Post by Jose Solorio.
During the election season of 2012 my friend, Shelly and I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to spend 10 days working on the re-election of President Obama. Obama won the State of Nevada as well as re-election as President.
Last week Shelly texted me that she wanted to go get her photo with Black Santa. I was totally up with that. So here we have it: Last week The Rush Limbaugh Show moved from KFI to KTLK in Los Angeles. For Rush Limbaugh, the voice of conservative Republicans, this means a HUGE demotion. KFI could reach Tijuana and Las Vegas on a good day. KTLK barely covers some of Orange County.KTLK was a progressive station. However, Cumulus and Clear Channel get their marching orders from Bain Capital who owns both entities. Can you imagine Bain putting up with Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller and other progressives from the airwaves? I can't. StopRush puts Limbaugh in the high heat cycle every day, 24 hours/day. The high heat cycle shrinks denim jeans until they're too short and too tight to wear. Likewise with Rush. He is WAY too short and WAY too tightly wrapped… shrink wrapped. Accusing StopRush of killing progressive radio is like blaming the mortgage crisis on poor people. Here is how StopRush managed to shrink Rush. Many people have pseudonyms on Facebook, Twitter and email. Hundreds of people whose real names will never be known write and tweet advertisers to tell them their ads are being aired on the Limbaugh Show. Most of these businesses immediately request the station place them on the No Rush List, meaning, do NOT play our ad on his show.
Lindsey Redmond started listening to Limbaugh on KFI right after he called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.” Lindsey is one of the original members of the grassroots group, #StopRush. Ms. Redmond became an activist after Sandra Fluke spoke before Congress on March 6, 2012. Limbaugh has always hated women but talking about Ms. Fluke for THREE days? Lindsey started monitoring KFI for advertisers supporting the schlub. She still listens live to the Limbaugh Show three hours per day, five days per week. Her sanity remains intact although we're not sure how she does this. When Rush Limbaugh came to Los Angeles for a week, StopRush circulated a petition, Rush Limbaugh: Please Leave Los Angeles. Please click, sign, email, tweet and invite your friends and family to do the same: Rush Limbaugh: Please Leave Los Angeles On October 25, 2013, a StopRush member delivered the first draft of the petition with over 13,000 signatures to KFI at the Clear Channel building in beautiful downtown Burbank. Click here for that story: Petition Delivery to KFI UPDATE: 9/3/2014 KTLK changed its name to KEIB, Limbaugh's EIB network which is not really a network. KEIB added a People are STILL signing the petition. As of December 10, there are 25,428 signatures. The. Best. Hashtag. Ever. AND we trended at #2 after the promoted tweet. Sorry if you missed the Twitter Fiesta last evening. But you may still submit your entry to #RapeyRush. Some of the partiers spent the night on the couch at Media Matters. NO THEY DID NOT. You guys out there are goofballs if you think anyone at MMFA has a couch fine enough for a #stoprush rump. Rush Limbaugh loves rape. He loves to talk about it. He loves to joke about it. He loves to fantasize out loud about it. He even likes to use rape in analogies. Here’s an analogy from last week. LIMBAUGH: Let's forget the Senate for a minute. Let's say, let's take 10 people in a room and they're a group. And the room is made up of six men and four women. OK? The group has a rule that the men cannot rape the women. The group also has a rule that says any rule that will be changed must require six votes, of the 10, to change the rule. Every now and then, some lunatic in the group proposes to change the rule to allow women to be raped. But they never were able to get six votes for it. There were always the four women voting against it and they always found two guys.Well, the guy that kept proposing that women be raped finally got tired of it, and he was in the majority and he was one that [said], 'You know what? We're going to change the rule. Now all we need is five." And well, 'you can't do that.' 'Yes we are. We're the majority. We're changing the rule.' And then they vote. Can the women be raped? Well, all it would take then is half of the room. You can change the rule to say three. You can change the rule to say three people want it, it's going to happen. There's no rule. When the majority can change the rules there aren't any." This audio stimulated the #stoprush neurons into a virtual frenzy. Someone decided we needed to help the citizens of the United States in America to understand exactly, “What is this love affair Limbaugh has with rape?” Then another #stoprusher came up with the name #RapeyRush. Who are the #stoprush professionals? I can only speak for myself. I am a self-made woman with a full-time career devoted to listening to Limbaugh and contacting his sponsors. Here at the #stoprush factory, hours are long but, for the most part, the conditions meet OSHA, ADA and FDA requirements. Our boss? His name is associated with ours all over social media. Last week I walked into George’s office. I said, “Mr. Soros, you are overpaying me for a job that I am in love with. My job is so much fun, I would do it for free.” And you know what George said? George said, “I beg to disagree with you, Your Royal Highness Princess Prissy Pants. All of you are doing such a great job, I will double your salary.” It really pays to be assertive. On that solemn note, I bid you adieu. I have to go clear out the ashtrays, beer cans, and tequila bottles from the scene of the #RapeyRush Twitterfest.
Thanks to @slowvoid at Dreamworks for the audio/turkey shot, and @GeeGeeAkili for discovering the word “rapey.” On Monday, October 14, Mark Steyn substituted for Rush Limbaugh. He paid #StopRush the greatest compliment by mentioning us on his show. I cannot go any further before I thank Mr. Steyn for calling NikLuk "Princess Prissy Pants." Yes, that is what Mark Steyn called Nikluk, "Princess Prissy Pants." Even I do not know if it should be PRINCE Prissy Pants or PRINCESS Prissy Pants. I became so jealous that I have asked Nikluk if I could please borrow the moniker. After she agreed I altered the name slightly to @hrhprissy. See how that works? The gender is inclusive.I don't know about you, but last Monday morning I usually leap out of bed, excited for another opportunity to #StopRush. This particular Monday we here at Newt Alpha Base [all the UNPAID Rush Limbaugh monitors] issued a collective “ugh,” scrambled for coffee and inserted toothpicks to keep our eyelids open. Steyn is stinky boring. Yawn.
When Steyn's voice came on instead of Limbaugh's, my heart sank. We went to all that work, getting the petition signed and delivering it to the radio station and Rush might still possibly be in Los Angeles. The horror. Excuses were given that Rush was suffering from bottle flu aggravated when TMZ captured him outside Toscana. That’s what my Cousin Jane told me anyway. Limbaugh had visited Los Angeles for “secret meetings” and broadcast from secret basement confines. Here'e the TMZ proof that Rushbo actually was in LA. Rush Limbaugh DISSES Howard Stern! Rushbo had explained at the beginning of the week of October 14 that the dittocam was positioned behind his head? I could not stomach seeing Rush in LA, even from a basement, so I took his word for it and left my dittocam on pause. Furthermore, I could not possibly tune into the dittocam AND keep my breakfast. Rush reported that all one could see was his cochlear implant, his cigar and the ashtray on his broadcast desk. Quite the trilogy. So here's Mark Steyn last Monday, October 21, behind the golden microphone. He was explaining, Why would a Canadian citizen doctor-shop in the "United States IN America?" Yes, that is what Steyn calls our country: the "United States IN America." Close but no cigar. Canadians have their own health care. However, they apparently don’t have doctors that will take $50 for a negative HIV test without actually administering the test. Oh, sorry. That was a Wall Street Journal employee who doctor-shopped in Brooklyn. Which reminds me of the time I called my friend Bill, telling him my other friend had a problem drinking too much. Bill, a gorgeous hunk of manhood AND a construction worker (there’s something about that low-slung toolbelt) had achieved sobriety and I knew he could help “my friend.” Steyn has marred the good name of Enosburg, Vermont, permanently. Just across the border from Montreal, poor Enosburg will live in infamy as the innocent New England town that Steyn, a Canadian, chose to get an HIV test. If we had only known in advance, we could have called Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) to report his border crossing. But he is WHITE so we don’t have to worry about him. Professor Steyn also works at Hillsdale College. I wonder if his students need toothpicks? The President of Hillsdale referred to "the dark ones." Since Steyn is "a white one," ICE may not be interested. In 2009, the gendarmes arrested Rush for doctor shopping. Besides being wackos, Rushbo and Mark have that in common. Steyn claims he needed the HIV test for emigration to the United States IN America. Wait a minute. Emigrate? Does that mean he is trying to become a U.S. citizen Somebody call ICE, quick. NikLuk first recognized this story on the Rush Limbaugh Show for what it was. Thank you for helping me define the issue and for all your efforts on #stoprush. Last summer I flew to Washington, DC, to deliver the petition, AARP: Rescue Your Name from Rush Limbaugh" to AARP Headquarters in Washington, DC. With the help of moveon.org this petition has the signatures of 199,280 people.Delivery of the second petition, Rush Limbaugh: Please Leave Los Angeles proved much simpler. All that was required was a short jaunt on the freeways of Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Travel time was approximately the same as Los Angeles to Washington, DC. However, there were no security lines to stand in. This petition currently has 26,241 signatures. The story of the trip to the KFI studios in the Clear Channel building in Beautiful Downtown Burbank may not have been as exotic as the AARP trip. However, there is a lot to be said for the old adage, "Think Globally, Act Locally." The local trips do not require packing, ticket purchasing or any of the hassles or expenses of modern-day travel. AAMCO, Stop Supporting Rush's Hate is the name of the third petition that I have hand delivered to a sponsor or business connected to The Rush Limbaugh Show. On December 17, I took a drive down the coast of sunny Southern California to AAMCO Transmissions in Dana Point. In the seat next to me sat 29,880 people or at least a portion of their signatures. We were asking AAMCO to please stop supporting Rush Limbaugh. Lindsey Redmond and I had delivered the signed petition to nine (9) other AAMCO service centers in Southern California. Then recently I discovered that the board member in charge of local advertising owned the AAMCO business in Dana Point. Finally, someone who might make a difference. I had mailed a copy of the signed petition to Marc Graham in Horsham, Pennsylvania. I received no reply from him. Apparently the AAMCO CEO does not care about what horrible marketing decisions local dealers make. This seems strange to me since this affects the AAMCO bottom line and will impact his stock prices. Calling the 70 mile round-trip from Anaheim to Dana Point "unspectacular" would be an overstatement. At the AAMCO service center, Josh politely received the signed petition. Andrew Ream, the Owner, had just stepped out. Rather than destroy a forest, I had printed 100 pages, only a fraction of the 496 signatures from California alone. I explained to him basically what the cover letter had stated, shook his hand (clean of transmission fluid) and drove off. On January 1, 2014, Rush Limbaugh will find out what it means to be "downsized." His show will move from KFI which broadcasts to thousands of square miles, to KTLK, which broadcasts to dozens of square miles. We shall find out if AAMCO makes the wise choice. Hopefully AAMCO will help Limbaugh pack his bags then bid him good riddance.
Meanwhile the petition is still posted and available for your signature. We shall keep it posted until AAMCO makes the right decision to leave Limbaugh in the dust. Bright and early Friday morning, October 18, I sat up in bed realizing I had to deliver the “Rush Limbaugh: Please Leave Los Angeles” petition to El Rusho's [sic] Los Angeles affiliate. I thought he might be leaving town at noon after his last Los Angeles broadcast and I wanted to be sure to tell him “Get out of town” before he actually did.I set off at 6:20 am, printed petition copy with 12,100 signatures in hand, plugged the address into my GPS and headed for the freeway. Jezebel, as we fondly refer to the voice actor in our car, gave me directions.
When the screen told me 48 minutes to get to KFI in beautiful downtown Burbank, I guffawed briefly and had a sip of coffee from my to-go mug. The J Paul Getty Museum is beautiful; especially viewed at 5 miles per hour while inching through the construction zone known as Screwyou Overpass. I mean Screwballs. I mean Skirball which means you’re screwed because going and coming this overpass will claim at LEAST 45 minutes of your life. At 8:30ish I called Lindsey, the longest & hardest working StopRusher, to tell her what I was doing. After I pulled off the freeway, I reconnoitered the joint. The address for KFI coincided with a FORTRESS a la LA. Glass and steel going up into the sky, no signage except the numbered address, 3400. Jezebel doesn’t usually lie so I took her at her word when she said, “You have arrived at your destination.” I found street parking but WAIT, the coffee I had brought with me was long gone. I called Lindsey again to tell her I had arrived but had to go get coffee and would get back to her. NO COFFEE FOR MILES. I am totally serious. ALL steel and glass buildings jammed next to each other with the exception of the Walt Disney Studios which have that green metal sign accompanied by green metal palm trees. Of course later I found that Starbucks was in the other direction but never mind. I drove back towards 3400 W Olive Ave because I wanted to arrive before 9 am to catch a glimpse of Rush’s limo as it whisked him into underground parking. Didn't happen. I called Lindsey again to ask, “Remember when we were supposed to go to all the Rush Limbaugh stations and get that information?” She performed a Vulcan mind meld across 30 miles and briefly hung up. Okay, now this is where Lindsey is totally on the ball. She remembered it was the FCC, went to their website and deciphered it was the “Quarterly Programming Reports.” Petition in hand I parked on the street, walked up between 2 beautifully appointed buildings and entered the Warner Bros. entrance. Undeterred I walked outside, floated up a perfectly landscaped walk with tile steps. Inside the modern marble and pleasant smelling palatial lobby was a circle with a wood table holding a bouquet. Just the right amount of star-gazer lilies (I thought of @Cooper as in Joni) scattered in a huge, long stemmed bouquet. Ah, that’s where the perfectly-balanced smell came from, not too sweet but clean and outdoorsy. No security guard this time. I went to the directory and there was KFI listed along with all the other dozen Clear Channel radio stations on the 5th floor. The ceiling in the elevator was so high, I had to tilt my head back at an angle crushing my cervical vertebrae in order to see it. When the elevator door opened, a floor-to-ceiling collage of all the stations greeted me on the opposite wall. Later I had my photo taken there with the “FEARLESS” sign. On the left were closed double doors. On the right was a small lobby with a few modern chairs. The “receptionist” was on the phone so I stood behind the counter. Her cubicle resembled a high-security bank counter with (bullet-proof?) glass extending to the ceiling. There was a small slot like the one you would use to feed an inmate and a little circle where I could address the receptionist. She was not happy to see me and I had not even opened my mouth. I smiled and told her I was there to deliver a petition to Rush Limbaugh. “He’s not here. He’s never here,” she said curtly. I said, “That may be the case but he IS broadcasting from Los Angeles this week. So I thought this would be the best place to deliver the petition.” We had a couple more exchanges, she gruff and officious, me kind and polite. Finally she conceded with a HUGE sigh that while she would accept the envelope she would have to forward it to the Programming Department. So I said, “Thank you. Would it be possible for me to see the “Quarterly Programming Reports.” She said, “The what?” I said, “The FCC requires that each station allow people to see the Quarterly Programming Reports.” Another sigh. She came out from around her barricade through a locked door. Then she scurried across the reception area to open a door which led into a teeny tiny room containing a left-over file cabinet. She had me sign in with my name and address. As she left she said, "I'll have to call someone." I waited in the little room and gave myself kudos for thinking about opening the file cabinets but not doing so. “They’re probably empty." I talked myself out of it. That left me alone with a computer that reminded me a lot of my first IBM-knock-off from 1995. She called someone and up he came in about 10 minutes. I introduced myself, held out my hand and received no name in return. He moved around me to the computer, pulled up a menu of FCC documents, asked me specifically for what I wanted to see. I replied, “The Quarterly Programming Report.” As he was pulling that up he said, “No one has ever asked to see that before. Well, it’s 15 cents per printed page.” Suddenly I am thinking that means that I have no idea what I’m asking for. He pulled it up and started printing. The buffer from the computer to the printer took 3 hours. Not really but, as I said, 1995 vintage computer, 1998 printer. We chatted, he suspicious, me saying, “I don’t know what I’m asking for but that’s what ‘they’ said they wanted.” He said, “For 15 pages that will be $2.25.” I said, “I can afford that. But I’ll need a receipt.” He looked at me like “Eat shit and die,” but he said nothing. I said, “Just kidding.” I had forgotten how long it used to take to print 15 pages 15 years ago. Finally at page 10, either the printer told the computer or the computer told the printer, “No way, Ray. I’ve worked hard enough for one day.” Meanwhile I had discovered that “No Name” was the Facilities Manager who had been with Clear Channel for 10 years. He said he’d go downstairs to get the document printed and be right back. Meanwhile I looked over the first 10 pages and decided what I had was useless but on the up side, I had asked for something. Balls up. Yippee for me. Just call me “Slick.” Or you can call me what Mark Steyn, my new BFF, calls NikLuk which is “Princess Prissy Pants.” I asked NikLuk and she dm’ed me that I could borrow the name. I have not yet asked my husband to call me “Princess Prissy Pants.” I kind of like the idea. I was in the process of lining up a selfie when some guy came off the elevator I asked if he would take my photo with the only KFI sign available. Voila, my new Twitter avi was born. Eventually the Facilities Manager returned. He said since he only had fourteen pages instead of fifteen, it would only cost me $2.10. I asked, “Cash, check or paypal?” Some people have no sense of humor. “Just kidding,” I said. Luckily I had exact change. I paid the guy and from a ten-foot pole distance he said, “Why don’t you like Rush Limbaugh?” I said, “Because I don’t like being called a ‘slut’ and a ‘prostitute.’” He nodded. Then I probably got carried away. I said, “He used the ‘N’ word on the radio and he spends 3 hours/day, 5 days/week bashing our President.” At this point he started backing up. The thought flashed through my mind that I might need a breath lozenge. I said, “If you had offered me a cup of coffee I wouldn’t be so grumpy.” Not really. I felt I had overstayed my welcome. I reached out my hand, shook his and said a cheery, “Thanks again!” And took the elevator down. As of 10/25/13, 2:39 pm Los Angeles time, there are 13,260 signatures. The comments from signers still roll in. They make me laugh and make me believe this all MIGHT be worth it. UPDATE 9/2/2014: TOTAL SIGNATURES = 26,504 and counting |