Rush Limbaugh loses another station and more than a dozen more national advertisers

Let’s keep the pres­sure on! Anoth­er sta­tion has just can­celed Rush:

AM 1420 WBEC [Pitts­field, Mass­a­chu­setts]  releas­es state­ment regard­ing the removal of Rush Lim­baugh from the airwaves

Due to the inap­pro­pri­ate remarks made by Rush Lim­baugh regard­ing San­dra Fluke, the man­age­ment of AM 1420 WBEC has made the deci­sion to remove the Rush Lim­baugh Show from the pro­gram­ming line-up effec­tive March 5th. Rush Lim­baugh ‘s com­ments do not reflect the view­points of the sta­tion man­age­ment and we apol­o­gize to any­one who may have been offend­ed by his remarks. While we under­stand the con­tro­ver­sial nature of talk radio and encour­age polit­i­cal dis­course, we believe there are ways to do that with­out exceed­ing the bounds of civil­i­ty. Rush’s defam­a­to­ry and dis­parag­ing remarks about Ms. Fluke clear­ly vio­lat­ed the stan­dards we have set for our sta­tions and left us no choice but to remove him from our airwaves.

Mean­while, a pro­gram man­ag­er at a dif­fer­ent sta­tion in Ver­mont has acknowl­edged that man­age­ment there is weigh­ing whether to drop Rush or keep him in their line­up. And adver­tis­ers con­tin­ue to flee Rush’s three hours of hate as well:

The steady stream of adver­tis­ers flee­ing Rush Lim­baugh­’s radio show con­tin­ued on Mon­day and Tues­day, as a bar­rage of new com­pa­nies announced they would no longer run com­mer­cials on the pro­gram in the wake of Lim­baugh­’s offen­sive com­ments about San­dra Fluke.

Even though Lim­baugh has apol­o­gized for call­ing Fluke a “slut” and a “pros­ti­tute” for her advo­ca­cy of insur­ance cov­er­age of birth con­trol, adver­tis­ers are still mov­ing towards the exits.

ThinkProgress has been keep­ing a tal­ly of how many com­pa­nies have announced they will not be adver­tis­ing dur­ing Rush’s show, and it now stands at thir­ty-five. The list includes Sleep Num­ber, The Sleep Train, Quick­en Loans, Legal Zoom, Cit­rix, Car­bonite, ProFlow­ers, Tax Res­o­lu­tion, AOL, Bono­bos, Sears, All­state Insur­ance, Sen­sa, Bare Escen­tu­als, Vita­cost, Hadeed Car­pet, Thomp­son Creek Win­dows, Poly­Com, Ser­vice Mag­ic, AccuQuote Life Insur­ance, Geico, John Deere, Stamps.com, St. Vincent’s Med­ical Cen­ter, Bethes­da Seda­tion Den­tistry, Cas­cades Den­tal, Philadel­phia Orches­tra, Good­will Indus­tries, Heart & Body Extract, Net­flix, Downeast Ener­gy, Capi­tol One, JCPen­ney, Matrix Direct, and Rep­u­ta­tion Rhino.

Lim­baugh, backed by his biggest cor­po­rate sup­port­er, Clear Chan­nel Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, con­tin­ues to strike a defi­ant tone. Yes­ter­day, he con­tin­ued to try to deflect crit­i­cism of his hate­ful com­ments, incred­u­lous­ly sug­gest­ing that we pro­gres­sives are to blame for his pot­ty mouth.

(Nice try , Rush, but nobody’s buy­ing that).

Those who have tried to defend Rush’s com­ments are hav­ing a hard time doing so. Actress Patri­cia Heaton delet­ed her Twit­ter account after com­ing under fire for repeat­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits’ attacks on San­dra Fluke. She issued a mea cul­pa yes­ter­day, claim­ing that she meant no offense.

There is no ques­tion that Rush’s hate speech is like tox­ic waste when it comes to the qual­i­ty of our polit­i­cal dis­course. Lim­baugh may have the right to speak his mind, but he does not have the right to monop­o­lize the pub­lic air­waves for the pur­pos­es of slan­der­ing oth­er cit­i­zens. His “show” deserves to be canceled.