President Obama played golf Saturday with ESPN "Pardon the Interruption" hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon -- both former sports columnists for The Washington Post.
Not only that, ABCNews.com announced that on Friday, Wilbon, Kornheiser, and Tony Reali –host of ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and a long-time fact-checker for the other two ESPN hosts — ate lunch at the White House and visited with Obama in the Oval Office. As the Post reported (via AP) on Sunday:
ESPN Pardon the Interruption co-host Michael Wilbon is no fan of comedian Seth MacFarlane's performance as emcee of Sunday night's Oscar awards. But rather than leave his criticisms confined to the merits of MacFarlane's performance, the liberal former Washington Post sports columnist whipped out the race card on Washington, D.C.'s ESPN 980, reports WTOP.com:
"They got tired of famous black people, so they've got to go get a white guy? Affirmative action Academy Awards host?" Wilbon said. "Is that what this is about? Really?"
Rush Limbaugh was convicted of racism in a kangaroo court of "objective" media and dropped as a potential owner of the St. Louis Rams football franchise. His accusers claimed he once said slavery "had its merits" and that the assassin of Martin Luther King deserved a "Medal of Honor." The story circulated on the Internet and was eventually picked up by the major media, including both CNN and MSNBC.
On Sunday, ESPN host and sportswriter Michael Wilbon said conservative talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh is "univerally reviled by African-Americans."
As amazing as it may seem, this was at least the second time Wilbon made this statement on national television.
Unfortunately, the person he said it to Sunday -- Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources" -- didn't bother challenging him about just how absurd a thing this is to say (video embedded below the fold with transcript):
Michael Wilbon, a sports writer and columnist for ‘The Washington Post,’ has written a really entertaining column today.Entertaining, in that it’s self-contradictory in the extreme. This column is the literary equivalent of punching an inflatable Bobo the Clown. And of course, it has to be about Rush Limbaugh.Wilbon can’t even make it out of the first paragraph without making a contradiction that would confuse Yogi Berra:
We've already seen CNN's Paul Begala, affectionately referred to as "The Forehead" by Rush Limbaugh, and one ESPN personality, Fred Roggin, taking shots at Limbaugh on the heels of news of his interest in the National Football League's St. Louis Rams.
But it was just a matter of time before the usual culprits on the left would attempt to make an issue of it, in what seems to be an effort to gin up some reason for the talk show host not to have an ownership stake in an NFL team. And, MSNBC's Ed Schultz isn't waiting for pointers from the left-wing blogosphere to set the "Stop Rush's Bid for the Rams" agenda. He took it to Limbaugh on his Oct. 6 program immediately.
"There's also some comical football news out there," Schultz said. "The drugster's talking about buying the St. Louis Rams. That's right, the leader of the Republican Party is bidding for ownership of a team that's been giving more money to Democrats than any other team has over the last 10 years, at least that's what the survey says. He'll have to do something about that I'm sure."