Sites like Daily Kos are having a great time watching Rush Limbaugh’s downward spiral and with good reason. Limbaugh was once called “the Most Dangerous Man in America“. His decades long campaign of propaganda, lies, deceit and hate speech hurt Americans individually and collectively and to a lesser extent, people around the world.
Limbaugh has been as responsible as anyone for removing civility from public discourse and for building and spreading the pile of half truths, outright lies and fairy tales on which the US conservative movement is now based. So, obviously it is nice to see his ratings and career sink slowly into the abyss.
According to Media Matters:
“Three months later, Limbaugh’s KEIB is a ratings disaster, coming in 37th place in the second largest radio market in America with a .5 rating share in March, the most recent month available, according to Nielsen ratings. (A ratings share represents the percent of those listening to radio in the market who are dialed into a particular station.)
How small is KEIB’s audience? So small that eleven non-English radio stations have larger audiences in Los Angeles. And so small that KEIB actually trails four college-run, non-commercial stations in the market. This, for a man who makes $40 million a year to attract big radio audiences? As for KFI, the station Limbaugh left and which switched to an all-local news and talk format, its ratings remain healthy in the talker’s absence. A top ten station, KFI boasts an audience six times larger than KEIB’s.”
Unfortunately there is little evidence that the angry white males who provided Limbaugh with his audience are any less angry. There is no indication that they have seen through the lies and bullshit and turned away from Limbaugh or that they have learned anything about politics, history, economics or science.
My fear is that Limbaugh is no longer able to provide adequate sustenance for the monster he helped to create and so it has abandoned him. Ronald Reagan, after all, would be considered a progressive liberal by today’s Republicans. The Tea Partiers now consider people staunch Reagan/Bush era conservatives like Lamar Alexander, Pat Roberts, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and John McCain so ‘left wing’ that they should be challenged in the primaries.
Again, my fear is that Limbaugh’s decline isn’t a byproduct of conservative decline but of conservatives moving even farther to the right. Rush and Fox News may be on the decline but history revisionists, conspiracy theorists, criminals and hate groups all seem to be doing quite well in the modern GOP.
So, while I understand the enthusiasm over Rush’s demise and enjoy watching it happen it may be a little early to break out the streamers and balloons.