The National Organization for Women (NOW) is attempting, once again, to do what no other group has been able to accomplish — get radio giant Rush Limbaugh off the air.
On Thursday, the women’s advocacy group announced a renewed protest campaign —“Enough Rush” — to bring Limbaugh down.
“He is going to be whining and calling us out about his First Amendment rights” Terry O’Neill, president of NOW, told The Daily Caller about how she expects Limbaugh to react to their campaign. “There is nothing in the Constitution that says Rush Limbaugh gets $38 million a year for being on a radio show.”
The group, which Limbaugh often jokingly refers to as the NAGs (“National Association of Gals”), is rallying their chapters for a day of protest on May 18th.
Brian Glicklich, Limbaugh’s spokesman, told TheDC that his audience will not be driven away by the group’s efforts.
“Every organization that has tried to censor Rush Limbaugh has failed because his audience won’t stand for being told by agenda-driven activists what speech is acceptable,” Glicklich explained. “NOW has been attempting to silence ideas they dislike for a long time; this is nothing new, and has no more integrity or honesty today than ever.”
While Limbaugh has weathered many campaigns to silence him, NOW hopes to accomplish the thus-far Sisyphean task by bringing their frustrations to local stations and advertisers.
“Different chapters are going to be doing different things. You might see some chapters picketing a local radio station,” O’Neill said. “But I think mostly what the chapters are doing is finding the local advertisers that advertise at the local level during the Rush Limbaugh Show and urging them to think twice about where they put their money.”
Glicklich noted that NOW is using the campaign to raise money.
“It’s instructive and telling that NOW added a ‘donate’ button to their website to ‘support their campaign,’” Glicklich pointed out, adding that “they have a store, too. Selling T-shirts.”
Indeed, many other campaigns against Limbaugh have failed, but O’Neill believes NOW’s effort has the potential for success, especially in the wake of Limbaugh’s comments about Georgetown Law student and contraception advocate Sandra Fluke.
“He spent three days not only attacking [Fluke] personally, but doing so in a way that was actually threatening,” O’Neill explained. “When he demanded to see video tape of her having sex, that crosses the line into fantasizing about pornography and violence. So this latest is very different.
“Now he says he has weathered the storm and we’ll just have to see if he is right. I don’t think he has,” she added. “I think it is definitely a long-term project but his brand of hate, I think, A) Has finally gone too far and B) I think the American people are really just not interested in that anymore.”
Limbaugh has apologized for his comments about Fluke.
O’Neill added that she expects push back from Limbaugh on his show.
