The double standards operating against outspoken conservatives are legion. Perhaps no one knows this better than talk radio host Rush Limbaugh who has been the target of the left's hatred for decades now. Watching the latest news in the business of sports, he's got to be shaking his head in dismay.
If you're a liberal like Bill Maher, a generous donor to a Super PAC support Barack Obama's re-election efforts, and you invest as much as $20 million to buy a part of the New York Mets, the New York Times gives you favorable coverage. Completely leaving out Maher's recent, and long-running, history of using vile and misogynistic terms to describe conservative women, both on his HBO show and his stand-up comedy shows, the NYT described Maher as "the most celebrated person — at least the only one with a TV show — known to have become a new partner in the team."
(While Maher may claim the libertarian label for himself, obviously he's no libertarian as his numerous pronouncements in favor of big government and Democratic politicians have made quite clear. His handing over of $1 million of his own personal funds to the most anti-libertarian president since Woodrow Wilson really ought to have sealed the deal for the Times.)
Writing a bland stenographic note is a far cry from how the Times covered the story when Limbaugh tried to invest some of his fortune in the St. Louis Rams less than three years ago. Upon Limbaugh's announcement that he was part of an investment group trying to buy the Rams -- who aren't even a New York team -- the Times devoted plenty of ink and web pixels to covering attempts by critics to paint Limbaugh as racist in order to block his bid to own a part of the Rams.
On the same day the Times published a commentary by sports columnist George Vecsey slamming Limbaugh as a racist, the paper also reported on a letter sent by Al Sharpton to the NFL urging them to reject Limbaugh as owner because he was racially "divisive."
"In his letter, Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization, said that the N.F.L. should reject the bid by Limbaugh because he would be bad for the league," the NYT reported, utterly pretending not to remember that Sharpton himself is a notorious race-baiter.
Of course, opposition to Limbaugh investing in the Rams wasn't really about race or comments Limbaugh made on the radio about the NFL or the NBA or specific players. Instead, it was about the intolerant left trying vehemently to stop any conservative from being a part of a large, general-interest organization. Liberals hate Limbaugh for his large audience and the fact that he inspired the creation of conservative talk radio.
That is why you don't see the same self-proclaimed guardians of the culture trying to stop Maher's bid for the Mets. If they truly were against "divisive" people, they'd be out there right now trying to get the HBO vulgarian dropped.
In fairness to the Times, the paper is only supposed to cover news if others engage in making it--except in the case of the PGA Masters Tournament about which the Times obsessed for months despite little public interest--so if conservatives aren't trying to get Maher blocked from buying Mets shares, then there's fight to cover.
That said, the paper ought to have pointed out the prior Limbaugh kerfuffle and mention Maher's highly controversial status within the culture. Doing so would've certainly been "fit to print."
