Let’s hope that they’re just the first of many:

New West Broad­cast­ing announced today that it is dis­con­tin­u­ing the Rush Lim­baugh pro­gram on KPUA AM 670 in Hilo, Hawaii effec­tive immediately.

Chris Leonard, Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of New West released the fol­low­ing state­ment this morning:

“We have always encour­aged spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion about nation­al and local issues on KPUA and from time to time those dis­cus­sions may be deemed by some to be objec­tion­able. We are strong believ­ers in the First Amend­ment and have rec­og­nized Mr. Lim­baugh­’s right to express opin­ions that often times dif­fer from our own, but it has nev­er been our goal to allow our sta­tion to be used for per­son­al attacks and intol­er­ance. The most recent inci­dent has crossed a line of decen­cy and a stan­dard that we expect of pro­gram­ming on KPUA whether it is local­ly pro­duced or a syn­di­cat­ed pro­gram like the Rush Lim­baugh Show.”

“While much of the nation­al debate regard­ing this issue is now being framed in polit­i­cal terms, the deci­sion for us is one of decen­cy and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Regard­less of one’s polit­i­cal views on the issue being dis­cussed, we feel the deliv­ery was degrad­ing and the con­tin­ued com­ments over sev­er­al days to be egre­gious. As a result, we are dis­con­tin­u­ing the Rush Lim­baugh pro­gram on KPUA effec­tive immediately.”

Lim­baugh has also lost near­ly a dozen nation­al adver­tis­ers so far as a result of the vicious slan­der he broad­cast­ed last week against George­town stu­dent San­dra Fluke: ProFlow­ers, AOL, Quick­en Loans, Sleep Train Mat­tress­es, Sleep Num­ber, Legal­Zoom, Car­bonite, Cit­rix, Bono­bos and Sears.

As Media Mat­ters has doc­u­ment­ed, Rush’s smear­ing of San­dra last week was hard­ly the first time he has sub­ject­ed some­one he dis­agreed with to degrad­ing com­men­tary. Lim­baugh­’s crude sex­ism has pol­lut­ed Amer­i­ca’s air­waves on a great many occa­sions pri­or to last Tues­day, Wednes­day, and Thursday.

Long ago, Rush Lim­baugh turned his show into a three-hour ver­sion of the “Two Minute Hate” depict­ed in George Orwell’s 1984. It is not a civ­il dis­cus­sion of the issues. It’s not com­e­dy. It’s just reg­u­lar­ly-broad­cast ver­bal abuse. There’s sim­ply no place for such malev­o­lence in a healthy democracy.

If you’re inter­est­ed in see­ing Rush Lim­baugh tak­en off the air in Seat­tle, con­sid­er doing as David Gold­stein has sug­gest­ed: con­tact the com­pa­nies that adver­tise local­ly on Rush’s show, which is broad­cast on KTTH, one of Bon­neville Inter­na­tion­al’s Seat­tle sta­tions, and ask them to stop sup­port­ing Rush’s hate speech. Sev­en oth­er com­pa­nies already have.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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One reply on “Hawaii radio station cancels Rush Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated three hours of hate”

  1. Thank you for uphold­ing your prin­ci­ples by dis­con­tin­u­ing the Lim­baugh show. I agree entire­ly with almost every­thing you said except that for the major­i­ty of us this is not polit­i­cal. We are against this hor­rid man for the same rea­sons you out­lined. You have mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and oth­er coun­tries behind you on this.

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