Was It the Pills Talking?
With the impeccable timing of a pro, Rush Limbaugh has a perfect cover story for his controversial comments regarding Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb: It was the pills talking.
To be fair, no man is hero to his valet, and no man is sober to his housekeeper (the source for the drug abuse allegations). And Rush refuses, at least for now, to back away from his comments, saying they were directed at the media, not at McNabb, and that they had no "racist" intent. Here's what he said: "
"I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."
More peculiarly, Rush has insisted that the criticism of his comments only means that he's absolutely right:
"If I wasn't right there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community."
As the AP's Jim Litke points out,
For the record, the Eagles have gone to the NFC title game the last two seasons, and having a defense ranked in the top five certainly hasn't hurt. By the same token, the rest of the players in the league thought enough of McNabb's offensive skills to vote him into the Pro Bowl the last three seasons. Without reporters blocking or catching a single pass, McNabb has led Philly to a 36-22 record in his starts, including the playoffs.
One thing Limbaugh might have missed: The media may well have a vested interest in seeing the Philadelphia Eagles, a franchise that historically has vacillated between being a high-performance and low-performance loser, finally win a Superbowl, if only to placate the team's fans, among the nastiest in all of professional sports.