Victor Davis Hanson notes that one reason for American exceptionalism may be that we did not inherit from England "a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs." Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche.

--Rich Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review Online, 3/8/10, via Crooked Timber, 3/9/10)

So, David Paterson will become the massa who gets to appoint whoever gets to take [Rep. Eric] Massa's place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting.

--Rush Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/9/10, via Media Matters, 3/9/10)

Forty-eight years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. We could make fun of people in a general gentle way, and certainly, "Ahab Was the Arab" [sic] was a general gentle parody. But now we can't. What has changed in America?

As American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer put it, O'Reilly is really

mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.”

Serwer adds that we are apparently still a country where it’s not entirely "taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs." However, while jokes about Arabs may be frowned upon, it should be noted that full-throated calls for their profiling, detention and bombing are practically required by certain media outlets, Fox News among them.

For more on O'Reilly's record of bigotry, see "O'Reilly's Racist Slurs--in Context" (Extra! Update, 6/03).

President Obama's Attacks on Free Speech Opposed by Most Americans, Zogby/O'Leary Poll Finds

Tell me more!

Here's one of the "questions" asked in the poll, tailor-made for Fox News Channel:

Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd wants the FCC to force good white people in positions of power in the broadcast industry to step down to make room for more African-Americans and gays to fill those positions.  Do you agree or disagree that this presents a threat to free speech?

It's worth noting that this question only elicited 51 percent support.

Are there any other non-existent administration policies that polling outfits should be asking people about?

That's because Limbaugh has a long record of making racist remarks. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed written by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and myself, we documented many instances of Limbaugh's racism, including his admission that he once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose," his assertion that "all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson," and his advice to a group with a 90-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

Last year Limbaugh referred to Barack Obama as "the little black man-child." This past January, while discussing Barack Obama with Sean Hannity on Fox, Limbaugh said, "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."

So the prospect of Limbaugh owning a team in a league where nearly two-thirds of the players are African-American should be natural media buzz generator. As CBSSports.com's Mike Freeman wrote under the headline "NFL's Greatest Nightmare," "sometimes these column thingies write themselves." (Unfortunately, Freeman's column, also posted on the Washington Post's League blog, repeated an alleged Limbaugh quote about the merits of slavery that is unverified.)

Perhaps Limbaugh’s most notable remark in the St. Louis context was his 1994 response to learning from a caller to his show that St. Louis would be extending a light rail system into East St. Louis--a community of some 40,000 residents, almost all of whom are black. Said Rush (The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, New Press, 1995): "They got a light rail system to East St. Louis where nobody goes?"

Reporters might ask East St. Louis residents what they think about the prospect of Rush Limbaugh owning their local football team.