It is not my habit to listen to Wingnut blowhards. I don’t think I’ve listen to Rush Limbaugh for years, but on Friday afternoon I was driving around and noticed that it was about ten to three. So, I thought I would catch the last segment of his show. What I noticed was commercials–a lot of them. And that reminded me how the Limbaugh show was mostly a grift about getting rubes to open their wallets for this, that or the other pitch. Some were legitimate businesses–your mattress companies, your computer software or gadget and the like. Others were multi-level marketing deals with referral kick-backs for anybody who mentions the show when placing an order. And others–most of them it seems–were straight up grifts to fluff up Rushbo’s wallet and fund this or that aspect of the wingnut money machine. The legitimate advertisers are the cover for the grifters. They are the honey pot to attract the rubes to scams to fund the cons funding the CONsevative movement–and Rush is the sideshow barker saying anything to pull the rubes in the door so that their wallets can be relieved of their Dead Presidents.
By Friday afternoon, Rush had already double down on his slander of Sandra Fluke and he was feeling the pressure of the blowback. Sponsors/advertisers–the real businesses and not the wingnut grifters–were pulling their ads. Republicans everywhere were under pressure to condemn Rush’s slander and their fear of Rush was beginning to be offset by fears of an angry electorate in November. Within 24 hours, Rush would be forced to issue a non-apology apology and look weak. It would not stop the storm of outrage, but even that lame-ass word string was a signal of weakness from the Leader of the Republican Party and the CONservative movement. When the commercials finally ended and the Master blowhard took to the mic, you could hear his fear.
It was in every phrase. Every word. He was pleading. Whinny. And full of self-pity. He verbally thrashed and sought a scapegoat. Naturally he decided that all of his actions were President Obama’s fault. Fear was in his voice as he tried to craft an alternate reality where President Obama’s support for women to be in control of their health care choices forced poor old Rushbo to call Sandra Fluke a slut and a whore.
Doug is spot on. Limbaugh’s apology is a clear sign that we are winning and that it is time to kick them while they are down and hand them anchors, anvils and millstones.
The effort to get advertisers to pull their ads from Limbaugh’s show is working. If you haven’t joined the fun, I urge your to get involved. Here is a link to one Boycott Rush effort, and another, and another. I’m certain that there are more and that more will surface.
Getting the advertiser to separate from Rush is important. It hits him in the wallet, but more than that it removes the cover for all the other grifts he runs on his minions day after day. And it exposes every local radio station that caries the rat bastard to financial pressure and can send a warning flag to any advertiser supporting these stations. And Soonergrunt is correct to point out the effort to get Armed Forces Radio to stop carrying somebody who is so actively anti-American (you can help that effort here).
Every bully goes too far one day. For Joe McCarthy it was the Army-McCarthy Hearings. For Bobby Knight it was choking a player.. Perhaps–if our Nation is lucky–this is the end of the line for Rush Limbaugh. He knows he stepped in it. You can hear the fear in his voice. There is no justification for his bullshit any longer and anybody who defends him is a coward, a fool or both.
I could hear the fear in his voice and I think we should all do what we can do to make that fear grow in the coming weeks.
He is down from a self-inflicted wound and it is time to kick him.
Cheers
Xenos
I have never been able to understand the economic basis for RL’s income… his market share is drastically exaggerated, and most of his advertisers are not incredibly successful companies that are making a mint off a range of well designed, high margin goods. It is radio.
My theory for over a decade now is that Clear Channel is paying RL a couple orders of magnitude more than he is worth, as a matter of puffing up a marquis star that enables the organization as a whole to demand higher fees for fees in other channels, billboards, and so on. It is the ultimate case of wingnut welfare.
techno
Yes indeed, it’s way past time to kick the Rushbo when he’s teetering.
But it is even MORE important that Progressives have a counter-narrative. And quite honestly, we don’t have one that addresses the big problems facing Americans—jobs, fuel prices, climate change, ETC. FDR had the Keynesians generating an alternative narrative to the right-wing bullies. Who is today’s Keynes? Where are the universities that are teaching the new Keynes?
I don’t see it either.
balconesfault
Rush’s show is all about touting how brilliant he is, and how brilliant his dittoheads are for being willing to subject themselves to his brilliance each day, despite mind numbing repetitiveness and self-congratulatory babble.
He’s in a tough spot, because he’s going to have to play the victim card hard to tell people why his advertisers are fleeing, and it’s hard to look brilliant when you’re playing the victim card too hard.
Vixen Strangely
I’m warming to the idea–but slowly. The fuel of the right wing imagination is often resentment and anger, and my sense in part is that Rush’s doubling-down is in part, martyr-baiting. He’s looking to be censured by the Left machine as an example of the kind of First Amendment-haters we “really” are. Not that he’s any more entitled to his radio show after using it to bully a college student and activist who has shown considerable poise in the face of it,, than he was entitled to a tv show or a place commenting on football (I had been awaiting an “Obama can’t quarterback” moment, but that is just too lightweight for his radio show’s general hate-viscosity). He’d just spread his hate to Sirius (perhaps, like Dr Laura) but retain a following of hardened acolytes.
But then again, so what? At least a line would be drawn regarding what we can’t find acceptable as a society. Some part of his audience would possibly wake up without his voice in their heads. Long run, pulling the tick off the body politic is probably the right thing to do. And it serves as an example (just as he wanted to make of Ms. Fluke).
The Dangerman
What’s Don Imus doing these days?
Watson
Yawn, the truth is that Limbaugh’s influence has been waning for years. I honestly don’t know why you people keep giving him more attention than he deserves. You are only helping him. There is no such thing as bad attention when it comes to him. Boycott or not, if he get’s more attention he gets more listeners. If he gets more listeners the free market eventually responds with more advertising dollars.
So you can keep fantasizing that by making him toxic you are somehow accomplishing something…you’re not in the long term. The best thing you can do is ignore him. Lack of attention is what hurts him. If he sees an increase in listeners over this he will only try come up with more outrageous stuff to piss you all off. That’s what he does. That’s all he does.
ItAintEazy
Well, all those companies were willing to be on Rush back when he admitted to being a pillhead. If that didn’t topple him, what will?
pedant
Proofread your posts. I counted at least five grammatical errors, including “choking a playing” for “choking a player.”
Linda Featheringill
It would be really really nice to get rid of Limbaugh.
I think Rush affects the ditto-heads like a drug. If he were to be taken off the air, they would have to detox. After a period, they might even have to start thinking for themselves but that might be asking too much.
IF Rush’s snit fit about making sure women have access to birth control destroys him, do you think the rest of the world just might think twice about fighting about contraception?
Probably not. Forget I mentioned it.
Soonergrunt
@The Dangerman: precisely.
@pedant: You’ve named yourself appropriately.
hitchhiker
@Watson:
We give him negative attention for the same reason that Rs try to say every D is cozy with moveon.org while highlighting the extreme positions moveon has taken — because it makes independents NOT want to be guilty by association.
It doesn’t matter if Rush is “taken down.” In fact, he’s probably more useful than not to the Ds at this point. Let him play large turd, small bowl and stink up the R room so thoroughly that nobody with functioning neurons will want to go in there.
Our job is to highlight the stink and make sure the place is plastered with signs that say REPUBLICANS THIS WAY.
gnomedad
@Vixen Strangely:
I see what you did there.
Lolis
@Watson:
Tell that to Glenn Beck.
Soonergrunt
O/T–sorry Dennis–
It’s not worth its own thread, but this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a week.
Shit Civilians Say to Veterans
All of the people in it are Vets.
Li
I know a number of people who have had their brains turned to mush by that man, and they have seemed increasingly unhinged and driven by fear, especially in recent years. They have a devotion to him and his words that is cult-like in its intensity.
I have long been concerned that Rush might one day order his flock to kill, and we’d have a million murders by morning. We should be on guard; if backed into a corner, a psychopath like Rush could do almost anything.
maya
He can play the victim and the 1st Amendment cards all he likes. The counter is simple:Responsibility for one’s words and/or actions. He has yet to accept that. He has yet to pay the price. I’ll just bet he’s been having one splendid weekend feeling sorry for himself.
JoyfulA
When I first saw the list of advertisers, I saw one I could refuse to patronize, legalzoon, which a client who wants me to form an LLC had suggested.
I tweeted that story, and the next day legalzoom announced it was no longer advertising on Limbaugh.
So I wonder how many other people tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, whatevered their disgust, including names of advertisers. Is this the first social media takedown?
Full of Woe
Here’s my question: do I have to stop kicking him?
FlyingToaster
@Full of Woe: SATSQ: No.
rob!
I am a Phillies fan. In my area, Phillies games are played on a radio station that carries Rush (they run ads for the show during Phillies games, that’s how I know).
When the 2012 season starts, I am writing an email and/or calling the station to tell them I will no longer be tuning into their station, as long as they carry Rush’s show.
Schlemizel
@Linda Featheringill:
I’m pretty sure that Mush is a drug for his listeners. The problem being if we withdraw the drug from those pathetic junkies they will simply switch to methadone or similar to get their high. I don’t know who that is but he will appear as needed to make the morans chills subside and make the shakes, along with reality, go away allowing them to return to the drug induced stupor of fantasy they prefer living in.
We can eliminate the symptom but the disease rolls merrily along.
But it will be enjoyable to lance that pustule.
Watson
@hitchhiker: And your point is?
Hint:
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” –
Napoleon
Cain
If you get rid of Rush, some other guy is going to take his place. There is money to be made from grifting. I would even bet that the mantle would be passed to Sarah Palin.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@The Dangerman:
married to prince charles last i saw.
Egg Berry
@Cain: There are already a thousand mini-rush’s waiting in the wings before you get to Palin. Levin, Hannity, Erickson, Savage, ad infinitum.
CTVoter
SING IT.
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: Stoled and shared with a friend in Afghanistan. And thanks!
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Linda Featheringill:
we will never get those people. never.
kicking rush isn’t about how much he makes(phoney baloney numbers are a thing that exists, especially when they help everyone involved in announcing them)
its not about most of his listeners, be they many or a dwindle.
its about the fact that actual people with actual power do not defy the limbaugh.
its about him leading the onslaught from pundits bloggers trolls etc that push what he deals.
keep kicking until someone in the gop with a name dares defy him, then you will really know he is over.
Soonergrunt
@Yutsano: I laughed my balls off when I saw it.
Smedley the Uncertain
Armed Forces Network petition signed!
Geoduck
@Cain:
Nah. Talking for hours every day on the radio is far too much like work.
Hob
@Watson: That doesn’t make any sense.
First, how exactly is Dennis criticizing Rush supposed to lead to Rush getting more listeners? I seriously doubt anyone here was inspired by this post to start listening to his show, and it’s not as if there are a bunch of wingnuts out there who had never tried listening to Rush and are now going to do it because some random liberal blog doesn’t like him.
But really it doesn’t matter how you explain your theory, because it’s being proven wrong right now. The kind of attention Rush is getting is demonstrably hurting him. Advertisers have pulled their business, and they wouldn’t have done it if lots of people hadn’t publicly made a stink. Even if Rush somehow gained listeners due to this negative attention, he can’t make money from those listeners without advertisers.
The Raven
Circle, circle, circle.
We may hope.
Villago Delenda Est
Go for the throat. No mercy for the foul fascist likes of Limabaugh. No quarter.
fasteddie9318
@techno:
The old Keynes would do just fine, if we could get anybody in Washington to admit that, you know, he was right.
Brachiator
@Dennis G:
Interesting theory, but probably wrong. Although some commercials are tailored for Rush, the bulk of the inventory is repeated on other Clear Channel radio stations, including, for example progressive radio station KTLK in the Los Angeles market.
If you listen to more radio, you might notice stations bragging that they have more long commercial free segments. This, as well as the increasing number of crap commercials, is a direct reflection of the bad economy. There are fewer good advertisers around. Rush’s wingnuts are fed grift, but probably not much more than the goobers who listen to sports radio.
I agree with others that Rush may be losing his appeal, even though he continues to attract a loyal core. Dr Laura got kicked to the curb because she was no longer pulling big numbers in major markets. And one of the things keeping Rush going is the sad fact that much of the potential competition is incredibly weak.
Comrade Baron Elmo
I honestly wonder if Rushbo isn’t doing a little freelance sabotage on the GOP. He’s certainly causing them more damage than good these days, and I’m beginning to suspect that it’s intentional – that his true motive is to poison the Republican well for everyone but millionaires, bible-beaters and straight white guys who think America would be a great country if it weren’t for all the damn blacks, beaners and homos.
After all, an Obama victory would be a much happier outcome for Rush-the-pundit than a win from one of the Repub goobers scrambling for the throne… just as Obama’s win in 2008 revitalized Rush’s show and ratings like nothing in years. Which is more satisfying for a man like Limbaugh: calling down plague and pestilence on the Kenyan Usurper, or resignedly pumping stale air into the leaky tire of a President Romney?
StarStorm
@ Watson #6
Bull-FUCKING-shit. You do not make a bully away by “ignoring” them. You make them go away by hitting them so fucking hard that they don’t want to do it again.
His bullshit fucking hurts people, and it leads others to hurt people. The ONLY appropriate response is to hit him until he STOPS.
Chet
Well, Knight currently enjoys a prominent and presumably well-compensated position as a basketball analyst with ESPN, so that might not quite be the example you want to cite.
Stentor
The Bobby Knight example is just not fair. I watched that incident several times, and from what I can conclude, the kid was being a deliberately disrespectful little shitbag by calling Knight by his last name only, not Coach Knight, but just Knight, like he was back on the block, and not playing for Bobby’s team. My father is one of those old school teachers, he used to pick up kids by their hair, throw chalk & erasers at them, and stuff wet paper towels in their mouths when they were talking during his class. My Dad moved to Lubbock when I joined the Marine Corps back in 1986, & when Bobby Knight came to Texas Tech to coach basketball, became a pretty good friend of my Dad’s. From what I can see, the cocky little asswipe deserved it, & my father agrees with me. From what Bobby told us, he didn’t mean to grab the kid by the throat, he was trying to grab his jersey, but the shithead wiggled away from him just as he was reaching for him, & you know the rest. Say what you will, I have a pretty finely tuned asshole-detector from my years in the Marines, but I think Bob Knight’s an okay guy.
aimai
@Stentor:
Okay, I’ll say what I will: that is one of the most sublimely unselfconscious accounts of the authoritarian mindset at work and play that I’ve ever seen. Its charming that your father was so out of control and fearful of challenges to his petty teacher’s authority that he struck the children in his charge, stuffed their mouths with wet paper towels, and etc… No wonder you think Bobby Knight is an “Okay guy”–where do you stand on Charlie Manson?
aimai
kerFuFFler
@aimai: I’m pretty sure Stentor’s post was pure snark….
kay
@Watson:
I don’t really need an elaborate strategy or political calculation. Fluke should be defended because she showed up. She’s a real person, with a real life, and she’s not a multi-millionnaire media personality with all of the insulation that provides.
You can’t ask or expect people to “fight!” if you’re going to “yawn” when they do, and there are repercussions for them. I don’t care what happens to him. I care what happens to her, and people like her.
jefft452
@kay: this!
Nemesis
I live in a small/medium market sity in the Midwest. Mind you, there are zero stations in the entire state carrying Air America/liberal broadcasts. Yet, in my city, Jiggles McOxyblob is carried on TWO stations at the same time.
Obviously, Jiggles will see a bump in his audience today.
If the WH is smart, they will continue to use the words of all rw noise machine bloviators. When one of them says something over the top, like every day, use it against them. Ask the gop candidates to denounce the rhetoric or support the rhetoric. Imma tell you, the results would be terrific.
Barry
@balconesfault: “Rush’s show is all about touting how brilliant he is, and how brilliant his dittoheads are for being willing to subject themselves to his brilliance each day, despite mind numbing repetitiveness and self-congratulatory babble.
He’s in a tough spot, because he’s going to have to play the victim card hard to tell people why his advertisers are fleeing, and it’s hard to look brilliant when you’re playing the victim card too hard”
Umberto Ecco’s ur-fascism, points 6 and 7 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/jun/22/ur-fascism/?pagination=false).
rikyrah
tell it.
all of you going after the fat, racist dophead.
GO FOR IT
Ken
kick them while they are down and hand them anchors, anvils and millstones.
I’m behind the kicking, but the millstones are unnecessary. As Rush showed, they find those on their own.
Zak44
I have nothing to add to what’s already been said. But I do have a question about something that’s been bugging me. Just what does that double-B monogram on Limbaugh’s chair stand for?
In a just world, in would signify “Butt-Boil” (the pilonidal cyst that he used as an excuse to escape the draft), but I know that’s not it.
Jeff Boatright
@Watson:Watson, you’re missing the other half of the equation. If everyone had taken your advice and completely ignored Limbaugh, the egg all over his face, and by association, the face of the conservative movement, would not be splattered there right now.
See, for people to know how bad Rush and the conservatives have gotten, they actually have to be informed about them. If Rush had been completely ignored by the the likes of us, nobody else would have been informed, there’d be now outrage that they, finally, have no shame and common decency, etc.
Jeff Boatright
@Zak44: That’s a stylized “EIB” for Excellence In Broadcasting.
Kathy in St. Louis
Anyone who ever saw the movie, “A Face in the Crowd”, remembers the bad ending that came to Lonesome Rhodes. But the best part was the last speech by Walter Matthau, who told old Lonesome that people would eventually forget his horrible actions on the air, that he would get another chance at a program, but next time it wouldn’t be in prime time or with so many trimmings…that eventually he’d just sort of fade away until the day someone asked, “Whatever happened to Lonesome Rhodes?” But he also said that by that time there would be another clown that would come along, even bigger and better. I think that Rush will fade away, just as his audience of old white guys is fading away. But there is always the next big thing to come along, the next really awful shock jock, which is really all that he is. But I will certainly enjoy the process of watching him fade. He is one of the worst human beings I’ve ever run across, a real sociopath.
Svensker
When this kerfuffle first started I posted something on my FB page and a bunch of friends said, ‘yeah, but Rush always does this and you can’t hurt him, so why bother.’ Well, those of us who bothered (and my naysayer friends joined in soon enough) helped get 6 advertisers to pull their spots from Rush’s show, caused him to issue an apology of sorts, and even got a few Repubs to back nervously away.
His brand got damaged for a lot of folks and he gave some space to “sane” Republicans to back away. He sustained a wound on this one. Seems like a good time to keep the pressure up.
muddy
I was kind of hoping the part about Bain Capital owning Clear Channel would get more mileage, because getting it around that Rush is therefore Mitt’s bitch seems really like something that would make Rush’s narcissism run over. It is his own argument about the b.c. pills, someone is paying, so the other party is clearly a whore. I could easily see Rush fking up the entire Republican party in a tantrum over it.
“He doesn’t tell me what to do! No one tells me what to do! I’m the great….” flub spittle glub
Catsy
@Cain:
We should be so lucky. That woman has a voice made for tutoring deaf children, and she would get bored and quit within a year or two once she realized just how much work the gig actually is.
As for this and other comments minimizing the importance of taking down Limbaugh or expending effort on him, I just have to ask: really? I mean, really?
Sure, if we manage to take Limbaugh off the air or even severely diminish him, some other right-wing gasbag will step in to fill the niche. They are meeting a real demand, after all.
But no other gasbag has the influence, connections, market penetration or aura of untouchability that Limbaugh has enjoyed for decades. No one could simply step into Limbaugh’s role and inherit his credibility among wingnuts.
Make no mistake, anything that diminishes Limbaugh’s power is a victory for America.
WereBear
@Kathy in St. Louis: I adore that movie, and it is still highly pertinent today.
A bully does not go away when you ignore them; they simply redouble their efforts. The only thing that makes a bully go away is to make them afraid to hurt you.
Sorry, but that’s just the facts.
Kyle
@Jeff Boatright:
Fixed it for you.
Zak44
@Jeff Boatright:
“Excellence in Broadcasting” is even more ludicrous than “Butt Boil.”
But thanks for clearing that up.
Stentor
@aimai: Go piss up a rope aimai, you never had to deal with the kinds of kids my father did back then in my hometown, a good bunch of them were one step shy of being a juvenile delinquent. He was one of the gentlest kindest men I ever knew, he was a music teacher for crying out loud, it’s not like he was wielding a paddle, like Paddlin’ Peggy (King of the Hill reference). He never spanked any kids, or harmed them in any permanent way, he merely embarassed them. So take your Charlie Manson straw man and stick it straight up your ass, if I wanted any lip out of you, I would have scraped it off my zipper, hippie.
Top of my shit list—-> aimai
Stentor
@kerFuFFler: No, it wasn’t. I don’t pretend to excuse Coach Knight for what happened, but from the video & audio of the incident, the kid did call him by his last name, and was acting disrespectful. It also seems to me that Knight has anger issues, but there is always two sides to every story, and I don’t think listening to Bob Knight tell his side in any way puts me squarely in his camp. I’m merely an interested observer.
pseudonymous in nc
Which is true across most radio ads. I used to be surprised by the number of obviously scammy advertisers that would show up during the breaks on commercial radio, especially talk radio, but I now understand that they’re perfectly pitched to the core demographic.