On his Tuesday radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh reacted to one of the big media stories of the day involving ESPN announcer Brent Musburger and Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend and Miss Alabama, Katherine Webb.
During Monday night’s Alabama-Notre Dame national championship game, Musburger praised Webb for her looks during the broadcast of the game, and was later was criticized in many media circles, including on “CBS This Morning” by co-host Gayle King.
Limbaugh asked why there was a vocal backlash at all, considering that just days before during CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, co-host Kathy Griffin pretended to perform oral sex on Anderson Cooper.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a question, just a question on the culture,” Limbaugh said. “On New Year’s Eve — and we talked about this yesterday, might have been last week — on New Year’s Eve, on CNN, Anderson Cooper was hosting the ball-drop ceremony in Times Square. And he had on his usual cohost, Kathy Griffin, who engaged in simulated oral sex on Anderson Cooper right there on TV. She went down on Anderson Cooper, who was fully clothed.”
“The reaction to it was — ‘Isn’t that revolutionary? Why, isn’t that cutting edge?’ And people laughed about it and had a good time with it,” he continued. “In fact, there wasn’t much of a reaction to it. Letterman thought it was cool. Anderson Cooper thought it was cool. He had her on his show the next night to talk about it even more. But clearly that’s outside the norms of what was — used to be, anyway — acceptable public behavior.”
Limbaugh pointed out that CNN is attempting to make a comeback as it finds itself struggling in the ratings war with MSNBC and the Fox News Channel. But even with this rebranding effort, no one seemed to be as upset with Griffin’s antics as with Musburger’s remarks. (RELATED: AJ McCarron’s life is better than yours)
“CNN, which is in the midst of attempting to put its image back together, an image of respectable journalism, trust and all that, and then New Year’s Eve and the ball drop, they give this acknowledged D-list celebrity airtime, and she performs this simulated … well, she did a Lewinsky,” Limbaugh said. “She did a Lewinsky there on Anderson Cooper. And of course … maybe one of the reasons nobody had a cow over it is everybody knows that Anderson Cooper’s gay so the thing had to be a simulation. But still, even when I mentioned it, [show producer] H.R., who will go to great lengths to excuse reprobates, said, ‘Yeah, but you could only see half of it on the screen.’ Well, you saw enough of the half of it on the screen to know what was going on.”
“My point is that there certainly wasn’t any outrage over it,” Limbaugh continued. “Well, if it had made Anderson Cooper straight, we wouldn’t have known that. That’s not a factor. We don’t think that his sexual orientation was changed after this because it was a simulation. My point is that nobody really had a problem with it. The pop culture, low-information entertainment media places thought it was just cool as hell. Brent Musburger, however, last night during Alabama-Notre Dame, the BCS championship game, happens to see Miss Alabama in the audience. Happens to note that it’s the quarterback’s girlfriend, and goes gaga, and everybody’s having a cow over it. ‘Dirty old man, drooling, who does he think he is?'”