Joel S. Hirschhorn

For some years, several times a week while driving to go shopping and do errands, I have listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Pretty much all the time I have become angered because every few sentences I realized that with his total sincerity and conviction he was stating absolutely incorrect things. Add to endless wrong information complete lapses in logic, causing me to be bewildered that Limbaugh has reached such success. My only explanation is that he appeals to a very large number of ignorant and unintelligent people who, like religious zealots, remain enraptured by his ultra-ring wing rhetoric. What a surprise therefore that recently Limbaugh has been speaking relentlessly about “information poor” Americans as his pseudo brilliant explanation of why President Obama has succeeded.

Two things stand out. First, he clearly refuses to face the reality that it is his incredibly loyal audience that must be information poor to readily accept all the falsehoods he dishes out daily.

Here are just two simple example of intentional misinformation and disinformation he has dispensed, like the proverbial Kool-Aid keeping his listeners doped up. He recently was admonishing President Obama for doing terrible things or not doing the right things and in his routinely glib, smooth style spoke of the five years of the Obama presidency. This happened at about 10 percent into Obama’s second term, in other words some weeks, or about 90 percent less than the full fifth year of the Obama presidency. How could an honest, fair person so easily state to his vast audience that there had already been five years of Obama as president? And yet, there it was. I quickly realized that this specific event was just part of the normal design of the ludicrous Limbaugh rhetoric, actually propaganda designed to maintain the conservative idiocy of his loyal audience.

And then today I heard Limbaugh refer to the settlement of Minnesota by the Vikings. As usual I shook my head in disbelief. I could not imagine how the Vikings had managed to get so far inland when they had hit North America around the year 1000. So when I got home I did some easy research on the web and, of course, verified that I was correct to disbelieve what Limbaugh had said. The Vikings discovered Eastern Canada, not what is now defined as Minnesota. But like everything else Limbaugh mutters he conveys a complete sense of honesty, correctness and conviction, despite being totally wrong. Does Limbaugh connect the Minnesota Vikings to historical fact? Perhaps he has learned from many years of astounding radio success that he can say just about anything and get away with it.

Now for my major point about information poor people that he now talks about endlessly. Limbaugh has shown semantic creativity in expressing racist thinking. When he uses the presence of many millions of information poor Americans to explain Obama and Democratic successes he has devised yet another way to attack African Americans and Hispanic Americans that, indeed, are demographic realities causing failure for Romney and other Republicans. Moreover, it is also apparent that Limbaugh does not appeal to the poorest Americans who he routinely condemns for living off of government handouts.

I suspect that if there were good data about the demographics of the Limbaugh audience they would reveal, like those voting for Romney, that it consists mostly of older, higher income white American men. Well, turns out there is some decent information.

As to the listeners of Limbaugh's daily radio show, according to a 2008 news media consumption survey conducted by PewResearch, 72 percent are male and 80 percent are conservative. About three-quarters of his listeners identify themselves as Tea Partiers and Christian Conservatives. In other words, Limbaugh does not change the thinking of people, he appeals to a mindset and gives those people exactly what they like. Another source says his audience is 95 percent white and two-thirds earn more than $60k a year with the majority earning over $100k a year. In other words, not only is his audience mostly white men, they are also in the upper parts of the economic spectrum (I suspect mostly small business types who may have learned how to make money but nevertheless are quite ignorant and prejudiced.)

As to his website, according to quantcast.com (as of March 3, 2012) the vast majority of visitors to RushLimbaugh.com are aging white males: 54 percent are 45 and older, with 28 percent 55 and older, and 91 percent are Caucasian.

So here is a radio god whose success depends on having information poor people as addicted listeners using the same concept to condemn those minority Americans he aggressively blames for the ruin of the nation because they vote for Democrats. And of course with his male dominated audience he has shown himself to be rude and worse towards women, another demographic that Republicans have lost.

It is time for people, especially decent Republicans, to condemn wacko Limbaugh for all of his many failures, especially his new attempt to mask racism with the cloak of information deficits. If Republicans ever want to appeal to a broad cross section of Americans they should have the courage to disown and openly condemn the appalling strategy of bloviator Limbaugh to cater to the most stupid and biased Americans. They may, indeed, be seen as the core constituency of the Republican Party, but they are a heavy anchor pulling it down. Interestingly, among Republicans, only 13 percent say they tune in to Limbaugh “regularly.” Time to dump Limbaugh.

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[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]