Rush and the Bounty

Rush Limbaugh deserves every last bit of scorn we can muster for his sexist, misogynist, bullying, nasty, reprehensible comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress about the positive impact of President Obama's directive which mandates that companies must offer birth control as part of health insurance coverage.

Heck, he deserves all of that for practically every minute he spends on the air - our air, for you fans of the Communications Act of 1934 out there. On his nationally syndicated radio show last week, Rush called Fluke a "whore" and a "prostitute" who we, the taxpayers, were in effect paying to have sex. He urged Fluke to post videos of her sexual activity so Rush could see what we paying for and shared his complete lack of knowledge about how birth control actually works. I urge anyone who reads this and works at a radio station that carries Rush's show to hector your boss until he or she decides to drop the show. The same plea goes out to employees of Rush's advertisers.

And Gregg Williams, defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams (my favorite team, I regret to say) deserves a significant suspension for putting bounties on the heads/bodies of opposing players while he was employed by the 2010 Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints. His defensive players received tidy cash bonuses for, among other things, knocking an opponent out of a game ($1,500) and for causing an opponent to be taken from the field on a cart ($1,000), according to Sports Illustrated's Peter King.

Adding insult to intentional injury, players would roll their rewards over to increase the pot. In the 2010 NFC Championship Game, Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma purportedly offered $10,000 to the teammate who could deliver the knockout blow to then Vikings quarterback and serial retiree Brett Favre.

What really deserves our collective disgust is the overheated (and often manufactured) reaction to these incidents. Conservative stalwarts like George Will and Sen. John McCain have lashed out at Rush. Former players have lined up on sports talk radio and ESPN to criticize the Williams System and disavow involvement in similar antics when they were in the league. 

But before your final gasp of disbelief, ask yourself: are you really shocked at these transgressions? Shocked that highly paid athletes unleashing their macho in an extremely violent game at the direction of win-at-all cost coaches put bounties on the heads of opponents? Shocked that the NFL hadn't "noticed" the problem, much like Major League Baseball's leaders didn't "notice" rampant steroid use while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were dragging the sport out of the abyss caused by the 1994 players strike?

Does anyone else fantasize about Captain Louis Renault strolling on to ESPN's SportsCenter set to say "I'm shocked, shocked to find that lucrative headhunting and hateful misogynist misinformed ranting are going on in here"?