Pittman told The Associated Press in an interview that the controversy over Limbaugh’s comments was merely “part of the normal day-to-day of talk radio,” and said that neither the advertisers nor the stations leaving the program had a major impact on the company — despite the fact that the plumbing fixtures company Kohler Co. just became one of the latest sponsors to leave Limbaugh, saying “we do not support the comments of Mr. Limbaugh and have pulled our advertising from his show.”

Pittman, who helped found MTV decades ago, also noted that Limbaugh apologized for the first time in 30 years — although Limbaugh added the caveat that he was being subjected to a double standard that didn’t apply equally to rappers.

Meanwhile, as the Washington Post reported, “Liberal groups that organized petitions and boycotts against Limbaugh say that they intend to keep up the pressure and that they’ve had a lasting impact on the most popular radio host in America.

“The objective has been to show that there are real consequences when someone like Mr. Limbaugh or his company shows no accountability for his actions,” Angelo Carusone, who has been leading the anti-Limbaugh efforts for Media Matters for America, told the Post’s Paul Farhi. “That is continuing.”

The radio stations that air Limbaugh’s program have been told by his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, to resume running “barter” ads during his program.  Premiere, which is owned by Clear Channel, had suspended the “barter” requirement for two weeks in a move widely seen as a way to give advertisers a chance to lie low while Limbaugh was in the news.

But Steven Biel, director of SignOn.org, a Web site created by MoveOn.org for an anti-Limbaugh petition drive, said the episode will make “King Rush” think twice in the future.

“I suspect his internal editing equipment is significantly amped up,” Biel told Farhi. “I could easily imagine a scenario in which one more ill-timed comment will get him banished” to satellite radio.

Here’s a program summary:

“He has made a living from speaking his mind. But this time round, Rush Limbaugh, the US radio talk show host, may have taken his conservative rants one step too far. Last week, the right-wing shock jock led an on-air, all-out verbal assault on Sandra Fluke, who had argued before Congress that contraception should be covered by health insurance.

This week, advertisers pulled out of his show en masse, despite a rare apology from Limbaugh for the words he had unleashed. And while Barack Obama, the US president, chose to speak up, Republican candidates decided to keep their heads down, weary of upsetting one of the most powerful right-wing media voices in the US – as the countdown to the presidential elections creeps up.

This week’s News Divide takes a look at a controversy within the Republican media machine and the impact it may have on the US presidential election. Has Limbaugh unintentionally harmed the party he backs?

In our Internet Video of the Week, we feature one of the smartest and most prolific online animators around, Mark Fiore. With the US primaries rumbling on, it was only right that he would weigh in with his take on it. In the latest video, “Leader’s”, he summarises what the candidates are talking about – personal lives and timeshares – as opposed to the big issues like economy and war, that they should be talking about.”

Listening Post can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Saturday: 0830, 1930; Sunday: 1430; Monday: 0430.

Although our country’s leading shock jock spoke in the aftermath of the massacre that left a federal judge and five others dead and Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords critically injured, he was not referring to Jared Loughner or any of the many other well-armed gunmen who increasingly try to hold our democracy hostage. Instead, he typically assured his massive audience of self-described “ditto-heads” that the country is most imperiled by anyone who dares suggest that the daily hate fest on leading right-wing radio talk shows such as Limbaugh’s might have any connection with the violent acts that sometimes follow.

Rush is right” sort of. It is our duty to speak out! But Limbaugh’s assessment of who “has put the fate of our country in peril” is cockeyed. He says Democrats and progressives, who are trying to silence conservative voices, are to blame – but I say it’s El Rushbo and his fellow purveyors of hate speech on America’s public airwaves who are America’s real enemy. In fact, I wrote a whole book about it”

Limbaugh was among the shock jocks who “pushed back against arguments that their heated political rhetoric had played a role in the tragedy,” the New York Times reported in an article headlined “Talk Radio Hosts Reject Blame in Shooting.”

“Jon Justice,” Rush’s local equivalent, was another. Justice plies his talk trade at KQTH 104.1 FM, which calls itself “The Truth.”

“There isn’t any correlation,” Justice told the Times. “It’s like blaming Jodie Foster for the individual who shot Ronald Reagan.”

Justice and other local hosts “struck a defensive, even embattled tone” in response to remarks by Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who said at a news conference that Arizona had become “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul-searching,” the Times reported. “They said Saturday’s shooting had nothing to do with either their broadcasts or the state’s tense political environment.”

Some callers disagreed and “made it clear” they think the radio hosts bear some responsibility. “You ought to be ashamed,” one told Justice. “You are part of the problem.”

“People need to go and point fingers,” Justice responded. “It’s unfortunate, but some people do. They have to find somebody to demonize.”

Judge for yourself whether or not “Jon Justice” is being “demonized” – or if instead he is part of the problem. I profiled him back in August 2008 in a blog post called “The Truth, Jon Justice” and the American Way?”

In that post, I chronicled how Tucson’s bush-league Limbaugh (who reportedly lost a previous on-air slot when he pretended to drown a dog on-air) made anti-immigrant, racist and homophobic remarks on-air – and then posted sexist and racist videos on YouTube attacking Isabel Garcia, a well-known Arizona-based immigrant rights advocate.

“We’ve been facing down the forces of hate for years,” Garcia told me. “But it has never been like this before – until Jon Justice and hate radio 104.1 FM came around and began making derogatory comments and using hateful language while regularly fomenting lies, fear and misinformation about immigrants.”

Garcia’s associate Kat Rodriguez said she “would usually shrug this off as idiotic, but it has actually gained traction. This right-wing jerk, whose show is a constant stream of anti-immigrant, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, is leading the charge, even commenting the other day that we need “bloodshed in the polling places.” Nobody outside of Arizona knows what is going on, and the madness continues,” concluded Rodriguez.

Having been branded a lesbian, a communist and a terrorist, and likened to Al Qaeda, Garcia was then targeted by a local anti-Mexican immigration activist named Roy Warden. After threatening those he terms “Left Wing activists and Pendejo Thugs” that he will “draw my weapon and blow your freaking heads off,” Warden warned that he might “turn their skulls into red mush” in an attack that “will make the Shootout at the OK Corral look like a Sunday school picnic.”

Given that more people were killed in the recent Tucson shooting than died in the actual OK Corral episode, it seems fair to ask: Who is really putting the fate of our country in peril – hate-speaking shock jocks, or those who criticize them?

Don’t be a dittohead- make up your own mind! Here’s how my post from two-and-a half-years ago about on-air hate speech in Tucson ended:

“It’s not a stretch to ponder whether on-air remarks such as Jon Justice’s call for “bloodshed in the polling places” could one day prove to be the spark that turns such ominous hate speech into real-life acts of hatred – and real people’s skulls into – yes “real red mush”

Smerconish is one of the many nationally syndicated radio hosts (he’s also a columnist and MSNBC contributor) profiled in my recent book Shock Jocks. Now he’s suddenly reporting “from the front lines” that a quest for guaranteed “high ratings” has resulted in “a rapid escalation of extreme dialogue” The result, he says, has been a “climate in Washington…being shaped “by an artificial presentation of attitudes on cable TV and talk radio” as “politicians emulate the world of punditry.”

As one who has long argued that the real shock jock racket is the money racket – everyone but the victims makes millions, from national distributors and local stations to advertisers and sponsors to Rush ($50 million per year) Limbaugh et al — all I can say to Smerconish is, “Welcome to the Club!”

Recently, says Kinsley, “the theme was that anyone who criticizes Arizona’s new get-tough-on-illegal-immigration law is a hypocrite, because Mexico’s immigration laws are even tougher.” Kinsley, who lives in Seattle, says he “heard it on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved and a local guy named David Boze” and decided “it is an absurd point.”

Kinsley believes most Mexicans “would probably have no trouble agreeing with Rush and Sean and Glenn that Mexico is a dreadful place with a corrupt government that has terrible, onerous laws on many subjects.”

Obviously Kinsley doesn’t agree with the conservative shock jocks on this one — but I doubt many Mexicans agree with him either!

There’s a few large assumptions buried in that sentence, of course, starting with the idea that there has been — or will be — much “Republican success” this year. But Chafets IS correct in noting — as I have for some time — that El Rushbo is “the brains and the spirit” behind any conceivable GOP resurgence, as well as his assertion that, Limbaugh has consistently “mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.”

His strategy was simple — but effective. “With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda… Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates “especially centrists “to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.”

What will happen next? As Chafets notes, “Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of ‘no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.”

“This,” says the man Hedges believes is “America’s greatest intellectual,” is the frightening mood of the country — “the level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions,” and the “self-destructive fantasies” that have Chomsky warning “that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.”

“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told Hedges. “The parallels are striking.

“I don’t think all this is very far away,” he added. “If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

Apparently the noted linguist has been hearing some shocking things from America’s shock jocks — and their audience.

“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”

In case you think Chomsky’s ire is limited to conservatives, however, think again! “Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system,” notes Hedges, “Who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates.”

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky says. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, “Look how courageous I am.” But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

Turner, charged with threatening the life of three federal judges who issued rulings supporting gun control, claims federal agents encouraged his seemingly dangerous rants over the years, and told him to “ratchet up the rhetoric” while asking for help in identifying a white supremacist killer. Government officials admit using him as an informant (beginning in 2004 and culminating in 2007) for intelligence on members of white supremacist groups, among whom he had a devoted following. Turner’s background as a paid F.B.I. informant has now become the main issue in the thus far unsuccessful prosecution.

As the New York Times reported, “Before, during and after his employ as an informant “sometimes to the chagrin of his handlers and sometimes at their request “Mr. Turner continued to use his radio show and Web site to spout racist and, at times, violent rhetoric aimed at elected officials, public personalities and judges.”

Suddenly last summer, however, Turner was arrested, accused of posting photos of the judges and saying they were “worthy of death.”

In his hours on the witness stand, Turner detailed his ascent as a shock jock, as well as his relationship with the F.B.I.. Michael A. Orozco, one of Turner’s lawyers, offered as a defense that his client is “nothing but a shock jock.” Turner’s “hand was guided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said. “He was providing a service. This is betrayal.”

Turner has long been notorious for making anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, white supremacist remarks and encouraging violence on his Internet radio show and companion Web site.

Last June, for example, he posted this message: “The government “especially these three judges “are cunning, ruthless, untrustworthy, disloyal, unpatriotic, deceitful scum.” The judges all testified at trial that they felt threatened. Turner later took the stand to say his rants were an F.B.I.-sanctioned ruse to “‘flush out’” dangerous members of his audience.

Were Turner’s comments a clear threat, as prosecutors alleged, or simply “the type of free speech that the F.B.I. had encouraged and condoned in the past,” as defense lawyers contended? Despite the fact that the government actually brought in the judges who were Turner’s targets to testify in the second trial, two sets of jurors have now failed to come to a consensus on that crucial question.

A new trial date has been set for April 12, and lead prosecutor William Hogan, says “it’s highly likely” the government will take another bite at the apple. Third times a charm?

Turner also faces state charges in Connecticut, for telling his followers to “take up arms” against state lawmakers who voted to give Catholic lay members more control over church finances.

Turner, on trial for threatening the life of three federal judges who issued rulings supporting gun control, claims he followed the agents” suggestion immediately, posting a picture of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Federal District Court in Chicago on his blog below the headline “Gotcha!” and later appearing on television to declare the judge “worthy of death.” In exchange, Turner said, he was paid by the F.B.I.

In his five hours on the witness stand, Turner detailed his ascent as a shock jock, as well as his relationship with the F.B.I. , which he says encouraged his seemingly racist rants over the years. Turner’s first trial ended with a deadlocked jury last year, with prosecutors admitting then that he was an F.B.I. informant.

In that trial, Michael A. Orozco, one of Turner’s lawyers, offered as a defense that his client is “nothing but a shock jock.” Turner has long been notorious for making anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, white supremacist remarks and encouraging violence on his Internet radio show and companion Web site. Last June, for example, he posted this message: “The government “especially these three judges “are cunning, ruthless, untrustworthy, disloyal, unpatriotic, deceitful scum.”

Offering that opinion was certainly Turner’s right “but going on to say, “These judges deserve to be killed” may not be. “That is not just political rhetoric,” said the prosecutor, assistant United States attorney William R. Hogan. “It is not O.K. “very definitely not O.K. “for him to call for their execution and their murder.”

That’s when Orozco chimed in. Not only was Turner just a “shock jock” offering constitutionally-protected “opinion,” he was also speaking and acting in accordance with guidelines the F.B.I. had set out for him as a confidential informer, Orozco noted. In fact, he added, the F.B.I. had even requested that Turner turn up the heat and the volume of his remarks to impress “and perhaps infiltrate “certain shadowy groups the Bureau was looking into. Turner’s “hand was guided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said. “He was providing a service. This is betrayal.”

Prosecutor Hogan acknowledged in his opening statement that Turner was an informer for the government, beginning in 2004 and culminating in 2007.

In his retrial, Mr. Turner has claimed he is opposed to the racist views he expounded, and said he never wanted anyone to get hurt.
Instead, he says, he is a a patriot who worked on behalf of the government to infiltrate the white supremacist movement, and never believed the messages he put forth supposedly at the behest of the feds. As proof, he offered a letter he wrote to an F.B.I. agent that noted, “the person you hear [or hear about] on radio is not real life.”

Turner also faces state charges in Connecticut, for telling his followers to “take up arms” against state lawmakers who voted to give Catholic lay members more control over church finances.