Gone Too Far?

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past couple of weeks you’ve probably already heard about the fracas going on between ultra-conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and his advertising sponsors – or his former sponsors, as an increasing number of them are becoming. I don’t intend to comment on the political aspects of the situation – I’ll leave that to those better qualified in political science, history or abnormal psychology (it depends on your point of view) – but I do find it interesting that the issue of healthcare benefits, which is usually a lot less interesting than watching paint dry, has now become a political hot-button topic contentious enough to impel major right-wing celebrities into making personal attacks on apparently innocent graduate students for expressing an opinion in front of a Congressional committee when asked to do so. It’s also somewhat intriguing watching the arguments over whether or not this sort of thing should be protected speech – and whether or not advertisers should be pulling their support for the program…

Regardless of how one feels about Limbaugh and his political positions, it seems clear that he has the right to voice them, and his radio network has the right to broadcast them. People who believe that health insurance benefits should include reproductive health and family planning services are not a protected class of citizens, and none of the radio broadcasts I’ve heard about advocated violence against them. These comments may be hateful, vitriolic, ignorant, and personally offensive; they may also be professionally incompetent, in the sense of driving support away from the speaker’s alleged political and social allies and making all right-wing pundits (and politicians) look like bigots and idiots (to the extent that there’s a difference). But there doesn’t seem to be any possibility of banning these broadcasts from a legal standpoint. Doing so as a business decision is another matter…

No organization that does business with (and therefore makes money on) customers from liberal or centrist ideologies would want to be associated with this type of broadcast, given the high probability of anger and disgust for Limbaugh transferring to their product or service (or worse yet, to the companies themselves). Thus, many of the companies that believe they have customers (or potential customers) in those demographic groups are abandoning their support for the program by refusing to pay for advertising time during those broadcasts. Normally, we would expect to see this type of avoidance (or outright flight) on the part of right-wing companies in reaction to things they consider too radical, liberal or risqué for public broadcast, but the principle applies just as well to offerings on either side of the spectrum, and I don’t think there can be any question that the advertisers are within their rights as well…

My point here is that from a business standpoint, none of the parties involved are doing anything questionable. Any radio station (or network of stations) is completely within its rights to broadcast programs that are offensive to millions of listeners, provided that they don’t violate any of the actual laws about hate speech, obscenity, and so on. By the same token, any company is completely within its rights to refuse to sponsor any of these programs, either because the material is reprehensible in its own right or because they are concerned that their customers’ displeasure with the program will translate to lower sales or any other unwanted business condition. Any intervention into the situation can only be seen as a violation of free speech and free enterprise – and we’ve seen plenty of historical examples that prove that neither of these things is a good idea…

A friend of mine once wrote that “The Constitution does not guarantee the right to be listened to,” and I’ve always felt he had a point. In the case of Limbaugh versus everyone with a conscience, I’d have to say that the system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to…