I must have missed the memo in the late '80s to early '90s that said being a radio talk show host makes one relevant. True, a lot of very stupid people's opinions are shaped (if not outright determined) by what they're told over the radio or by cable news, but come on - the same people also believe the messages of advertising, religion, action B-movies, and video games. They believe in a white, blue-eyed, bearded God sitting on a bejeweled throne on a cloud licking his chops at the prospect of sending lesbians and Buddhists to hell. They believe SUVs are patriotic and manly. They don't know the difference between reality and Chuck Norris movies. They're morons. That's kind of what it means to be a moron - having no intellectual immune system, and being little more than meat puppets to the cheapest and most manipulative memes floating around the ether. Their stupidity is relevant, yes - but which mouthpiece feeds their sickness is not.
When I think of Rush Limbaugh, I don't imagine some media Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo - what I've heard of his content is not persuasive, at all, even deceptively. It's not charismatic or intoxicating in the way of truly dangerous demagogues infecting the body politic with their own personal madness. What I hear is akin to a drunken, disorderly idiot muttering to himself on a public bus and occasionally heckling passers-by with random insults - and what's worse, the people on the bus find it highly entertaining. Kindred spirits find his antics gratifying, and people who loathe him enjoy having an easy target to vent their frustrations with the poisonous impact of right-wing politics.
The problem is it doesn't work the other way around: We accede to a rigged game, knowing full well that the other side doesn't play that way when it's a liberal doing the speaking. Conservatives are not content to be outraged when they have any other means of changing the situation more to their liking: They demand to control the debate, and not allow a single word in edgewise from opponents if they can prevent it. Politics for conservatives is not an act of self-expression - it's an act of infliction. It is something they Do Unto Others, as a way of warding off fears of being Done Unto: They are so afraid of your freedom that they will utterly obliterate even the possibility that you may use it to ends that threaten them. But that's not how we roll, no - we allow them to set themselves up in control so we can keep being rebels and feeling righteous.
The proof is in the pudding: How many people exactly like Rush Limbaugh have been infecting the allegedly public airwaves for how many years now? For how many years have liberals diligently listened to that cacophany, adding their numbers to what radio and TV stations sell to advertisers, all for the gratification of saying the next day, "Did you hear what that piece of shit said the other day?" How much energy has been wasted over decades playing wingnut whack-a-mole, getting some hatemonger with a tainted brand-name fired so some fresh hatemonger can come in and do the same thing? The agenda these people serve and the impulses they reflect don't change just because the studio brass changes the lineup.
That isn't to say Limbaugh et al can't hurt people - Sandra Fluke (if not countless others) has an ironclad defamation case against both him and the corporations behind his broadcasts. But what these mouthpieces are not is individually politically relevant. They're toys we play with because it's easier than fighting the real fight, and the people who most need to be fought understand that and find it very useful. Limbaugh being on the air is not the problem - the problem is that the media is controlled by the sort of people who put Limbaugh and others like him on the air. They are not concerned with balance, fairness, reason, public service, truth, reality, or even common decency, and in fact, aren't even necessarily concerned with the immediate profitability of a given program: They are concerned only with the overall profitability of their total media enterprise, which means that a show which effectively spreads thought-killing, pro-corporate, pro-Republican, anti-human propaganda will produce greater returns through systemic perversion of politics than an otherwise popular liberal program that does the opposite.
Audiences induced to think for themselves and given real information are less attractive to advertisers, and tend to elect politicians less likely to serve the interests of the business and more likely to hold it accountable for its actions. So in point of fact, it may be that the business case for a psychotic right-wing program comprised of nothing but inchoate ravings is stronger with an audience of 1 million than an intelligent, constructive program with an audience of 5 million would be. And this is the case because audiences are not the consumers of public media - they are the products sold by the media. Advertisers and media companies that host these programs are the consumers: They are the ones whose interests matter in determining content.
If the public media actually were public in the sense of being regulated for the public welfare like the law demands, this wouldn't even be an issue. People like Limbaugh would still undoubtedly get their say on satellite radio, the internet, and cable networks, but their influence would be proportional to their political relevance - i.e., not very much. Once their lies and derangement stopped being force-fed to the American people, only those who actively seek them out would be exposed, and then this whole ridiculous game of having to hold them accountable for abusing influence they should never have had in the first place would be moot. The fact is we shouldn't have to constantly monitor our airwaves for lunatic propaganda demonizing our society and trying to destroy our republic - we should be able to simply trust that content is responsible, and that deviations from that standard are dealt with appropriately without having to mobilize a torch-bearing mob to make anything happen.
And this goes to an even deeper root of the problem: How much of our public sphere we have ceded to private interest. The fact that a show has a large audience and generates advertising revenue isn't relevant to its appropriateness for the public airwaves, and it's utterly insane that hundred-thousand-dollar FCC fines are exacted for saying the word "fuck" on air or exposing a woman's nipple, but taxpayer-subsidized media can somehow be legitimately monopolized by overt racists and genocidal maniacs calling for invasions of other countries because they're supported by money. That's what's truly unacceptable here. Rush Limbaugh doesn't outrage me - I feel no greater threat from him than from the drunken idiot on the bus mentioned above. But the people who give him a taxpayer-subsidized mass-media forum to cram his bigoted inanity down our throats do outrage me.
Our public property as Americans is basically being squatted on by a handful of rich sociopaths who then act like it belongs to them, and that we have to petition them to stop abusing it. We have to supplicate ourselves at their feet and beg them to stop using media we pay for to attack and undermine us. We have to beg, cajole, and bully advertisers into not supporting blatant hatemongering, and then use whatever success we get from those efforts to persuade networks and media conglomerates to stop flooding American media with anti-American propaganda.
This is the outrage. Most of the broadcast venues that host programs like this belong to us, the American people - they're not private property. They're licensed monopolies granted to corporations on the sole condition that they work for the public benefit, and they are not only not doing that; and not only haven't been doing it for decades; but they do the opposite, constantly, blatantly, and with arrogant disregard for anything resembling American law or responsibility to American society. So it's time to start revoking broadcast licenses, or at very least imposing obscenity fines on things that actually bear some resemblance to the concept of obscenity - i.e., slandering private citizens, inciting violence, promoting racism, trying to undermine democracy, deliberately falsifying news coverage, and engaging in propaganda to deceive the public and silence discussion.
The scandal isn't what Rush Limbaugh said recently, or even his entire demented oeuvre - it's that his opinions and petty bigotries have been shoved down our throats by companies who are only legally allowed to broadcast at all on public sufferance. So yes, kick the asshole off the airwaves, but stop obsessing on him or any other individual and start holding the recidivist propaganda companies accountable who keep putting people like this on the air, and the FCC that keeps acting as if broadcast licenses are a corporate entitlement rather than a conditional tenancy.