Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show has an estimated audience of nearly 15 million weekly listeners. It is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. Limbaugh also authored two books in collaborations with conservative writers: The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) with Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and See, I Told You So (1993) with WorldNetDaily.com editor Joseph Farah.
Limbaugh regularly feeds his audience a diet of falsehoods, misstatements, distortions, invective, and childish put-downs in service of the conservative movement. During his long reign over the airwaves, Limbaugh has called abortion rights activists "feminazis", told an African-American caller to "take that bone out of your nose," referred to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as "blow[ing] some steam off, " and declared that "what's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party." He touts his close connections to Republicans, claiming that he "[g]ot a big hug" from President George W. Bush during a 2004 White House visit.
In August 2005, Limbaugh asserted that Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who staged an anti-war protest outside President Bush's ranch in Texas, "is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents." Burkett is a retired Texas Air National Guard officer who provided CBS' 60 Minutes with unauthenticated documents regarding President Bush's National Guard record. After Media Matters for America documented this, he claimed that he was taken "out of context" by "little pimple-faced kids that are working at wannabe websites" -- even as the audio and text published by Media Matters proved otherwise. Limbaugh also claimed that Sheehan was "exploiting death."
Limbaugh has also spread numerous rumors and conspiracy theories about the Clinton family, alleging that Hillary Rodham Clinton was involved in the 1993 suicide of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster and peddling gay-baiting sexual innuendo about Clinton based on Edward Klein's error- and innuendo-filled book, The Truth About Hillary.
Limbaugh was forced to resign from his position as a football analyst on ESPN in 2003 after he claimed that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because "[t]he media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." The following season, McNabb led his team to the Super Bowl.
Based on Limbaugh's trivialization and enthusiasm for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Media Matters requested that he be removed from taxpayer-funded American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), while Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) offered amendments to defense authorization bills in both the 108th and 109th Congress requiring political balance on AFRTS. The Senate unanimously passed a Sense of the Senate resolution calling for balance on AFRTS.
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