Rush Limbaugh's statements about Sandra Fluke

IanExMachina

Just get him to do a radio show in the UK or something.

glennmagusharvey

> Andrew Breitbart

I am sorry for those people that Mr. Breitbart leaves behind.

LouieW

CountryPumpkin,

people every single day known lies in order to further the political agenda of a dying party looking for some small sliver of relevance in a changing world

I am not sure if you are being totally serious about this or if I am understanding you correctly, but if you are and I am, I would like to hear why you think the Republican Party is dying. I have heard people say as much on the liberal side before, but I do not really know enough about political parties to determine if that is a reasonable belief or not.

Also, as far as I can tell, reasonable and respectful conservatives definitely do exist (just like reasonable and respectful liberals do). I think that shock jocks just tend to get a lot of attention because of how offensive some of the stuff they say is and because there is a market for that stuff (unfortunately).

RedEyedAbyss

The thing is that the world sees the Democratic Party as conservative and the Republican Party as ultra-conservative. The notion of the Republican Party dying out may be wishful thinking (though a US user can clarify this), but to say the least they're not very popular globally.

glennmagusharvey

Whether the party is "dying" depends on what you consider to be the "life" of the party, so to speak.

 

Both parties in the U.S. are not so much individual parties with coherent ideologies like in many-party systems but actually coalitions of multiple groups, some of which are sometimes at odds with each other.  That said, the recent trend toward polarization (in part due to the use of wedge issues by the Republicans, as detailed in Karl Rove's strategies, as well as tapping into anger, xenophobia, and defensiveness) seems to have the effect of concentrating (self-identified) conservative and very conservative voters into the Republican Party, while making it less popular for everyone else.

It is true that a lot of the ideological goals espoused by these very conservative politicians and voters are quite unpopular (let's put aside discussions of their merits for now).  If the Republican Party continues this polarization, political observers project that it will gradually marginalize its appeal.

One could argue that the Republicans' electoral success in 2010 is a sign that they are resurgent.  However, to this, I will point out that public opinion of the Republican Party is very negative right now, and it was negative even during the 2010 midterm elections.  Republicans were able to win big in part because they were not in power, and were able to tap into dissatisfaction with incumbent Democrats.  Their electoral success has since given themselves a lot of headaches; as I like to observe, it's a lot easier to sit around posturing politically than it is to actually legislate and govern.

The role of an opposition party will never go away.  If a party named the Republican Party shall fill that role, one could argue that they cannot "die", unless they were to be replaced in this role by another party, which may or may not be ideologically different.  And ideologies can change within parties anyway, especially in coalition parties that contain many factions within them.  Ideologies themselves, however, can become popular or unpopular, to the point of being vastly accepted or completely marginalized.

Crimson

I think the "dying party" here is the Tea Party, which Limbaugh draws a lot if support from, that has indeed been dying.

CountryPumpkin

Sí.

-fuck Rush Limbaugh

glennmagusharvey

FYI CountryPumpkin you might want to lay off on the emotion a bit.  I'm pretty sure everyone here hates Limbaugh, as we should, but your level of intensity is a bit unsettling.

CountryPumpkin

Mods, please change my name to "FuckYouLimbaugh"

FrodoGoofballCoTV

I just heard Limbaugh apologized.

RedEyedAbyss

"My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

In other words, he's only sorry he got caught.

CountryPumpkin

I was kidding, but the more I look at it the more I like my new name. I'll keep it.

IanExMachina

^
You're welcome. 

BlackHumor

Yeah, word choice wasn't the problem here.

Icalasari

Not sure how to shorten Country's new name. "Fuck" and "You" could lead to confusion, and "Limbaugh" just seems bleh



Limmy? Would Limmy work?

Nyktos

FYL?

MillerCross

Just call him Rush

ClockworkUniverse

^^Phil?

Icalasari

FuckYouLimbaugh -> FYL -> Phil -> Phillip -> PhilipTheNickel -> Nickel -> Nick -> PhoenixWright -> Wright -> WrightBrothers -> Brothers -> Bro

MillerCross

seems legit

Scythemantis

There is no level of hatred towards Limbaugh that could ever go too far. He is a fucking criminal and a monster. There is a point at which we should all be able to agree that "free speech' is being abused and that a person should be able to prosecuted for their endless tirades of hate speech.

Forzare

There is a point at which we should all be able to agree that "free speech' is being abused and that a person should be able to prosecuted for their endless tirades of hate speech.

nope.mp4

MillerCross

But hate speech is supposedly against the constitution and the first amendment...?

with that said, arresting people for being bigoted sets a dangerous precedent. What we should do is just...like...ignore him, man. Leave him without a job

All Nines

I'm just glad that hate speech is illegal under the Constitution, and that they make that specification; true free speech (as in, literally say whatever you want) would be horrible.

Whale

Nine firms have dropped their ads from Rush Limburgh.

All Nines

Oh, yeah, I just remembered; one of my friend's dad's license plate is RLIMBAH. Probably explains why he's such an asshole.

^ Good to hear.

Crimson

That's still a drop in the bucket. Rush still has like 20 million listeners and makes $50 mil in revenue each year.

BlackHumor

@Everest (and Juan): You're wrong. Hate speech is legal; what's illegal is hate CRIMES. You have to actually hurt someone to be prosecuted for racism/sexism/etc.

All Nines

Ah. I'd been told before by Neo that some other similar sentiments counted as hate speech and were thus illegal. But if hate speech falls under free speech, then free speech isn't worth it.

Crimson

Actually:

The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] ... have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."

Granted, this isn't airtight enough to cover all discriminatory speech, but I'd qualify what Rush said under this.