I had to look that shit up. I have done it to someone!

Note also...

The cut indirect, is to look another way, and pass without appearing to observe him. The cut sublime, is to admire the top of King’s College Chapel, or the beauty of the passing clouds, till he is out of sight. The cut infernal, is to analyze the arrangement of your shoe-strings, for the same purpose.

Definition taken from The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, originally by Francis Grose.

But I think (despite their catchy names) The Cut Direct is the most brutal.

I think that Limbaugh walked right into the perfect storm. People are still raw from the Komen debacle. And then the personhood bills. Then the ultrasounds. And then the gut-punches to contraception. And then the photo of the all Old Men panels on birth control.

Women (and a lot of men, too) were already gathering, and the Komen defeat by way of social networking is still very fresh for people who, unlike most of us super savvy netizens really haven't seen how powerful a net campaign can be.

When you add in the fact that has a tenth of the listeners as NPR, you get the idea that A)it isn't going to hurt advertisers to drop him, and B)they're probably getting a ton more free publicity by NOT spending any money at all just by dropping him, it's a no-brainer.

I don't think JC Penney's pushback against the homophobic groups threatening to boycott them because of Ellen is hurting them at all.

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted for the Blunt amendment and just had to apologize to her constituents, when she got flooded with angry phone calls and emails from Alaskan women wondering who the fuck she thought she was representing.

The world is moving on without these folks. We live in interesting times.

I think they're starting to panic.

I think they're starting to panic.

::pops popcorn, passes it around::

brenda, your point is well taken. I am being mean about it.

Oh, I don't buy it for a second. But it does at least include the words "I was wrong". (Though the mea culpa reads a bit like snark, so take some points back.)

The concept of constituents making enough noise to sway their representatives more than party "leaders" and the big money donors is a stunning turn to the interesting.

Before the Komen defeat there was the SOPA reaction. It will be very interesting indeed to see where this shiny new power leads.

I think that part of Limbaugh's problem is that he, like many partisan pundits, sometimes forgets that he's actually dealing with a populace. He just opposes whatever the opposition's supporting, which is a knee-jerk reaction that is not always in line with his listenership.

This time, he forgot that only a small portion of his audience actually is opposed to birth control on moral grounds. In fact, a large percentage of it actually uses it. So slut-shaming that was aimed at an anonymous person actually hit women and their husbands who are listening to his show. And his deliberate misunderstanding of how it works was instantly recognizable by those women, unlike some of his more whackaloon but less disprovable views.

I'm reading that his demographics suggest only 13% of his listeners are female.

However, I'm getting more and more skeptical. I keep seeing ratings all over the map, and I think it's all proprietary, not at all Neilsen-like in that these ratings are easily found and you can see what the method is.

The Cut Direct

The StuntHusband got to use that recently at a social event, directed toward someone neither of us associate with any longer. He was quite gleeful about it.

30 advertisers now.

checks list Oh yay, Goodwill pulled their advertising! I don't have to change my thrift shopping habits.

Laura, did you think it was a deliberate misunderstanding, or that he really just doesn't know?

I keep thinking he actually has no idea how birth control is used.

ETA, Liese. I was sending an email to a Laura and just had a brain burp, sorry!