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That's not a rhetorical question. I really want everyone who was surprised to raise their hands and keep them up, so I can tell who all the gullible people are.

This isn't all Limbaugh's fault here. ESPN, in an effort to increase the ratings of its pregame show, went out and hired a man whose statements can usually be placed into at least one of three categories -- lies, inaccuracies, and vicious political invective.

I mean, we are talking about a guy who, on his late, unlamented television show, once flashed a picture of a basset hound on the screen and announced it was Chelsea Clinton.

As measured by ratings, hiring Limbaugh was a success. ESPN reported a 10-percent increase in viewership since he joined the show.

Of course, I think he got a lot of credit for the show's performance that he didn't deserve. And ESPN ultimately paid a high moral price for bringing Limbaugh on board.

If you lie down in a stable at night, you can expect to be covered with horse droppings in the morning. And there's the distinct odor of manure emanating from ESPN's studios right about now.

The powers that be at ESPN should have seen this one coming. Every time Limbaugh attempts to reach beyond his core audience of self-proclaimed "dittoheads" who drive pickup-trucks festooned with Confederate flag bumper stickers, he exposes his ignorance.

It happened on his original television show, when he appeared on David Letterman, which is probably one of the reasons he doesn't do interviews. And it happened on ESPN last week.

One of the reasons it happens is that his core audience either forgives his many inaccurate statements, or agrees with them. With a wider audience, there is a higher standard, one which Rush is unable to meet.

In Rush's Bizarro World -- a term borrowed from the book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," by Al Franken -- using a dog to describe a teenage girl going through an awkward stage in her life is a funny joke, Vince Foster was murdered, global warming is a myth, and Mike Martz has never coached the Rams into the Super Bowl.

And, of course, Donovan McNabb is overrated and the beneficiary of a conspiracy by the media, the NFL, the NAACP, and presumably the Bavarian Illuminati to create a successful black quarterback.

In his five-week stint on ESPN, Limbaugh proved he is just as ignorant about football as he is about politics.

And those are -- God help us -- his two best subjects, by his own admission. If that's true, Limbaugh just might be the dumbest guy on the planet.

If football and politics are Limbaugh's two best subjects, he probably needs help to open his own refrigerator. I mean, they print directions on toothpicks for guys like him.

While we're getting hung up on whether Limbaugh's a racist -- an issue that, in spite of his denials, should be clear-cut -- the bigger matter should be the fact that he was wrong.

Wrong about the media, wrong about football, and most importantly, wrong about McNabb.

Last year, the Eagles' quarterback signed the richest contract in NFL history for one simple reason. He is among the league's elite quarterbacks.

His stats -- his career-high for passer-rating was his 86.0 last year -- are a little better than pedestrian, but numbers don't tell the whole story. The operative question is, who would you rather have at quarterback than Donovan McNabb, a three-time Pro Bowl player?

Well, Rush?

Brett Favre? He'd have been my pick, too, before this season. But based on his performance this season, Limbaugh's quote could have applied to the Pack's QB, as well.

Same with Kurt Warner, who is now looking like damaged goods.

We know you wouldn't pick Daunte Culpepper, Steve McNair, or Michael Vick there, Rush, because that would just weaken your own argument. You can't, after all, be saying there is a racial conspiracy to turn McNabb into a superstar at the expense of another black quarterback.

In any event, McNabb is probably a better pick than Culpepper on the basis of production, better than Vick on the basis of experience, and at least McNair's equal.

Maybe Limbaugh would pick Rich Gannon. He's all right, I guess, but I kind of think of him as the beneficiary of a system that suits his talents. And the Oakland Raiders aren't exactly setting the house on fire this season.

The best quarterbacks in the league, right now, in my humble opinion, are probably Favre, Drew Bledsoe, and Peyton Manning.

McNabb and McNair probably belong in that group, as well, and for a lot of the same reasons, none of which have to do with their skin color.

Harry Edwards, a one-time University of California at Berkeley professor who has worked as an advisor to the San Francisco 49ers, has theorized that black athletes are often shortchanged when they are described as "athletic" or "great physical specimens."

The underlying assumption with such statements is that black athletes have everything handed to them in terms of natural ability and they don't have such attributes as a work ethic, toughness, intelligence -- all of which are necessary in a quarterback.

In fact, today's black quarterbacks -- and specifically McNabb and McNair -- are the antithesis of that theory. McNair has decent statistics, which would be better if he didn't play so often, and so well when he is hurt.

In McNabb's case, we're talking here about a guy who last year played an entire game on a broken leg. In that game, robbed of his mobility, he had to play the role of a drop-back passer.

And he did it well.

A lot of people -- the Sporting News, which named him one of football's top players at any position; Pro Bowl selectors, who put him into the NFL's all-star game three times; MVP voters, who named him as runner-up twice -- who know a lot more about football than Limbaugh (heck, I'd put myself in that category) have ordained McNabb one of the league's top QBs.

And race had nothing to do with that.

Limbaugh was forced out of the ESPN pregame cast because his words were perceived to have been racist. But the major problem was that his opinion was uninformed.

And because of that, he probably never should have been on the show in the first place.

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