That would be Rush Limbaugh of course, thwarting his lifelong dream to affiliate somehow not just with professional sports [once upon a time he lackeyed for MLB's Kansas City Royals], but with his true love, the NFL.
For those who came in late, Limbaugh was prepared to pony up some portion of his hard-earned fortune [$20+ million a year] to become a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams.
“Minority.” Therein lies the rub.
Limbaugh hasn’t been gentle on the Black Establishment, especially the corrupt demagogues Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, nor has he been gentle on their fealty to the Democratic Party.
Limbaugh’s a Republican, afterall.
Neither has Limbaugh been particularly kind to the pathologies that are sometimes excused as “African-American culture,” or charitably, the fallout from slavery and Jim Crow. Crime, gangs, broken families, education, employment, whatnot.
Race is America’s Third Rail—to touch on its implications and enduring problems in any meaningful way is social suicide, and that includes African Americans like Bill Cosby, who endured Jim Crow personally in his journey as one of Black America’s first transracial—post-racial—social pioneers.
Cosby, like Jackie Robinson, pierced the ceiling of racial prejudice by overwhelming merit. Cosby was charming, could absorb the flak without firing back, and he was funny. Robinson was charming, could absorb the flak without firing back, and could play the hell out of the game of baseball.
Limbaugh’s funny and charming, and very good at what he does too. See, this isn’t about race, it’s about partisanship. It’s about political power.
The Democratic Party cannot gain or stay in power without retaining 80-90% of the African American vote. That’s just a statistical fact.
Therefore, race-baiting—in this case branding the other “side” as racist—isn’t only convenient, it’s entirely necessary for the Democratic Party and their clients like Jackson and Sharpton and Waters and Lee and the NAACP and MSNBC in these, the early days of the 21st Century.
Just as it was in the 1960s, and has been ever since.
Y’see, after his baseball career was over, Jackie Robinson tried to become a journalist. In 1960, he interviewed both John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. According to US government archives
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/jackie-robinson/nixon-draft.html
Robinson viewed Nixon’s civil rights record as more promising than Kennedy’s, especially after meeting with both candidates.
But the fix was in. The political power game, in favor of the Democratic Party. And so
Robinson was pressured into taking an unpaid leave of absence and ending his triweekly column with the liberal New York Post when he publicly endorsed Nixon.
It’s not about race and never was. It’s certainly not about Limbaugh.
Even Jackie Robinson himself had no chance against the machine, and he was no Rush Limbaugh. It’s not about race and never was. It’s about power, pure and naked.