Thrown for a Loss

News: Rush Limbaugh fails in his attempt to become a part owner of the NFL St. Louis Rams.

Views: I had a disturbing dream the other night. I was at the opening game at Ed Roski's new stadium in the city of Industry, a locale with all the charm and beauty that its name suggests.

When I looked down on the field, who should I see but the Rams, the team that packed up and abandoned Southern California area some years ago, leaving pro football fans here with such a bitter taste in their mouths that most believe NFL stands for Not For Los Angeles.

Now they were back, lured from St.Louis, lacking both contrition and talent.

When I looked up to the owner's box, who should I see but Rush Limbaugh, now a partner in the franchise, smoking a foot-long cigar and slapping his wing nut buddies on the back.

Could it be true? Limbaugh and the Rams, the worst pairing since Sacco and Vanzetti, playing right here in a stadium I repeatedly called a pipe dream?

I woke up in a cold sweat. But when I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I realized Limbaugh, who has a history of making racially insensitive remarks, had about as much chance of owning a piece of an NFL team as he does becoming president of the NAACP.

When a man talks trash, he often ends up in life's landfill.

Besides, Roski will never build his stadium unless he can lure an NFL team here, which may be harder than getting Iran to disarm.

His people predicted last year that a team would be playing in the Los Angeles area come 2oo9. Now they're saying 2011 is a more likely date with the new stadium opening in 2013.

Sweet dreams.

News: Roman Polanski's lawyer says the director is "depressed" as he sits in a Swiss jail awaiting extradition to the U.S., a country he fled after pleading guilty 31 years ago to raping a 13-year-old girl.

Views: I'm depressed too, depressed that there was an outpouring of excuse-making for Polanski, a man whose immense talent overshadows his lack of moral backbone. About one hundred mostly European artists signed an online French cinema industry petition demanding Polanksi's release, and U.S. directors Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and David Lynch joined in.

Why? Because he's an artist, one who has suffered, surviving the Holocaust and the death of his first wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson gang. And now, living on the run.

That's all very moving. But others have suffered greatly without resorting to criminal behavior. Nelson Mandela and Elie Wessel come to mind.

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, actress Whoopi Goldberg rose to new levels of absurdity by saying she didn't consider the sex incident to be rape in the strict sense of the word. "It was something, but I don't believe it was rape-rape," Goldberg said on TV chat show "The View."

So let me get this straight: she was a child, he gave her liquor, drugged her, sodomized her then fled? You're right, Whoopi. It wasn't "rape-rape." It was worse than that.

We tend to cut our artists a generous amount of slack. They are talented and temperamental, and their excesses seem to come with the job description.

But genius doesn't guarantee immunity. Just ask Phil Spector.

News: Marge Simpson appears in Playboy.

Views: OK, so Marge is a cartoon. But she's at least as real as the silicone-injected, bleached blond, nipped and tucked bimbos Playboy has offered up as the ideal American woman.

Her appearance is an attempt to attract younger readers. So now a blue-haired mother of three with a voice like fingernails on the blackboard is going to reverse the declining fortunes of the Playboy franchise?

And you thought the Nobel Peace Prize was weird.