Talk show host Rush Limbaugh sought to reassure listeners Wednesday after the tally of local and national companies that have pulled their advertisements from his time slot topped 40, insisting that the show will go on and that the program is not losing revenue from the exodus.
At last count, 42 advertisers, two radio stations and two musicians have closed the door on Limbaugh following incendiary comments he made last week about a Georgetown law student who testified before Congress in favor of having birth control covered under insurance plans.
Limbaugh called the student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” and a “prostitute.” The conservative commentator apologized for his “insulting” comments in a statement posted to his website on Saturday and again on his radio show Monday. His point was he was against taxpayers paying for her contraceptives so she as a single woman could have sex outside of marriage and receive financial support for those activities.
Despite the apology, which Fluke said she did not think “changes anything,”customers and listeners have taken to social media to inundate advertisers, stations and sponsors of Limbaugh’s show with calls to boycott Limbaugh.Limbaugh told his listeners today that “everything’s cool,” noting that many of the advertisers that have yanked their support are local and thus have little if any impact on the show’s revenues.
“Nobody is losing money here, including us, in all this,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Wednesday. “[The advertisers] are not canceling the business on our stations. They’re just saying they don’t want their spots to appear in my show. We don’t get any revenue from ‘em anyway. The whole effort is to dispirit you.”
The conservative commentator estimated that as many as 18,000 companies could be advertising on any one of the 600 or so stations that broadcast his three-hour radio program.
“ABC News, who understands how this works and are purposely misrepresenting it, is out there ballyhooing that we have lost 28 sponsors,” Limbaugh said. “Twenty-eight sponsors out of 18,000! That’s like losing a couple of french fries in the container when it’s delivered to you at the drive-thru. You don’t even notice it.”
While he would not name companies, Limbaugh said three new sponsors have signed onto his show in the past two weeks.
“None of what’s happening is out of the ordinary,” Limbaugh said. “It’s just part of an onslaught to try to convince you that this show’s history and our days are numbered. And I’m happy to tell you nothing could be further from the truth.”
Over the years Rush Limbaugh has been the arch-enemy of the left and the liberal press whom Limbaugh has coined the term "Drive by media" to describe their blatant strategy of waging war on conservatism and abandoning the principals of a fair and impartial press, taking aim at conservative ideas, market leaders, and politicians.
Following Rush Limbaugh from his early days at KFBK in Sacramento, and seeing his satirical style and wit offered in his tongue-in-cheek entertainer's way become a cultural phenomenon and successively paving the way to a medium for conservative voices now dominating the radio-land, his antics have always bordered the outrageous.
Without the profanity and anarchist rhetoric, Rush Limbaugh is the Lenny Bruce of conservative talk radio. Bruce was demonized by his detractors and idolized by his fans and libertarians whether they liked his material or not for he pushed freedom of speech closer to it's constitutional parentage. Bruce was arrested for "obscene language" in public in his nightclub act in San Francisco circa 1961 but was acquitted by a jury. Not long after he was also arrested in West Hollywood for using the word "smuck" which had small male genitalia meaning in Jewish culture. Lenny Bruce was Jewish.
On February 3, 1961, in the midst of a severe blizzard, he gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. It was recorded and later released as a three-disc set, titled The Carnegie Hall Concert. In the liner notes, Albert Goldmandescribed it as follows:
I could not describe Rush Limbaugh in better terms. While he crossed the line acceptable even to his own listener's (mostly because he gave the enemy ammunition) chagrin, that's Rush...and this is still America.This was the moment that an obscure yet rapidly rising young comedian named Lenny Bruce chose to give one of the greatest performances of his career. ... The performance contained in this album is that of a child of the jazz age. Lenny worshipped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there — from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up — as if he were a spectator at his own performance!
From a biblical position, when I call abortion murder, according to scripture it is! Thus I call the mother and medical personnel involved with that crime murderers! Far worse a designation than if the mother became pregnant unmarried calling her a fornicator. If she had the pattern of multiple abortions out of wedlock and I wrote that she was a murdering whore, no one from my biblical based culture would disagree especially if the intention of my writing as a conservative columnist and social critic were to stop that unseemly sinful cancer destroying our nation. Because Muslim law allows converts to be put to death, should that stop us from calling that murder? No, and the assault against the christian faith forcing churches to offer contraceptives to employees against their beliefs, is another nail in the coffin of freedom in America.
So those companies boycotting Rush just want to appease the shrill whining of the enemies of freedom. But they are free to do so as we are free to boycott the advertisers that tried, convicted and sentenced free speech to a lesser place of freedom in America.
Here is the list of confirmed companies who have officially pulled their advertisements from the Rush Limbaugh radio show.
- Service Magic home contractor
- Hadeed Carpets
- Accuquote Life Insurance
- Vitacost vitamin supplier
- Bonobos clothing company
- Sensa weight- loss program
- Thompson Creek Windows
- AOL
- Tax Resolution Services
- ProFlowers
- Legal Zoom online document creator
- Carbonite web security firm
- Citrix software maker
- Sleep Train Mattresses
- Sleep Number mattresses
- Quicken Loans
- Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington
- Cascades Dental
- Consolidated Credit Counseling Services
- Constant Contact email marketing firm
- Philadelphia Orchestra
- Reputation Rhino online reputation consulting firm
- St. Vincent’s Medical Center
- Cunningham Security
- Regal Assets precious medal investment group
- Freedom Debt Relief
- Norway Savings Bank
- Portland Ovations performing arts center
- Stamps.com
These companies say their ads were mistakenly run during Limbaugh’s program and have contacted radio stations and media buyers to ensure their ads do not run during his program again.
- JCPenney
- Capital One
- Goodwill
- Geico
- Sears
- PolyCom web conferencing
- Matrix Direct
- Netflix
The following companies said they did not intentionally have their ads run during Limbaugh’s show, but are also not specifically taking steps to remove the ads from his time slot.
- John Deere
- Bethesda Sedation Dentistry
- Amberen menopause medication
Other news outlets have reported that the following companies have pulled their advertisements. ABC News is working to confirm.
- Downeast Energy in Maine
- RSVP Discount Beverage of Portland, Maine (declined to comment to ABC whether they had pulled their ads)
NOTE: research to make sure innocent company with similar names are not mistaken for these.
2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
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