gr8oldies said:
There may be plenty of litigation to go around, first with Sharpton's interference with a contractual agreement. The media that repeated made-up Limbaugh quotes as fact. I don't frankly know when Sharpton and Jackson were elected official spokesmen for minority communities in this country. Aside from that, Sharpton loses absolutely nthing from Limbaugh's comments, where Limbaugh loses the right to buy into the St. Louis Rams based on Sharpton's intereference.
If you believe Sharpton was the reason Rush was dropped from the investment group, I know a place where you can find 600 radio broadcasting jobs. Sharpton is low hanging fruit for people who think he represents "the black community." Sharpton and Jackson are old news. They don't represent the majority of African Americans, and neither one is bidding to be involved in owning an NFL franchise.
Rush is playing the victim card (it's always been part of his stock and trade). Some even believe he's a victim. If they believe that then they're just victims of his skills as a superb broadcaster. If Rush is a victim of anything, he's a victim of his own free speech. Clear Channel dumped Howard Stern because his free speech --his radio act-- was no longer a fit on their radio stations. For certain people of influence, it was the same thing with Rush and his radio act. You can't insist on having the right to say what you want and then turn around and complain about people who didn't like what you said, and Rush has said plenty of things that a sizable number of people didn't like --a sizable enough number to make a difference in whether he could or couldn't be a part of the NFL.
Free speech isn't only about the right to say what you want; it's also about the right to disagree with what's said and to take action against it (or as the First Amendment defines it, "redress.") If a company takes a political or philosophical stand with which you disagree, then you should have the right to boycott their products. That's all that's going on here. It doesn't matter whether you think Rush is a racist or not. It doesn't matter if he says he's not. It doesn't even matter if he truly is a racist or not. What matters is what the league owners think. Rush has a 20-year-history of offending people, including perhaps, some of those owners, and it appears the majority of them felt that Rush's opinions could cost them business and/or create an unnecessary distraction. They exercised their right of free speech (perhaps tacitly) by opposing his involvement in ownership. You can't complain that the people you've offended aren't interested in doing business with you, and you certainly can't go around blaming everyone else but yourself when you were the one who said those things.
I'm not saying that Rush is wrong, but it doesn't matter what I think; I'm not the one who decides if he gets an ownership or not.
Free speech isn't free; it can come with consequences and then you have a price to pay. Right now, Rush is paying. He can blame other people if he wants to but in the end, its his words, no one else's, and it's the league's opinion of those words that count, not Al Sharpton's. If Rush doesn't like it, let him sue and let it go before a jury and let the entire record be laid bare. If he doesn't care to do that, then he'll have to suck it up, chalk it up as a loss and too damned bad. That's life. As the old saying goes, you mess with the bull, sometimes you get the horns --a Ram's horn, in this case.
