Liberalism's totalitarian mindset

I don't know. While I hate liberals just as much as you, I think organizing and boycotting is pretty basic American. Conservatives do the same thing.

Either way nothing is going to happen to Rush. His supporters will counter them and people will forget.

Liberals fucking blow though. Instead of wasting all this time punishing Rush they should be volunteering or helping poor and disadvantaged people. Unfortunately they wont do this because it doesn't involve someone elses money or increasing government.

They aren't boycotting him because he's conservative. For fucks sake, he called a Georgetown law student a SLUT (this is the same guy who was caught in the Dominican Republic with a fucking tub of Viagra). If I were an advertiser, I wouldn't want my brand associated with this dipshit, end of story.

I mean, they are perfectly within their rights to request a boycott. Rush's sponsors aren't being forced to ditch him. They likely expect him to say controversial and hyperbolic things. He's Rush Limbaugh.

What's more, the people who would be listening to Rush's program (and therefore hearing the sponsors' messages) probably are not offended by his statements.

I mean, honestly, this is a waste of time. It's like a conservative urging a boycott of Rachel Maddow. Now, if some special interest group starts suing Rush (which is all but inevitable in this country), then I will say they have gone too far.

While I hate to jump to the defense of either the Liberals or of Rush, a boycott is a perfectly free market solution. So long as Limbaugh's detractors are not seeking to sway the sponsors through compulsion via force, there's absolutely nothing wrong with threatening to take their business elsewhere. The state has absolutely no role in either side of this conflict, it is the private sponsors who decide whether or not to respond accordingly. When all is said and done though, this protest likely won't amount to anything because the sponsors understand that the leftists protesting against Rush are not the initially-targeted conservative demographic they focus on in Rush's program anyway.

What if that law student is a slut?

when i saw the title, i thought for sure this would be an ANT thread.

for the OP: there was a similar boycott on bill maher when he made comments about us being cowards and the 9-11 hijackers not being cowards. it ended his show. can you think of a more effective boycott? is maher not a super partisan left winger?

and you have to face the fact that left wingers have many fewer outlets in which they CAN be boycotted. jeremiah wright? what's the worst thing you can do to him? stop attending his church and dropping 20 in his donation plate?

and of the left wingers who do have national media shows, many fewer of them say the kinds of things that rush and imus does. i've been listening to rush since the 1980s, and there is a lot of shit you people won't know about him unless you've followed his whole career. he's made a career out of mocking rape victims and civilians bombed to death in america's wars. it's his whole routine. puerile nastiness is the whole soul of his routine. but the funny and sad thing is that we have some right wing true believers who flock to this guy and defend him when he sticks his foot in his mouth, as if his vulgar shtick should be taken on the same level of will or buchanan or charen.

he was actually PRO-CHOICE in the '80s before his show took off. he used to be libertarian before he made the calculated decision to capture the religious right market and he flipped 100% on that rather important issue. he used to attack ross perot before his rather sharp sense of how best to pander best to the greatest and most lucrative demographic cross section flipped him 100% on that.

as gullible suckers are defending him he is laughing his way to the bank.

You guys are all missing the point, including ANT, which is surprising. The point isn't that it's within their rights; the point is the totalitarian mindset of trying to silence the opposition. If you look at the Facebook page they are attempting to go after Rush's best sponsors, theoretically to make it so Rush will eventually get shut down due to lack of advertising revenue. The point isn't whether this is within their rights or whether or not it will be effective. The point is the mindset--if you disagree with someone then try to have them shut down. It actually worked on Glenn Beck, which is the surprising and scary thing.

I don't believe in intimidating or threatening sponsors to have the opposition shut down. If you don't like what the opposition says you counter their arguments, expose their arguments or simply turn the dial. Trying to silence critics through crippling economic boycotts is in violation of the SPIRIT of free speech.

On a side note, I'm probably the only person here who actually HEARD Rush Limbaugh's statements live. You cannot read Rush's quotes and understand the context of what he says in many instances, this being one of them. You actually have to listen to Rush in order to hear the tone and understand the point he is trying to make. What Rush often does is use the absurd to demonstrate the absurd. He wasn't actually calling the girl a "slut" or "prostitute"; what he was doing was sarcastically going to the logical conclusion. He often does this in a sardonic and comical manner. The problem is you can't understand this by reading the quotes. Unless you listen to Rush you can't understand. Sometimes Rush will give a 15-minute monologue full of transparent absurdities that could make him look like a total jackass on paper--that is, if you hadn't heard it live and in context with the tone and even the follow-up segments.

ok your point is taken. i refer you, for an instance of a "totalitarian" instance of end-running the debate to silence the opposition with economic means, the case of bill maher. massive boycott against his sponsors at ABC/capital cities after he made his 9/11 comments. he actually was taken off the air for many years, where i'll bet good money that rush will keep on going.

let me throw another example at you. ward churchill, of "the little himmlers" fame, teaching at some no-name college in colorado? was there not a national right-wing movement to get his tenure revoked and himself canned? why did the right not engage his rhetoric? why did they end-run the debate by going over his head?

i think that proves that the left wing does not have a monopoly on such tactics in public debate. this is just hardball american politics as practiced by all.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213965-limbaugh-apolog…

Mission accomplished? I am eternally amazed that this sort of thing can become a subject of national debate.

As VT4Ever said, it should have been taken in context, and its unlikely many of his listeners were offended. I don't think Rush has significant penetration in the politically correct, liberal demographic. It's like putting up a sign calling Bush a war criminal on UC Berkeley's campus.

that's not how advertising works. the reason firms pay rush millions is because they boost their sales. they care not where those sales come from but in the usual case it will be the listeners. if rush's antics cost them sales, either from the listener or the non-listener pool, they will think twice. we can take it for granted that dittoheads like rush's cracked brand of humor and will be buying no fewer sleep train mattresses, but that's only 20 million people. if enough of the other 280 million people decide to boycott, rush = toxic advertising poison and they are going to drop his ass like a bad habit.

moot point though. he's too smart as a businessman to let any of this happen. thus his apology. again, why the low-income nobodies continue to defend him just baffles me beyond words.

and i doubt anyone here knows rush's shtick better than me. i was listening to him since he was doing evil empire updates and his whole Gorbasm routine. he's an incredibly entertaining guy and a brilliant showman, but taking his bits as serious political commentary would be like awarding ah-nold a ph.d. in cybernetic engineering for his work in the terminator films.

melvvvar shut down the thread. Game ovah.

If they provide condoms then what is the issue?

Again, BC isn't just to prevent pregnancies. I have known more than one chick who took BC for health reasons, not just to stop from forming a babby.

Side note: what dude here is seriously cheering for condoms? If you are in a legit relationship, you should want your girl to be on the pill. If a male BC pill came out, I'd take it in a heart beat. Fuck a rubber glove.

OP's assertion is absurd at worst and hypocritical at bes. Conservatives boycott and threaten the other side all the time.

As mentioned above, they've tried to get advertising sponsors to jettison liberal writers and think tanks on several occasions. Not just with respects to the Rolling Stone article but Media Matters in particular.

Big Journalism, a Breitbart created conservative news site, has been excoriating Media Matters on false charges and asking advertisers and politicians alike to disassociate from the group for about a year now. It's all a tit-for-tat political game. Conservatives are a nasty lot, if their yearly electoral fraud cases are any indication.