Limbaugh’s Latest Lame Excuse: Liberals Made Him Do It!
Posted: March 5, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, Republican politics, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: Birth Control, Clear Channel, contraception, John McCain, Premiere Radio Networks, Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke 42 Comments
So much has been happening with the Rush Limbaugh story today, that I thought I’d post an update.
Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers are dropping like flies. This morning the eighth and ninth sponsors–AOL and Tax Resolution Services Co.–withdrew their ads form his show. This afternoon, two more sponsors–Bonobos and Sears–pulled their ads. It’s practically a stampede! At least one radio station, KPUA in Hawaii, has also cancelled the program.
Even John McCain–the closest thing the Republican Party has to an elder statesman–has now called Limbaugh’s behavior “totally unacceptable.”
Speaking on CNN’s “Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien,” the Arizona lawmaker and 2008 GOP presidential nominee said Limbaugh was an “entertainer,” but that the remarks were “totally unacceptable, totally and completely unacceptable, and there’s no place for it.”
Fluke herself said today on The View that Rush’s faux apology “doesn’t change anything,” noting that Limbaugh hasn’t called to apologize to her personally and she really hopes he doesn’t!
Media Matters has catalogued some of Limbaugh’s greatest hits from his “decades of sexism and misogyny.”
But Rush still doesn’t get it. On his Monday show, Limbaugh once again pretended to apologize for his disgusting behavior, while claiming liberals made him do it. Eric Wemple summarizes Limbaugh’s latest lame effort:
“Give me 30 minutes — I want to explain why I apologized,” said Limbaugh just after noon.
The reason he apologized, he says, is that he descended to such a low, such a scummy, gutter-level depth . . . that he started to resemble liberals: ”I don’t expect morality, intellectual honesty from the left — they’ve demonstrated their willingness to say or do anything. This is the mistake I made: In fighting them . . . I became like them. Against my own instincts, against my own knowledge.”
Limbaugh further mentioned that he felt “very badly” because he’d “used those two words [slut and prostitute] to describe Sandra Fluke and I feel very badly about that. . . . I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for using those two words to describe her. The apology to her over the weekend was sincere. It was simply for using inappropriate words. . . . I ended up descending to their level. It’s important never to be like them.”
I can’t quite make sense of this, but it appears that Limbaugh is only sorry for the two words he used–slut and prostitute–but not for saying Fluke should post sex videos on the internet for him to watch or claiming that she “has so much sex” that she can’t afford all the pills she needs, or for claiming that she has boyfriends lined up around the block to have sex with her.
The show’s parent company Premiere Radio Networks also tried to explain away Limbaugh’s days of repulsive attacks on Sandra Fluke and the 99% of women who have used contraception:
Premiere Radio said in a statement Monday that it respects Limbaugh’s right to express his opinions, and said that “in an attempt at absurdist humor to illustrate his political point, Mr. Limbaugh used words that unfortunately distracted from the message he was trying to convey.”
The company said Limbaugh did the right thing by “expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke.”
I guess Premiere Networks and Clear Channel did not realize Limbaugh would spew out more personal attacks at Sandra Fluke today. It seems he is simply unable to control himself. From Think Progress:
LIMBAUGH: Her testimony was not that of an expert, it was just another expert person in this case, Sandra’s case. 30-year old activist after years of a career championing birth control issues. In fact, she told stories less about birth control as a social tool, which is of course the left’s true agenda, and more about birth control as a medication for treating other conditions, such as pregnancy. To the left, pregnancy is a disease. […]
Sandra Fluke gave vague examples based on unnamed friends, who she says couldn’t afford birth control to treat medical conditions they had, since Georgetown University wouldn’t pay for them. … Or so she says. We still don’t know who any of these friends of hers are, these other women, and we don’t know what happened to them. Her testimony was hearsay, and it was unprovable. […]
But the point here is that this was an issue that represents a tiny, tiny slice of what the Democrats really want here. They use Sandra Fluke to create a controversy. Sandra Fluke used them to advance her agenda, which is to force a religious institution to abandon their principles in order to meet hers.
So Fluke isn’t a “slut” anymore–she’s not only a dupe of the Democratic Party but also she’s duping the party into getting what she wants! WTF?! This incoherent moron is the spiritual voice of the Republican Party?
It appears that the suits in charge of Premiere Radio Networks and most likely Limbaugh’s lawyers are trying to get him to apologize, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. This mess has to be hurting the Republican Party, particularly on the eve of Super Tuesday, but it appears that most Republican leaders are still too afraid of this piggish, repulsive man to take any real action. You’d think at least Mitt and/or Ann Romney would speak up, since Bain Capital owns Clear Channel Communications.
I’ll update with any new developments in the comments to this post.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Believe it or not, I caught a few minutes of his show while out this afternoon on my car radio.
Some woman called in, blessing and praising him if you can believe that.
He then made some lame claim to being worried about the way this culture has been moving for the last 20 years which compels him to speak out.
Rush the Patriot! Sounds a lot like Newt who has one less ex wife sitting in the bleachers.
These people are sick. And there seem to be quite a lot of them sitting in positions of power which makes it even sicker.
I’ve heard more of his show in the past week than I ever heard before in my life. And it’s already waaaaayyy too much for me. Not only is this man crude and piggish, but he’s semi-literate, incoherent, and childish. I can’t believe this is the person all the righties look up to.
Some British guy tries to figure out what’s going on over here.
I can imagine that every other country’s trying to figure it out. We used to stand for progress and tolerance. I’m expecting to read that Rick Santorum’s flew a plane into a university some where in the name of what’s “moral”.
LOL! I’m just glad Rick Sanchez isn’t around anymore to opine on all this. Meanwhile, Bill O’Reilly is now attacking Sandra Fluke.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/03/bill-oreilly-sandra-fluke-limbaugh_n_1318249.html?ref=mostpopular
Falafel must have felt left out,
Yeah, the US brand is getting shot to hell. Just check out the deals on a .us website. Talk about American “values” 3.99 a year…its a deal!
He is in the dark as much as the rest of us.
I keep asking: How did it get to this?
This is the next step–a purity test out of South Carolina if you want to be a Republican.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/sc_county_gop_if_youve_had_pre-marital_sex_you_can.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
They’re insane clear and simple. There’s really no way to explain this sort of nonsense. A purity test! I’m guessing chastity belts come next.
This is just too funny for words. I guess it’s one way to attempt to avoid the “hypocrite” label. It does prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that to be a Republican you must be an idiot.
Damn, I can’t be a republican. What will I ever do? To the fainting couch.
I wonder where that state GOP places masturbation?
Christian Taliban — ignorance and mythology enforcement squad.
Don Imus assumes the role of the pot calling the kettle black:
Imus still doesn’t get it. It’s not about apologizing after doing something like Limbaugh did. When you do that there is no coming back, your ass should be over!
Does Patricia Heaton have a career left or is there something we can do to usher her ignorant ass into obscurity too?
http://todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10584003-patricia-heaton-back-on-twitter-sorry-for-bashing-georgetown-student
She’s back on tv in The Middle, part of ABC’s Wednesday night line up.
I never could stand her even when I didn’t know she was a fembot. Probably the main reason I never watched or liked raymond. What little I saw flipping channels. Too bad they didn’t make a sit com about the parents and leave raymond and the shrill one off the show.
Until this got started, I didn’t know if she was still alive or not let alone had a career 🙂
Jeebus, What disgusting remarks. I knew Heaton was a J-freak, but I didn’t think she got involved with smearing people. I gave her a pass for her lunatic ways until now.
Her career died years ago.
BREAKING: @AllState pulls ads from Rush Limbaugh show. That’s #12.
I don’t think they were on anyone’s sponsor list. Guess they were collateral damage, in a good way.
The pressure’s on Capitol One now
A Hawaiian radio station, KPUA AM 670 said it has canceled his show entirely.
Average age of Limbaugh listener is 67 and O’Reilly viewer is 71.
wow … what’s the sex distribution?
http://www.sgalbert.com/2010/03/rush-limbaugh-audience-demographics.html
The Viagra Club
absolutely. lots of well off old men.
Is that for real? They’re a dying breed!
According to ThreeWickets that’s the demographic. I have no clue about the sex distribution. I think he got it from some media group on fb.
A second radio station in Pittsfield, MA has dropped the Limbaugh show.
http://nepr.net/news/pittsfield-mass-radio-station-drops-rush-limbaugh-after-contraception-controversy
RT @StopRush: Massachusetts’ WEBC radio reportedly cancels Rush Limbaugh program: http://bit.ly/wPNJsW — Onward!
That’s the same Pittsfield station in my comment. Just two stations so far.
ah, for some reason I thought it was a different one
It’s a start. People should contact their local stations and demand they drop him. I’ll do it tomorrow.
You knew it was bound to happen:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/pat-robertson-tornadoes-prayer_n_1321686.html
If you believe Pat Robertson has reached full blown dementia……clap your hands. Maybe he’ll go up in a puff of smoke!
Pat Robertson was sliding into dementia years ago – only he and his devout followers didn’t recognize it. The rest of the world outside of the U.S. media pays no attention to the simpleton. BTW, if one claps one hands and Tinkerbell lives, does that mean that Robertson will go up in smoke? If so, I’m clapping wildly – one less old white guy trying to reshape the world to his private fantasy.
{{clap,clap,clap}}
He is an idiot.
Limbaugh And The Right-Wing Nervous Breakdown
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203050003