I was poking around the website of Research 2000, the pollster that conducts polls for many organizations, including, of course, The Daily Kos.
What I saw on the front page of the website amazed me. This was posted by the Research 2000 founder and president, Delair Ali.
ENOUGH, LIMBAUGH HAS TO GO!
...
Let me make it clear that I will continue to be the same non partisan pollster as I have been for over the past 20 years when it comes to the quality of my work. If that is not good enough for our clients or prospective clients, then to hell with all of you, particularly if you feel that way after you read the list. In fact, I hope my media clients will go after this cowardly slob and take him down once and for all...
...Almost two years ago, I posted my two cents about the fuss over Don Imus’ comments with regard to the Rutgers Women basketball team. His comments were indeed offensive and racist, however, the point of my post then was how amazing it was that Rush Limbaugh was still viable. Two years later, I come across ten verbatim quotes from Limbaugh which I read in the San Francisco Examiner. Each of these quotes can be confirmed by audio and you tube and worst of all Limbaugh is not ashamed of any of them! My blood is boiling as I am convinced of two facts beyond refute:
- There is no such thing as a liberal media bias. There is a corporate bias in that if someone like Limbaugh has a daily audience of 20 million plus, no matter how xenophobic and racist, that person will get a pass not only from the corporate and national media but worse, the leadership (I use the term loosely) within the Black community. Al Sharpton has proven himself in my view to be a clown and a phoney. The Rev Al was so upset at Don Imus, yet nothing comes from his big mouth on the vile racist comments which are frequent from Limbaugh.
- The corporate media consists of COWARDS!. Ed Murrow would be ashamed of his contemporaries today. Not only do they fail to confront this racist, they pander to him and worst of all they allow Republican law makers to pander to Limbaugh instead of confronting the law maker and asking them how they feel about the below quotes from Limbaugh and why would they want to be in the good graces of a racist?
First of all, it should be noted that Del Ali is a respected pollster and has served a wide range of clients for over 20 years. Because of his association with The Daily Kos, he probably has a presumption in certain circles of being a liberal pollster, but I have seen no real evidence of this. His polls seem to be generally in line with other pollsters. His election day polls last year were very close to the actual results and do not exhibit a "liberal bias" (His polls may exhibit a "house effect", as all pollsters do, which is another subject entirely and does not indicate an ideological bias).
He has had many clients apart from The Daily Kos, mostly in the media, but many outside of the media. He lists several organizations in his company biographical page, and I'm not familiar with most of them, but I would assume that it's not generally good for business for a non-partisan pollster to be putting his name on vehement screeds critical of notorious public figures.
It bears noting that Del does not post items frequently on his website's main page. Before today's posting about Limbaugh, his last post was the week after the election last year, running down his final poll numbers against the final election returns. His post today was just wildly out of character from everything else on his site, which never strays far from the business of polling.
He must have gotten really pissed off.
Del is not clear about what prompted his rant. As far as I can determine, he is reacting to the criticism that ex-baseball star Lenny Dykstra is receiving for what are reported as racist and sexist statements. His point is that while Dykstra was being labeled a racist and sexist based on hearsay, no media outlets are similarly excoriating Rush Limbaugh, who is well-documented as repeatedly making the vilest of racist statements. I don't know much about the Dykstra issue and have no opinion about it, but Ali's points about Limbaugh are unquestionably true.
I don't think Del gets much traffic through his website. It appears mostly to be a marketing organ for his polling company, dealing very little in political commentary. I don't know that he expects much attention to his comments. I don't know if he has posted them anywhere else on the Internet. I think I would like to see them get a much wider audience.
And just because it is always good to be reminded, let me copy in the comments that Del cites as proof of Limbaugh's racism, and demanding that the media so eager to persecute others on hearsay begin to hold Limbaugh accountable:
The LIMBAUGH LIST:
- I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.
- You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.
- Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?
- Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.
- Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.
- The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.
- They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?
- Take that bone out of your nose and call me back(to an African American female caller).
- I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.
- Limbaugh has called Obama a ‘halfrican American’ has said that Obama was not black but Arab because Kenya is an Arab region, even though Arabs are less than one percent of Kenya. Since mainstream America has become more accepting of African-Americans, Limbaugh has decided to play against its new racial fears, Arabs and Muslims. Despite the fact Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school, Limbaugh has called him an ‘affirmative action candidate.’ Limbaugh even has repeatedly played a song on his radio show ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ using an antiquated Jim Crow era term for black a man who many Americans are supporting for president.
Finally let me add that during the 2006 election, Limbaugh thought that Sherrod Brown was African American based on his name and he accused the Democrats in Ohio of being behind his candidacy because he was black. To this day, not a single reporter ever confronted Limbaugh about this.
A note of disclosure: I am proposing a panel for the Netroots Nation that will include Mr. Ali. He and I have exchanged exactly two e-mails, and he has agreed to be on the panel if it is programmed. In fact, the very reason I was on his site today was to find his bio to include with my proposal. I didn't expect at all to see what I found, and it was a rather unlikely coincidence that it was posted the very day I was on his site.