Radio giant Rush Limbaugh is fighting back against the National Organization for Women (NOW), the liberal women’s advocacy group that has mobilized with Media Matters to take him off the air.
On Tuesday, Limbaugh announced the creation of a new women’s group on Facebook — Rush Babes for America, aka The National Organization for Rush Babes — to provide his women listeners and other females with conservative leanings an outlet to show their support and independence from groups like NOW, to which Limbaugh often refers as the National Association of Gals or the NAGs.
“I wanted to come up with a contrast to the NAGs, to the NOW gang: Just all of the women in this country and in this audience, as a means of contrast. So we start this group dedicated to the values that most women hold dear: family, the American values of the founding, freedom and capitalism,” Limbaugh explained on Tuesday. “And most important of all, not being told by anybody else how or what to think!”
According to Limbaugh, organizations like NOW see women as a single-minded entity with liberal causes on the brain. The radio host explained that his project is part of movement against that to show that women can have all kinds of beliefs —even, and especially, conservative ones.
“The National Organization for Women and their simpaticos, like the mainstream media, want to project this image that all women think alike, that they’re all ‘feminists’ in the activist liberal sense; that they’re monolithic, that they all think and act and do the same things,” Limbaugh said. “So what Rush Babes for America is about is posting stories and ideas that happen here on the program (and occasionally elsewhere) and inviting all of you to participate in conversations on Facebook with other women about what matters to you as a means of demonstrating just what a minority the National Organization for Women and its so-called affiliates really are.”
In less than a day, the Facebook page had garnered 18,430 “likes.”
In mid-April, NOW launched its “Enough Rush” campaign to get Limbaugh off the air for what they allege is his misogynistic bullying of women (particularly noted contraception activist Sandra Fluke) and others. (RELATED: Full coverage of Rush Limbaugh)
The group has been working with Media Matters for America to target local advertisers and stations to reach that end. On May 18, NOW is rallying their chapters for a national day of protest against Limbaugh and his affiliates.
Their “coordinated plan to have me taken off the air, under the premise that women hate this program and that this program is an unfriendly environment for women, that this program laughs at, impugns, makes fun of women,” Limbaugh responded. “Of course, the flaw in this is the National Organization for Women thinking that they speak for women. If there was ever a group that speaks for an almost infinitesimal minority of women, it’s the NAGs.”
To Limbaugh, that group is just a handful of “basically miserable and unhappy women, for whatever reason.”
Limbaugh will be using the Facebook page to highlight news stories and issues of interest to the women in his audience.
“I happen to know the women in this audience in total number dwarf the membership of the National Organization for Women, and yet there they are teaming up with Media Matters — a combined program designed to convince everybody I should be taken off the air,” Limbaugh said. “Well, what about the women who listen to this program? What about the women who like this program? What about the women who believe in this program? What about the women who agree with the political concepts, the values, the objectives as stated by your host on this program? What of them, what of all of you women who seemingly don’t exist to the media, to the National Organization for Women. There are many, many more of you than there are of them. And Rush Babes for America at Facebook is where you go to be officially counted and tabulated and to make a difference.”