When I compare the main conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh to the liberal's main proud radio personality, I have to ask:
who is the main liberal radio personality again?
I mean, sure: the libs have almost ALL of the main stream media's news anchors and "reporters" [sic] (i.e., their new readers) on the left side. But, that's just the old propaganda outlets.
Yet libs, like the author of the blithering blathering OP, do tend to hyperventilate that conservative talk radio is a success.
They worry about having ANY competing thoughts being disseminated. Their need for group think and rigid orthodoxy is disturbing.
Bad news for the lunatic libs who tend to oppose alternative views being tolerated: Rush Limbaugh isn't going anywhere. If the ABC radio network and the syndicate that puts out the Rush radio show allows him and his EIB network to move on, then move on Rush will. He won't go away, he'll just start up on different outlets: that's only going to give Rush a wider audience in the long run.
The orchestrated effort of the leftist wannabe censors will not succeed.
Like him or not, Rush offers something the leftist radio talking heads could never provide: informative and entertaining radio.
You bring up a relevant point, Ilya. There is no one on the left who is the equivalent of Limbaugh, or Beck for that matter. Which raises the question as to why there is such a huge market for this on the right but it is virtually non existent on the left.
Perhaps the OP provides a clue when it mentioned Limbaugh's misogynist remarks about Fluke. There really doesn't seem to be any audience on the left for that kind of language. Granted there is a sense of outrage on the left but it is a reaction to what is stemming from the right rather than originating from the left. There just doesn't seem to be any need for someone on the left to demean women when the right is doing such a thorough job of it. And to be fair it isn't only Limbaugh. Just look at all the GOP candidates remarks about women, rape and abortion.
Between them all they have the misogyny market locked down so it looks like you are right that Limbaugh isn't going anywhere. He amply fills the niche that he has created for himself.
Damn. I'm out of rep but here's an IOU.
You've drilled into a deep psychological well here, a question I've been raising for years. Dittoes are so fond of bringing up AirAmerica and the various leftist radio talkers that tried to copycat Limblob's model and couldn't find the same ratings numbers.
Since we're talking about ratings (attention) we can see the leftists copying the model of mean-spirited demonization have not garnered the same degree of attention... yet the right wing talkers that copied the same model (Hannity, Boortz, Savage et al),
have done so. We can conclude that the strategy of eliminationism works for the right but does not work for the left, which in turn indicates the two approaches are serving different audience hot buttons. It would appear the right's hot button is much more attuned to division and misogyny that the left's is.
On the other hand what works far better for audiences on the left is humor and satire (Stewart, Colbert, Maher, Carlin), an approach that seems to remain a mystery to the right.
It's got to say something about how the two groups tend to think.