Looks like he's accepted the inevitable, and is basically telling his advertisers to go to hell. Via Media Matters, here's the latest from today's show:
This show is about you. It's not about the advertisers. I knew the political inclinations of these people. They didn't care when they were profiting, and I didn't either.
So AOL and all the rest of them were just a bunch of liberals all along.
That little sideswipe at the sponsors, about how "I knew the political inclinations of these people", indicates that he's pretty much written them off. You don't talk that way if you're trying to make nice. He continues:
Everybody's able to put these things aside for the sake of mutual beneficial business activity. No radio broadcast will succeed by putting business ahead of the needs of its loyal audience, and that audience is you. My success has come from you. My focus has always and will always be on you. And I'm still not through, hang in there.
He knows that's nonsense. Nobody understands better than Rush that it's
all business. And what's with the "Hang in there" at the end? Is he actually afraid that his loyal army of dittoheads might be heading for the exits?
I've followed him on and off (mostly off, thankfully) over the years, and this is the first time I've detected a hint of desperation in his words. He is genuinely rattled by all of this. He's already issued yet another, more grovelling apology to Sandra Fluke this morning, and now he's begging his listeners not to abandon him.
Here's the segment from Media Matters, if you can bear it: