I can understand why people are so upset with Rush Limbaugh. His three-day jeremiad against the Georgetown University law student and her sex life, after she testified at a rump Senate committee hearing in support of the Obama administration contraception program, was scurrilous, disgusting, mean-spirited, and not funny. He must have either been off his meds or over-medicated. Either way, that's no excuse. It was totally reprehensible.
Now, I don't listen to Rush on the radio anymore. Life is too short. But in his early days he made me fume, blow a gasket, and otherwise upset my normal tranquility. He should be arrested, his tongue taken out, and be treated as a chandelier, as the old saying goes -- hang by day and burn by night. And that's before they punish him.
At the risk of my progressive friends coming to my doorsteps with pitchforks and burning torches, I want to say that as wrongheaded as Rush was in misspeaking, it is also reprehensible for advertisers to pull their ads from his radio show just because of those several hundred ill-chosen words.
What do the actions of such sponsors as ProFlowers, Sleep Train, Carbonite, Quicken Loans, Citrix, LegalZoom, and all the other rats abandoning the good ship Dittoland say about all the skipper's nasty, vicious commentaries on other days? Are they OK with all the venom he spewed daily on other subjects, which made Attila the Hun seem like a flaming liberal?
Advertisers are free to do whatever they want, of course. But they are skating down a slippery road when they start making judgments about their media buys based on the audiometer. By measuring the volume on the meter dial they are leaving themselves open to organized, spontaneous demonstrations by supposed angry citizenry with ulterior motives.
Rush, whose ego is bigger than his belt size or wallet, can take this hit in the pocketbook. But there is a larger principle here.
Long before most of my readers were born, veterans of the war against Madison Avenue were fighting broadcasters who let advertisers control the content of what was put on the public airwaves. You wouldn't believe how cravenly broadcasters bowed down to the Madmen in the bad old days, circa 1950-60. When Judgment at Nuremberg first aired on TV in 1959, to cite one classic example, the show's sponsor, the American Gas Association, made the network bleep out the word "gas" in all references to the Nazi death chambers. In the so-called golden age of drama on TV, it was the sponsors that dictated that only dramas about people with happy problems were suitable for their sales messages.
It took a generation for advertisers to accept the concept that their ads were neutral, no more indicative of their approval of content than the ads in magazines.
Predictably, we are now at the second phase of media censorship: mea regreta culpa. Is what Rush calls an apology a serious apology or just something pro forma he has pulled out of the media first aid kid kit in the bottom desk drawer? How can you trust him anyway? As we have learned in broadcasting, sincerity is the easiest thing to fake -- shades of the McCarthy Era when people needed to apologize for their political beliefs.
It would be counter-productive for an art form like broadcasting to open the gates and let the barbarians back in. To give the Madmen more power than they already have by virtue of voting yes or no about supporting a program in the first place is reprehensible.
My advice to Rush is think before you open your big fat mouth and put your mother's combat boots in it. But I'm sure he'll be able to sleep at night knowing that, given the courage of their lack of convictions, his advertisers will be back.
I began tuning in to Rush as a Lynn Samuels fan from her years at WBAI. In their early days this tandem boosted WABC's ratings by being damn ENTERTAINING. My favorite was Rush's daily 9-minute banter with newsreader of the opposite political persuasion, Kathleen Maloney – absolutely Golden Radio! Rush's ridicule rocked, with GROUND-BREAKING exposure of the mass media's agenda – feminazis, environmentalist wackos, Gorbasms, homeless and General David Dinkins updates, the tape of Sen. Kennedy speaking total gibberish cheered by applause.
But Rush's change coincided with his hearing loss, just as you wrote, Ted. I've always suspected his hearing loss was a side-effect to whatever measure Rush took to drop weight after Al Franken's "Big Fat Idiot" book. That was okay for Franken to say, huh. Just as the HORRID nightly attacks of Republicans by STUPID Letterman, Leno, and Conan in the guise of "jokes." Not funny; click. Media & advertiser outrage has a double-standard.
I quit listening soon after when Rush became a mouthpiece for the new George W. Bush administration.
Having twice watched Sandra Fluke's testimony, I didn't see that she should be hailed or ridiculed. Embellishing The Pill's expense at the git-go cost her credibility. She testified she's attending Georgetown Law on a "public interest" group's scholarship. While this 98%-ile LSAT scorer simply representing the upward mobility of voiceless low socioeconomic blue collar parents, was snootily rejected by admission to further their agenda committees.
Founder Brian Lamb is stepping down from C-Span. Remember the year when the only call-in lines were "Bush Supporters" and "Democrat Supporters," shutting out the voices supporting neither? And goddamn C-Span for giving overwhelming air time to the powerful Ivy League contingent's affirmative action for the privileged and connected.
According to a WSJ report, Former Republican governor of Arkansas and onetime presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, a Fox News Channel commentator, will go head-to-head with Rush Limbaugh in a syndicated radio program airing in the noon to 3 p.m. Eastern time, weekday slot.
With the slogan "more conversation, less confrontation," the syndicator behind "Huckabee," Cumulus Media Networks, has been pitching the new show to advertisers as a less combative alternative to Limbaugh. Cumulus is a unit of Cumulus Media Inc., (Nasdaq: CMLS), which owns 570 radio stations.
Many people associate McCarthy with the Hollywodd writers and HUAC. Actually McCarthy only went after communist influence in the government (mainly the state department) His tactics probably helped real communists who moved about freely while luckless "fellow travelers" were red branded and ruined.
Soviet documents released after the collapse of the evil empire reveal there was a great deal of spying and espionage going on but the political circus here let most of it slip by unnoticed.
HUAC was even more of a joke.
The Hollywood writers were the focus of Senator Francis Walters anti-communist campaign.(Some of the writers were communists and told by the comintern not to cooperate with HUAC in order make the American system look fascist and persecutorial.)
There is speculation that the vituperative Sen. Walters went after Arthur Miller in order to see Miller's wife Marilyn Monroe up close.
The dedicated Red Hunter privately offered to let Miller off if he agreed to have his famous wife pose with Walter for a campaign poster. Miller refused.
Further proof of Walter's ability to spot a commie when he sees one came when he took away American William Morgan's Citizenship over Morgan's association with Cuba and Castro. Morgan was later killed on direct orders from Castro for refusing to become a communist.
Read Max Eastman "The Last Romantic." and The Vinona Papers.(intercepted soviet documents)
@Noreen, your post with that interview with Rod Serling was fascinating, to say the least. It's always great to delve into the mind of such a creative force and get some insight not only into the type of issues that motivate/annoy/etc. them, but also to get a sense of their industry in a different era.
Not to mention the fact that it was really cool to think about a time when the twilight zone was nothing more than another project that was on the horizon and not one of the most influential, timeless pieces of tv ever produced...
The Rush situation was simply to volatile for advertisers to appear that they were supporting him in his latest misstep. Most likely they will return but not the employers pay the price Rush's oversight.
I agree with the sentiment of the article, but all of this just feels like business as usual and not some sign of dark times ahead.
Sponsors behave according to what's in their best interest while always keeping a finger on the public's pulse. If Rush says something distasteful (what else is new?) but it doesn't pick up traction with all of the groups of sensitive people just begging for there to be a controversy, then all is well. There's no reason for the sponsor to jump ship because no one is going to associate their product with this issue that's being ignored. On the other hand, if there's a massive public backlash against something said (as was the case here), it makes sense that the sponsors would not want to be associated with that.
In the eyes of businesses, people are just dumb creatures that fall ionto statistical categories. Do I agree with this way of thinking? Absolutely not. Is it shocking that the sponsors would bail the way they did? Absolutely not.
If the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) rallies above 163 today on volume of around 19 million shares it will give a buy signal. It will be confirmed on Monday if it advances again, on volume a bit higher than that.
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