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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 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.

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?

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 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. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/04/15/has-rush-limbaugh-fin
ally-reached-the-end-of-the-road/

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As of April 12, 2014, some of the sponsors that haven’t been heard of in months include: Sodastream, Club Glove, Fin Electric Cigarettes, Mannheim Steamroller, Kars4Kids, Sears, Taco Bell, Jewelry Exchange, National Association of Realtors, SweetJack, New Vitality, Greenlight Financial Services, Stanley Steamer, Midas, Income At Home, Verengo Solar, Taste Of Home, Gold Bond, NFL Monday Night Football, Reagan.com, University of Iowa, and Blue Bell Ice Cream. ( http://samuel-warde.com/2013/06/and-now-a-word-from-2773-rush-limbaugh
-sponsors-goodbye/)

Things have gotten so bad for Rush Limbaugh, that Cumulus Radio Network also complains of losing millions of dollars due to Limbaugh’s insane and erratic behavior on the air. A representative from the company even said that many companies are reluctant to invest because of Rush, and say that 49 out of 50 advertisers have ‘No-Rush’ clauses when buying air time. ( http://samuel-warde.com/2014/04/major-limbaugh-sponsors-go-silent/)

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Usually I would shun any additional attention aimed at the Kardashian of conservative radio, Rush Limbaugh. His shocking brand of discourse was never intended to shine a light on issues he legitimately cares about. Rather, his churlish antics serve only to increase the profile of Rush Limbaugh. It would not be surprising if the adage ‘The only bad press is no press’ was tattooed under one of his musty and fungal-rich body folds he uses to trap lint, the odd crumb of food, and an errant oxycontin.

Too often, that bloated and gelatinous mass of what once could pass for being human has bloviated on feminazis, “Barack the Magic Negro” and that slut, Sandra Fluke, to name a but a few. And each time, with perhaps only mild rumblings from his cadre of advertisers, he has basically escaped unscathed for his trademarked brand of comment that has been excised of any and all civility. So, if past performance is the best predictor for future outcomes, I don’t want to see any energy wasted on exalting that ego.

But then there’s Jon Stewart. Dear, dear Jon Stewart. His ‘The Daily Show’ has been unafraid to shame those who engage in hypocrisy, willful ignorance and who blatantly disregard truth in the aim of furthering their agenda. Of course, Fox News gets their fair share of being called out. But so, too, do CNN and that bastion of the liberal media that Stewart allegedly is in cahoots with, MSNBC.

Last night, however, Stewart was in rare form. By now you have heard about the over 200 girls who were kidnapped at gunpoint from their school in Nigeria. The perpetrators of this heinous crime, Boko Haram, have vowed to sell the girls into slavery, a right they claim granted them by Allah. Stewart pointed out how the President of Nigeria, Good Luck Johnathan, and his government were trying to sweep the whole incident under the rug (Stewart: How big are Nigerian rugs?) until two of the mothers took to Twitter with messages and the #BringBackOurDaughters hashtag which ignited a social media and global consciousness of the situation.

#BringBackOurDaughters morphed into #BringBackOurGirls and has garnered attention from high-profile individuals in the fields of sport, celebrity, politics and activism. #BringBackOurGirls has also, for some inane reason, garnered the ire and derision of more than a few right wing hacks. Man Coulter’s horse faced photo holding a sign mocking the Nigerian cause (#BringBackOurCountry) exposed her simply as one willing to exploit any situation for her own brand of whatever the hell it is she does. An example of instant karma if ever I’ve seen one, a special photoshop revenge taught her that mocking the Gods of Social Media would exact a quick punishment.

Right wing radio, however, is rarely subjected to such swift justice. Jon Stewart changed all that when he took Limbaugh to task for mocking the many who did their own small part by posting photos of themselves to different social media platforms holding signs with the consciousness raising hashtag. As a result of the social activism, President Good Luck Johnathan finally relented on turning down outside assistance and welcomed forces from around the world into his country to aid in the search for the missing girls. “That’s the thing about social activism,” said Stewart. “It cannot stop a crazy person from doing something. But it can shame a less crazy person into not doing nothing whilst apparently driving a medium-crazy person crazier” (emphasis added)

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“There’s a photo of Mrs. Obama looking sad. Is that not pathetic? What the hell message does that send,” Limbaugh screeches out. “It is just unbelievable. The sad thing here is that the low-information crowd that is puddling around out there on Twitter is going to believe that we are actually doing something.”

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Jon Stewart, in his wonderfully dry delivery comments “He seems nice,” before launching into El Rushbo with a fervor not seen since his excoriating tirade against the U.S. Congress when they were voting down health benefits for surviving first responders of the attacks on 9/11. As Stewart conceded to Limbaugh, saying that yes, we must all pick sides, a picture of Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl who was shot multiple times by a faction of the Taliban simply for being a girl who wanted an education, was put on the screen next to Jabba the Rush.

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“So that’s our choice: Malala or Rush — the quivering rage heap who is apparently desperately trying to extinguish any remaining molecule of humanity that might still reside in the Chernobyl-esque superfund cleanup site that was his soul,” said Stewart. “Who should we choose? Well I don’t know, why don’t we tweet our votes to hashtag #F*@KYOURUSH.”

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And with that, almost immediately the social media universe was awash in tweets with that and similar hashtags urging Mr. Limbaugh to go and do to himself what most assuredly has been a physical impossibility for him for many a decade, if not the entirety of his life. http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/05/14/limbaugh-nigeria-comments/

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Nominees are selected by the most objective method possible, sales, while the winners are supposedly picked by kids, who vote online. But executive director Robin Adelson of the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader, nonprofit organizations that co-founded the awards seven years ago, acknowledged Thursday that adults could easily vote and vote multiple times, a problem not uncommon for Internet competitions.

"Every one of our finalists gets fake votes every year," Adelson told The Associated Press. "We like to think that's the enthusiasm of adults who love children's books."

Adelson cited three ways that people can vote: a widget that can be embedded in such popular kids' websites as www.poptropica.com, a link on the awards website ( http://ccbookawards.com) that allows individuals to vote and a link on the awards site that allows teachers, librarians and others to submit bulk votes on behalf of their institution.

Adelson said she doubted that parents or other grown-ups were voting through Poptropica, but acknowledged the awards site was more likely to be manipulated. An individual voter can vote multiple times and does not need to provide a verifiable email address or proof of his or her age. Bulk voters are required to submit a verifiable email, but there is no guarantee that a given teacher or librarian is really expressing the wishes of others

Limbaugh has touted his nomination on his radio show and on his website, www.rushlimbaugh.com . Adelson said Limbaugh initially enjoyed a wide lead, but that voting tightened considerably in the final weeks and the outcome was "fair and close." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/limbaugh-childrens-book-award
-rush_n_5330294.html

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