Rush = Porn!

(Like the media can ever get enough.)

Under the flimsy guise of a conservative response, Newsweek morphs a super-sized Limbaugh into the Great and Powerful Oz, slaps a tag across his mouth clearly connotative of porn, and guarantees (ca-ching, ca-ching) he will be driving the news cycle beginning a second week in a row.

By the way, the porn allusion wouldn’t have anything to do with moving a few copies to Rush’s 72% male, 20-30 million strong audience, would it?

(image: Ron Edmonds/AP. White House. Jan. 13, 2009)

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The Gap

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Tags: Enough, media, Newsweek, Oz, photo, politics, Rush Limbaugh, White House

http://justbetweenstrangers.blogspot.com/ acm

two thoughts:
1) clearly I don’t read enough pr0n, because what I see here is a gag (and/or the black boxes used in redacted documents)
2) not sure whether it will give him another news cycle — depends a bit on how it’s handled. for example, if you slam him not for all his Rush-i-ness but for hoping for failure of the only plan that might save us from more tent cities and further economic crash, then the focus is back on the economy where it should be….
(p.s.) apparently hard to comment on this thread and get the system to accept the comment as real!
Stella

Reminds me of the fundamentalists that flocked to the Terry Schiavo scene and like to parade around women’s clinics with duct tape over their mouths. This guy certainly represents that radical extreme. The media will keep selling the culture war if we keep buying.
DanM

Censorship, yes, but as acm mentioned, I think more of a Dick Cheney-Senate floor *bleep* than a Girls Gone Wild Commercial. If I can venture into the contextual aspect of a textual element — “ENOUGH!” -> very parental; he’s been naughty.
No love lost here in this headshot. The black background launches that ruddy flesh forward (is that a zit?) with its full-blown corpulence — he just might be hiding third chin under that stuffed collar. Moreover, the blackground bleeds into his jacket, highlighting its off-center lay around his collar (and it’s his own fault, but that tie).
Not to mention the deepset, shifty eyes (to the right, of course) caught in a rearview mirror-crop between the gag-box and the “Newsweek” bumper sticker slapped across his forehead.
Julie L

Pron?
Um, no. It speaks of muffling the b@$tard.
charlie

“Enough! Eight is enough!” I would guess that’s the reference here.
http://www.victorfitzsimons.net Victor F

Well, Rush is obscene and distasteful. I can see the pr0n connection.
The black box over his mouth reminds me of those old Monty Python cartoons, and all the characters with their mouths flapping open speaking nonsense.
The problem with the media covering the media is, everybody in the media wins and all the consumers lose. Enjoy selling those glossies, Newsweek! Rush won’t shut up because, for a little while longer anyway, he’ll make SOMEbody some money.
http://pacifist.net db

Though I could care less what David Frum has to say, or Newsweek for that matter, this is a rather lovely cover. That said, it’s the kind of thing the nutcases would probably wear as a badge of honor.
When the WSJ, Fox and The Weekly Standard start running these pieces, I’ll pay attention.
http://americaadrift.com/ Stuart

This came to mind.
yg

glimmers of a recovery?
KansasKowboy

I was reading on Media Matters where they demonstrate how 1.5 million listeners, plus or minus is a more realistic estimate of the regular Limbaugh audience. They say that is about equal to the viewership that Obermann and Maddow get everynight. So that number seems to make more sense to me that 20 million. The 20 million figure is a number the Limbaugh team made up years ago. And there is no indication that the publicity that he has received recently has “doubled” his listeners as the media likes to repeat.
wagonjak

Not sure why you here at BAG are repeating the 20-30 million number of Rush’s listeners…even Rush doesn’t claim that many…you should be careful here about repeating numbers that large without backing them up with actual facts…which apparently are not available.
And I’m sure a lot of people tune into him because 1) he’s the only game in town in parts of the south and southwest, especially if you are a trucker or on the road, and 2) I suspect many people tune into Rush these days just to listen to his rants, not because they believe his nasty slanted bashing of O and liberals, and 3) I wonder how many of those ditto-heads actually take the time to go to the polls and vote…
mjf

I think whoever put this together was having a laugh. The image of Limbaugh is dominant, menacing, defiant but most importantly challenging. The dominant colour in the image is black – his suit and the b/ground blend black. From his perspective Limbaugh looks out – down and to the right. He isn’t looking/engaging the viewer. His intended gag is black but it doesn’t extend far enough to be taken (visually) seriously and serves to reinforce the operation of black. (Enough! could also be read as his response to the challenge) The white text reads Glimmers of a recovery/ The ‘octomom’ explained/ Newsweek/ Enough!/ A conservative’s case against Limbaugh. Then the joke – Limbaugh has been challenged and he is engaging his challenger which has come from the right – in very small black text on his main chin almost blurred is ‘by David Frum’. The image however reinforces Limbaugh as a picture of excess dominance (the predominantly male audience). He is barely contained by his suit and it looks as though he is about to break through the cover and continue on his mission to confront Frum. He can’t/won’t be stopped, silenced, challenged, contained or controlled.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Arel Harry R. Sohl

Normally I’d say “put a fork in her, she’s done.”
But I can’t advise that on this bloated Rush “Oscar Meyer Hotdogs – they plump when you cook ‘em” Limbaugh. Whoever did it may have to clean up the barrels of bile that haven’t already spewed out of his gaping maw.