Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003
IN MY OPINION
Three cases of foot-in-mouth disease
BY GREG COTE
gcote@herald.com
Greg Cote
Call them the Trinity of Turgidity -- three loudmouths befouling the NFL this week with pompous streams of bombast. It was three-part dis harmony like you've never heard, or likely wish you hadn't.
Rush Limbaugh.
Brenda Warner.
Terrell Owens.
You've heard of The Three Tenors?
These are The Three Tenesmus -- tenesmus being a medical word for the inclination to evacuate one's bowels, in this case by way of one's gaping maw.
Limbaugh: Talking his way off of ESPN's pregame show by revealing how little he knows about football, and in a way that invited cries of racism.
Warner: Complaining and threatening over husband Kurt not playing, fulfilling the dual purpose of sowing team dissension while also emasculating said husband.
Owens: Letting loose a cannonade of sideline bile against an assistant coach, reminding the stubborn few who doubted it that selfishness answers to the nickname T.O.
Together, these three were firing volleys more ridiculous than outrageous as the NFL's regular season made it first-quarter turn.
Like three crime scenes, the blathering demands separate dissection:
? An analyst's buffoonery: Limbaugh, the right-wing political commentator, had no legitimate place on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown to begin with, but the ill-fated experiment imploded even more quickly than expected.
Limbaugh resigned under pressure three days after saying Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated and that the promotion of him as otherwise was some sort of media conspiracy to satisfy the NFL's desire to have successful black QBs.
It was one of the few times McNabb has failed to avoid the Rush, by the way.
Not sure if the commentary was racist or even a firing offense. What it was was plainly stupid, ill-informed. Worse, it was condescending.
What Limbaugh said was inane to the degree it didn't merit the reaction it got from Democratic presidential candidates and the NAACP, but McNabb's response was right-on.
''It's something I've been going through since I was young. Through high school, through college,'' he said. ``You figure that it would have been over by now.''
It's as if Rush had been in a time warp, and still was coming to grips with the idea of black quarterbacks.
Hul-lo? Dear Rush: Nine of 32 starting QBs are black. It's hardly a story any more. Names Steve McNair and Daunte Culpepper ring a bell? McNair leads the NFL with a 110.9 passer rating. Whose grand plot is that? Our predominantly black defenses conspiring to advance his cause?
I hesitate to even mention the trouble Limbaugh is in over his alleged abuse of illegal painkillers, except to say that if he were all doped up when he went on his McNabb rant, at least he'd have en excuse for being out of his mind.
? A wife's presumptuousness: Brenda Warner has done this before. She goes on local St. Louis radio -- incredibly, she has a regular weekly spot -- and essentially promotes the interests of her husband, Kurt, who should be starting for the Rams (according to Brenda) over Marc Bulger.
The fact Bulger is on an 8-2 run as a starter or the fact Warner is way injury-prone and has lost eight of his past nine starts seems of negligible concern to the obviously neutral and open-minded Brenda.
Can you imagine the wife of Brian Griese (if he were married) going on WQAM to lobby for him starting over Jay Fiedler?
Find a hobby, Brenda. Go away.
? A receiver's offensiveness: Owens behaving like the Maestro of Me? That might be redundant by now. It should be assumed.
But the 49ers receiver could not have spelled ''No Class'' any more clearly if he'd written it with a Sharpie pen than with his sideline tirade against offensive coordinator Greg Knapp last week.
Owens should not play Sunday. He should have been suspended for his display -- and might have been, too, if not for San Francisco's 1-3 record and the bald desperation of new coach Dennis Erickson, who is too busy searching for a win to look for his spine.
What Owens did might mistakenly be forgiven as ''passion'' by his apologists, but more rightly should be ID'd as a raw, intolerable lack of respect.
There is not so much tying together the separate outrages of a selfish receiver, a lobbying wife and backward-thinking TV analyst.
There is a commonality in the proper reaction to each, though:
Shut up.
Please?
IN MY OPINION
Three cases of foot-in-mouth disease
BY GREG COTE
gcote@herald.com
Greg Cote
Call them the Trinity of Turgidity -- three loudmouths befouling the NFL this week with pompous streams of bombast. It was three-part dis harmony like you've never heard, or likely wish you hadn't.
Rush Limbaugh.
Brenda Warner.
Terrell Owens.
You've heard of The Three Tenors?
These are The Three Tenesmus -- tenesmus being a medical word for the inclination to evacuate one's bowels, in this case by way of one's gaping maw.
Limbaugh: Talking his way off of ESPN's pregame show by revealing how little he knows about football, and in a way that invited cries of racism.
Warner: Complaining and threatening over husband Kurt not playing, fulfilling the dual purpose of sowing team dissension while also emasculating said husband.
Owens: Letting loose a cannonade of sideline bile against an assistant coach, reminding the stubborn few who doubted it that selfishness answers to the nickname T.O.
Together, these three were firing volleys more ridiculous than outrageous as the NFL's regular season made it first-quarter turn.
Like three crime scenes, the blathering demands separate dissection:
? An analyst's buffoonery: Limbaugh, the right-wing political commentator, had no legitimate place on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown to begin with, but the ill-fated experiment imploded even more quickly than expected.
Limbaugh resigned under pressure three days after saying Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated and that the promotion of him as otherwise was some sort of media conspiracy to satisfy the NFL's desire to have successful black QBs.
It was one of the few times McNabb has failed to avoid the Rush, by the way.
Not sure if the commentary was racist or even a firing offense. What it was was plainly stupid, ill-informed. Worse, it was condescending.
What Limbaugh said was inane to the degree it didn't merit the reaction it got from Democratic presidential candidates and the NAACP, but McNabb's response was right-on.
''It's something I've been going through since I was young. Through high school, through college,'' he said. ``You figure that it would have been over by now.''
It's as if Rush had been in a time warp, and still was coming to grips with the idea of black quarterbacks.
Hul-lo? Dear Rush: Nine of 32 starting QBs are black. It's hardly a story any more. Names Steve McNair and Daunte Culpepper ring a bell? McNair leads the NFL with a 110.9 passer rating. Whose grand plot is that? Our predominantly black defenses conspiring to advance his cause?
I hesitate to even mention the trouble Limbaugh is in over his alleged abuse of illegal painkillers, except to say that if he were all doped up when he went on his McNabb rant, at least he'd have en excuse for being out of his mind.
? A wife's presumptuousness: Brenda Warner has done this before. She goes on local St. Louis radio -- incredibly, she has a regular weekly spot -- and essentially promotes the interests of her husband, Kurt, who should be starting for the Rams (according to Brenda) over Marc Bulger.
The fact Bulger is on an 8-2 run as a starter or the fact Warner is way injury-prone and has lost eight of his past nine starts seems of negligible concern to the obviously neutral and open-minded Brenda.
Can you imagine the wife of Brian Griese (if he were married) going on WQAM to lobby for him starting over Jay Fiedler?
Find a hobby, Brenda. Go away.
? A receiver's offensiveness: Owens behaving like the Maestro of Me? That might be redundant by now. It should be assumed.
But the 49ers receiver could not have spelled ''No Class'' any more clearly if he'd written it with a Sharpie pen than with his sideline tirade against offensive coordinator Greg Knapp last week.
Owens should not play Sunday. He should have been suspended for his display -- and might have been, too, if not for San Francisco's 1-3 record and the bald desperation of new coach Dennis Erickson, who is too busy searching for a win to look for his spine.
What Owens did might mistakenly be forgiven as ''passion'' by his apologists, but more rightly should be ID'd as a raw, intolerable lack of respect.
There is not so much tying together the separate outrages of a selfish receiver, a lobbying wife and backward-thinking TV analyst.
There is a commonality in the proper reaction to each, though:
Shut up.
Please?