Oh, do pass the popcorn. Please. And while you're at it, get yourself some Raisinets or Dots, because we are watching history unfold right in front of us and it might take a while.
Watching the implosion of right-wing hate talk radio as 98 advertisers pull their support not just from Rush but from Hannity, Beck, Savage, and other programs deemed to have "content... deemed to be offensive or controversial," I am reminded of the denoument of the McCarthy trials, and what finally shocked the nation into realizing that they hadn't been listening to actual facts but just the ravings of a demented, paranoid madman - the point in June of 1954, when Joseph Welch, the chief legal representative of the US Army, challenged Senator McCarthy on live TV with this question: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" The gallery erupted in applause, a recess was called, and for the first time it became clear that McCarthy's paranoia was not universally shared. After that, he quickly slid into disgrace and disfavor.
That was the beginning of McCarthy's fall from power. Come with me past the orange squiggle to see how Rush's fall looks an awful lot like it.
Joseph McCarthy's famous (perhaps I should say infamous?) witch-hunts of Communists during the 1950s created a neologism based on his name: McCarthyism, which in part means making poorly supported accusations, using demagoguery, and creating mass hysteria and moral panics through these methods. Yep. Sounds like Rush to a T.
Like McCarthy in the 1950s, Rush has made his fortune and his name on having no sense of decency. He attacks people all the time, and his listeners, who are just as paranoid and angry as he is, eat it up like ice cream on a hot summer day. They just can't get enough of it, poorly supported and demagoguic though it is.
But it also impairs their ability to think and reason. It makes it hard to explain to them what's really going on. A Rush listener, as Lefty Coaster describes, has drunk the Flavr-Aid in a big, big way - and believes everything that Rush and Fox "News" tell them.
When Edward R. Murrow discussed McCarthy's ongoing diatribes towards suspected Communists, he described McCarthy's "primary achievement" as "confusing the public mind". Isn't that what Rush is doing, and has been doing, for the last fifteen to twenty years?
The similarities between these two men can't be ignored. McCarthy's popularity and success depended on stirring up hate, anger, and fear. So does Rush's. McCarthy enjoyed huge popular support for quite some time. So did Rush.
Oh, and both of them are addicts. McCarthy had cirrhosis of the liver and was frequently in the hospital due to alcoholic binges. He died of acute hepatitis (a liver disease). And we all know about Rush and his love affair with pills and bottles - nothing more need be said about that.
Both of these men were highly influential, mainly because they stirred up anger, fear, and hate. McCarthy was perhaps a little braver than Rush, as he faced the people he was accusing of Communism and sedition in person, rather than from within the safe insulation of a radio station, but both of them depended heavily on stirring up anger, fear and hate by attacking anyone who opposed their positions or beliefs.
But both of them, I think, have now had their "common decency" moment - the moment when what Wikipedia calls "noteworthy people" have challenged them and pointed out that their emperor of paranoia has no clothes. In McCarthy's case it was senior Army staff and respected journalists. In Rush's case it's known and respected corporations.
McCarthy was eventually formally censured by the Senate for his antics. Although he finished out his term, his popularity was destroyed, and he was never again elected. By their withdrawal from sponsorship of his show, Rush is being publicly censured by the people who used to fund his diatribes. That, in some ways, has even more punch today than the political censure that McCarthy received.
McCarthy was never again elected to public office. Rush may never recover from this loss of corporate support. Eisenhower quipped that McCarthyism was now "McCarthywasm." Might we say that corporations are "Rush"-ing away from Limbaugh?
Either way, it's the same. Rush has reached his McCarthy moment. It's over, and he knows it, his posturing all aside. McCarthy postured too - to empty halls and zero press.
And, like Americans did after McCarthy was off the air, perhaps the country will now begin to come to its senses. Maybe now we can have some hope that things will actually get better.
Like I said, pass the popcorn. We've all waited for this for a long, long time.
Edited to add: Wow, the Rec List? Thank you, folks! I'm honored.