Tracking the Rush Limbaugh maelstrom, one mini-roundup at a time
WRDU in Raleigh, N.C., which bills itself as “Rush Radio,” is the FM home of the Tarheels Sports Network in the Triangle. Blogger James Protzman, whose wife, Jane Brown, is a professor at the University of North Carolina, is calling for the university to rethink this relationship. ¶ Somewhat counterintuitively, Michael Kinsley suggests that the anti-Limbaugh push is phony: “The self-righteous parade out the door by Limbaugh’s advertisers is hard to stomach. Had they never listened to Rush before, in all the years they had been paying for commercials on his show?” ¶ It’s not quite correct for Limbaugh to apologize as if he’d committed one transgression, notes Erik Wemple: He has attacked Fluke at least 20 times. ¶ Premiere Networks, which syndicates Limbaugh’s show, used a shopworn statement — “We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions” — to defend him. New West Broadcasting Corp. of Hawaii is exercising its right to disagree with Limbaugh by dropping his show. Also, it’s getting hard to keep track of which advertisers have left the show. ¶ WBEC in Pittsfield, Mass., also is dropping Limbaugh, something I learned from David Folkenflik on Twitter. ¶ Quantcast says users of Rush Limbaugh’s website are mostly white, male and twice as likely to be over 65 as the Internet average. More than half of them have no kids, they make good money, and they’re well-educated. There are no outside ads on Rushlimbaugh.com right now, even though the controversy has increased traffic substantially.
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