Ladies and gentlemen, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now, because Rush Limbaugh told us on his radio show today that he's very sad:

I want to share with you first the way all of this affected me, because in many ways I think that I am fairly typical. I am smack-dab in the middle of the targeted marketing the NFL does to acquire and hold an audience, right smack-dab in the middle of it. And I have to tell you, I was so sad Sunday morning when all of this started falling out.

... I was personally saddened. I did not watch the National Football League yesterday, and it was the first time in 45 years that I made an active decision not to watch, including my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was not a decision made in anger. It was genuine sadness.

In case you didn't catch that, Rush Limbaugh was sad. He was sad because -- at the age of 66 -- he has lost the ability to worship big, strong jocks as if he were an 8-year-old boy:

I realized that I can no longer look at this game and watch this game and study this game and pretend, you know, fantasize, everything a fan does. This whole thing has removed for me the ingredients that are in the recipe that make up a fan.

The mystique is gone. That actually started vanishing a while ago. The larger-than-life aspect of it is gone. The belief, the wish, the desire that the people in the game were the best and brightest and special, and that’s why they were there, that’s gone.

It's tragic to watch a man lose his faith. Who stole it from Limbaugh? Oh, the usual suspects:

And it’s been politicized. It has been politicized and corrupted, and it didn’t start this weekend....

And the people politicizing it, since we’re talking about politics, the people that politicized it are people on the left. And when that happens, things change. It’s just over.

We've broken him! He's a broken man! How could we be so cruel to Rush Limbaugh?

The liberal response to this, of course, will be that nothing Limbaugh is suffering is in any way comparable to what's suffered by the victims of police brutality, or by their families.

But why should any rational person get worked up over unarmed people being killed by cops? It's all fake news!

You know what I fear? Based on things I’ve seen, based on things I’ve read, based on things I’ve heard, it seems that a lot of people still believe “hands up, don’t shoot” happened. It seems to me — and I’ve done nothing but immerse myself in this. I have wanted to find even the most obscure comments from the most obscure players. And, folks, it seems to me that there are a lot of people who believe “hands up, don’t shoot,” Ferguson, Missouri, that Michael Brown was an innocent victim running away from a policeman and was shot in the back while having his hands up saying, “Don’t shoot.”

It didn’t happen. It is a false narrative that the media spread and spread, and the protesting agitators spread it. And it has taken on a life of its own that it never had, it was never true, and significantly a lot of people believe it and other things similar to it that didn’t happen or didn’t happen the way they were reported.

The Justice Department under Eric Holder, despite being deeply critical of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, did reject the "Hands up, don't shoot" narrative in the death of Michael Brown. So, according to Limbaugh, that's all you need to know about "other things similar to" the Brown shooting. They "didn’t happen the way they were reported"! None of them! All those cases you've read about -- all fake!

But wait -- aren't some on video? Oh, please:

... you take a street corner, an average street corner and there’s no camera there, and things that happen happen. You put a camera on that corner when people know it’s there, and their behavior all changes. The people who know the camera is there are gonna change their behavior.

... that’s now how people see life, is through the lens of media. And so that affects how people behave. They comport themselves in ways to be seen by cameras that will then televise what they do, people who have, quote, unquote, platforms. And it becomes an act or a call for attention or a marketing plan or what have you.

Remember Eric Garner repeatedly saying "I can't breathe" as he was being choked to death? He was marketing himself, silly!

But back to Rush Limbaugh's sadness, which is the one genuinely tragic result of all these so-called acts of police brutality:

... all of this is just sad. Folks, the National Football League, I loved it. I mean, it was one of my top five passions, hobbies, enjoyments, as regular listeners of this program know. I’m not making this about me.

Oh, no. Obviously not.

There is no way that business is going to grow and prosper. No matter how correct the protest might be, no matter how justified it might be, that is not the place for it. It is not why people spend money watching it, patronizing it, purchasing anything to do with it. And that makes me sad.

Did you catch the "sad" part? I just want to make sure you caught that.

The upshot of it is, though, the sad realization that something I loved — and, look, this is not old man “get off my yard” stuff.

This is not old fuddy-duddy wanting the Ward and June Cleaver days back. It’s not that.

Oh, heavens no. Who on earth would think that?

It’s just I don’t think I’m gonna look forward to NFL Sundays....

And how are you dealing with your profound grief, Rush?

It wasn’t until last year — maybe the year before but certainly last year — that I started playing golf on Sunday afternoons in order to get home to see the second half of the late game and maybe the Sunday night game. That never happened before. But yesterday was the first day I did not watch any of the National Football League.

I'm sorry, readers. I probably should have warned you about how heartbreaking this monologue is. It's almost too much to bear.

So how did that make you feel, Rush?

I just didn’t care, which made me sad. I was depressed.

It made me, as I say, very sad.

Sad. He felt sad.

Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog