“Getting By On Fumes”: Has Rush Limbaugh Finally Reached The End Of The Road?
Like him or hate him, there is no disputing that Rush Limbaugh’s very special brand of mixing right-wing politics with his flare for entertainment has produced one of the most successful radio programs in the medium’s long history.
Whatever the burning political question of the day, millions of Americans have relished the opportunity to tune into Rush’s program, knowing that he would quickly take that hot potato, throw a few gallons of verbal kerosene into the mix and elevate the matter into a five alarm fire with a just a few well-chosen words spoken in the style only Rush Limbaugh could produce.
Until now…
At long last, it appears that Rush Limbaugh has run out of steam.
I have to acknowledge that I have sensed Rush getting by on fumes for some time now (yes, I tune into his show from time to time to enjoy his broadcasting skills if not his message). However, it was only recently that the world of Limbaugh crossed that thin red line from partially serious to total self-parody and audience deception—a line crossed from which there is often no return.
It happened on the occasion of Stephen Colbert’s appointment to fill David Letterman’s soon to be vacated chair on the CBS (CBS +0.65%) late-night set.
By using this occasion to create a political narrative designed to stir up his listeners, Limbaugh telegraphed to his loyal followers that he is now dependent upon feeding fully faux political nonsense that his audience instinctively—or explicitly—knows is a bunch of baloney.
To be sure, this is hardly the first time Limbaugh has fed his audience a diet of twisted information and bizarre, conspiratorial memes. However, it may well be the first time that he attempted to shove a diet down the throats of any semi-rational listeners still living in the real world made up of nonsense that even his most loyal listener could not possibly swallow.
That’s a problem for Rush.
A show like Limbaugh’s is wholly reliant on his listeners’ willingness to believe—or suspend belief—no matter how ‘out there’ their guru’s arguments may be. While it is one thing for me to sneer at much of what Limbaugh may present, it is quite another when he attempts to sell his loyal audience on stuff they already know, through personal experience, to be false and fraudulent hokum.
Upon hearing the news of Colbert’s new gig, Limbaugh pronounced— as only Limbaugh can pronounce—
“CBS has just declared war on the heartland of America. No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values, conservatism. Now it’s just wide out in the open. What this hire means is a redefinition of what is funny, and a redefinition of what is comedy. They’re blowing up the 11:30 format… they hired a partisan, so-called comedian, to run a comedy show.”
Not quite satisfied with his initial declaration, Limbaugh returned to the subject in a later program, commenting further on CBS’s decision to hire Colbert—
“It clearly indicates that the people making this decision have chosen to write off a portion of the country, that they don’t care if a portion of the country watches or not.”
Rush has it right on his last statement.
Indeed, the people who make decisions at television networks have chosen to write off a portion of the country—a decision that was made for them a very long time ago.
However, it has never had anything to do with making choices of audience based on anything even resembling politics and has always had everything to do with blowing off anyone older than 49 years of age because these older folks are poison to advertisers. In other words, the networks are clearly writing off those in ‘the heartland’ if they’ve reached 50 years old—just as they’ve written off folks in this demo in every other nook and cranny of America.
What Limbaugh chose to ignore in his rant is that this is a choice based on what television advertisers want—and what television advertisers want is a young television viewing audience or, to be more specific, viewers that fall between the ages of 18-49. Despite Limbaugh’s truly lame efforts to pretend otherwise, if you fall within this age group, you are welcomed to the party whether you be a progressive, conservative, independent, communist, John Bircher, or whatever other political affiliation you can conjure up.
You see, car companies don’t really care about your politics when they are trying to sell you a car via a TV commercial—they care about whether you are in a position to buy that new car should they succeed in getting your attention. Purina really doesn’t give a damn about your politics or your dog’s politics when they are trying to sell you their brand of dog food.
For these reasons that would appear to be obvious to everyone but Rush Limbaugh—although we all know that they are obvious to him too—all viewers younger than 50 are coveted by the television networks.
And yet, Limbaugh—a guy who has spent his life in media—wants his audience to believe that there is some political agenda on the part of a network at work here. Never mind that early morning and late night are the two largest sources of revenue for every broadcast network. Limbaugh expects us to believe that CBS is willing to throw all that money out the window to make a political statement.
If you are a Limbaugh fan, how are you not asking yourself just how dumb this man thinks you are?
Even the right-wing Frontpagemag.com was able to properly discern the truth of the situation and provide an excellent explanation of reality:
The number of people who watch a TV show stopped mattering years ago. If it did, Murder She Wrote, a show that had an older audience and high ratings, wouldn’t have been canceled. Instead there’s talk of rebooting it with younger multicultural leads in a different setting.
Network television doesn’t just fail to count older viewers; it tries to drive them away. A show with an older viewership is dead air. Advertisers have been pushed by ad agencies into an obsession with associating their product with a youthful brand.
The demo rating, 18-49, is the only rating that matters. Viewers younger than that can still pay off. Just ask the CW. Older viewers however are unwanted.
A network show would rather have 5 million viewers in the demo than 15 million older viewers. A cable show would rather have 1 million viewers in the demo than 10 million viewers outside the demo.
Colbert and Stewart have the top late night talk shows in the demo. That means 1 million ‘young’ viewers. That’s barely what Letterman was pulling in on a top network.
Networks, which already have high median ages, are doing everything possible to bring them down. CBS has a median age of 58 and is the oldest network. Colbert is supposed to lower their average.
Letterman’s show had a median age of 56. Colbert’s show has a median age of 39. That a 49-year-old comedian with an audience whose median age is 39 is considered a draw for younger audiences reveals just how thoroughly younger viewers are abandoning television.”
As someone who spent the overwhelming majority of his career as a television producer and executive, I can state with absolutely certainty that Frontpagemag.com got it precisely right—and when was the last time you heard me say that a right-wing anything got it exactly right?
So, what does it say when a guy like Rush Limbaugh stoops to trying to build a political fire out of what is about as apolitical as chicken soup?
It says Rush is running on empty. It says he’s grown lazy. It says he’s probably trying to hold on to get though the next presidential election cycle before fading off into the sunset.
Rush’s audience knew that his anti-Colbert rant was nonsense the minute it left Limbaugh’s lips. How did they know?
While Limbaugh’s listeners may be inclined to believe the words of the great Rush Limbaugh, these aging listeners are the very people who can no longer find anything on TV to watch because everything is so skewed to the young viewer. They know all too well that it has nothing to do with their politics and everything to do with their age and being outside the desired demographic.
Rush Limbaugh ‘works’ when he can fire up his audience with red-hot ideology designed to bring out the anger of his listeners. But no entertainer succeeds when they try to stupidly pull the wool over the very listeners who have been loyal—and Limbaugh’s effort to politicize the Colbert hiring was just that.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, April 15, 2014
“The Bundy Crisis In Nevada”: Right-Wingers Ignoring The Law And Disregarding Court Rulings
It’s not uncommon for conservative media to put a very different spin on current events than major news organizations. For example, news consumers who surround themselves with nothing but conservative media might believe right now that the Affordable Care Act is in a death spiral, the IRS “scandal” is heating up; the nation is facing a debt crisis; the Benghazi conspiracy will soon rock the White House; etc.
But once in a while, conservative media doesn’t just put a unique spin on the news, it also identifies stories that exist largely below the radar. Over the last week, for example, far-right news consumers have been captivated with coverage of Cliven Bundy, while for much of the American mainstream, that name probably doesn’t even sound familiar.
If you don’t know the story, it’s time to get up to speed.
U.S. officials ended a stand-off with hundreds of armed protesters in the Nevada desert on Saturday, calling off the government’s roundup of cattle it said were illegally grazing on federal land and giving about 300 animals back to the rancher who owned them.
The dispute less than 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas between rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had simmered for days. Bundy had stopped paying fees for grazing his cattle on the government land and officials said he had ignored court orders.
Anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists camped around Bundy’s ranch to support him.
By any fair definition, this was an intense standoff with a very real possibility of significant casualties.
But to understand how and why the crisis unfolded as it did over the weekend, we have to start with how it started in the first place.
Ian Millhiser did a nice job summarizing the backstory.
This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.
Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands – he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”
So, on the one hand we have Bundy, who’s said, “I don’t recognize [the] United States government as even existing.” It led him to repeatedly ignore federal law, repeatedly blow federal court rulings, and refuse to pay federal fines for his transgressions. On the other hand we have the United States government – which does, in fact, exist – showing considerable restraint in trying to resolve the problem.
All of this started to come to a head last week, with federal officials going to the area late last week to enforce the law and seize the cattle Bundy has been illegally grazing. Except this proved to be problematic – Bundy’s heavily-armed allies, egged on by conservative media, showed up from a variety of Western states to confront U.S. officials.
Facing the very real possibility that the anti-government forces might open fire, U.S. officials backed off in the interest of maintaining public safety.
“Based on information about conditions on the ground and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public,” U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze, said in a statement.
Bundy’s cattle, which had been rounded up, were released. The Bundy supporters and assorted militia members were pleased, the crowds dispersed, and no one was shot.
But you probably see the problem: it’s unsustainable to think a group of well-armed extremists can simply block the enforcement of American laws in the United States. It’s perfectly understandable that the Bureau of Land Management saw a crisis unfolding and pulled back to prevent bloodshed, but there’s an obvious problem with establishing a radical precedent: you, too, can ignore the law and disregard court rulings you don’t like, just so long as you have well-armed friends pointing guns at Americans.
To put it mildly, that’s not how the American system works. Indeed, that’s not how any system of government can ever work.
Tensions eased over the weekend, but it seems likely that this story isn’t over yet.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 14, 2014
“Somebody’s Got To Sell That Platform”: Wingnuts’ New 2016 Hero? Marsha Blackburn Is Perfect!
Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn is having a moment, of sorts. An anonymous aide told Real Clear Politics last week that she was going to New Hampshire to “test the waters” for a 2016 presidential run. And why not? Blackburn would be the only woman in the race (so far), and she’s no worse than the rest of the oft-mentioned male candidates.
She’s no better, either, despite being floated as someone who might help Republicans with skeptical women voters. Blackburn, you’ll recall, became the public face of the House GOP’s 20-week abortion ban last year when Rep. Trent Franks said the bill didn’t exempt cases of rape because “the incidence of pregnancy from rape is very low.” She had earlier become a GOP hero for insisting on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that women “didn’t want” pay equity laws. “I’ve always said that I didn’t want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job,” she told David Gregory. “And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want.” In fact, women overwhelmingly want pay equity, and they support laws to achieve it, according to public opinion polls.
Now that pay equity is back in the news, thanks to Democrats pushing the Paycheck Fairness Act, Blackburn is in demand again. She told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that “we’re all for equal pay.” But the GOP supports neither the Paycheck Fairness Act nor the minimum wage, which would hugely help women, who make up two-thirds of minimum wage workers. “I would love for women to be focused on maximum wage,” Blackburn bizarrely explained. She went on to insist “I have fought to be recognized with equality for a long time. A lot of us get tired of guys condescending to us.”
This is what Republicans hope they can reduce this debate to: complaining about “guys condescending to us,” not guys being paid more, or guys paying less for insurance (as they did before the Affordable Care Act) or guys making laws that tell women what they can do with their bodies.
Appearing at the Freedom Summit in New Hampshire, Blackburn tried out the idea that it’s actually Democrats who are condescending to women.
“Women aren’t a cheap date,” she told conservatives there. “Women want a little bit more out of life than contraceptives.” Describing women as any kind of “date,” whether cheap or expensive, seems condescending to me, but I’m not a Republican woman.
You’ve almost got to feel sorry for Republicans, they seem so clueless about what to do about their problem with female voters. The Associated Press has a story today about a new GOP strategy to court women, which comes down to encouraging male politicians to feature their wives and daughters in campaign ads, and something weirdly called “14 in ’14,” to recruit and train women under 40 to spread the GOP message in the last 14 weeks of the 2014 midterm campaign. That’s not recruiting and training women candidates, mind you, just some young women who will hit the campaign trail in the home stretch on behalf of predominantly male candidates.
It’s worth noting that although Blackburn served in Congress when the GOP held the House, the Senate and the White House, the single piece of legislation I could find that she had signed into law was the Wool Suit Fabric Labeling Fairness and International Standards Conforming Act of 2006. She has also successfully sponsored resolutions renaming various Tennessee Post Office buildings as well as (to her credit) one honoring the late Issac Hayes.
None of that would likely hurt her in the GOP primaries, where Rep. Michele Bachmann and pizza magnate Herman Cain briefly held leads back in 2012.
A Blackburn run isn’t a done deal; a communications staffer denied that she was considering it. “She is running to represent the people of the TN 7th Congressional district,” Darcy Anderson told the Daily Caller. It’s also hard for House members of either party or gender to run for the White House, as they mostly lack a fundraising base and must also run for reelection every two years. Still, I wouldn’t count Blackburn out.
The GOP might be well-served by having a woman at the top of the ticket, at a time when their top priority is a massive transfer of income away from women and back to men, by repealing ACA provisions prohibiting charging women more for insurance. Somebody’s got to sell that platform, and it wouldn’t be the first time a terrible, thankless job got foisted on a woman.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 14, 2014
“RNC Unveils Its ‘14 In ‘14’ Plan”: A Stroke of Genius, Include More Women In Campaign Ads
When Democratic policymakers started a fight over the Paycheck Fairness Act, Republicans responded by dismissing it as a hollow, election-year stunt. Sure, it was a substantive policy response to a legitimate issue, but GOP officials said the debate itself was little more than a cheap political exercise – which women voters would see through immediately.
And speaking of cheap political exercises that women voters will see through immediately…
The Republican National Committee plans a new initiative, “14 in ‘14,” to recruit and train women under age 40 to help spread the party’s message in the final 14 weeks of the campaign. […]
They are encouraging candidates to include their wives and daughters in campaign ads, have women at their events and build a Facebook-like internal database of women willing to campaign on their behalf.
I see. If Democrats push the Paycheck Fairness Act, they’re cynically trying to give the appearance of helping women in the workplace. But if Republicans include more women in campaign ads, that’s just quality messaging.
The “14 in ‘14” initiative, it’s worth noting, is actually a fallback plan of sorts. The original strategy was to push “Project GROW,” in which Republicans would recruit more women candidates to run for Congress in 2014. That project failed – there are actually going to be fewer Republican women running for Congress in this cycle than in 2012.
Presumably, “encouraging candidates to include their wives and daughters in campaign ads” is intended to compensate for the misstep, while hoping voters overlook the GOP’s opposition to pay-equity legislation and its preoccupation with issues such as restricting women’s reproductive rights and access to contraception?
Greg Sargent also had a good piece questioning the utility of the “14 in ‘14” plan.
Democrats are actively building their women’s economic agenda around the broader idea that women face unique economic challenges. A recent CNN poll found that 55 percent of Americans, and 59 percent of women, don’t believe the GOP understands the problems women face today. A Republican National Committee spokeswoman recently admitted that Republicans need to do a better job appearing in touch with women.
Republicans oppose a minimum wage hike; oppose Dem proposals to address pay inequity (while admitting it is a legitimate problem); and are telling women that their economic prospects can be improved by repealing Obamacare (and its protections for women). Indeed, they are even telling them that the push for pay equity is nothing but a distraction from the health law. Yes, Republicans could win big this fall with such an agenda. But this could also prove another area where structural factors ensure that Republicans win in 2014 in spite of the failure to address the need — which they themselves have acknowledged — to broaden their appeal to women with an eye towards future national elections.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 14, 2014
“The Missing Generation Of Obama-Inspired Politicians”: Congress Is The Last Place From Which Important Change Is Going To Come
The 2008 Obama presidential campaign, you’ll no doubt remember, was a marvel of social engagement, particularly among young people. They got involved in politics, they saw the potential for change, they sent emails and posted to Facebook and knocked on doors. But as Jason Horowitz reports in The New York Times, not too many of them decided to run for office. I’ll solve that mystery in a moment, but here’s an excerpt:
But if Mr. Lesser, who is on leave from Harvard Law School to run for office, is the face of the promised Obama political generation, he is also one of its few participants. For all the talk about the movement that elected Mr. Obama, the more notable movement of Obama supporters has been away from politics. It appears that few of the young people who voted for him, and even fewer Obama campaign and administration operatives, have decided to run for office. Far more have joined the high-paid consultant ranks.
Unlike John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who inspired virtual legislatures of politicians and became generational touchstones, Mr. Obama has so far had little such influence. That is all the more remarkable considering he came to office tapping into spirit of volunteerism and community service that pollsters say is widespread and intense among young people. Mr. Obama has come to represent that spirit, but he has failed, pollsters say, to transform it into meaningful engagement in the political process.
There are a bunch of empirical claims here that may be questionable. Are there actually fewer young people running for office six years after Barack Obama got elected than there were in 1966 or 1986? Perhaps, but I don’t know that anyone has determined that for sure. And as for more of Obama staffers going into consulting than running for office, that always happens. You could without question say the same thing about every president since political consulting became an industry. Running for office is something very few people ever do, and for people who are working in politics and want to keep working in politics, the move from staffer to consultant is a natural career progression without huge risks.
More importantly, running for office is just one tiny part of “meaningful engagement in the political process.” What other things have all those former Obama volunteers been doing? The answer may be that they’ve actually been doing quite a bit.
But if mounting a congressional campaign is the one thing they haven’t been doing, it would be hard to blame them (and they may be running for other offices, but national reporters haven’t noticed). The last five years haven’t exactly made being a member of Congress look like the kind of fulfilling endeavor for which you’d make extraordinary life sacrifices. In fact, these days Congress looks like the last place from which important change is going to come. So if you’re an idealistic young person and the prospect of spending the next few years voting against the 50th and 60th and 70th Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act doesn’t stir you to the depths of your soul, it’s hard to say that’s Barack Obama’s failure.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 14, 2014
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