Talk Is Cheap

Rush who?

A quote on Twitter a few months ago from comedian and podcaster Dana Gould made me ponder a how ephemeral a career in talk radio is.  Gould was talking specifically about Rush Limbaugh, about a year after the radio commentator's death.

"[I'm] thinking about Rush Limbaugh and how, now that he’s dead, you never, ever hear about him," Gould wrote.  "No one mentions anything he did. Because what he did had no value. It contributed nothing worthwhile to the culture. Nothing of lasting value. He just made anger. Every day. Rising, blooming and fading like a fart. Then he died and was instantly replaced by a fleet of little replicas, farting fake fury five days a week. Creating nothing of interest or artistic value to anyone. Seriously, what an awful way to make a living."

Of course, talk radio hosts like that are a dime a dozen.  Limbaugh was hardly the first right-wing talk radio host on the American waves, in fact.  Many others had come and gone before Limbaugh went into national syndication in 1988.  The most obvious example is Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit-area priest with his nationally aired radio show in which he espoused pro-fascist, anti-Semitic views in the 1930s.  No one remembers him today, as well they should not.  Ditto Walter Winchell, the broadcaster from the 1940s and 1950s, who equated civil rights with communism and urged Americans not to get the polio vaccine.  Even if people don't talk about Limbaugh now, many remember him, but their memories will fade, and eventually a generation with no direct memory of him at all will come along.

And when I talk about talk radio hosts being easily forgotten and disposable, I'm not just talking about conservatives.  Liberal talk-radio hosts are just as forgettable.  Gould's remarks made me think of Ed Schultz as an example.

From 2005 to 2014, Schultz was a leading progressive voice on talk radio, a reputation which he parlayed into a television program on MSNBC for six years beginning in 2009.  Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I watched him religiously and hung on almost every word he said.  When Schultz was fired from MSNBC in 2015, I continued listening to him on his podcast.  Then in January 2016, just before Schultz was to start a new news commentary program on another TV network, he mocked Martin O'Malley - my 2016 Democratic presidential candidate - and said that nobody had tuned into the most recent Democratic presidential debate to hear O'Malley.  Realizing he called me a nobody, I stopped listening to him.  And I decided not to tune in to his new show on this other network.

This other network was RT America, the U.S. arm of Russia Today, the Russian national television channel.  Available mostly through the Internet, it aired commentary aimed at skewering the establishments of both major parties . . . and Schultz ended up not just complimenting Putin, a man he once ridiculed, but he also consistently praised Trump.  His commentary on Hillary Clinton became more vicious than it had even been on MSNBC, though it might interest you to know that, when he was a guest on MSNBC prior to getting his own show on the channel, he consistently defended Hillary.  Ed was for her before she was against her.

Schultz died in 2018, and even though I was sad to hear the news, I had moved on from his shtick long before.  At least Limbaugh was consistent and had a core ideology.  Schultz, who had actually started out as a conservative Republican, didn't seem to have any rock-solid beliefs.  He simply adjusted his views to the moment.  Yes, he genuinely abandoned his conservative views when he realized they were bunk, but as a leftist, he veered between establishmentarian and populist opinions based on what his audience and his employers wanted him to say and do. A different set of commentators took over the old time slots he'd once had on MSNBC, And life went on and everyone moved on.   

Truth be told, Schultz was not the sort of commentator known for deep political thought.  With legal abortion on the line now, it might do well to remember this incoherent explanation from Schultz of his views on abortion:  "Now, as far as abortion is concerned, in my heart I'm a Christian. I'm against it. But we're livin' in a country where the majority rule and I'm not, as a talk show host, overturning Roe v. Wade."

I'm left asking how many talk show hosts ever overturned any Supreme Court decision.

Here today, gone tomorrow.  An icon in life, a trivia question in death.  That's the way it is in the talk-radio business.  And that goes or TV talk show hosts also; someday, we'll forget about the current crop of TV talk-show hosts on cable news after they're gone.  And even though he's still alive, does anyone really talk about Chris Matthews anymore?

Ten Reasons Not To Sentimentally Eulogize Rush Limbaugh

His own words.

"Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream."

"The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

"When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's an invitation."

"Women still live longer than men because their lives are easier." 

"If you feed them, if you feed the children, three square meals a day during the school year, how can you expect them to feed themselves in the summer? Wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the State. Pure and simple." 

"Holocaust, 90 million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos, what's to complain about?"

"What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex." (in response to reproductive-rights activist Sandra Fluke, who advocated for federally funded access to contraceptives) 

"The Earth's eco-system is not fragile." 

"Obamacare is not about health care. Obamacare is about the expansion of government and the total loss of freedom."

"It's the flu!" (about COVID-19)

And I've only scratched the surface.

It's hard to believe that this guy was on the air nationwide longer than Johnny Carson. 😠

Democrats Hit Rock Bottom

Nancy Pelosi ripped apart Trump's State of the Union speech the other night because it was full of lies and distortions. Not that it mattered. The speech was a spectacular success, which only forces us to look at the spectacle that is the Democratic Party declining and falling like the Roman Coliseum because they still haven't figured out how to take on Trump.

The Democrats had Trump on the run only a week ago, but now he has been acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors by the Senate, his approval rating is at its highest in his term, and yet the Democratic Party keeps blowing it.  They still, even after a caucus in Iowa, can't figure out whom to nominate for President.  Not that it matters.  People are ready to shrug off impeachment and the mere fact that Trump is a two-faced liar and give him another term to reward him for the economy, which has benefited Wall Street more than Main Street.

And Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbuagh.

This was infinitely worse than inducting Madonna into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I suppose now that, if the Democrats ever regain the White House (yeah, right!), Nicki Minaj will get a Kennedy Center honor?

Democrats may be infuriated, but they have little opportunity to channel their anger and no recourse for channeling it into anything constructive .  They have all of these internecine fights over the direction of the party instead of talking to the voters about health care, transportation, climate - things that matter.  Relevance, of course is something the Democrats haven't had a sense of for the past four decades.   

Of course, this is only one bad week for the Democrats, and maybe they'll get their groove after New Hampshire.  Note that I didn't see they will get their groove "back," since one cannot regain what one never had. >:-(

I'm just glad I have a passport. 

Rush To Wishful Thinking

Rush Limbaugh called Hurricane Irma a hoax and also called it a story that was deliberately overhyped to promote Al Gore's climate change agenda.  Another Al who believes in climate change - that would be Al Roker, the NBC weatherman - called Limbaugh's statement dangerous and counterproductive.  Then Rush had to evacuate his own home in Florida.  So liberals have decided, given this humiliation, that Limbaugh's long and peculiar career as a right-wing political commentator is over.

Yeah, about that . . .

I remember folks saying that Limbaugh was finished when, in 2012, he attacked Sandra Fluke, the law school student who achieved fifteen minutes of fame by defending contraception in a congressional hearing and then in 2014 ran for a seat in the California State Senate, and how numerous advertisers were pulling ad accounts from his show.  Talk-radio consultant Holland Cooke noted on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show that Limbaugh's show was migrating from AM radio stations with strong signals to AM stations with weaker signals.  The sun was finally setting on conservative political talk radio and talk radio in general.  Ed Schultz himself was getting out of the talk-radio business and going only to podcasts.  A new media era was dawning . . .

It was a mirage.  After the Fluke fluke, Rush's ratings did change. They continued to go up.  Here are some unfortunate numbers courtesy of Wikipedia: Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates Rush's show, and iHeartMedia - formerly Clear Channel Communications, the company with which he signed his contract - noted in 2016 that Rush's audience grew 18 percent among adults 25-54 and experienced even more growth with women in the same age group - 27 percent.  How do you think Donald Trump got elected President?  Meanwhile, Limbaugh hardly needs to worry about any of the advertisers who bailed out on him in 2012 over Sandra Fluke.  With a reported ad revenue growth of 20 percent year over year, he'll continue to make a lot of money for the advertisers who stood by him - and, coincidentally, for himself.  Maybe that's why his 2008 contract with iHeart - set to expire this year - was renewed in advance last year through 2020, keeping him on the national airwaves for 32 years, longer than Johnny Carson hosted "The Tonight Show."

Oh yeah, a Zogby 2008 poll found that Rush Limbaugh was the most trusted "news personality" in America, with one of eight respondents giving him a thumbs-up over numerous news personalities who are actual reporters and editors.  Walter Cronkite, in pace requiescat.

Limbaugh has since tried to spin the media's negative reaction to his Irma statements by saying that he never told anyone not to evacuate and that his remarks were taken out of context.  Incredible, but people will believe him.  Meanwhile, Sandra Fluke, who lost her bid for office, lived up to her surname, and Ed Schultz, long gone from MSNBC, is a discredited hack working at RT America as an apologist for Vladimir Putin.  (I neither know nor care what Holland Cooke is up to.)  Unless the Communications Act of 1996, which put terrestrial radio in the hands of fewer people and dictates who and what we get to listen to even if don't like what we get, is repealed, get used to the future of American talk radio looking more like the hideous and godawful present, only more so.  

Rush Update

Nine advertisers have jumped ship from Rush Limbaugh's radio show after the incendiary comments he made about Susan Fluke.  Oops, I mean Sandra Fluke; he even had trouble getting her name right.  And to those who insist he was only trying to make a point about our tax money going to support private sexual activity, let's get one thing clear: Birth control and contraception are used to prevent various gynecological diseases.

And, oh, yeah, let me get one other thing clear, something the media haven't: the federal requirement for insurance companies to provide birth control coverage does not use one cent of tax money.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.   

Rush To a Fluke

Rush Limbaugh went so far to the right in denouncing President Obama's health insurance policy for guaranteeing insurance coverage for birth control that he actually, for the first time in a long time, threatened his own career. When Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke testified before House Democrats in favor of Obama's policy to require insurance companies to provide birth control coverage to students of Catholic universities such as herself, in recognition of Georgetown's obvious refusal to do so, Limbaugh called her a "slut" and a "prostitute" on the grounds that any woman who needs birth control is obviously sexually active and that funding birth control coverage through Obama's mandate is essentially asking taxpayers to finance someone's sex life.

This is so wrong on so many counts. First of all, birth control devices such as pills are not taken in anticipation of sexual activity or on a constant basis like, say Viagra. Second of all, providing birth control saves money on health care expenditures in the long term. And third and most important, calling a woman a "slut" or "prostitute" for something as innocuous as supporting birth control coverage is misogynistic and mean-spirited.

Faced with the obvious possibility of losing advertisers - he'd lost two already, both mattress companies, over this - Limbaugh (sort of) apologized and said that he selected the wrong terminology to make his case against federally mandated contraception coverage. I'll let him explain it:

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke."

If this sounds like a preamble to an excuse as well as an attempt to cast himself as a purveyor of wit, it is. Because this is what he also said in the same statement he issued today:

"[This debate is] utterly absurd . . .. In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom, nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a presidential level," he said.

Wow . . . "posited?" That's a very intellectual word for him! And by the way, if he doesn't think this is an appropriate topic for public discourse or worthy of the "presidential level" (Obama spoke to Ms. Fluke after Limbaugh made his original comments), then why did he dump all over Sandra Fluke in public during a presidential campaign?

And why did he mock her to the backing music of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer?"

Democrats originally wanted Ms. Fluke to testify at a House committee hearing on the need for her to get birth control coverage that her Jesuit school will not provide for her, but the Republican-majority members of the committee holding the hearings refused on the grounds that they were asking about birth control coverage as a religious, not a medical, issue. The Democrats on that same committee held a counter-hearing after the Republican committee hearing heard exclusively from men and had Ms. Fluke testify in the hope of calling attention to her cause. They couldn't have gotten better attention and sympathy for Ms. Fluke than by provoking Limbaugh if they tried.

For one brief shining moment, it looked like Limbaugh would be thrown off the air and the only Rush we'd ever hear on the radio again was a power trio from Toronto. But his quasi-apology may have provided him enough cover to avoid have what happened to Glenn Beck at Fox News happen to him. (And by the way, Beck is still on the radio and hasn't really gone anywhere.)  And, to be honest, Limbaugh must be enjoying the free publicity he's getting for himself yet again. He knows that any press, even bad press, is good press, and when folks like Chris Matthews or Ed Schultz bash him, they're only focusing on Limbaugh's favorite subject.

Oh yeah, in his statement today he tried to explain his opposition to Obama's health care policy:

"I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.  What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?"

I, for one, would gladly pay for a pair of sneakers for Limbaugh to encourage him to take up jogging (no cracks, please, about encourage him to jog off a short pier).

But I don't want my tax dollars to pay for the golf cart he wants to whiz through art museums in.

BP - Botched Priorities

As British Petroleum tries once again to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, one can only guess what's going through the minds of BP executives.

My guess is that they're getting very upset and wringing their hands. Not because of the environmental degradation and disruption of livelihoods on the Louisiana coast. No, they're probably upset because all this oil has been wasted, when it could have been made into gasoline and made them more money.

One good has come out of this crisis so far: After Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that the Sierra Club forced oil companies to drill for oil farther out where it was less safe, donations to the Sierra Club skyrocketed. And just for the record, BP would have been out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico drilling for oil even if they could have drilled ten feet from shore. BP and other oil companies will always go where the oil is. If they could drill in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean - at 35,000 feet deep the deepest ocean on the planet - they'd do so.

Pains In the Neck

Rush Limbaugh revealed the depth of his compassion for the unemployed. Speaking with and unemployed 49-year-old male caller about the severity of the man's employment situation, Limbaugh was so touched by his story - after he learned that he didn't vote for Obama - that he gave him information for getting a free massage from one of Limbaugh's sponsors to relieve his stress.

I would have preferred a fruit basket. At least then I'd have something to eat.

Meanwhile, someone suggested to Sarah Palin that Glenn Beck should be her vice presidential running mate if she is nominated to run for President in 2012. Palin praised Beck in response.

This story has given me something no masseur can relieve. :-O

Disorder In the Court

Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's choice for the Supreme Court, is under fire for her comment from 2001 that she thought a wise Hispanic woman with her background could make a more informed judicial decision than a white male jurist without a similar background. Although Sotomayor has sought to clarify her statement, explaining that she meant to say her upbringing gives her a unique perspective on the bench, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have called for her to withdraw her nomination.

This remark was unearthed just as the Supreme Court is about to visit a case in which eighteen white firemen scored high on promotional tests but had their results rendered moot because not enough blacks scored high. Sotomayor was part of three-judge panel that let the ruling stand on technical grounds without comment. The Court is likely to overturn the decision, and it will likely ignite a debate over affirmative action.

Sotomayor may very well be enduring unfair treatment due to the fact that, while flame throwers like Limbaugh, Gingrich and Sean Hannity have the opportunity to mouth off on the issue of the Sotomayor nomination every day, Sotomayor herself hasn't been given enough opportunity to make a case for herself. Though her comments and this ruling has drawn blood, I still expect her to be confirmed. It helps that she's as wise as the hypothetical Hispanic woman of which she spoke, while the white men she's angered are fools.