ADVANTAGE ED! Back on Monday,

ADVANTAGE ED! Back on Monday, July 14, we wrote that Rush Limbaugh will go on ESPN’s NFL pre-game show each week…

…and discuss nothing but football. Meanwhile, his detractors will start foaming at the mouth at what an evil, vile, racist, awful, dangerous, psychotic Nazi he is. Sort of a dispersed version of the how James Taranto described what the protests outside the Republican convention in New York will be like.

Paul Zimmerman, the venerable Sports Illustrated writer does precisely that in his column today:

Duncan of Fairfax, Va., wants my thoughts on Rush Limbaugh being added to ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown. “Personally, I’m getting ready to break out the pitchfork and find me a couple of torches,” he writes, “but I suppose I’ll have to make do with just not watching the show.” Careful about hints of terrorism, Dunc. Not only the FBI, but the Justice Department monitors columns such as these for any hints of terrorist threats. To say nothing of the Department of Agriculture and the Attorney General’s Office, which is exactly what I’d like to say about them. Not that I don’t agree with everything you’ve said. I most certainly do. It’s funny, on Thursday afternoon I did an interview on ESPN Radio, only because I wanted to present my Limbaugh views right up front. So I ranted and raved for a while about how ABC set the idiot-tone with its Dennis Miller venture. But Miller, while being a footba! ll! ignoramus, at least wasn’t mean, in direct contrast to this Limbaugh character, who’s not only stupid and nasty, but stupid and nasty at the top of his voice. The pity of it is that I used to enjoy watching Countdown, but of course I won’t tune in anymore. And what do you think the radio guy said? Right on cue he came in with, “See that, we’re all talking about him.” To which I retorted that we talk about murderers, too, and thugs and all manner of aberrant behavior, which doesn’t mean that we want to include it as expert commentary on the football scene. I hope to God this is the last reference to Limbaugh that I’ll have to make.

So being a conservative radio talk show host is the equivalent of being a murderer, a thug, and someone who engages in “and all manner of aberrant behavior”? Nope, no media bias to see here, move along…