know the game. That is why Troy Aikman and John Madden (though he is slipping) are successful.
Two possibilities: Rush Limbaugh isn’t entirely stupid, so they probably thought he’d keep his mouth under control. The second is that they believed, as some people do, that his whole shtick is just that, an act he puts on for the conservative yokels. Put him in a different context, things change. Name recognition to pull people in, then no real political commentary, just talking about the game as a fan.
The problems that resulted demonstrate that he either really does believe the crap he peddles, and/or that it’s become such a part of him that he can’t shut it off.
Sports is so confusing. Wasn’t one of the most monumental moments in the history of baseball Lou Garrik’s teary eyed resignation speech? Or are you only allowed to cry if they name a disease after you?
“Did any right-wing sissy-phobes call TO out on this? Or were they just relieved to see a big, scary black man taken down a notch? ”
Check the comments on that video - plenty of comparisons to female anatomy being thrown at TO…
Every American man I have ever spoken to (not many) seems confused that sportsmen of other nations cry, and infers some kind of lack of commitment or grit from the tears (which is pretty funny considering how piss-weak American sports are compared to the rest of the world).
Maybe this columnist is simply appealing to a demographic you guys aren’t talking to?
During the last rugby world cup, some teams had little routines that they went through before each match. The most well-known one, obviously, is the All Blacks’ haka, but it was quite endearing to watch the entire Argentinian team bawl all the way through their national anthem at the start of each match, particularly since they were hugely outperforming what was expected of them.
Garrik= Gehrig, but yeah. It was.
Real people know that it’s “okay” to cry; cartoon characters with nothing better to do than to belittle others as ‘part of their job/create any sort of controversy’ don’t. That these buffoons have this sort of thing as a paying JOB shows in part what a fucked-up world we have.
Anyone else remember the 1970’s Indian crying commercial? The single tear?
Lou Gehrig:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig
I’m also a lifelong Yankees fan, but until either the Steinbrenners sell the team/ step back and stop making it all about THEM, I’m routing (this year at least)- gulp… for the Red Sox.
May Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson and Bucky Dent have mercy on my soul…
If I’m not mistaken, during her senior year while Laura Ingraham typed loathsome articles for the Dartmouth Review, Dartmouth won only one football game and that was against the almost equally pathetic Columbia team.
That must explain something…………………….
I doubt Favre cares what Ingraham thinks of him, and I doubt few sports, let alone just football, fans care what Ingraham thinks about anything. That said, Favre is about as ‘man’s man’ as there is at the QB position. He NEVER missed a game as starter for the Packers. I’d bet every player in the NFL would follow him to sub-zero conditions, and give every last ounce of effort. His tears do not make him less of a leader, but MORE. He cried because he cared about his teammates, the Packers, his fans, and most importantly, the game he grew up loving to play.
For extra subtext, consider the conditions Favre retired under.
THe previous two seasons, his team had gone 4-12, then 8-8, and there was serious debate both times about his return. This past year, the Packers went 13-3, nearly made the Super Bowl, and everyone just assumed he’d return - you want to come back when you have a real shot at a champoinship, right?
But then Favre retired. Why? Because the pressure had sapped all the fun from the game for him. Because spending all his time off the practice field glued to game film was draining him. Because the prospect of another year of doing that, a year that would be wasted without at least an NFC championship, was frightening.
If you want to get into the idea of having to constantly re-prove your masculinity, you can go a lot deeper on Favre’s retirement than him having the same press-conference breakdown lots of pro athletes do. You can tie it into the pressure to be absolutely committed to being top dog no matter what the cost. Favre decided that the chance (far from a certainty) to win (another) championship wasn’t worth what it would cost him and his family - and no athlete is supposed to say something like that before he’s in a state to check into Betty Ford.
Rush was not hired for ‘Merican football chops but because the bosses in the suites knew his show. The current crop (crap?) of conservative TelePrompter readers have Qs in the toilet. Only the continuing support of el Jefe keeps them on the air. In the old bad days, the ratings would have dumped them. Now, we get the sheer deeelite of Captain Couric and her Colonic Crewe. Feh, I like C. Amanpour. Or Helen T.
I know what you mean, Mold; watching ANY national news channel in the morning is painful. Fluff pieces, bad pronounciations, giggly idiots, sappy manufactured pseudo-concern when interviewing “survivors” or relatives- FEH, indeed. That’s before you get to Murdoch’s physical requirements and dress codes for the Fox ninnies…
Katie had me boggling when she started crooning Tony Bennett, guest-hosting Leno, and popping up in the occasional movie (Austin Powers/ SharkTales). Gave her the benefit of the doubt the first 2 nights, then back to NBC. And with Meredith, found Today to be too insipid to tolerate further.
Thanks be to the Internet…