For once Nate Silver was a tad off, but he had said it would be close. So Frothy has won Alabama and Mississippi, and it looks like Noot will be second in both and Mittens third. I tried to see some TV commentary on this, but every time I turned to MSNBC either Frothy or Noot were talking, and I’d rather have my fingernails ripped off than listen to them. But I suspect this isn’t going to help Mittens much.
Do see this cartoon. It’s a hoot.
OK, so there are primaries in Alabama and Mississippi today. Nate says it’s very tight. I don’t care who wins.
Ed Schulz had a segment on Rush and the talk radio business, and there was a fellow from the radio business named Holland Cook who had a lot of illuminating things to say.
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The problem for Rush isn’t just a loss of advertising revenue. As Cook explains, the way the business works is that syndicated shows usually offer free or low-cost content to radio stations, and the stations and the syndicator split the ad revenue. But Rush has been collecting high licensing fees from the stations for the privilege of running his program, and Cook says that stations are not going to put up with that for long if the advertising dries up. It’s actually less expensive for the stations to hire someone to create their own content than to air Rush.
Rush’s syndicate has told the stations it is “suspending” national ads for two weeks. I believe this means the stations run their own ads and keep all the revenue. This may be a measure to keep more stations from dropping Rush.
There is also talk that a lot of stations might drop Rush in favor of a new syndicated program by Mike Huckabee, which begins April 2. It’s to run in Rush’s noon-to-3 time. That program was in the works before the Fluke meltdown, which suggests that Huckabee’s syndicator, Cumulus Media, already thought Rush was vulnerable.
Getting back to this David Frum article — Frum says something I speculated about a few days ago. The speed at which so many advertisers suddenly dumped Rush suggests that many of them had been questioning their ad buys on Rush’s show before Fluke.
This background may explain why so many of Limbaugh’s advertisers bolted for the exits when the Fluke rampage went wrong for Limbaugh. It wasn’t social conscience: Limbaugh has said offensive things before. It wasn’t social media: Facebook and Twitter existed back in 2009, when Limbaugh explained how the Obama presidency had emboldened black schoolkids to beat up whites on schoolbuses.
The difference this time is that Limbaugh’s advertisers and his stations had already begun to feel ripped off.
On top of that, Rush’s audience is, um old.
And make no mistake: Limbaugh’s audience is very old. One station manager quipped to me, “The median age of Limbaugh’s audience? Deceased.â€
This is not to say that Rush is going to disappear tomorrow. However, I think it’s unlikely that his business model is going to bounce back to what it had been before Fluke. It’s nearly certain that he will lose some stations and a lot of revenue; his syndicator might have to reduce or waive licensing fees to keep Rush’s show marketable, for example.
What I hope for, though, is that Rush’s position as the feared grand high exalted poo-bah and unelected leader of movement conservatism may be coming to an end. This would be a good thing.
Oh, and let’s get Rush booted from Armed Forces Radio.
Greg Sargent writes that Rushbo may have lost even more advertisers than we know about. See also Think Progress.
Mistermix suggests this could mark a permanent shift of “mainstream” advertisers away from right-wing talk radio — “the twenty-five year fantasy that right-wing radio is a mainstream American phenomenon is finally ending.”
Anyone who’s ever subscribed to Mother Jones is familiar with this phenomenon. I don’t subscribe now, but unless things have changed radically, McDonald’s, GM and the rest aren’t advertising there, for a simple reason: what Mother Jones prints is offensive to too many GM customers, not to mention GM itself. Mother Jones is financed by a mix of donations, grants and advertising from companies whose products are pitched directly at people with progressive values (like social investment firms). Similarly, Rush and the rest are going to have to re-tool with advertisers who cater to the 27%. Apparently this group is profitable for companies selling tinnitus cures and gold. Rush might not be able to make $50 million/year and fly around in a private jet by hawking quack remedies and begging the Koch brothers for donations, but he’ll no doubt be able to make a living.
I think that’s very likely true. However, I suspect some conservatives with deep pockets will see to it that Rush stays on as many stations as possible, at least until after the November election.
I don’t usually read Kathleen Parker, but a link from DougJarvus Green-Ellis took me to one of her columns. And it’s a fascinating thing to read, although not necessarily in the way Parker intended.
Parker’s task in this column is to refute the idea that there’s a GOP war on women, but she inadvertently does just the opposite.
One can hardly blame Democrats for taking advantage of a perfect storm of stupefying proportions. The only thing Republicans failed to do was put a bow on this mess. Consider the headline-grabbing events that came together almost at once:
Virginia’s pre-abortion sonogram law that could have required women to undergo a transvaginal probe; the debate over religious liberty vs. contraception mandate, prompted by health-care reform; Rush Limbaugh’s commentary about a female law student in which he called her a slut and a prostitute and, in a final flourish, suggested she provide him sex tapes so he could watch her in the activities precipitating the need for birth control.
Individually, these anecdotes would have been problematic, but combined their effect on female voters is that of a Tyrannosaurus rex approaching a Gallimimus herd.
She tries to argue that Limbaugh is not really the leader of the Republican Party, but then throws in this:
Even so, he does have a large audience and it is disconcerting that so many seem to share his obvious hostility toward women. Several of his cohorts in discourtesy are snorting and grunting in my inbox even now.
One who wrote in defense of Limbaugh informed me of my place in God’s hierarchy, slightly above goats, and gave me a tutorial about why women have been saddled with the monthly inconvenience and painful childbirth — for tempting men to do evil and failing to recognize their roles as “helpmeets†for men.
“Pagan women like yourself,†he patiently averred, “have no regard for the natural order of God’s plan and shamelessly promulgate the ‘we are goddesses’ bile that has infected the entire country and pretty much stopped it in its tracks from incurring God’s blessing.†I’m leaving out the best parts.
You don’t have to read many such letters to think that maybe Democrats have a point.
Ya think?
Yet it is false to imagine that any objection to abortion is necessarily anti-woman. It may feel that way to women seeking abortions. And it may look that way when those pushing anti-abortion measures are men whose experience in such matters is biologically irrelevant. As feminist Flo Kennedy said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.â€
And if it’s got webbed feet and feathers and quacks ….
Unfortunately, the conservative governing principles that traditionally attracted level heads to the right side of the aisle have been incrementally subsumed by social issues — a bull’s-eye for Democrats and a black eye for Republicans.
… The GOP long ago made its bed with social conservatives, a large percentage of them Southern evangelicals, and now must sleep with them. After marriage, of course.
In between these little gems, Parker throws in some verbiage to the effect of “but we’re really the party of small government!”
Yeah, right.
In a similar vein, E.J. Dionne (who still suffers from the vapors at the indignities heaped upon the poor Catholic Church recently) adds this:
In his diocesan newspaper, Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, wrote: “The provision of health care should not demand ‘giving up’ religious liberty. Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship. Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. All of these were co-opted by the government. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society.â€
My goodness, does Obama want to bring the Commies back?
Cardinal Dolan is more moderate than Cardinal George, but he offered an unfortunate metaphor in a March 3 speech on Long Island. “I suppose we could say there might be some doctor who would say to a man who is suffering some sort of sexual dysfunction, ‘You ought to start visiting a prostitute to help you, and I will write you a prescription, and I hope the government will pay for it.’ â€
Did Cardinal Dolan really want to suggest to faithfully married Catholic women and men who decide to limit the size of their families that there is any moral equivalence between wanting contraception coverage and visiting a prostitute? Presumably not. But then why even reach for such an outlandish comparison?
Well, my guess is that the dude has serious hangups about women and sex that should have been left behind in the 14th century. And this is why they are in no position to make demands of the rest of us.
Finally, Charles Johnson chronicles rightie blogosphere reaction to the killing of 16 Afghani civilians yesterday. It’s genuinely disgusting stuff; “the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim” is one of the milder comments. Like BooMan, I haven’t forgotten that Little Green Footballs used to be dedicated to that very kind of hate speech, but there’s no question Johnson came to his senses, and maybe others can, too.
But the point is that this is the nature of the beast. Polemicists like Parker try to pretend that the Republican Party is still the party of sober men and women in sensible cloth coats — if in fact that’s what it ever was — but I think it’s closer to reality to say that they’re the scorpion and the rest of us are the frog.
It’s been a while since I linked to a Steve Benen post about the Mendacity of Mittens, but here is a recent one. See also David Bernstein and Paul Waldman.
So, yes, the GOP field is a pack of mutts, but possibly the most bizarre behavior of the lot of them, which is saying something, is Mitt’s lying. Yeah, politicians lie, but not like this. They spin, they stretch, they take stuff out of context. Romney just makes it up.
Bernstein writes,
I think we’ve seen, over the past couple of months, an important tipping point where much of the national political media now recognizes — as the McCain team did during that January 2008 St. A’s debate — that, in the Romney campaign, they are dealing with something unlike the normal spin and hyperbole. They are realizing that Romney and his campaign simply cannot be trusted, in any way, about anything.
They are also coming to realize just how carefully controlling Romney is about the media, how little access and information the media will get from the candidate and the campaign, and how hostile Romney is toward them.
And Waldman says,
So here’s my question: Just what will it take for reporters to start writing about the question of whether Mitt Romney is, deep within his heart, a liar?
Because he does this kind of thing frequently, very frequently. Sometimes the lies he tells are about himself (often when he’s trying to explain away things he has said or done in the past if today they displease his party’s base, as he’s now doing with his prior support for an individual mandate for health insurance), but most often it’s Barack Obama he lies about. And I use the word “lie” very purposefully. There are lots of things Romney says about Obama that are distortions, just plain ridiculous, or unfalsifiable but obviously false, as when he often climbs into Obama’s head to tell you what Obama really desires, like turning America into a militarily weak, economically crippled shadow of Europe (not the actual Europe, but Europe as conservatives imagine it to be, which is something like Poland circa 1978). But there are other occasions, like this one, where Romney simply lies, plainly and obviously. In this case, there are only two possibilities for Romney’s statement: Either he knew what Obama has said on this topic and decided he’d just lie about it, or he didn’t know what Obama has said, but decided he’d just make up something about what Obama said regardless of whether it was true. In either case, he was lying.
The narrative the Press has been going by is that Ron Paul is a flake, Noot and Frothy are bomb-throwing clowns, and Mittens is the relatively “normal” one. But the truth is Mittens may be the sickest one of all.
A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan is accused of killing 16 civilians. He is thought to have left his base during the night and to have gone from house to house shooting people, including women and children.
Keeping in mind that these are early reports, which may be inaccurate — needless to say this is really, really bad, on every level. The Obama Administration has been trying to orchestrate a reasonably graceful endgame, and one suspects that’s been blown out of the water.
Recent polls suggests that more Americans than not want the U.S. to just haul itself out of Afghanistan and let the chips fall. The way things are going, that may be the best option.
I’m watching “Game Change” on HBO, about the McCain Palin campaign, and it’s a hoot. If you’re missing it try to catch it when you can.
Update: Taylor Marsh writes a review with which I entirely agree. The movie was extremely kind to John McCain (played by Ed Harris), but it nailed Moosewoman (played by Julianne Moore, who will almost certainly be nominated for an Emmy for this).
It was priceless to watch Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) as the truth about Palin’s ignorance of the world dawns on him. He has to explain to Moosewoman what the Federal Reserve is and that the head of state in Britain is the prime minister, not the queen. There’s a great scene in which some foreign policy experts show up to prep Palin for some event, and they end up showing her a map of Europe and saying “See? This is Germany.”
And while you are at Balloon Juice, read about Fionn and Druid. Beautiful story.
Ninety-eight major advertisers are pulling all of their ads from “controversial” talk radio programs. John Avlon writes at Daily Beast:
Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).â€
This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).†Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.
Avlon suggests there’s a little more going on here than just disgust with what Rushbo said about Sandra Fluke. This is significant:
…this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.
One suspects that if these advertisers believed they were getting a good bang for their advertising buck on talk radio, they’d ignore the controversy. The way this episode has played out makes me think at least some of these companies were already losing interest in advertising on talk radio before Rushbo went overboard slut-shaming Sandra Fluke.
Avlon goes on to say that in the end, market forces made rightie talk radio viable, and now it’s possible market forces will kill it. Rush’s recent antics just hurried the process along a bit.
Update: See also Digby.
Update: See also Clarence Page. Like Page, I am skeptical we’re seeing the Twilight of Rushbo. If nothing else, Wingnut Welfare will kick in somehow and see to it he stays on the air. However, I wouldn’t have anticipated that so many major advertisers would suddenly decide to pull out of rightie talk radio.
Also as Page says, Limbaugh’s antics are hurting the Republican Party more than helping it. So maybe it’s OK if he stays around awhile longer.
Recently there’s been a substantial swing of women voters toward the Democratic Party. Gee, I wonder why that happened?
In other entertainment news, I see that comedian Louis C.K. was invited and then dis-invited to appear at the Radio and TV Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner, because a couple of years ago he tweeted some naughty things about Sarah Palin.
Now, this is no where in the same ball park as what Rushbo did to Sarah Sandra Fluke. But I’m not sorry some rightie “correspondents” like Greta Van Susteren complained about Louis C.K. It really is not OK to use sexual “jokes” to slam any woman, no matter how much you don’t like her. It’s as bad as using the “n” word to insult, say, Michael Steele. Sexually aggressive language puts down all women, because it suggests there is something substandard about being a women. And truly, Palin’s gender is probably the least objectionable thing about her.
So call Palin a twit, but not a tw*t, please.
Update: Some newspapers pulling next week’s Doonesbury.
Update: A Louis C.K. video that’s kind of on topic.
