Over at Daily Beast, Conor Friedersdorft has a good piece examining why it's impossible to take seriously Rush Limbaugh's whining about how the 'other side' always injects race into the debate, when Limbaugh himself has spent 2009 pretty much doing nothing but that:

It is also understandable that a professional sports league wouldn't want to associate itself with someone who so frequently plays the race card. That doesn't mean Mr. Limbaugh is a racist. I take him at his word that he isn't. He is merely a racial provocateur whose ire at being called a racist doesn't prevent him from affixing the label to others with stunning frequency.

Limbaugh's defense is part of the emerging, albeit bizarre, right-wing view that conservatives are allowed to do and say whatever they want under the guise of political debate, but nobody--nobody--is allowed to hold those words against them. Suddenly, in the far-right corners of the political spectrum, “free speech” means never being held responsible for anything you say.

So when Limbaugh spends the first eight months of Obama's first term relentlessly, and divisively, injecting race into every day's debate, he can never be labeled a race-baiter. That's an attack on his right to free speech.

The NFL (and the real world) begs to differ.