After New York Times columnist Roberts finished praising the prowess of Vick, McNabb and McNair, she turned her guns on NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who she dismissed as hopelessly white ("as culturally hip as Pat Boone"); stated the NFL "is still as white as baking soda while teams ponder their openings;" and accused the owners of using "Trent Lott logic; just because you say ‘what up, homey' doesn't mean you're inclusive." If that's not liberal-think, what is it?

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon is a great read on his sports page, great entertainment on TV and also regularly liberal politically in his sports reports. In 1995, Wilbon cheered NFL star Kellen Winslow when he entered the Hall of Fame with a political speech attacking Justice Clarence Thomas for opposing racial quotas and "barring the government from doing the right thing." Wrote Wilbon: "Winslow can be my Gipper any day. My hands are still raw from the applause." Wilbon even cheered the arrival of black sports stars at Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March," and said of this spewing preacher and racist, anti-Semitic and America-hating bilge: "So much of Farrakhan's message was necessary and correct." None of this stopped ESPN from hiring Wilbon for its daily show "Pardon the Interruption."

One wishes Rush had explained himself better. Maybe it would have mollified his critics had he explained that it is also in the conservative impulse to cheer the achievements of barrier-breaking blacks, so long as the achievement is real (Woods, Williams sisters) and not construed (in Rush's analysis, McNabb). But that's the stuff of three-hour radio talk show discussions, not seven-second TV soundbites. That mistake, coupled with the media's unwavering commitment to political correctness, is what spurred ESPN to grow queasy and hush Rush.