FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Wait a minute, did Rush Limbaugh just ADMIT DEFEAT???


With assholes like Rush Limbaugh, all you have to do is wait…

For days the rumor has circulated that WLS 890AM, the Chicago market Cumulus-owned talk radio station, is about to drop Rush Limbaugh from its 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday slot at the end of March, although the company has denied this.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that this “leak” was a way to grind Limbaugh down in contract renegotiations, but then Limbaugh himself posted this curiously self-aware statement on his official Facebook page:
 

 
My oh my, that sounds to my ears like the “Mayor of Realsville” admitting defeat, don’t you think?

WHO is gonna miss Rush Limbaugh when he retires? The only person whose life would be changed for the worse is that of the woman who married this asshole. Now he’s got more time to spend with her…

Limbaugh has been with the Chicago station for 25 years, but recently his show has become, in the words of one WLS insider “impossible to sell.” Both TIME and The Wall Street Journal have cited Limbaugh’s “failure to generate ad revenue” and credit his fall principally on social media campaigns like StopRush, BoycottRush and FlushRush that put public pressure on his advertisers, shaming them on social media where any association with Limbaugh is obviously toxic. Another of Limbaugh’s corporate benefactors, IHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel) which carries The Rush Limbaugh Show on over 500 of their stations, reported a quarterly loss of $309 million and upwards of twenty billion dollars in debt. Rush needs to pick up the hint and get the hook before he burns their house down! (He’s allegedly got a $400 million contract with them. Regrets? They’ve had a few hundred million, I’d reckon…)

Who says that hate speech, racism, misogyny and homophobia aimed at an audience dying off faster and faster with each passing year doesn’t pay? Ask the fuckwits tanking their stock carrying Jabba the Rush’s relic of a radio program in 500 markets in 2015! (How incredibly innovative of you, IHeartMedia!)

It will be a good day for America when El Rushbo hangs up his headphones for good, but I for one wish him a long life. Not a happy life, mind you, but a damned long one. May his millions pay the finest physicians that money can buy to keep him alive forever, like the Face of Boe on Doctor Who, his big fat head preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, his mind driven to madness by the realization that his entire life’s work was, in the end, of little value to anyone and with the lasting resonance of a particularly sulphurous fart in the howling winds of history. May he live forever and a day.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.06.2015
04:06 pm
|
53 reasons why Rush Limbaugh’s big fat idiotic a$$ is going to get kicked

image
 
With Rush Limbaugh hopefully about to go the Glenn Beck “bye-bye” route, with more and more of his advertisers seeking to disassociate their goods and services with such a tainted, hateful brand as his, I have to wonder if any of them have EVER listened to his daily three-hour puke fest for the past several decades? Better late, than never, but really? This shit came as a fucking surprise???

More advertisers are expected to drop out today and you can bet Limbaugh is sweating…. like a pig. Don’t forget that such a massive salary as Limbaugh recieves—he signed a $400 million dollar contract in 2008—has got to be paid back before profit can occur for his corporate masters. Recall that in Beck’s case, in the UK he nearly had ZERO companies willing to advertise on his show for the final year and in the US, aside from Goldline, a crooked gold dealer who wanted access to Beck’s gullible, gullible viewers (I wonder why?) and the odd Depend® adult diaper ad, they were losing money on the guy here, too.

At Fox News, Glenn Beck made but a fraction of what Clear Channel pays Limbaugh. Limbaugh’s problem, you might say (in business terms) is that he is too “top heavy” on the bottom line. 

As long as more money comes in than goes out, Rush and his salary is safe, but let’s say that a sizable percentage of his advertisers fuck off. Easy enough to imagine.

Now picture a Clear Channel lawyer calling up Limbaugh’s attorney and telling him that ol’ Rush needs to take a bit a of haircut. Does anyone reading this think that Limbaugh’s ego would allow him to take a pay cut, in public? He’d quit before that would ever happen. It could well be the accountants who lance this oozing, festering boil on the American body politic.

Boycotts DO work and there are a relatively small number of national companies who advertise on Limbaugh’s program. Target enough of these companies successfully and their boards and CEOs will push Limbaugh off the gangplank without hesitiation. What would their loyalty be to this fat creep, anyways? It could happen.

John K. Wilson, a Daily Kos blogger, compiled several days’ worth of the 53 cretinous, anti-woman smears, calumnies and misogynistic insults Rush Limbaugh hurled at Sandra Fluke. Ms. Fluke’s phone must be ringing off the hook with lawyers wanting to court her. I do hope that her lawyers take a big fat chunk out of Limbaugh’s big, fat, rich ass.

How many of this country’s finest legal minds would love to take on such a high profile—not to mention potentially highly lucrative—case??? It’s delicious, isn’t it?

Obviously, it’s not just attorneys who are sharpening their knives to carve up this ham, either. The media, too, seem to be collectively saying “Squeal like a pig, Rush. You got a pretty mouth!”

Hell, even the Republicans are staying clear of this beached whale!

The best thing is seeing this play out in public: Rush Limbaugh has put the conservative worldview in Chinese fingercuffs. The more he tries to defend himself, the worse he’ll look to the general population; the more that worldview will become discredited. Far from being the leader of the Republican party, Limbaugh may prove to be its worst enemy!

John K. Wilson is offering his password to the Rush Limbaugh website to anyone who wants to compile an audio version. You can email him at collegefreedom@yahoo.com if you are up for the challenge and have a strong enough stomach…

Feb. 29, 2012:
1) “she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills”
2) “they’re having so much sex they can’t afford the birth control pills!”
3) “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. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
4) “Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can’t afford birth control pills.”

March 1, 2012:
5) “You’d call ‘em a slut, a prostitute”
6) “she’s having so much sex”
7) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
8) “they want to have sex any time, as many times and as often as they want, with as many partners as they want”
9) “the sexual habits of female law students at Georgetown”
10) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
11) “having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
12) “four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
13) “Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex.”
14) “to pay for these co-eds to have sex”
15) “she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently these deadbeat boyfriends or random hookups that these babes are encountering here, having sex with nearly three times a day”
16) “Therefore we are paying her to have sex. Therefore we are paying her for having sex.”
17) “Have you ever heard of not having sex so often?”
18) “Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
19) “we want something in return, Ms. Fluke: And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money.”
20) “‘If we’re paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes.’ And what else could it be?”
21) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right?”
22) “I’m having sex so damn much, I’m going broke.”
23) “She’s having so much sex that she’s going broke! There’s no question about her virtue.”
24) “having so much sex she’s going broke at Georgetown Law.”
25) “Here’s a woman exercising no self-control. The fact that she wants to have repeated, never-ending, as often as she wants it sex—given.”
26) “She’s having so much sex it’s amazing she can still walk, but she made it up there.”
27) “Maybe they’re sex addicts.”
28) “to pay for her to have sex all the time.”
29) “she wants the rest of us to pay for her sex.”
30) “She wants all the sex that she wants all the time paid for by the rest of us.”
31) “Here this babe goes before Congress and wants thousands of dollars to pay for her sex.”
32) “a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman.”
33) “She wants all the sex in the world, whenever she wants it, all the time.”
34) “If this woman wants to have sex ten times a day for three years, fine and dandy.”
35) “to provide women from Georgetown Law unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
36) “so she can have unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
37) “You want to have all the sex you want all day long, no consequences, no responsibility for your behavior”
38) “The woman wants unlimited, no-responsibility, no-consequences sex, and she wants it with contraceptives paid for by us.”

March 2, 2012:
39) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t afford her birth control pills anymore.”
40) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it—and we should.”
41) “She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
42) “this, frankly hilarious claim that she’s having so much sex (and her buddies with her) that she can’t afford it.”
43) “And not one person says, ‘Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex that you have?’”
44) “Does she have more boyfriends? Ha! They’re lined up around the block.”
45) “It was Sandra Fluke who said that she was having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
46) “By her own admission, in her own words, Sandra Fluke is having so much sex that she can’t afford it.”
47) “they’re having a lot of sex for which they need a lot of contraception.”
48) “Her sex life is active and she’s having sex so frequently that she can’t afford all the birth control pills that she needs.”
49) “who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”
50) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it.”
51) “As frequently as she has sex and to not be pregnant, she’s obviously succeeding in contraception.”
52) “Ms. Fluke, asserts her right to free contraceptive, to handle her sex life—and it’s, by her own admission, quite active.”
53) “Ms. Fluke, who bought your condoms in junior high? Who bought your condoms in the sixth grade, or your contraception?”

Rush Limbaugh’s apology (and a translation)

UPDATE:Here’a the video version. Even more vile than the print version…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.05.2012
11:49 am
|
Rush Limbaugh in his own words: No vast liberal media conspiracy
01.27.2012
01:10 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
There’s little to no leftie fodder to mock on his radio show, according to Rush. Just “two shows or three shows” on MSNBC.

Here’s what the conservative radio blowhard had to say on November 9, 2011, in a rant about how America will continue to decline unless the GOP establishment embraces conservative ideology.

Transcript taken from his own website:

If it weren’t for MSNBC we wouldn’t have any liberal sound bites.  I’ve told Cookie I’m sick of it, ban MSNBC, and we can’t, ‘cause there’s no other place to get liberal sound bites.  There isn’t any other place.  I mean CNN is just insane over there.  They emphasize their hosts, they have guests, but just roll tape on ‘em and it’s so boring. It’s not worth putting anything from CNN on the air.

If it weren’t for MSNBC there wouldn’t be any liberal sound bites.  Now, that has to mean something.  That has to mean that they’re rare, that they’re not everywhere.  They may be everywhere in print, but, you know, left-wingers on the radio, genuine cuckoo’s nest.  You wouldn’t even want to go there.  I wouldn’t play that stuff.  MSNBC’s it, and it’s two shows or three shows.  It’s it is morning thing with Scarborough, it’s the Larry O’Donnell show at night, and maybe occasionally something from Reverend Sharpton. (interruption) Well, yeah, sometimes Sergeant Schultz.  Sergeant Schultz is out there walking amongst abandoned railroad cars looking for the future of America. I know there’s Al Gore’s channel, but that’s nothing worth highlighting. It really says something. MSNBC is the only place in the media to get these liberals.

There it is. He done let the cat out of the bag.

Curiously he left Rachel Maddow out of these comments, but maybe not so curiously because she’s generally so circumspect and fact-based in the arguments she makes on air as to be impervious to attacks from Limbaugh on a regular basis.

Ed Schultz, Rev. Al Sharpton and Lawrence O’Donnell, with their more bombastic (and yes, male) styles I can see providing easy targets for Limbaugh (a service he provides for them, too, of course) but I think his instincts to perhaps stay away from commenting too much on Maddow is a smart one on his part.
 
Via Daily Kos

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.27.2012
01:10 pm
|
‘Pure Hatred’: Lawrence O’Donnell’s epic take-down of Rush Limbaugh


 
Imagine a version of It’s A Wonderful Life, but it’s about Rush Limbaugh. Quite a pathetic thought isn’t it? Still, nothing would make me pity him. When Rush Limbaugh finally has a heart attack and keels over and dies, the world will be a better place without him.

Rush Limbaugh has gotten away with so much shit in his career that it’s a real pleasure to see him so thoroughly pissed on by Lawrence O’Donnell in the following clip. It’s about time people stood up to this bully and really let him have it. Repeatedly. What does Rush Limbaugh bring to the party except poison? Good for O’Donnell, he’s a terrific moral compass for this country right now.

I look forward to the next installment of this one!
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.02.2011
02:18 pm
|
Rush Limbaugh vs Douglas Rushkoff
09.09.2011
10:11 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Reichwing radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh responds to Douglas Rushkoff’s fascinating essay “Are Jobs Obsolete” in his own inimitable style... Hilarity ensues!

I love how Limbaugh starts off his rant by making sure his listeners know that he’s never heard of Douglas Rushkoff. Since Rushkoff is one of America’s most prominent intellectuals, no surprises there, Rushbo…

RUSH: I was just handed here a CNN story. The headline here: “Are Jobs Obsolete?” Who wrote this? Douglas Rushkoff. I never heard of Douglas Rushkoff. It’s a column. I’m gonna have to read this. The point of this is the whole concept of jobs may be “obsolete” in America now, which is the most amazing attempt to excuse Obama I have net seen, but that’s just at cursory glance. Yeah, get this, folks: “America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.” This is an opinion piece called, “Are Jobs Obsolete?” that appears at CNN.com by some guy named Douglas Rushkoff, who I’ve never heard of and he’s not identified here.

Okay, now, I found out who this Douglas Rushkoff guy is. He’s a “media theorist,” a media theorist, “the author of Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, and also Life, Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back.” That’s who has written the piece at CNN.com, “Are Jobs Obsolete?” He’s a “media theorist.” What the hell is a “media theorist”? Now, he’s got a Wikipedia entry, but everybody has a Wikipedia entry, just like everybody has a radio show. It says he was born in 1961, so he’s 50. He’s “an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.”

So he’s a “media theorist” who writes comic books. So it’s quite understandable here that CNN would give him a soapbox. Anyway, “Are Jobs Obsolete?” On the day Obama’s going to give his big speech on jobs! “The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology’s slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That’s 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms. We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks.

“But the real culprit—at least in this case—is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps. New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures—from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs,” and it doesn’t ask for a day off to take care of the cat.

“We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace. And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs—as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there’s something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned. I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a problem? I understand…”

(laughing) “I understand we all want paychecks—or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money buys us. But do we all really want jobs? We’re living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That’s because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.” (sniffs) No, my nose started running. This is Douglas Rushkoff, “media theorist” at CNN.com.

“America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that’s even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings to get the empty houses off their books. Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff—it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.”

Wait a minute. “[W]e don’t have enough ways for people to work,” but yet he just said we don’t need people working. I shall nevertheless continue here: “Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept.” Did you know that, folks? Jobs are a new concept, “relatively” so. “People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. By the late Middle Ages, most of Europe was thriving under this arrangement. The only ones losing wealth were the aristocracy, who depended on their titles to extract money from those who worked.

“And so they invented the chartered monopoly. By law, small businesses in most major industries were shut down and people had to work for officially sanctioned corporations instead. From then on, for most of us, working came to mean getting a ‘job.’ ... While this is certainly bad for workers and unions, I have to wonder just how truly bad is it for people.” See, workers in unions are not people. “Isn’t this what all this technology was for in the first place? The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment?

“Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with ‘career’ be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful? Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff. The communist answer to this question was just to distribute everything evenly. But that sapped motivation and never quite worked as advertised.

“The opposite, libertarian answer (and the way we seem to be going right now) would be to let those who can’t capitalize on the bounty simply suffer. Cut social services along with their jobs, and hope they fade into the distance.” Is that what we’re doing? That’s what we’re doing now, we’re just cutting loose people and letting them suffer out there? We’re cutting social services along with their jobs? I’ll tell you what, I think Obama is putting this crackpot theory to the test. Having a small number of people working to support the rest of the country is exactly what Obama’s doing. This crackpot’s theory is in process here of being implemented!

We’re all a bunch of guinea pigs here; we didn’t know it. Mr. Rushkoff here sounds like he’s sitting in some frat house after a night of too many hits on the bong, folks. He says here, “We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do—the value we create—is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful. This sort of work isn’t so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations.

“We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another—all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.” Yeah, that’s what we should do: Make games for each other, write books for each other, solve problems for each other, educate and inspire one another instead of doing stuff—and we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff, but… Well, nobody’s gonna have any money if they don’t have any. I don’t know. Again, Douglas Rushkoff. I’m sort of embarrassed this guy shares letters of my name.

You know, this Rushkoff guy needs to hear the story of the first Thanksgiving. He needs to hear how his way failed. He needs to actually… Anyway, it’s at CNN.com, and just came in over the transom. (interruption) Funemployment? Look, I’m not gonna make the claim that this guy is out there trying to help Obama (laughing), but on the day Obama’s giving his big job speech, this guy’s got a piece out there, “America’s productive enough they could probably shelter, feed, educate, even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working,” and we’re putting that theory to test here, folks. We are in the process of doing exactly that.

Thank you kindly, Jeff Newelt of New York City!

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.09.2011
10:11 am
|
Rush Limbaugh: Still a dickhead

image
 
Rush Limbaugh laughed at media outlets who missed the obvious sarcasm of his praise for Obama’s military leadership, but he seems to be oblivious himself to the irony that in this instance—uniquely so—certain people were willing to actually give this lardass blowhard the benefit of the doubt that for once he might not be behaving like a total asshole.

As if. And how could anyone be taken in by this? That’s shameful. All it took was watching it, nothing more! I suppose that’s too much to ask?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
05.02.2011
04:44 pm
|
Terry Southern on Rush Limbaugh: ‘Unspeakable slime and putrefaction’
03.03.2011
05:08 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
In 1968 Esquire magazine hired Terry Southern, William Burroughs, Jean Genet and John Sack to cover the volatile Democratic Convention in Chicago.
 
Some voices from the counterculture are so sorely missed in these turbulent times. Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, George Carlin… wouldn’t you just love to hear what they would have to say about the Tea party, Sarah Palin or the GOP’s misguided anti-union putsch? Sadly we never will, but thanks to Nile Southern, we can read exactly what his father, the celebrated satirist, novelist and screenwriter, Terry Southern thought about Rush Limbaugh. Although these unpublished observations were made in the 1990, they still seem pretty fresh today, if you ask me!

12/3/93

Mr. Howard Stern
c/o Simon and Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020

Dear Howard Stern:

As a long time admirer of your wit, and your enduring integrity re the First Amendment, I was intrigued by your recent expression of the interest in the “actual weight” of the outlandish pumpkin head of the total A-hole, R. Limbaugh. By grand good chance, a friend of mine is a professor in bio-physics here at the university, and, with some sophisticated instruments, and his professorial savvy, he was able to take the measurements necessary for the calculations directly off the video screen. Howard, you will be interested to learn that the weight came in at a whopping 58 ½ pounds; that’s right, fifty-eight and a half pounds of unspeakable slime and putrefaction – perhaps the most concentrated conglomeration of homophobic spleen, racist venom, rancid anti-fem menstrual corruption, all infested with coprophillic and child-abuse fantasies ever to accrue in a single enclosure – Howard, they say that stench of this monstrous vessel will send the needle of an E-Meter right through the side of the goddamn box! Can you believe that he is allowed to regurgitate this foul muck under the guise of public buffoonery? It is outrageous; in his case, I would be obliged to shut down the First Amendment pronto. And yet, you, apparently are so unaware of him as to express only a passing curiosity about the “actual weight” of his pumpkin head. This was disappointing, because you, Howard Howie Stern, have the ideal forum from which to blast this vomitman A-hole. Should you, hopefully, decide to do so, let me tell you that one of the best ways to get his goat, to set him hopping, so to speak, is to confront him (and his moronic viewers) with a few of what he calls his ‘action-warthogs’. Evidently there also exists video tape footage of this horrendous coupling. Howard, they say the imagery will make an ambulance attendant puke.

I’m enclosing a short piece which I think may amuse you. With all best wishes for your continuing and most highly deserved success,

Terry Southern
East Canaan, Connecticut

*******

March 23, 1995

The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY

To The Editor:

Readers of every stamp and kidney are increasingly perplexed by your failure to respond to the xenophobic rant of the so-called ‘radio commentator’ RASH LAMEBRAIN. To dismiss his remarks as merely the dotty musings of a curmudgeon/buffoon (a la Major Hoople) is to be unaware of the scope and focus of their calculated savagery – which has now progressed from comparing the President’s daughter with a dog, to ridiculing persons dying of AIDS. Why hasn’t at least one of your great champions of truth and decency (Lewis, Rich, Quindlen) been allowed to counter his unopposed spew of sleaze and putrefaction? The fact that they have not is painfully reminiscent of another era of fear and silence in recent American history.

Terry Southern
East Canaan, Connecticut

*******

The Most Delightful bit of poetic justice I’ve seen lately happened when, immediately following the Okla City disaster, the crypto curmudgeon/buffoon Rash Lamebrain started barking his mad dog mantra “Bomb the Arabs! Bomb the Arabs!” only to discover the next day that the initial suspects of the deed were the very mirror image of himself – two mindless rednecks. The irony was absolute.

Terry Southern,
East Canaan, Connecticut.

Thank you Nile Southern/Michael Simmons!

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.03.2011
05:08 pm
|
Who will Beck, Palin and Fox News blame the next time?

image
 
Well, we know that Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck and their irresponsible, hateful rhetoric had nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the shooting in Tucson, because… well, they (and Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the right-wing punditacracy clown parade) told us so. Right? Right??

But what of the people who were actually shot, but survived, or who were eyewitnesses to the tragedy? What do they think? Who do they blame for the sorry state of the toxic political climate that led a complete lunatic like Jared Loughner to seek to inflict his “Second Amendment remedies,” on them, as per the innocent, blameless Sharron Angle?

Well, can’t say it’s much of a shock to report that at least one of the shooting victims, Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old disabled veteran who had campaigned for Gabrielle Giffords in her reelection campaign last Fall, DOES blame Palin, Beck and Angle. Fuller, who was shot in the knee and wounded in the back, told Democracy Now that “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target. Their wish for second amendment activism has been fulfilled.” In remarks Fuller prepared in advance for the interview, he added “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled—senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic-fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even nine-year-old girls.”

In my book, Mr. Fuller’s opinion holds more water than Palin’s, Beck’s, Angle’s, Limbaugh’s and the whole of the Fox News staff’s (especially Steeve Doocey, who is a blithering idiot) combined. He took a bullet, two, in fact, so he’s got a right to his opinion. He earned it with his own blood. Suck on that, Sarah Palin!

What’s pathetically ridiculous about the entire argument from the right that the specific words of these specific people had no effect on this matter because Loughner is so very obviously batshit crazy is that this ISN’T the first incident like this in recent memory. It’s (at least) the second (if not the third: the name Richard Poplawski ring a bell?).

Why are so few people in the media talking about what happened when Glenn Beck decided to make the tiny Tides Foundation into a fearsome component of his “the progressive movement wants to destroy America with their evil Socialism” conspiracy theories last year? It HAS happened already that a mentally unbalanced person has decided to fight the vast-leftwing conspiracy that Beck and others subscribe to and propagate, with violence. Just seven months ago, a bank-robber out on parole, Byron Williams, en route to murder the staff at the Tides Foundation, opened fire on Oakland police with a 9mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308-caliber rifle with armor-piercing bullets. Williams told told authorities that he wanted to foment a revolution by “killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.” His mother told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son had been watching Fox News and was angered by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.”  Williams thought that the Tides Foundation was part of a conspiracy in which the BP oil spill was a deliberate act of sabotage masterminded by George Soros and progressives.

Sound like a Glenn Beck fan to you?

(Self-described “progressive hunter,” Williams told a reporter that Beck “blew [his] mind.” Who I am to disagree?)

Where will all of this end? Who knows, but what happens when the people who make a living riling up dumb-ass, poorly-educated white people to hate and fear people who are different than they are or who think differently than they do, face a blowback themselves? Sooner or later, a left-wing crazy probably is gonna come after one of them. It wouldn’t stretch the imagination of anyone to figure that somewhere out there in this vast nation of 300 million people, there is a foaming at the mouth far-left nutcase (or a “radical centrist” for that matter) who feels that what’s really destroying America is assholes like Beck, Palin and Sharron Angle and who thinks killing them is the answer to our nation’s problems.

I have a sickening, sinking feeling that this isn’t the end of this, for lack of a better term, “partisan violence,” but just the warm-up acts. There is something eerily Weimar Republic-esque about the sad state of present day America and it’s extremely disturbing to attempt to draw this type of behavior to its logical conclusions. Before anyone writes in to say that it’s only the right-wing who is using the violent talk, the “reload” nonsense and the brain-damaged conspiracy theories, I get that. I know that. What I’m trying to point out here is that I think the genie is all the way out of the bottle for this type of violence, for them, too.

Even if the right has always been the spiritual home to the racist and cryptofascist fringe, from the KKK to the John Birch Society to today’s Teabaggers, there are crazy people all across the political spectrum. The next time—and there is going to be a next time—it might be a former member of the American middle class who has lost his home or pension who comes gunning after a Republican. The next shooter might come from the ranks of the 99ers. The next cold blooded killer could be a radical environmentalist. The next political assassin might be someone whose child died because their insurance company didn’t pay for a new medical treatment or ...?

This toxic political climate in America today is a direct or indirect consequence of a small number of politicians and pundits on the far right calling those who they disagree with “evil.”  Does anyone with half a brain, really dispute that? Then something awful happens, like what happened in Tucson. And then there is more blame. Then the momentum of the bad craziness builds in some lone-wolf lefty lunatic and this energy reemerges with someone on the right getting hurt. And then it will start again. Back and forth, back and forth.

When, not if, the next politician, government official or TV news pundit who is killed turns out to be someone on the conservative side, Palin, Beck, Angle, Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the idiots at Fox News will have no one to blame but themselves.

UPDATE: Mr. Fuller was arrested today for disorderly conduct after allegedly making a threat to Tucson Tea party spokesman Trent Humphries during a “town hall” TV show taping for ABC. According to sheriff’s deputies at the scene in Tucson, Fuller took a photo of Humphries and then said, “You’re dead.”

I didn’t think events would prove my point this quickly—and regret that they have—but there it is.

2011 is going to be a doozy.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.15.2011
03:21 pm
|
Unfortunate Rush Limbaugh billboard in Tucson
01.13.2011
01:01 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Via Reddit

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.13.2011
01:01 pm
|
Rush Limbaugh, watch your back: Cute kid with speech impediment, racist talk show wants your job

image
 
Extraordinary: A cute kid with a speech impediment has his own… racist talk show! That’s right, meet ten-year-old Andrew Pendegraft, host of “The Andrew Show,” a presentation of White Pride TV, who also produce a Ku Klux Klan TV show and a show for white teenage girls. I should probably mention that all of these shows are hosted by just one family. Yup, that’s right, Andrew’s mother, Rachel Pendergraft (who produces the shows) is the daughter of Thomas Robb, the Klan’s “national director” (the term “Grand Wizard” has been retired. Too many negative connotations, I suppose!). Father and daughter host the KKK show and Rachel’s daughter (Andrew’s sister) hosts the teen girl racist show. That’s three generations of cracker white trash talent on display here!

Is it wrong to laugh at this? Is it wrong to laugh at a child’s sincere efforts to hone his hosting skills in the hopes that he’ll one day be a marquee star on Fox News? Am I heartless for posting this here for your amusement? Is it even funny in the first place?!?! What the fuck??? I mean, this kid even has his own GREEN SCREEN… and, of course, ADULT PRODUCTION HELP. Christ is this fucked up… but still oddly funny.

But the sad thing is that these videos are going to follow this poor kid around for the rest of his life. His idiot mother might as well have just tattooed a swastika on his forehead for all the help she’s giving him starting out in life.
 

 
After the jump Andrew the racist kid asks “Has Justin Bieber ever kissed a black girl?”

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.04.2010
08:11 pm
|
Birds for Justice: DC Central Kitchen replies to Rush’s remarks about non-profits

image
 
On Inauguration Day 1989, Washington DC-based club manager and booker Robert Egger opened the DC Central Kitchen in order to use job training, meal distribution, and supporting local food systems to help fight poverty, hunger and homelessness in the nation’s capital.

It was about five months after a certain repugnant blowhard named Rush Limbaugh took his show into national syndication. Last week, that blowhard had this to say about non-profit organizations:
 

 
Egger’s thoughtful response—after the jump—should encourage all you Dangerous Minds readers to donate to the DC Central Kitchen today…watch till the end…
 

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
|
08.19.2010
12:24 am
|
Wish Rush Limbaugh a Merry Exile
03.31.2010
02:24 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image

This petition aims to collect 1 million signatures wishing Rush Limbaugh a merry exile in Costa Rica, where he once promised he would move if healthcare reform passed. Sadly, I think it’s a lost cause: these guys are like little writhing maggot bombs dropped into the culture by El Diablo, poised on kamikaze missions to destroy everything good and humane in sight. This one’s already tapped out and drained and they’ve already got Glenn Beck up from his brimstoney summer villa to take his place. I have a better idea… let’s start a petition to have these evil fuckers locked in a room with Diamanda Galas.

Sign this petition, and your name will be added to a going-away card for Rush Limbaugh.

Rush promised that if the Healthcare Reform Bill passed, he would move to Costa Rica:
“I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now
and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go
to Costa Rica”  – Rush Limbaugh

Now that the Bill has passed, lets honor this outspoken American with a proper goodbye. Once signatures hit one million, a card will be designed, printed and mailed to Rush Limbaugh and his associates (to ensure he gets the message).

(Adios, Rush!)

(Diamanda Galas)

Posted by Jason Louv
|
03.31.2010
02:24 pm
|
The Right-Wing Rape Obsesssion
12.18.2009
07:28 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
As Sociological Images (where this was spotted via Media Matters) points out, it’s entirely possible that a similar clip could be cobbled together from the blatherings of left-wing pundits.  But I don’t think so.

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
|
12.18.2009
07:28 pm
|
Rush Limbaugh: Swastikas Everywhere!
08.11.2009
02:21 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
image

Evidently, the fertile, painkiller-fried imagination of Rush Limbaugh has detected a connection between the swastika and President Obama’s symbol for health care reform.  The results?  Alarmist truth-stretching at its most amusing (and syntax-mangled)!  The LA TimesChristopher Knight sorts it all out, or tries to:

‘You will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo,’ Limbaugh asserted to his listeners.  ‘I’m going to show you people watching on the Dittocam this, and there Nazi symbol you are: The middle frame is the Obama health care logo.  At the bottom is an official Nazi logo, eagle and everything, spread wings, or bird with spread wings.’

There’s just one hitch: Asserting a resemblance between the two logos is like saying Limbaugh resembles Gary Busey because both men have two eyes, a nose, a mouth and a drug addiction.  Obama’s health care logo includes no eagle, Roman symbol of imperial authority, and it has no swastika, the bent-arm cross designed by Hitler himself as the emblem of National Socialism.  Instead, the Obama design surmounts the red, white and blue landscape of his presidential campaign logo with a caduceus, the winged staff entwined with serpents that derived from the rod of Asclepius, son of Greek god Apollo.  An ancient symbol of healing, the rod is often used as a medical logo.  So the Obama design shows a medical symbol above the American landscape.

Rush Limbaugh Flunks Graphic Design 101

Rush Speaks: The Swastika In Obama’s Health Care Reform Symbol

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
|
08.11.2009
02:21 pm
|
Rick Perlstein: In Bill O’Reilly’s Sights
07.27.2009
05:15 pm
Topics:
Tags:

What happens when a journalist runs afoul of shrill Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly and his marauding army of right wing viewers? Rick Perlstein found out when Newsweek published his think piece on Sarah Palin’s future in the Republican Party. Even before O’Reilly’s show ended that night, Rick’s inbox filled up with hateful and ignorant emails. Rick’s original piece is here and his post-Factor essay on the results is here. Rick Perlstein is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.27.2009
05:15 pm
|