Tag Archives: Rush Limbaugh

Good riddance to a nuisance

Sports, , , , , , , ,

DSC_0986.jpgHe was a Boston icon, yes. But Glenn Ordway was also such a vulgar, uncreative radio personality for so many years that his eventual termination is all the more embarrassing for its tardiness. Perhaps Ordway’s most enduring legacy is bringing Rush Limbaugh-esque sensibilities to Boston sports talk radio, and for that I say: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

The fall is a stunning one for Ordway even by the volatile standards of the radio business. He was the ringleader of the “The Big Show,” which featured him moderating a rotating cast of co-hosts, and the show was a tremendous ratings success through the late ’90s and well into the last decade.

Ordway signed a five-year contract worth a reported $1 million per year in January 2009, but there were out-clauses if certain ratings benchmarks weren’t met.

The launch of the CBS Radio-owned 98.5 The Sports Hub in August 2009 almost immediately revealed that there was room for two potent, strong-signaled sports radio stations in the market. It’s afternoon drive program, hosted by Michael Felger and Tony Massorotti, has consistently had stellar ratings the past couple of years.

The competition cut into Ordway’s audience — and in a sense, his salary. In September 2011, Entercom, WEEI’s parent company, cut his salary in half after the program failed to finish among the top three stations in the Boston market for a particular demographic in a specific number of consecutive Arbitron books.

In his own words:

“You’re going to hear nothing negative about anybody here,” said Ordway. “If you’re looking for that, you’re not going to find it here.”

On why he wasn’t expressing more of his disappointment publicly, Ordway said, “I was there on Day One. I was a big part of starting all this, so I’m really fond of it.”

Took him thirty years to find the high road, but glad to hear he’s briefly discovered it.

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False equivalency and the White House: Obama becomes a media critic

Media, Politics, , , , , ,

From the newly released New Republic interview with the president, Obama had some thoughts on the prevailing practices of today’s political media:

One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it…

The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. I think the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word. And I think at least leaders like myself—and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this—are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done…

In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, “A plague on both their houses.” On almost every issue, it’s, “Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree”—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?

Socialist America

Politics, , , , , , , ,

John Nichols suggests that all the talk of creeping “socialism” during the Republican primaries and beyond may have actually increased Americans’ positive disposition towards socialism generally:

A new Gallup Poll finds that socialism is now viewed positively by 39 percent of Americans, up from 36 percent in 2010. Among self-described liberals, socialism enjoyed a 62 percent positive rating, while 53 percent of Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic gave socialism a thumb’s up.

Needless to say, this provoked the predictable fine whine of right-wing media. The conservative Washington Times newspaper declared: “Yes, Democrats, liberals favor socialism.” The Business Insider website announced: “Everything Republicans Fear About Democrats Is True.” William F. Buckley’s old magazine, National Review, allowed as how there is “much that is peculiar, and much that is worrying” about the new polling data.

That reactionary Republicans get a little hysterical at the mention of the word “socialism” is not news. But the reaction to there reaction is. No two groups of Americans talk so much about socialism in so many public settings these days as Republican candidates and conservative commentators. And this appears to be influencing the discourse.

Indeed, it is fair to say that nothing has done more to promote the cause of socialism than the ranting and raving of Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. It’s not just that the right has spread the word about socialism, raising the ideology’s profile to levels rarely experienced in recent decades—if ever—and associating the ideology with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, President Obama and a lot of other programs and people that Americans actually like. The fact that so many agitated, angry and—at least in some cases—politically toxic characters go apoplectic at the mere mention of the ideology has undoubtedly caused millions of Americans who don’t know much about socialism to say to themselves, “Anything that Paul Ryan does not like must have some merit.”

But I have to agree with the National Review assessment that the Gallup survey information “is worrying”—at least for conservatives. The most significant increases in sympathy for socialism over the past two years—since the last time Gallup polled on economic and ideological terms such as “socialism” and “capitalism”—have been among self-identified “conservatives” and “Republicans.”

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A short blast through today’s Internetz

Miscellaneous, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are way too many funny and crazy things to see on the Internet today, so I suppose I’ll just have to link to them all. Here goes.

First off, Rush Limbaugh is launching a “Rush Babes” campaign to counterattack the National Organization for Women’s attempts to get advertisers to boycott his program:

Rush Limbaugh is fighting back against the National Organization for Women, the progressive women’s group that has been targeting local advertisers and affiliates in an effort to get the conservative talk show host off the air.

On his program today, Limbaugh announced a new National Organizaion for Rush Babes”dedicated to the millions of conservative women who know what they believe in: family, American Values, and not being told by Faux Feminist Groups how to think.”

Beyond the immediate laughter such a mental image provokes — what is a Rush babe, after all? an overweight, pale, white Midwesterner who hates Mexicans and loves Cheetos and Jim Carrey? — the comments section below the article is absolutely hilarious. See how quickly it devolves into complete insanity from its original starting point of…well, it was basically already insane when it started. I love Internet commenters.

Then, it turns out that, as soon as Michele Bachmann was out of the political limelight, she took stock of “birtherism” and decided, hell, being something other than American isn’t so bad after all. Therefore, she is now Swiss. I smell a double standard here:

Rep. Michele Bachmann is now officially a Swiss miss.

Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently became a citizen of Switzerland, making her eligible to run for office in the tiny European nation, according to a Swiss TV report Tuesday.

Best part is when they asked her if she’d consider running for Swiss public office: “Bachmann joked that the competition ‘would be very stiff because they are very good.'” And by that she means that they make more sense in English than she does.

A lot happened yesterday at the voting booth. Republican senator Dick Lugar of Indiana lost to Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock in the Republican primaries, signaling the further polarization of the Senate. (Of course, there is really only one “pole” here, and it is the fanatical right wing, but I digress.) Meanwhile, Wisconsin Democrats chose their candidate, Tom Barrett, to challenge Republican governor Scott Walker in the special recall election next month. But in the biggest piece of news, North Carolinians chose bigotry and homophobia over normality: yes, Amendment One passed overwhelmingly, which inscribes a prohibition of gay marriage and even civil unions into the state constitution.

Meanwhile, Democrats are worried about campaign dollars and where they’ll be going. The New York Times has more interesting backstory to the Chen Guangcheng saga. And the Underwear Bomber 2.0? Turns out he was a double agent working for the CIA. Nice work, but also a good reminder that the next terrorist attack is undoubtedly a matter of when, not if.

And lastly, because this is just too weird, I was looking through the Atlantic‘s stellar collection of Hindenburg photographs (it crashed 75 years ago last Sunday) and was actually viscerally shocked to see so much Nazi imagery in connection with the United States. It’s easy to forget that the Nazi Party existed before World War II began, and that they were fully recognized and welcomed abroad in many places, including in the United States. Anyway, worth checking out.

But they started it: a few thoughts on partisanship and when it’s OK to point a finger

Politics, , , , , , ,

For the last year or two, several of my friends and I have fashioned a mini-tradition out of emailing political articles to each other. As often as not, these email chains die on the vine, with nary a reply in sight. But the occasional subject will touch a nerve, prompting a barrage of reply emails with all the requisite jousts and parries.

The most recent addition to the series was sent by Ben* with the subject line, “Sometimes, I just hate politics…” The email linked to a YouTube video posted by the Wisconsin GOP in which Democratic politicians denouncing hateful rhetoric from the right were juxtaposed against footage of liberal protesters engaging in identical behavior. To Ben, the hypocrisy was nauseating: even the specter of a recent assassination attempt, far from halting the partisan bickering, instead served as a catalyst for more of it.

Unable to resist the bait — and I use the word “bait” loosely here, as that was not Ben’s intention — I responded, arguing that “equating Hosni Mubarak signs [used by public-sector employees in Wisconsin]…with, say, bringing guns en masse to town hall meetings is a bit of a dubious analogy.” I concluded with the estimate that “realistically, at least 75% of [the hyperbolic rhetoric] is coming from the (very far) right.” Continue reading But they started it: a few thoughts on partisanship and when it’s OK to point a finger →