Rush Limbaugh Boycott: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook Users Take Part (UPDATES)

UPDATE 1: Limbaugh issued an apology on Saturday. He said, in part, "My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices." Click here to read his full statement.

UPDATE 2: Limbaugh sponsor Carbonite has decided to pull its ads from The Rush Limbaugh Show, despite Limbaugh's earlier apology. Carbonite CEO David Friend wrote the following on the official Carbonite blog: "Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show."

UPDATE 3: Proflowers on Sunday said that it would also cease advertising on Limbaugh's show.

UPDATE 4: Aol, owner of The Huffington Post, has announced that it will suspend its ad deal with Limbaugh. "At AOL one of our core values is that we act with integrity," said Aol spokeswoman Maureen Sullivan. "We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values. As a result we have made the decision to suspend advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Radio show."

UPDATE 5: Tax Resolution said on Monday that it will pull its ads from the show, too.

UPDATE 6: Two local radio stations are dropping Rush from their daily lineups. KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii, and WBEC in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, released statements on Monday in the wake of the "slutgate" controversy.

____

PREVIOUSLY: The Internet has taken aim at Rush Limbaugh.

The inflammatory conservative political commentator and host of talk radio program The Rush Limbaugh Show set off a firestorm on Wednesday with his outrageous comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, who testified last week before an all-male panel during a House of Representatives hearing on religious freedom and the Obama administration's contraception policy. Limbaugh on Wednesday called Fluke a "slut" and on Thursday said, "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we [...] want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

On Friday morning, HuffPost blogger Krystal Ball called for a boycott of companies that sponsor the Limbaugh show. Participating Twitter users are rallying around the hashtag #BoycottRush, and two Facebook pages calling for a boycott had garnered more than 18,000 and 6,000 Likes by Saturday morning.

Reddit user jaybercrow posted on r/politics a list of companies that sponsor the Limbaugh show and encouraged Redditors to contact the businesses to ask that they sever Limbaugh partnerships on Friday. "TO BE CLEAR," reads a caveat at the very top of the post, "this is about taking Rush Limbaugh down through a boycott of his sponsors and in no way is meant to infer physical harm."

During the day on Friday, Limbaugh sponsors began responding to the outcry over his statements. Jaybercrow updated the Reddit list several times on Friday as sponsors pulled their deals with Limbaugh. By Saturday morning, Legal Zoom, Citrix Success, Heart and Body Extract, AutoZone, Quicken Loans, Sleep Train, Sleep Number and Oreck said they yanked ads from Limbaugh's show.

Nine companies remain on the list: ProFlowers, CARBONITE, Inc., Mid-West Life Insurance Company of Tennessee*, American Forces Network, Mission Pharmacal Company*, Life Quotes, Inc., Life Lock, Tax Resolution and AOL, parent company of The Huffington Post.

(Accompanying AOL on the list is a link to a landing page for AOL TechGuru, a remote access computer diagnostics service for Windows-powered PCs. The page currently displays a large photo of Limbaugh and advertises a special offer "exclusively for Rush Limbaugh listeners": $4.99 for a onetime computer diagnosis, a 75% discount on the service's $19.99 monthly fee.)

Website Left Action has also set up a Boycott Rush page that lists sponsors of the show. A petition attached to the page attracted close to 50,000 signatures in less than 24 hours, according to a statement on the page. The list of Limbaugh sponsors on that page, which differs slightly from Reddit's list, has also been greatly reduced since the boycott began. At the time of writing, TaxResolution, Sears, ProFlowers, LifeLock and Carbonite remain on the list. (The site lists Lending Tree among the sponsors of the Limbaugh program, despite the company's statements on Twitter that it is not affiliated with the show.)

*CORRECTION: Mission Pharmacal said in a press release posted to its website on Monday that it does not advertise with the Limbaugh program. Mid-West Life Insurance also says it has been incorrectly identified as a Limbaugh advertiser.

Take a look through the slideshow (below) to view tweets from the advertisers who have pulled content from Limbaugh's radio program, courtesy of HuffPost Media.

Loading Slideshow

• Carbonite

• Citrix Systems

• Kelly@ Quicken Loans

• Sleep Number Sara

• LegalZoom

• Sleep Train Mattress

• ProFlowers

• AOL

• Michael Rozbruch

• Bare Escentuals

• Vitacost.com

• HadeedCarpet

• ServiceMagic

• Polycom

• ThompsonCreekWindows

• StVincents MedCenter

• Allstate Insurance

• Sears

• Bonobos

• GEICO

• jcpenney

• AccuQuote

• Datavo

• SpringfreeTrampoline

• SpringfreeTrampoline

• Aquarium of Pacific

• New York Lottery

• Green Mtn Coffee

• Phila Orchestra

• Matrix Direct

• Constant Contact

• Hoover's

• Kohler Co.

• John Deere

Comments

[Myleau]

03:16 PM on 01/14/2013

Myaleaux: My response to the NRA position expressed today (12/21/2012)
As a democracy, we cannot allow our nation to become a police-state, where all issues are settled by firearms.  I have difficulty believing that that's what you want this nation to eventually become, yet if we keep escalating the emphasis of firearms as the solution to our problems and issues, I guarantee you that the policy of NRA will eventually get us there.  We must put an immediate end to such uneducated and idiotic proposals that are completely dysfunctional in an advanced, cultured, humanitarian society!!!  Shame, shame on you and your philosophy, NRA!
Nicholas B. Louis (12/21/2012)

[Kynz]

05:20 AM on 05/15/2012

Facebook boycott *a week in duration if not longer) is scheduled for 10/18/2012 - it's a small idea, hoping to spread the word? Thanks.

[Cathar306]

06:09 AM on 03/11/2012

Rush Limbaugh Show Includes Over 5 Minutes Of Dead Air As Advertiser Exodus Continues.

[EvenThen]

02:30 PM on 03/10/2012

The pro-Rush camp far outpaces the anti-Rush camp on social media. That's why SleepTrain wants back on Rush's show, and Carbonite's stock plummeted.

[Caris1]

11:21 PM on 03/07/2012

According to one Harvard study, 20-25% of women in college report being the victim of sexual assault. A higher percentage never report the crime. In the general population as reports become stratified based on economics, age and race, the estimated figures are staggering. And that's just in the United States. Limbaugh isn't sorry. He's scared.

"A bully is always a coward".
Maria Edgeworth, 1817

[David22222]

08:04 PM on 03/07/2012

It was the class of Ronald Reagan that caused me to leave the Democratic Party in the early 1980's. He was so articulate, loved our country, and made me proud to be an American. It is the same qualities in our President Obama that is causing me to leave the Republican Party that has become an embarrassment. President Obama is a class act that we haven't seen in a long time. Somehow Republicans have lost focus and say anything to better themselves as politicians and personal interests. Watch the debates as they have no idea how the average middle class or below feels nor do they care. It is their arrogance that offends me and the feeling they have to answer to anyone. I have no doubt of returning to the same ideas that almost ruined our country and don't want to share the burden. Wars without thinking, Wall Street, the banks, etc. and the debt is what we had to pay to bail them out to keep our country from folding. President Obama bailed them all out from their misdeeds and gets no thanks but gets the blame?? Come on... We are finally making progress again and hope we keep the course steady. President Obama makes me proud to be an American again and I wish him all the best and continued success..
Signed Leaving the Republican Party.

[GreedIsGood]

10:45 AM on 03/07/2012

Carbonite CEO has personally lost over $1 million in stock value since they withdrew their sponsorship from Rush ( that's $1 million out of $9 million) as the stock tumbled over 10% on the news.

There are costs to all parties.

[planetjeffy]

11:37 PM on 03/06/2012

keep up the pressure on his sponsors
here is a list of current advertisers...http://bit.ly/RushList

[Myleau]

07:52 PM on 03/06/2012

It's about time that the AFMP (anything for more profit) mentality be replaced with the spirit of the past that made our country great. The now defunct desire of those in the business, services and manufacturing sectors of our economy, to develop products that are second to none - not in terms of the bottom line - but in terms of their lost standards of product quality, durability, economy, ease of use, and value to the consumer. We need to restore, not only these values to our economic activities, but also add the new ones, that are of concern for potential danger in not avoiding everything that affects the effectiveness of our health care systems, services and technology, and the quality of the only finite environment we will ever have that is viable for life as we know it! Myaleaux.posterous.com

[Myleau]

07:50 PM on 03/06/2012

Mr. Limbaugh is an excellent example of careless, uninformed voices whose access to local and national mass media broadcasts only serve to misinform the public, and that are dysfunctional to conscientious individuals committed to being heard as responsible citizens of a democratic nation such as ours. With only a narrow, limited, self-serving understanding of the Constitution of the United States, they fail to understand that freedom of religion as well as of lifestyle, health and other needs of daily life apply to everyone, and do not bestow any right of any citizen to impose his freedoms on anyone else! That’s what make our nation great

A better understanding of the history of our country is needed by those who propose to enforce any religious or other dogma of their personal philosophy on others, through unconstitutional legislation affecting female health, sex, or gay marriage such as those currently being proposed by one of our political parties. They should learn that those who originally migrated to the American continent did so to escape the type of religious and other persecutions of their original country government, that are similar to what they now are endeavoring to unilaterally establish for everyone. If they manage to succeed, Bingo, we’re on the way back to square one, in the old world!!

Nicholas B. Louis, March 3, 2012

[Myleau]

03:43 PM on 03/07/2012

It's about time that the AFMP (anything for more profit) mentality of the current business world be replaced with the spirit of the past that made our country great. The now defunct product goals of those in the business, services and manufacturing sectors of our economy, of developing and delivering products that are second to none, as they were in the past - not in terms of their bottom line as they are today - but in terms of the lost standards of product quality, durability, economy, ease of use, and value to the consumer that used to prevail and that elevated the stamp, "Made in the USA," to be the envy of the world!

We need to restore these values to our economic activities, and in addition, also add the new ones, that are of concern for potentially dangerous environmental effects that may impact the effectiveness of our health care systems, services and technology, and the quality of the only finite environment we will ever have that is viable for life as we know it!
Nicholas B. Louis, March 6, 2012

[itzwitchy]

06:11 PM on 03/06/2012

Interesting response I just received...digging for the root of all evil is not easy!

"We are AFRN (Armed forces Radio Network) and we stand behind dropping Rush Lindbaugh. The problem is AFRN is not affiliated in anyway with the Station or programing that does the Lindbaugh show. Here is the information you need to get your message across.
The following is the organization responsible for Lindbaugh programing.
AFN which is part of AFRTS and their emailing address is [e-mail]

Respectfully yours,

Gary Bugnacki
President
www.armedforcesradionetwork.org

[TripkidNC]

01:46 PM on 03/06/2012

If apologizing because you need advertisers is akin to prostituting yourself (your own terms wouldn't get past these censors), imagine how you would describe apologizing to save your own company "Two if by Tea?

[nipaparel]

12:36 PM on 03/06/2012

People
You need to understand that this is an women issue at all
It is about bad politics. Women can receive health coverage almost anywhere ( planned parenthood? ) including birth control / abortions. The issue is about that there are people that believe that Gov must provide everything we need demanding tax payers to pay for it. Guys u may not realize it but this is why we are in trouble and going bankrupt. Also once we do that we loose FREEDOM. Our gov is practicing socialist behavior. Look at Europe and where it is going. The gov will eventually dictate how we live our lives. I want Freedom this is why we are AMERiCA.

[D4F7]

03:46 PM on 03/06/2012

The government uses the tax payers money, MY MONEY, to support the Christian Church every year. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars are poured into an institution that I do not believe in. How is that fair? This is about companies providing EQUAL coverage for everyone, not just some. Men are covered for vasectomies under most corporate health care plans. I know I am. If I can be covered for that, women should absolutely be covered for contraceptives. You know very little about what this is about. I would advise educating yourself about what "fair" actually means.

[Alyssa MacVeigh]

12:32 AM on 03/07/2012

If a woman pays for her insurance, birth control should be covered. Birth control is not just birth control for many women - it's used to treat several other things.
And why are those trying to defund PP also suggesting women just go there?

[nipaparel]

12:20 PM on 03/06/2012

Oh yes there are plenty u just don't want to see it

[cherryr]

11:57 AM on 03/06/2012

One of the problems I see is that most limb dik fans don't know how to use a computer.