Beginning this week, the “Sunday NFL Countdown” program on Disney-owned ESPN will feature Rush Limbaugh as a color commentator. There is a certain irony in hiring a color commentator who became famous and wealthy by bashing people of color. Mark Shapiro, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and production, describes Limbaugh as “a fan’s fan.” Well, fan is a derivative of the word fanatic. And Rush Limbaugh is indeed a fanatic’s fanatic.

In response to a caller saying African-Americans should be heard, Limbaugh once responded, “They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?” He told another Black caller, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” In 1992, on his television show, he ranted about Spike Lee urging African-American students to take off from school to see his movie, “Malcolm X.” Limbaugh’s comment: “Spike, if you’re going to do that, let’s complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater, and then blow it up on their way out.”

I am not going to be in any rush to watch or hear Limbaugh on Sunday or any other day. Not simply because he is a Right-wing fanatic—though that would be reason enough—but also because he has no regard for the truth. Limbaugh is so factually challenged that he makes Jayson Blair, the former “New York Times” serial liar, seem as believable as George “I Cannot Tell a Lie” Washington.

For several years, the watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media [FAIR], has documented Limbaugh’s wayward missives. Below are few of the many examples of how his pronouncements often don’t square with reality.

LIMBAUGH: “The videotape of the Rodney King beating played absolutely no role in the conviction of two of the four officers. It was pure emotion that was responsible for the guilty verdict.” (Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Summer 1993)
REALITY: “Jury Foreman Says Video Was Crucial in Convictions,” read an accurate “Los Angeles Times” headline the day after the federal court verdict.” (4/20/93)

LIMBAUGH: “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?” (From his book, “Told You So,” p. 68).
REALITY: According to Carl Shaw of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, estimates of pre-Columbus population of what later became the United States range from 5 million to 15 million. Native populations in the late 19th century fell to 250,000, due in part to genocidal policies. Today the U.S.’s Native American population is about 2 million.

LIMBAUGH: Praising Strom Thurmond for calling a gay soldier “not normal,” Limbaugh said, “He’s not encumbered by being politically correct… If you want to know what America used to be—and a lot of people wish it still were—then you listen to Strom Thurmond.” (TV show, 9/1/93)
REALITY: In the America that “used to be,” Strom Thurmond was one of the country’s strongest voices for racism, running for president in 1948 on the slogan, “Segregation Forever.”

LIMBAUGH: “It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the same cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases].” (Radio show, 4/29/94)
REALITY: Nicotine’s addictiveness has been reported in medical literature since the turn of the century. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s 1988 report on nicotine addiction left no doubts on the subject. “Today the scientific base linking smoking to a number of chronic diseases is overwhelming, with a total of 50,000 studies from dozens of countries,” states “Encyclopedia Britannica’s” 1987 “Medical and Health Annual.”

LIMBAUGH: “Oh, how they relished blaming Reagan administration policies, including mythical reductions in HUD’s budget for public housing, for creating all of the homeless! Budget cuts? There were no budget cuts! The budget figures show that actual construction of public housing increased during the Reagan years.” (“Ought to Be,” p. 242-243)
REALITY: In 1980, 20,900 low-income public housing units were under construction; in 1988, 9,700, a decline of 54 percent (Statistical Abstracts of the U.S.). In terms of 1993 dollars, the HUD budget for the construction of new public housing was slashed from $6.3 billion in 1980 to $683 million in 1988. “We’re getting out of the housing business. Period,” a Reagan HUD official declared in 1985.

Considering Limbaugh’s incurable lying, what message is ESPN and the Walt Disney Co. conveying by hiring him, especially when 67 percent of the players in the NFL are Black? What does it say about sponsors who will still advertise on that polluted program? And, more important, what does it say about us if we still watch the program or support the companies that advertise on it?