Dan Leberfeld Loses It

I love watching right wingers melt down

Last Sunday over the holiday weekend as I was minivanning the family from scenic Charlottesville to sunny Lake Anna naturally I was listening to Sirius NFL Radio 124, Dan Leberfeld and Zig Fracassi were on (Press Coverage?) and the conversation moved to Sunday Night Football on NBC, suddenly Dan was ranting about Keith Olbermann the MSNBC host of Countdown and how NBC was making a huge mistake putting him on the Sunday night NFL studio team, this is a man that slanders John McCain a war hero every night, every night I say!

Dan was sure to get the term slander in there at least three times and was in full concern troll mode, warning NBC of the risks of putting such a volatile personality on a national broadcast, someone that automatically would alienate half the audience, normally a great football talker, Dan simply unbottled and revealed himself as an angry conservative, Dan tried to get Zig to agree with him, Zig artfully declined.

A central tenet of Dan's argument compared Keith on Football Night in America to Rush Limbaugh and his brief and disastrous 2003 tenure on ESPN's NFL Countdown.

That is where the story breaks down.

See Keith was a sports broadcaster on ESPN for five years, he is qualified to do the sports thing. Rush was a top 40 DJ who went straight to talk, by the time he got to ESPN in 2003 he was there because someone **kaff kaff chrisberman kaff kaff** wanted him there, he was wholly unqualified in a way in which Keith is wholly qualified. It is this inexperience with the sports milieu that led Rush to make unfortunate remarks about Donovan McNabb's blackness vis a vis the media, because Rush cannot carry on a conversation about sports that is not really about politics.

Yes I was pissed when Rush was added to the Sunday NFL Countdown lineup and sure enough Rush stepped right in it up to his knees exactly as I had predicted.  I can understand that some people would not want to see Keith because of how he conducts himself and his show, when he is on NBC he is a sportscaster and not a political personality cameo ing on a sports show, it is a false comparison to link Keith on Sunday Football Night in America with Rush on Sunday NFL Countdown.

And besides, NBC is a rational money making enterprise, if they really thought people were tuning out because their heads were exploding over seeing Keith, who does not do much political stuff at all on the football show, then they would yank him and they have not signaling that as a sports personality Keith still enjoys broad appeal.

Then it got better.  The conversation between Dan and Zig moved to some list, I have been unable to find this list, apparently of football players, whom due mainly to roster cuts were not even in the league at the time the list was disclosed, that had failed NFL drug tests.

Here Dan showed strong libertarian tendencies by saying in effect, so what if these guys failed a workplace drug test, they are not even in the league so all it does to publish their name is to tar them, not being in the league means there is no policy violation, even though any player that failed a test and was signed back to the league could face sanctions, let them get the help they need with privacy and dignity, Dan continued, and let's not make pariahs and spectacles out of them because they have a problem.

Dan's closing point:  a list of people not in the league has no bearing on league business and so we should not even be talking about it (I tend to agree with this position).

To which Zig replied, almost as if set up by Dan, the timing and tone were perfect and I paraphrase here, any such list of people not actually in the NFL would include Keith Olbermann.  And then they cut to commercial.

I laughed my ass off.

Dan Leberfeld: uncredited image from here.