Gag order


“Decent folks who believe in tolerance and equality are no longer powerless against Limbaugh’s efforts to spread intolerance on the radio. StopRush is making a major impact by convincing advertisers on this show to withdraw their ads — and with your help we can do even more. Just a few e-mails, tweets or Facebook messages a week to Limbaugh’s advertisers can go a long way toward making hatred less profitable. It is our collective voice that makes us strong.” —, promoting the “StopRush” campaign.

Absolutely right! If you believe in tolerance and equality, the thing you really need to do is . . . shut other people up.

It’s only decent. If you believe in diversity, eliminate anyone who doesn’t fit the mold, and if you think hate speech is bad, build a campaign of organized loathing.

Perfectly logical.

The Daily Kos website displays an American flag (sort of — it’s orangey, like the red and yellow flag of some international workers’ collective after it’s been put through the washing machine too many times). It’s a wonder that the flag doesn’t get up and slink off the screen in embarrassment.

Because this country has a long, proud history of freedom to piss people off.

The StopRush movement, started by an employee of the liberal group Media Matters, brags that it has been successful in driving advertisers away from “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” which for 25 years has delighted, infuriated, tickled and provoked its radio listeners by the millions.

But it’s conservative, and liberals want to shut it down by convincing the sponsors that it’s too hot to handle.

Limbaugh has conceded on the air that the movement has had some success. Because advertisers are giant wussies.

Advertisers want audiences but abhor “controversy.” They don’t want to see protesters lining up outside their offices, don’t want to get petitions on anything but new flavor ideas for Pringles, don’t want to be mentioned in the political blogs.

Colgate doesn’t care if you’re red state or blue, all they see is nice white teeth.

In the kind of world that advertisers like, there would be no discussion of politics at all. The whole media world would be like “Entertainment Tonight” or a football game.

What would be the fun of that? Hell, even I sometimes watch MSNBC, when I want to exercise my snorting muscles.

The boycott sword has two edges. Progressive voices could easily be pressured off the air too, not because advertisers are conservative but because they could just as easily send their money to “Big Bang Theory” reruns rather than Al Sharpton’s show.

Scaring advertisers isn’t hard. The question is why the Kossacks even bother. What are they afraid of?

They claim they’re winning the argument. Maybe they’re correct. Limbaugh hasn’t stopped President Obama from being elected and re-elected. Democrats carried the popular vote three out of the four elections before Obama, too.

The Democrats claim they have demographic destiny on their side. They note that if a progressive president commands a huge proportion of the votes of blacks, Latinos and single women, they hardly need anybody else. Maybe they’re right on that too. Obama got just 39% of the white vote in November.

So if Limbaugh is guilty of (as another Kossack post claimed) “constant attacks on minority groups” and if no single woman wants to be on the same side as the tormentor of Sandra Fluke, maybe DailyKos should start a petition to demand CNN give Limbaugh three hours in prime time every night.

Maybe Fluke herself, who has made a career out of being mentioned by Limbaugh, should be first to sign. (Ironically, in the DNC speech she would not have been invited to deliver before Limbaugh made her a celebrity, she accused him of trying to “silence” her when what he did was mock her. Silencing Limbaugh is what Fluke’s friends at StopRush are trying to do.)

No one at StopRush is being chained to the wall and forced to listen to Limbaugh in a dungeon (though their thinking would probably be clarified if they were). So why do they want others to stop listening to him? Are they under the impression that Rush’s listeners would suddenly turn liberal if not for his influence?

Perhaps for all their talk of tolerance and diversity, they can’t stand that someone out there doesn’t agree with everything they say.

Limbaugh spokesman Brian Glicklich says, “Every organization that has tried to debate liberalism vs. conservatism with Rush Limbaugh for 25 years has lost. They have come and gone, and he has not. He has broken their arguments down into their essential absurdities, hypocrisies, and flat out fictions.”

Sick of losing, this “well funded political strong-arming propaganda ministry” resorts to trying to gag him, Glicklich says.

Kossacks, I know you’re some pretty tough hombres. Are you going to win the argument? Or are you going to wuss out and get the ref to disqualify the other guy on account of he’s so mean?