Worst Person Of The Day: "Boss Limburger" Rush Limbaugh.

Today's Worst Person Of The Day is Rush Limbaugh, who has managed to once again say something utterly stupid on his own radio show.  This one was so stupid however, that I thought Alex Jones had accidentally been substituted for him on his radio show.

He was talking about as USA Today op-ed on America's greatness myths.  Society is built upon so many myths and falacies, it's actually shocking that it functions as well as it does.  Well, apparently, Rush doesn't like that idea so he came up with an idea of his own.

"This -- none of this could be happening of its own. It couldn't -- this is not happening because a majority of the American people want this. That’s what makes this so outrageous. We are being ruled and governed here by a really small minority who are using the power of fear and intimidation and economic destruction — that is key.  Once you take people’s money away from them, you own them. Once you take people’s ability to earn a living and you become the provider, you own them. That’s the first thing they did, was shut down this nation’s economy. Now they’re trying to get it shut down again under bogus COVID-19 numbers... ...But at the end of the day, everybody needed America. Every nation on Earth’s economy needs America. But our economy has been shut down. We got 44 million people out of work. We’ve got in Chicago alone 4,400 businesses which have been shut down and are said never to reopen again. And that’s one city. In Rome and throughout Italy, they’re losing $115 million a day via tourism. There isn’t any. They miss the United States.  The world depends on it. This is another thing that is by design in all of this. You take out the United States of America and you take out the United States economy, and you have set up your precious globalism and world government because you are creating worldwide poverty and thus worldwide need. And when you, the global government or whoever you are, become the provider to those in need, guess who you own?  But none of this could be happening if it weren’t for the fact that the United States is under assault and being taken down on the basis of a pack of lies. That our great history is nothing but a bunch of lies, that our history is nothing but a bunch of myths. How in the world can anyone with any kind of intellect at all look at the United States, see its role that it played in the establishment of human liberty and freedom, and want no part of it?  Well, obviously people to whom human liberty and freedom are a problem. To communists and socialists, human liberty and freedom, free choice, that’s a problem. The state becomes the repository of all freedom. The state determines who can do what, when, where, why. The state determines who has what. The state determines who gets what.
But how in the world can this -- I ask myself how in the world can otherwise intellectually qualified people not value the concept of individual liberty and freedom? And yet people who are leading this anti-American movement are of exactly that frame of mind, that somehow individual liberty and freedom pose the threat, pose the problem to the ongoing future."

That's just a small sample of a over 10 minute rant that spews out of the consciousness that is Rush Limbaugh.  Media Matters has the entire transcript if you want to read it, and the video of the rant if you want to hear and see it.

The main thing wrong with it is that it is the very embodiment of the myths that the writer was talking about.  The idea that somehow America is better than any other country in the world.  Where as in fact it's just one of over 200 countries and territories in the world today.  It's not even the largest by population.  Both India and China are way ahead on that count.  There's nothing inherently superior about the United States, just like there's nothing inherently superior about the UK, or any other country in the world.  The conflation of the old Russian "Communist" model with socialism is quite deliberate.  Socialism isn't about controling distribution of goods.  It's about making sure those goods reach market in a condition that isn't going to kill the consumer, even accidentally.  It's about making sure the water is clean, the food isn't going to kill you, the services are at a fair price.  It's all about all that and more.  It's got nothing to do with controlling everything, despite what the right wants you to believe.

Rush Limbaugh, The Worst Person Of The Day.

Fox News Channel: Now in self parody.

Crooks And Liars reported an interesting incident on Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday where Missouri’s Lieutenant Governor Peter Kindler (Rep) yes, a Republican, said to someone off-camera in what he thought was an off-air moment, "God, that is terrible TV,"

When one of your core audience starts calling it terrible TV, that should be setting off some alarm bells at Fox News HQ.  Unfortunately, it probably won’t and here’s why.

Long ago, when I first saw Fox News, prior to the 2006 US Congressional Election, Fox News was no less extreme right wing than it is now, but because there was a Republican President, it was far less crazy, and actually managed to come across as semi-sensible sometimes, although Bill O’Reilly was already descending into craziness and madness, and Sean Hannity’s craziness was balanced out, at least a little bit, by Alan Colmes, who was a moderate Democrat, but could at least talk sensibly on some issues.  Since they split up Hannity and Colmes, Sean Hannity’s descent has gone faster than Bill O’Reilly’s, which is kinda disturbing actually.

Nowadays, the craziness is like a pandemic.  It’s everywhere, from Fox & Friends First, through all the so-called news shows, Outnumbered, Your World with Neil Cavuto, The Five, Special Report, to all the opinion shows, On The Record, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Red Eye, there’s no escape from it.  Well, there is one, Shepard Smith Reporting.  It’s not an entirely crazy free zone, but there is far more sanity in that programme, than there is anywhere else on the Fox News schedule.

The channel has gone from semi-sensible, to a complete crazy, bouncing-off-the-rubber-walls self parody, and whilst it remains successful in TV ratings terms, the rest of the conservative media that feeds off it, is doing less well, and eventually, those problems may come to affect Fox News as well.

One of the biggest signs that Fox News may end up falling like the rest of the Conservative Media, is what is happening currently to the biggest name in American talk radio, Rush Limbaugh.  For years, Rush Limbaugh was the biggest thing in the Conservative Media, way bigger than Fox News, with way more listeners, and way more impact than Fox News has ever had.  Even in 2012, it was reported that Rush LImabugh had over 15 million listeners, compared to the 3 million or so who watch Fox News. 

But in 2012, the descent into madness that Rush Limbaugh had been going through since 2003, hit home to most of the American public, with a commentary Rush did on his show on February 29th 2012, yes, on leap day, when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, a student who had given testimony to a congressional comittee, a “prostitue” and a “slut”.  How appropriate that on Leap Day, Rush Limbaugh jumped the shark.

Since that day, a campaign has been underway to get Rush Limbaugh off the air, by informing sponsors and advertisers that they’re advertising on his show, and advising them to pull their sponsorship and their adverts.  And this campaign isn’t just focused on the national advertisers, but on the local advertisers on each of the stations that takes The Rush Limbaugh Show. 

The campaign, known both as Stop Rush and Flush Rush, has had a major impact.  Rush’s show lost stations quickly in the aftermath of the Sandra Fluke controversy, and has continued to lose stations since, with rumours of Chicago talk radio powerhouse, WLS AM, about to drop the show, being merely the latest in a long line of stories about stations dropping the show.  The show once aired on over 900 stations, now it’s more like over 500, and even then, in some markets, it was dropped by the major news/talk station and picked up by a smaller one.

Of course, there are problems with trying to shame advertisers away from Fox News Channel.  For instance, Fox deals with its own sales for all of its national television operations, so you can’t go after Fox News Channel on its own, you have to go after all of Fox, which might be more difficult to do given they have some of America’s most popular programmes on their network.

On the other hand, given now that Roger Ailes now runs the local stations side of the Fox Television operation, as well as Fox News and Fox Business, that might give an opening to say to advertisers, you are advertising on Fox’s news output, and hurt Fox News that way, especially if backed with a boycott of said companies and products. 

Perhaps the more lucrative angle here, is going after cable companies.  Fox News is distributed by cable companies and satellite broadcasters, so the best way to starve it of cash, maybe by not buying the packages it is in.  Where it is in basic TV packages, then write in campaigns should be used to persuade cable companies that there is a large market out there for a package that doesn’t include Fox News, and that both it and Fox Business should be pushed to a higher level package, so that if people don’t want to pay for it, they can avoid paying for it, or indeed, drop it altogether. 

The more people highlight the controversial stuff that Fox News spreads, the lies, the propaganda, the craziness and the complete and utter contempt for the real world, the more likely it will be that advertisers and cable companies, will slowly drop Fox News or move it to higher end packages where it will have less subscribers and less revenue. 

We can’t shame Fox News themselves, they have no shame, they are completely shameless.  So others who pay for them, must be persuaded not to pay for them.  TV is the only industry where you are forced to pay for products you don’t want, don’t watch and never will watch.  Would Fox News be able to survive on it’s revenue it would get if those who wanted it, had to pay a separate subscription to get it?  It’s not certain that it would, after all, television is an expensive business. 

Breaking News: Rush Limbaugh apologises.

Rush Limbaugh has released a statement on RushLimbaugh.com

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

This is a rare moment, and I applaud Rush for actually realising he went too far.

But, in my honest opinion, Rush Limbaugh should be removed from the airwaves by his syndicators, and he should never be allowed anywhere near a radio studio ever again.

There's an old saying. "With great power, comes great responsibility". As welcome as the apology is, he has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is not a responsible broadcaster.

Worst Person In The World: Orly Taitz... again!

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Worst Person In The World: Pastor Wylie Drake

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Worst Person In The World: Boss Limburger!

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Viewpoint - Idiot Brigade Awards! - 7th-13th June 2009

Ian Beaumont has 3 gold medal worthy moments of idioticness to talk about, but only one can get the first Idiot Brigade Awards Gold Medal!  Will it be the Malk Maid, Michelle Malkin who gets the gold medal?  Or perhaps Boss Limburger of the Republican Party himself, Rush Limabugh! 

 

Look out for another Idiot Brigade Awards episode next Saturday here on Viewpoint.

Worst Person In The World: MIchelle Bachmann

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Worst Person In The World: Boss Limburger!

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Worst Person In The World: Rush Limbaugh

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Worst Person In The World: May 20th 2009

Glenn Beck, aka “Harold Hill” won last night’s Worst Person in the World segment on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  I tried posting the video, but somehow the code MSNBC provided wasn’t working.  I’ll figure it out later.

Video Blogging Week on Viewpoint - Day 5 of 7

Day 5 of Video Blogging Week



Another post tomorrow.

Dick Cheney shows up the failure of Conservative-Republicanism.

The Republican Party as of late seems to resemble a circular firing squad.  Even when they're aiming at the opposition, they do a "Dick Cheney" and hit their own men.  But now, the original has decided to add his bullets into the mix, and despite being aimed at US President Barack Obama, he manages to only shoot the Republicans collectively in the foot.

He appeared on CNN's State of the Union with John King, and proceeded to demonstrate yet again why the Republican Party not only lost both in 2006, and 2008, and why it will continue to lose until it disengages itself from rabid right wing conservatives like Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh.

"Limburger" and his fellow right wing talk show hosts, such as Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, are the public face of the GOP right now.  And Ugh!!! What a revolting face it is.  And the likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, do nothing to improve the public face of Republicanism.  In fact, if anything, they've actually managed to make it look worse now, than at election time back in November 2008.  Add into that mix, the new, and perhaps soon to be evicted, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt "Gingrinch" Gingrich, and a few others, and you have the political equivalent of a mass of bird poop!

The "circular firing squad" description that has become prevalent over the last couple of weeks, is very apt, but in some ways, doesn't do the situation real justice.  On top of this, you have moderate republicans, and rabid conservatives fighting for what is left, of the soul of the party, after "Emperor" Cheney and "Darth" Bush basically tore it out.  It's not just random shots being fired, it's an ideological battle, between unmoveable, unshakeable, unfathomable conservatism, which believes it is right, and everybody else is wrong, even the majority, and the more moderate republicans who have read the tea leaves correctly and realise that the centre ground NEEDS to be retaken in order to make the party electable again, and believe that conservatism will ultimately destroy the party.

Perhaps the conservative movement should get behind their own parties.  They have two of them after all.  The American Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party of the United States of America.  Why tack themselves onto the Republican Party?

The answer of course is simple.  The conservative movement, knows full well that it cannot run and win under its own banner.  Therefore, they tack themselves onto the more moderate Republican banner to become winners.  They think that by doing that, the public won't notice that Conservatism, and Republicanism, aren't necessarily the same thing.  The only time they go against that meme is a time like now when by linking the two, they've brought the Republican Party down badly, so they try to highlight the fact that Republicanism and Conservatism are different agendas.  Sorry guys, but you can't have it both ways!

At this point in time, it's difficult to see how the Republican Party can come back into electability, because right now, it looks like it's heading further and further out towards the extremities, and as the UK's Conservative Party proved from 1997 until recently, heading back to your base is a sure fire way to make yourself unelectable.

Worst Person In The World: Sarah Palin

Governor Sarah Palin won Tuesday's Worst Person In The World honours.

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Special mention goes to Comedian Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh, for accusing comedian come senator, him, Al Franken, of stealing the election. Perhaps he should reminded of a charge that he dismissed back in 2000, that a certain George W Bush stole the election in Florida, thereby giving him the WhiteHouse. They say that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The trouble is Limbaugh and his ilk throw concrete blocks in houses that are all glass, on quicksand foundations. Yet they still, just, manage to keep their heads above the waterline.

Worst Person In The World: Oliver North

Former Iran Contra Colonel Oliver North wins the award this time for saying that Barack Obama was wrong to look at talking to Iran and quoting John McCain who said that "...you can’t have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions with despots and dictators..."  This from then guy who co-ordinated sales of American weapons to the military of Iran!

 

 

Dishonourable mentions go to William Kristol, whose memory seems to be failing and his research non existant, and also to Rush Limbaugh, who tried to do rebuttal on Barack Obama by slamming an 1996 online essay about the Great Depression, written by someone who was a tenth grader in 1996!

Worst Person In The World: E. D. Hill.

Wednesday night's winner was E. D. Hill of Fox News Channel. Funnily enough, according to Wikipedia, her real name is Edith Ann Tarbox! You know, Miss Hill, you could have gotten away with using the name Edie, instead of tunring it into meaningless initials!



Dishonourable mention goes to right wing water carrier Rush 'Limburger' Limbaugh, who's "OperationE Chaos" backfired so spectacularly, that he changed his tune and said he wanted it to do that! Is there a Republican in the US who can actually say "sorry, I made a mistake" and then just go oops and get out of the way for a small amount of time, say about 2 years???

Worst Person In the World: Dick Morris

Last night, was another special edition of Countdown, on NBC. And as usual, it featured some of the MSNBC regular features, such as Worst Person In The World. The Bronze, for the third edition in a row, went to WalMart, who own Asda in the UK. They've sued a former employee who was broadsided by a semi, and claimed over $400,000 in compensation which was being used to provide 24 hour care for her, since she was brain damaged as a result of the broadsiding. WalMart sued and won in court a claim for all the money this woman had in the world. I understand that Keith will continue awarding Bronzes every night to Walmart until they atone, which they should do VERY quickly, since this is generating tons of negative publicity for the company.

Silver went to Rush Limburger, I mean, Rush Limbaugh, and former Clinton advisor Dick Morris got the gold. Check out the video below.

Putting the BOOT in!

I love reading Teri's Booted Up blog which is part of the Bootlovers.com site. I love boots, and gloves, the longer, the better in my book, and Teri is great for all my favourite pictures, but this time, I actually agree with her on something she says.

She posted a real vintage picture and then actually went off on a tangent about Rush Limbaugh and other "...dickless wonders..." who go off on one about "...femi-nazis..." as they call them, but comes the Universal Translator as fetishists.

I support every word she says. Read and inwardly digest.

Editorialising The News

I have a confession to make. I would call myself something of a news junkie. I regularly have one of the 24 hour news channels on in the background, and I download lots of news podcasts from different broadcasters all over the world. The reason for this is simple: it gives me a wide variety of different perspectives on the news, and on how the media itself reports the news.

But I do have another motive for my possible over-consumption of news programming. It gives me a better chance to separate the facts of a news item from any unintentional or deliberate bias that might be injected into a story, and also allows me to eliminate the ‘tabloid’ hype and clichés that are used to ‘sell’ you the story. It gives me a purer, more factual perspective on the news, and it has shown up a trend that started in newspapers, but is showing through in broadcasting and the new media.

I call it “Politicising” or “Editorialising” the story. Like so many trends, this one seemed to start in the United States a number of years ago, quite probably around the time when the media regulator there, the Federal Communications Commission, decided to do away with an ‘equal time’ rule, which allowed aggrieved parties equal time to respond. This rule was done away with in 1985, during the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan.

Now let me get one thing straight. You had conservative talk show hosts prior to 1985, and they did not give equal time to all issues, but there was far less difference between perspectives than there is now. But in 1994, the political world in the USA was turned upside down by the election of a Republican Congress, under the political leadership of House Speaker Newt Gingrinch Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey and Majority Whip Tom Delay aka “The Hammer”.

In 1995, this triumvirate of Republican leaders managed to get not only Conservative radio talk show hosts, but Conservative newspaper editors to all speak with one voice rather than many voices, in opposition to the Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Clinton was incredibly popular with both Democrats and Independents, but Republicans hated him, with a greater vengeance than had ever been seen against any Democrat before.

It was around this time that the Republican message about the so-called ‘Liberal Media’ first became really widely known, and even slightly considered to be even possibly accurate. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News Channel to be a conservative news network, as opposed to CNN, which got labelled the Clinton News Network by some conservatives. It was the first time that the news itself was becoming well and truly politicised in the broadcast medium.

Until this time, in broadcast news at least, the news was the news and that was it. You may have had bulletins created for a younger audience for example, but targeting the news with a particular political bias was regarded as an absolute no-no. However, conservatives felt that the mainstream media, or as conservative radio talk show host Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh calls them, the ‘drive-by media’, were not being critical enough of the Clinton administration, hence the idea that the mainstream media had a liberal bias. Of course, few anticipated the story that was going to engulf the news media in 1998.

Before news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Republicans had been so desperate to pin anything on Bill Clinton, that they were practically begging the media, especially Fox News, to throw them even a small bone to gnaw on. But when the story broke in January 1998, both Republicans and the media realised that they hadn’t been given a small bone to gnaw on, but a huge, meaty, 8 course feast to gorge on - and gorge on it they did!

For over a year, the media became more and more divided over the Lewinsky scandal, and whilst Republicans did not get the impeachment that they wanted, the real result of this effort came in 2000, with the most politically divisive election that there had ever been between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush. It ended in the ‘hanging chads’ debacle in Florida, and a win for George W Bush, a win that Fox News had declared on the night, only to have to retract it later the same night.

What had really been happening was that the conservative media had been moving further and further away from the rest of the media. But that seemed to be over, on September 11th 2001.

Almost every media outlet around the world was united in shock and outrage at the deliberate crashing of two planes into the World Trade Center in New York City. This single act managed to do what had hitherto seemed impossible, uniting the conservative and mainstream media in the US. For about 2 years, these two arms of the media would act as one.

However, a new media form, which had been coming together since 1994, would be partially responsible for the re-separation of the conservative and mainstream media: the weblog, aka blog. Bloggers had been around for quite a few years, but in 2002, this new internet media format, which had been used for years as a rebroadcast, and latterly a new broadcast medium, suddenly started to make itself widely known on both the US and world stage.

This new medium has become as politically divided as the rest of the media, and in some ways is still finding its feet. Some proposals to regulate the format, such as a Blogger’s Code Of Conduct, have been regarded by some political bloggers as tantamount to censorship.

Blogging grew from being a text-only medium, to an audio and then video medium. Blogs can be exclusively text, exclusively audio, exclusively video, or any combination of all three. Some bloggers have crossed over into other media, such as Michelle Malkin and Ariana Huffington. But there are many more out there for whom the blog is perhaps as close to fame as they will ever come.

With blogs being liberal, conservative, and all political points in-between, we have seen the development of true ‘liberal media’. Liberal Blogs now sit alongside the liberal talk radio network Air America Radio and Sirius Left on sateliite radio and liberal newspapers as being the real ‘liberal media’. Conservative media is representated by conservative newspapers and blogs, conservative talk radio, and of course, the ever-controversial Fox News Channel.

The rest of the news media, mainly radio news and most TV news, including the public /public-service media, try to maintain going down the political centre, even if they cannot claim to be unbiased. But of course, the politically biased dislike any media that do not agree with them.

There are a number of blogs that attack the public media for not being biased in their direction. Most are politically conservative, but one, surprisingly perhaps, is Liberal.

Today, through ‘user-generated content’, such as blogs, podcasts, public access TV channels, and Current TV, there are millions of voices out there. And while some have suggested that this would lead to democratization of the media, it could be argued instead that something like the opposite is happening - something that none of us ever dared imagine. We are seeing the news media as a whole, and individual news stories, used as political pawns, rather than as something that we use to base solutions on. This process of politicisation is only going to get worse, until the media get their act together en masse, stop trying to promote political viewpoints, and go back to doing what they do best: just reporting the facts and getting to ‘the truth’.