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It was more embarrassing than a hard-on at a lesbian bar.
Right there, in the little ads section on the right-hand side of my Facebook page—among the ads specially chosen for me, mixed in with (my favorite) FIND GIRLS WHO LIKE TO DRINK promotion—an ad sponsored by the lefty phone company Credo: Tell Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers: Stop supporting attacks on women.
Not being a regular Rush listener, I don’t even know that he said anything special until I see this ad. The only way liberals hear about Limbaugh’s spew is through fanatical media monitors—guys and gals who listen to everything from the other side, then get outraged by it. The professionally outraged—call in the protest wagon!
The right wing has a slew of these I’m-telling-on-you spies. They monitor every TV and radio channel, every website…record everything. They urge boycotts for anything that supports homotude or questions Christianity. Pro-Israelis also have a slew of these fanatics. They urge boycotts for anything nice to Muslims.
Example: when All-American Muslim premiered on The Learning Channel, pressure from the pro-Israel right forced the Lowe’s company to drop its ads for that show.
The right-wing Florida Family Association, also pushing advertisers to drop that program, cheered Lowe’s decision. The rest of us felt a little ashamed.
Remember Janet Jackson’s tit? Hooey, what an outrage. A nipple (and I think the nipple was covered) on TV! Oh no! Boycott that girl!
And the Dixie Chicks saying something nasty about GW Bush Jr.? Horrible! Boycott them, too.
Go to yourchristianspace.com. You’ll find a list of “companies that support gay rights,” and suggestions to boycott them…NOW! Before it’s too late!
If, in our society, the way ideas can reach the masses is through the support of corporations and the reaction to any idea we don’t like is to boycott those corporate supporters, the corporate world will just stop taking risks and stop supporting ANYTHING that people may not like. The range of ideas will shrink. There’ll be nothing but THE FOOD CHANNEL and JERSEY SHORE. I expect there are people who want to boycott those, too.
Listen buckaroos, the antidote to speech you don’t like is not to ban it, but to answer it with speech you DO like. When Rush Limbaugh caved in and apologized for calling this Catholic college student “a slut,” Michael Moore tweeted this:
Rush– as soon as you started losing the big $$ from your hate speech you caved and obeyed the men who pay u. Who’s the prostitute now, bitch?
Go Michael! That’s the way to answer the bully pulpit. Don’t ban ‘em. Yell back at ‘em!
As of this writing 50 companies pulled their ads from the show. Two stations WBEC in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii stopped carrying the show.
Flash to a Korean bar in midtown NYC: I’m with April, one of my colored pals.
[Note to new readers: I don't get along with white people, especially white Americans. There are some OK ones, I'll admit. I've even met some, but as a group, they give me the creeps. Usually, it goes without saying that I'm with someone of some kind of color—yellow...brown...black...red...but here it's important, so I mention it. You'll see why.]
We talk about Rush Limbaugh.
“Sure,” April says, “let him say what he wants about us, about Obama, “the welfare cheats” everybody knows he’s talking about this,” she points to her brown arm, “but does anyone complain? Naw, no one complains…no boycotts.”
I raise my eyebrows, signaling her to continue.
She does, “But let him insult one white girl and POW!! The shit hits the central air conditioning.”
“So you agree with me on this free speech stuff?” I ask.
“I don’t give a shit about that,” she says. “What pisses me off is that there’s plenty of white women in the 1% and not plenty of African Americans…Colored people to you, Mykel… That fat white guy can say what he wants about US…no boycotts…no demands to take him off the air. But let him insult the purity of one white girl and—”
She snaps her fingers that way that colored girls have of snapping their fingers—making a large Z in the air, and adding a swish of the shoulder. You could just die watching it!
She continues, “You’ve got Michael Moore tweeting and the president calling her up. One white girl. Pisses me off.”
Wow! There’s a point of view I hadn’t even considered. Up to now it seemed just a question of free speech. Give the widest berth to the widest number of ideas. Now we’ve got class war…or race war…or something. Hmmmm.
Flash back to now: April was right, of course. The Republican War on Women has been the biggest vote getter for the Democrats. Not their war on the poor… their war on Muslims…their war on colored people…their war on the 99%.…Nope, people with money can’t get behind those things. But a WAR ON WOMEN… that’s something Ms. and Mr. Middleclass can be proud to fight against.
It only confirms what I started out saying. That is, we need the widest possible variety of viewpoints in the media. We need the broadest representation of politics and of people.
Instead of kicking Rush off the air, we should be demanding shows for Muslims. Instead of boycotting Rush’s sponsors, we should be urging them to ALSO sponsor THE NEGRO HOUR, ANARCHY AT NOON, and MEXICANS TAKE IT BACK. We need MORE opinions, not fewer.
Did you know there was a gay Muslim/Arab organization? Did you know there is a Black Agenda Radio program? They don’t have shows on major stations. AOL never supported them, let alone pulled out. Fans of their shows probably don’t have enough money to make even the minimum for a Capital One account, let alone threaten a boycott. (Capital One, like AOL, ditched Limbaugh.)
Facebook hosts Somos el 99%, a Hispanic group supporting the struggling barrel bottom. That’s it… just a page on Facebook. Where’s their corporate sponsorship? Hello Fubu?
How come you never heard of these groups? How come you’re not out there demanding a spot for them—on Fox, perhaps?
I’ll tell you why. You’re too busy protesting Rush. You’re too busy worrying about how to LIMIT speech instead of expanding it for EVERYONE.
In Europe, most countries have a strong government-supported PUBLIC broadcasting system. This guarantees free speech across a wide spectrum of speakers. There is no tyranny of the marketplace on these stations. Marketplace be damned. But in the US, even the weak “Public” Broadcasting System is beholden to corporations to make ends meet. Anything they do is subject to the power of consumers and their manipulators.
Am I against all boycotts?
Of course not. If a store sells sweatshop clothes or a cell phone maker uses exploitation factories or a restaurant steals tips or a farm or a factory exposes its workers to dangerous chemicals…I say, yeah! Boycott! But the boycott is a tool…like a hammer. You can use it to pound in a nail or to hit someone over the head. Boycotts attacking speech are hitting someone over the head. You may enjoy seeing it until the head that’s hit is yours.
—MYKEL BOARD
Actually your info on Rush is a little off.
Most of the advertisers on Rush’s show came crawling back, and his ratings actually went up:
http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/rush-fleeing-advertisers-getting-creamed/
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/march-radio-ratings-in-for-rush-limbaugh/
And two stations mean nothing when you’re syndicated on this many:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/stations/all_stations/
Lew Rockwell has also said that boycotts are largely stupid for similar reasons. I think alot of people majored in sociology in the 90′s and this stuff is just nostalgia for them.
All the groups you’re talking about have public access shows. The only viewers are Sal & Richard prank calling them.
MAN do I hate white people!!!! Coloreds are TOTALLY WHERE IT’S AT!!!
Hey hey, throw in a couple of pathetic boycotts from Jesse and Rev Al and you can have a party.
Wait, for some reason, black folks don’t seem have a way with boycotts like white people.
In fact, until some white people got outraged and joined the blacks (slow month for Rush) the Denny’s boycott was pretty much not happening.
And wasn’t it a bunch of white guys in the US Supreme Court that “gave” rights to blacks?
Seems like whites are always helping blacks, but do they get any thanks???
Heck, Charlton Heston was one of the first white actors that marched with MLK, and when he fronted for the NRA, some POS black rapper said “somebody ought to plug that old man”.
With nary a peep from the liberal press. But talk about hanging some black rapper and the literary axes come out.
Once again from the “white” press.
Why do white people have to keep sticking up for black people? Like the dude said, YELL BACK!.
Don’t wait for yo momma to take up for you, do it yourself.
Zig