Philadelphia ? I don’t know Rush Limbaugh and I don’t want to know him.

I don’t know if he’s a racist or a bigot. I don’t know if he visited Jenny Craig or a plastic surgeon. After his disparaging comments about Donovan McNabb, I certainly do know he doesn’t know football.

But he knows the media. And society.

Let’s stop wasting time measuring the racial insensitivity inside of Limbaugh’s contrarian persona. Even after absorbing his rhetoric, deciphering what he said about McNabb on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” — “I think we have a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well” — there’s too many holes in his argument to give it credence.

If there was any truth to Limbaugh’s idiotic assertion that the present-day media are pushing for a black quarterback to be successful, coach Bill Cowher would not have been able to push Kordell Stewart out of Pittsburgh. Aaron Brooks would be a standout in New Orleans, Jeff Blake would be something other than an NFL vagabond, and there would be no need to mention Randy Moss every time Daunte Culpepper takes a deep breath.

McNabb’s credentials need no validation. And neither does the integrity of those who have covered McNabb.

At least in this town.

The pundits who covered sports long before McNabb came along, however, are another matter entirely. Mostly because they’ve spent years disseminating the kind of nonsense that fuels the Limbaughs of the world.

Long before McNabb came along, there were those that once asked Doug Williams, a Super Bowl MVP: “How long have you been a black quarterback?” Long before last Sunday, Randall Cunningham was lauded for his athleticism, his ability to react and improvise, and, of course, run that football. But never was Cunningham lauded for his acumen.

There’s no room to elaborate on why there was a need for Warren Moon to prove himself in the Canadian Football League before he was embraced by the NFL. Or to explain why James Harris, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ current player personnel director, was given such a hard time trying to break through as an NFL quarterback in the early 1970s.

So who was writing about Harris and Moon all those years ago? Who was questioning Williams? Who was insulting Cunningham? Who’s been lauding their “athletic” ability at the expense of suggesting some good brain matter, as well?

Instead, some in the media looked, talked and shared the same beliefs as the one-and-only Mr. Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh is Premiere Radio’s resident $250 million man, free to be a staunch right-wing Republican over the airwaves in every sense of the word.

Limbaugh is free to abhor affirmative action. Free to insinuate the media was trying to make a black star out of a paper quarterback. Free to ignore the paucity of African American football coaches and executives in the NFL, exhibiting bad taste and, unquestionably, racially provocative diatribes along the way. Free to be conveniently naive and/or indifferent about the residual effects on all those generations who endured lives condemned to little more than servitude, people he clearly couldn’t care less about or relate to.

I can’t decide whether to call Limbaugh a fool. Or simply say thank you for exposing what’s whispered behind so many closed doors.