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"DOONESBURY": Next week's abortion-law strips pulled by at least several papers
By Michael Cavna

Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury." (Courtesy of Universal Uclick - Courtesy of Universal Uclick) Yes, Virginia, there is a satire about transvaginal ultrasound laws.

Next week, “Doonesbury” will tackle the ultrasound-before-abortion debate that has roiled Texas and Virginia and the nation in recent weeks, as lawmakers fought over a procedure deemed physically invasive and medically intrusive by some critics, who dubbed it “state rape.” Last month, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who opposes abortion, insisted upon revisions in legislation so the state would require only transabdominal ultrasounds prior to abortion.

Into this political tempest wades Garry Trudeau, the Pulitzer-winning creator of the oft-controversial “Doonesbury” that over four decades has helped alter the boundaries of what newspaper editors allow on their “funny pages.”

[THE ‘DOONESBURY’ INTERVIEW: Trudeau says to ignore abortion debate would have been “comedy malpractice”]

Starting Monday, “Doonesbury” will skewer the politicians who have pushed for vaginal ultrasounds — a weeklong satiric approach that has prompted at least one newspaper not to run the abortion strips. At The Oregonian in Portland, Features Editor JoLene Krawczak tells Comic Riffs that her paper “has decided to pull the week’s strips and will direct readers online if they want to read them.”

“Doonesbury’s” abortion-law series features a woman receiving a compulsory ultrasound and refers to a “shaming room” and a ”10-inch shaming wand” — and seems to equate the procedure to rape. The Oregonian, in a note to readers Friday, says that Trudeau”went over the line of good taste and humor in penning a series on abortion using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page.”

Trudeau tells Comic Riffs that he and the syndicate are offering substitute strips for clients who don’t wish to run the abortion series.

[Update No. 1: Some newspapers, such as the Gainesville Sun and Ocala Star-Banner, won’t run the abortion strips, the AP reports.]

[Update No. 2: Other newspapers, including the Kansas City Star, say they will run the abortion series on their op-ed pages.]

This isn’t the first time “Doonesbury” has stirred deliberation over whether to run abortion-themed strips. In 1985, Trudeau and his syndicate decided themselves to pull back the strips.

“I, too, recalled the 1985 week of ‘Doonesbury’ that was about abortion,” Lee Salem, president of the Kansas City-based Universal UClick (which syndicates “Doonesbury”), tells Comic Riffs. “At that time, we thought the merits of the week would get lost in the larger discussion of abortion.

“The context now is a very different one,” continues Salem, noting that Universal Uclick will offer replacement strips to clients. “Thanks to the actions of the Virginia legislature, the Congressional hearings in Washington and the pronouncements of Rush Limbaugh, words like ‘contraception,’ ‘abortion,’ ‘slut’ and [medical] ‘wand’ are part of the vernacular.”

Since 1985, Salem notes, “‘Doonesbury’ has an additional 27 years of exploring topics rarely read on comics pages and provoking discussion. More readers, I believe, have come to expect that of the strip.”

Debbie Van Tassel, assistant managing editor of features at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tells Comic Riffs that she and other top editors have decided to run next week’s strips, which feature a woman who sits in a “shaming room” as she awaits a pre-termination sonogram and a check-up from a legislator. “We didn’t deliberate long,” Van Tassel tells Comic Riffs. “We all agreed that some readers will be upset by them, mainly because they appear on the comics page, but also because of the graphic depiction of a transvaginal sonogram.”

Van Tassel cites the larger journalistic context in which “Doonesbury” appears. “This newspaper deals with those issues routinely in the news sections and in our health section,” she tells us. “Our page one today, for example, carries a story about the movement by women legislators across the country to curb men’s abilities to get vasectomies and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction. I haven’t heard of any objections to that story yet.”

The Plain Dealer also believes “Doonesbury” deserves a long satiric leash. “Garry Trudeau’s metier is political satire; if we choose to carry ‘Doonesbury,’ we can’t yank the strip every time it deals with a highly charged issue. His fans are every bit as vocal as his critics. We are alerting readers to the nature of the strips so they can decide whether to read them next week.”

{The Post, for the record, plans to run “Doonesbury’s” abortion series next week.)

Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers
Mar 10, 2012 12:00 AM EST
Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio.

Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it.

Because now the fallout from the “slut” slurs against Sandra Fluke is extending to the entire political shock-jock genre.


Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”

This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.

Valerie Geller, an industry insider and author of Beyond Powerful Radio, confirmed the trend. “I have talked with several reps who report that they're having conversations with their clients, who are asking not to be associated with specifically polarizing controversial hosts, particularly if those hosts are ‘mean-spirited.’ While most products and services offered on these shows have strong competitors, and enjoy purchasing the exposure that many of these shows and hosts can offer, they do not wish to be ‘tarred’ with the brush of anger, or endure customer anger, or, worse, product boycotts.”

There are already tangible signs that the three dozen national and local advertisers that have pulled their ads from The Rush Limbaugh Show are having a financial impact.


PM Images / Getty Images

For example, the ads that ran on Limbaugh’s WABC show in New York on Thursday consisted primarily of public-service announcements. Among the few actual advertisements were spots from a Newt Gingrich–associated super PAC, Lear Capital, and the conservative Hillsdale College. Media Matters has been monitoring national trends along the same lines. When PSAs for nonprofit organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the United Negro College Fund run in place of actual advertisements on radio, it means the show starts losing money for the local station. And make no mistake, money is the only barometer of success the industry ultimately cares about.

Women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.
Limbaugh helped prove that right-wing talk radio could be big business—promoting the idea that only conscious conservative bias could balance the unconscious liberal bias of what was termed the “mainstream media.” In the fragmented media environment that emerged after the heyday of the “big three” national TV networks, narrow but intense niche audiences provided the most reliable listeners and viewers and the highest comparative ratings. Limbaugh’s outsize talent helped spawn scores of imitators—but none as successful, and some strikingly unsuccessful. Attempts to create left-wing talk-radio corollaries proved no less offensive but far less popular, like the little-lamented Air America.

But this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.

As pressure grows for advertisers and radio stations to drop Rush & Co., there will be much talk about the dangers of censorship, with allies talking about a left-wing “jihad” against Rush (language his brother David Limbaugh has already used).

But the irony is that the same market forces that right-wing talk-radio hosts champion are helping to seal their fate. Advertisers are abandoning the shows because they no longer want to be associated with the hyperpartisan—and occasionally hateful—rhetoric. They are finally drawing a line because consumers are starting to take a stand.

An additional irony: just as the technology-driven fragmentation of the landscape allowed partisan media to proliferate, a new technological development is providing the tools to take it down. Social media is making it possible to create a grassroots movement very quickly, voicing grievances very quickly and getting heard at the top of corporate headquarters.

“In the past, a letter, petition, or phone campaign took a few days to put together and longer to execute,” says Valerie Geller. “But now customers [listeners] can instantly rally using Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging to make their displeasure with a client, product, or service known immediately. These movements can happen fast.”

It is true that these efforts can be “astroturfed”—artificially created by activists with a specific ax to grind—but if they genuinely catch on, it is because they tap into broad sentiment.

Will this bombshell announcement by Premiere—and the decreased revenue from right-wing talk radio—provoke a change in the culture of hyperpartisan talk? It’s certainly possible—after all, they will adjust their approach to follow the money. There is no deeper political principle at stake.

It’s been interesting to see Limbaugh’s allies try to defend him indirectly over the past few days, pointing out (rightly) that the left does not cry foul when liberal political entertainers use derogatory terms about conservative women in politics.

But the left-wing talkers being condemned are actually following a model that Rush & Co created. Complaining about the escalation on the other side while ignoring the ugliness from your ideological allies is the larger problem, and it goes beyond hypocrisy. The only way we are going to stop this cycle of incitement is if we try to apply equal standards to both sides of the aisle. It’s not a complicated concept—it’s nothing more than the golden rule we learned in nursery school: treat others as you would like to be treated. And as political commentators like the radio pioneer Will Rogers once taught us, we can make serious points using satire, humor that is not designed to divide and destroy.

When big money starts shifting, it is a sign of a deeper tide that is difficult to undo, even if you are an industry icon like Rush Limbaugh. It is a sign that the times are changing. Let’s hope that what emerges is an evolution of the industry, away from stupid, predictable, and sometimes hateful hyperpartisanship and toward something a little smarter and more civil.

BREAKING: 98 Major Advertisers Dump Rush Limbaugh, Other Right-Wing Hosts
By Judd Legum on Mar 10, 2012 at 11:31 am
Industry website radio-info.com has the scoop:
When it comes to advertisers avoiding controversial shows, it’s not just Rush From today’s TRI Newsletter: Premiere Networks is circulating a list of 98 advertisers who want to avoid “environments likely to stir negative sentiments.” The list includes carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm) and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway). As you’ll see in the note below, those “environments” go beyond the Rush Limbaugh show
“To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory...They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).’
This helps explain why, on Rush Limbaugh’s flagship station WABC, almost of the commercial breaks were filled with unpaid pubic service announcements. You can check out the list of the 50 advertisers who were known to have dropped Limbaugh before this report here.
But it’s not just Limbaugh that these advertisers want to disassociate with, but other big names in right-wing radio too. As the Daily Beast’s John Avalon notes, this is unprecedented in the 20-plus years that Limbaugh and his imitators have been on the air and could spell real trouble for an industry that’s already suffering demographically. Women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, but Limbaugh and other conservative hosts have steadily alienated these listeners over the years, so the sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke were “a perfect storm.”
The advertising flight is reminiscent of Glenn Beck’s Fox News program. After major companies refused to advertise on Beck’s show in light of racially insensitive comments, he was left with just fringe businesses like survival seed banks and gold sellers. Not long thereafter, he left Fox, reportedly under pressure.

[Marie Laveau]

Well, on the surface, it seems like good news.

I'm going to hold my cards until I see if it's not meant to be taken in a very bad direction:

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH!" or "IF WE CAN'T SAY WHAT WE WANT TO SAY, NO ONE CAN!"

There are a lot of ways this could be nogoodnik.

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'SNL': Rush Limbaugh Talks New Sponsors In Cold Open (VIDEO at link)

It's been a rocky couple of weeks for Rush Limbaugh. Between calling a law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" for speaking in defense of contraceptive insurance coverage, and then making a decidedly unenthusiastic apology, the radio host has been dropped by most of his major advertisers.

But while a casual observer may say the situation seems almost impossible to recover from, with a little imagination things might not be so bad. Taran Killam took up his impression of Limbaugh on "Saturday Night Live" to explore the exciting world of up-and-coming business advertising, and if the current state of Limbaugh's career is any indicator, this parody may not be that far from reality in coming weeks

[seemslikeadream]

BREAKING: Rush Limbaugh Syndicator Suspends National Ads For Two Weeks
By Judd Legum on Mar 12, 2012 at 9:24 pm
Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to afflilates for free in return for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads called “barter spots.” These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.
But without explanation, Premiere has supended these national advertisements for two weeks. Radio-Info.com calls the move “unusual.” The development suggests that Rush Limbaugh’s incessant sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke have caused severe damage to the show.
From the memo:
Attention Traffic Managers of Premiere News/Talk Affiliates:
We are suspending the requirement to run barter spots for two weeks, March 12th and March 19th, for our News/Talk affiliates only.
Please replace/re-traffic any Premiere barter spots immediately. Contractual requirements to run barter spots are being suspended for these two weeks only. Replace them with Lifelock and Lear Financial or a local spot of your choice.
Earlier today, ThinkProgress exclusively reported that 140 advertisers, including dozens of major national corporations, had requested their ads no longer air on Rush Limbaugh. Lifelock and Lear Financial among the only companies standing by Limbaugh.
Over the last several days much of the advertising time during the Rush Limbaugh show on his flagship station, WABC, has been filled with free public service announcements.

Published on Monday, March 12, 2012 by Common Dreams
Pro-Choice 'Doonesbury' Too Much for Many US Papers
- Common Dreams staff
Fans of Garry Trudeau's 'Doonesbury' may have to adjust their reading habits this week as many US newspapers have decided to move the popular comic strip from its place on the comics page to the editorial section. Some papers, in fact, have decide to drop the strip entirely after they saw that this week's arch would be grappling with a rash of new state laws across the country that will require women seeking abortions to submit to state-run ultrasounds and other invasive procedures.

Here's the first strip in the series, due out Monday in the more than 1,400 papers that run the syndicated comic:

The Los Angeles Times is one of the papers that has decided to run the series, but will move it from the comic pages, where it normally appears, to their Op-Ed page. Explaining the decision, Sue Horton, the Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion editor of The Times, said, "We carry both op-eds and cartoons about controversial subjects, and this is a controversial subject."

And The Guardian in the UK, which also runs the strip, reported today:

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau has defended his cartoon strip about abortion, which several US newspapers are refusing to run, saying he felt compelled to respond to the way Republicans across America are undermining women's healthcare rights.

The strip, published on Monday and scheduled to run all week, has been rejected by several papers, while others said they were switching it from the comic section to the editorial page.

In an email exchange with the Guardian, Trudeau expressed dismay over the papers' decision but was unrepentant, describing as "appalling" and "insane" Republican state moves on women's healthcare.

About 1,400 newspapers, including the Guardian, take the Doonesbury cartoon. The Guardian newspaper is running the cartoon as normal on Monday.

The strip deals specifically with a law introduced in Texas and other states requiring a woman who wants to have an abortion to have an ultrasound scan, or sonogram, which will show an image of the foetus and other details, in an attempt to make her reconsider.

It portrays a woman who turns up at an abortion clinic in Texas and is told to take a seat in "the shaming room". A state legislator asks if she has been at the clinic before and, when she says she had been to get contraceptives, he replies: "Do your parents know you're a slut?"

Later, she says she does not want an intrusive vaginal examination but is told by a nurse: "The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10-inch shaming wand." The nurse adds: "By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape."

The Kansas City Star is among the papers not running the cartoon in its normal slot. "We felt the content was too much for many of the readers of our family-friendly comic page," an editor told Associated Press. The Star will use a replacement strip offered by the organisation that syndicates Doonesbury, Universal Uclick, and move the abortion one to its editorial pages.
The cartoonist was not surprised about the controversary surrounding the new series, and defended it in several interviews by saying that the new spate of laws was shocking, deplorable, and rife with comic opportunity. “To ignore it,” Trudeau told The Washington Post, “would have been comedy malpractice.” Trudeau's complete interview with the Posts follows:

Q: In 1985, you decided to pull a week of abortion-related strips satirizing the film “The Silent Scream,” which purported to show the reactions of a fetus. So what’s different now? What spurred you to create an abortion narrative in the current political climate?

A: In my 42 years with UPS, the “Silent Scream” week was the only series that the syndicate ever strongly objected to. [Syndicate president Lee Salem] felt that it would be deeply harmful to the feature and that we would lose clients permanently. They had supported me through so much for so long, I felt obliged to go with their call.

Such was not the case this week. There was no dispute over contents, just some discussion over whether to prepare a substitute week for editors who requested one [which we did].

I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.

Q: After four decades, you’re an expert at knowing the hot-button satiric words and phrases — such as, in the case [this] week, terms such as “10-inch shaming wand.” Can you speak to how you approached writing these strips?


A: Oddly, for such a sensitive topic, I found it easy to write. The story is very straightforward — it’s not high-concept like [the satiric] Little Timmy in “Silent Scream” — and the only creative problem I had to work through was the physician’s perspective. I settled on resigned outrage.

Texas’s HB-15 [bill] isn’t hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.

Q: Going back through the history of the strip, I'm surprised not to see a previous abortion strip in “Doonesbury’s” dossier. Have you tackled abortion before?

A: No. Roe v. Wade was decided while I was still in school. Planned Parenthood was embraced by both parties. Contraception was on its way to being used by 99 percent of American women. I thought reproductive rights was a settled issue. Who knew we had turned into a nation of sluts?

Q: Over the past 40 years, “Doonesbury” helped change the comics game for many newspapers and comics creators themselves. Do you think newspaper editors have “loosened up” over time regarding comics? Or have they grown more reluctant or skittish — or, even worse, dispassionate?

A: It’s a mix, but in general I spend much less time playing defense, presumably because of the ubiquity of topical satire these days. “South Park” and “The Daily Show” have stretched the envelope so much, most editors no longer see “Doonesbury” as the rolling provocation they once did.

Plus, I think I get a bit of a pass simply because I’ve been around so long. After all this time, editors know pretty much what they’re going to get with the strip.

[seemslikeadream]

GOP: Old, white and in trouble, poll says


Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich trade opinions during the CNN Southern Republican Presidential Debate at the North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, S.C. (Michael Reynolds / EPA / January 19, 2012)

By David Lauter
March 15, 2012, 5:00 a.m.
Reporting from Washington—
The Republican presidential primary campaign so far hasn’t produced a nominee, but it has had one clear outcome -- worsening the GOP’s image among the young, the better-educated and the non-white.

That finding, from the Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, could be a serious handicap for the party in elections this fall and in years to come, said Pew’s director, Andrew Kohut.

"The Republicans really are the party of white people, and especially older white people," Kohut told reporters as the poll was released. "They’ve done nothing in this campaign to make themselves be more favorably viewed" among other parts of the electorate.

That verdict won’t come as a surprise to many Republican strategists. Some, including Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s electoral victories, have been arguing for years that the party needs to find ways to reach out to demographic groups, particularly Latinos, who are increasing as a percentage of the population.

The example of what could happen if the party does not do so is California, where the GOP became alienated from Latinos just as their voting percentage began to rise rapidly. Over the last five election cycles, California has moved from being a swing state to being one of the most solidly Democratic states in the country.

Republicans don't face that sort of dire situation nationwide, in part because the nation's demographics differ from California's. Whites without a college degree form a much larger percentage of the voting population nationwide, and that group has become a bastion for the Republicans. But as the country becomes less white and more college-educated, the picture is changing. And the numbers in the Pew survey provide some bad omens for the GOP.

Latinos, for example, view the Republican Party unfavorably by a 2-1 margin (30% favorable, 60% unfavorable). By contrast, Latinos view the Democrats favorably, 56%-31%.

The picture among Americans under 30 is almost as negative, with 34% viewing the GOP favorably, while 53% have an unfavorable view. Their view of Democrats is almost the exact opposite, 54% have a positive view, and 35% negative. Among those with a college degree or more, only 31% said they had a favorable view of the Republicans, while 66% were unfavorable. That group, which was a key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, views Democrats favorably by 55%-42%.

U.S. Army among 141 groups pulling ads from Limbaugh

[Allegro]

…After all March IS Women's History Month. [REFER.]

Author, Alice Walker | Killing is Symptom of Unaddressed Racism
— Democracy Now! | uploaded March 30, 2012



Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) | The Life of the Legendary Poet & Activist
— Democracy Now! | uploaded March 30, 2012

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TUE JUL 24, 2012 AT 11:07 PM PDT
Rush Limbaugh's downward spiral promises to accelerate
byRichard MyersFollow

Rush Limbaugh has lost countless millions in advertising revenues for his syndicator and other radio networks, and the drip-drip-drip continues: Wal-mart's "Sam's Club" has just pulled advertising, and eBay has also joined the exodus. These follow closely on UPS abandoning Rush. Yet the greatest long term damage is likely to come from the exit of hundreds of small companies that do not make the news. In spite of the media largely losing interest in the Limbaugh boycott story, the StopRush effort is continuing to grow. For example, a new video featuring Rush Limbaugh's incessant attacks on working people and unions and a recent Daily Kos diary that made the front page brought in hundreds of new activists.
No one knows how many total advertisers (national and local, large and small) have dropped, but estimates I've heard put the number well above seven hundred. Radio stations have been forced to seek new sponsors for Limbaugh, and also for other radio talk show hosts impacted by collateral damage from the boycott.

Rush Limbaugh's response to the social media firestorm has largely been ineffective. Rush appears to have given up on Twitter, and the only two posts in the past six weeks on his "Rush Babes For America" Facebook page simply linked to his thoughts on a popular erotic tome -- which one might have thought a hot topic for the Rush Babes. Unfortunately for Rush, the absence of new content over the last six weeks has resulted in a drop-off in interest, as indicated by the dramatically lower number of Rush Babe responses.

A few months ago Mark Frauenfelder predicted a "perfect storm" for right wing talk radio: listener demographics, technological change, and the advertiser backlash all have been taking a toll. But another threat to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, looms on the horizon, and comes from a very different direction: vulture capital. None other than Mitt Romney's Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, which is the parent of the conservative talkers' syndicator, Premiere Networks. Clear Channel recently downsized, simultaneous with Bain Capital squeezing the company through a forced 2.2 billion dollar dividend. (This is one of the mechanisms by which Mitt Romney and friends have amassed their fortunes -- sucking cash out of troubled corporations, subsequently allowing some of them to go bankrupt.) Clear Channel was already 19.2 billion dollars in debt, and is facing a shareholder lawsuit related to loans between different Clear Channel entities that were used to cover the huge payout. In spite of crushing debt, Clear Channel is "splashing the cash" in "an attempt to rebrand itself as a hip digital music giant." Meanwhile, some are downgrading Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, the Clear Channel billboard entity, and recommending investment in their competition.

Essentially, the corporate structure is Bain Capital on top, pulling strings through Clear Channel Media Holdings, which is the parent to the other Clear Channel entities. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings was tapped for a loan to finance the dividend, and this has enraged its shareholders. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings isn't Clear Channel, but the two sibling companies are closely related, with nearly ninety percent overlap according to one source. Therefore, one might expect the health of one corporate subdivision to reflect the health of the other. Since the dividend payout to Bain Capital in March, the stock price for Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings has dropped by two thirds.

More privately held Clear Channel's valuation is not so easy to determine. Even so, what is the future of a company deep in debt that is "splashing the cash", and what might the impact be on conservative shock jocks? Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is extremely useful to the conservative cause, and is likely to survive (even while bleeding advertisers) through the next election, and possibly for many months beyond. (It took 20 months to force Glen Beck off of Fox News.) But Clear Channel has payments of "$2.8 billion due in 2014 and $12.2 billion due in 2016." The question becomes, will Clear Channel succumb to vulture greed the way so many other companies have?

StopRush is obviously damaging to Rush, but what irony that the very cutthroat capitalism Rush Limbaugh so strenuously champions may pound the last few nails into the coffin of conservative talk radio, at least as presently constituted. (If you're on Facebook, join the StopRush cause here.)

12:19 PM PT: Day after day, slowly but steadily, the downward spiral continues for Rush.

A major clothing chain -- one of those popular brand names that you'd recognize instantly -- told us privately two hours ago that they'll no longer advertise on the Rush Limbaugh show.

We generally wait for a clear public announcement before we'll publish the name of any company dropping Rush, and we try to respect a company's privacy if they decline to make a public announcement (to avoid possible backlash). But we still want to let you know about our victories, even if we choose not to mention the company name.