Rush Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio makes absolutely no sense. So how can we stop this?
I promised to diary every week until he was gone or until somebody more qualified took over in which case I will continue doing what I can until it happens.
I have written 2 diaries;
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
As I said before things have changed so it's more possible to do this now because;
1) Rush is loosing his advertisers in commercial radio (an effort lead in DailyKos by ProgLegs)
2) We have a Republican SECDEF which makes it more sellable when the CiC makes the final decision.
Every week I learn more about the whole thing and I try to improve the strategy.
New findings;
Political talk radio took off when in 1987 when the Fairness Doctrine was terminated thanks to Ronald Reagan. The Fairness Doctrine has become one more of the battlegrounds between Dems and Repubs since then. The repeal changed the landscape of politics to a degree that few could have predicted.
Rush Limbaugh got started right away. I have a confession to make, I did call Rush's show, broadcast in Sacramento only, in 1987, it had to to with guns and on air that time we agreed. So I am making amends in a certain way.
By 1993 he was on Armed Forces Radio. Someone in the DoD obviously supported the introduction of politics in AFR. I will continue researching this genesis.
After the Sandra Fluke atrocity by Rush in 2010 many tried to rid AFR of him but failed. A WhiteHouse.gov petition was signed by almost 30,000 people but it failed. In the official rejection, Bryan Whitman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, said;
AFN is charged with providing current information and entertainment programming to our Department of Defense audiences overseas, similar to what they could see and hear via the media in the United States. AFN acquires top-rated radio programs, as measured by audience ratings in the United States, and delivers them via satellite to our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen stationed worldwide in 177 countries.
So what are these ratings of talk radio that they consider? According to State of Media;
So in a way, AFR is being fair by including some progressive talk show hosts like Ed Schultz, Jim Hightower and even Alan Colmes.
I can understand why most of you believe that Rush will be on AFR until he retires as indicated by your votes in the poll in my last diary. After all Rush IS the "conscience" of the Republican base. Heck, Republican insiders are mentioning him together Sean Hannity and Mark Levin to moderate the the 2016 primary debates given CNN's "liberal" bias.
To all this we need to add the fact that given that the Republican party will never accept the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine and servicepeople in uniform and veterans are more Republican than Democrat.
Even the CATO Institute is sounding an alarm from a different perspective;
America is still laboring under the idea that the uniformed military is apolitical. It isn’t. Not only is the military increasingly politicized, it only expresses open political views on one side of the debate over America’s wars. Given the military’s influence on public opinion, that’s an unhealthy situation.
So the road we need to travel is uncharted and difficult. As I detailed in my previous diary, people at all levels have tried to get rid AFR of Rush since 2003. But as I said above things are changing.
One thing in our favor is Rush himself. He keeps pissing people off. None other than the very influential Oprah Winfrey recently.
So what IS the plan?
The plan is to do what we can.
1) Work together to coordinate all the efforts of people and organizations that have tried this before. susans has voluteered to create a list of all of them that we can use to work from.
2) Get "visibility" for our effort at the right time to get our voices heard nationwide. I have an idea to accomplish this that I am researching and I will cover in future diaries.
On the other hand, I will probably have to travel overseas for a few weeks starting next week so I apologize if I cant keep the diaries going but I will try.
Let's keep the fight and let me know if you want to join our small but dedicated group.