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Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

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.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 4:41 PM

Categories: Economic Security, Media & Culture, Policy Topics

Tags: ,

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