ADL: Beck Is Top Hate Monger

Birthers, Limbaugh, Beck fill vacuum as Obama tries to stay above the fray

(NEWSER) - As recently as this spring, the Tea Party movement seemed anemic and wonky. But in the months that followed, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others whipped the right-wing fringe into such a frenzy that a “separate reality grew like a second head on the American polity,” Philip Weiss writes in a New York magazine deconstruction of the anti-Obama movement. Nobody gets off easy: "I blame the whole birther movement on bad PR by the Obama campaign," says a veteran journalist. "They really bungled it." More»

McDonald's, NBC, US Army join the anti-Rush list

(NEWSER) - The Limbaugh advertising stampede is now officially an exodus. What was "only" 45 companies listed last week has expanded into a mass migration of 141 advertisers, according to an internal Premiere Radio Networks memo obtained by the Traffic Directors Guild of America . The memo lists 96 national companies that "specifically asked" not to have their ads play during the Rush Limbaugh Show—91 of them new additions to the list. More»

(NEWSER) - Once again the right-wing radio guys have managed to convince everyone that they are a great and powerful force to be reckoned with. David Brooks revisits the 2007 Republican primaries, when Rush, Hannity, Beck and company were all weak-kneed over Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney, but bashed “unreliable deviationists” John McCain and Mike Huckabee. What happened? Huckabee emerged as a star and McCain won. More»

Gawker wonders what prompted this bizarre request

(NEWSER) - Glenn Beck took it down a notch last night, adopting an “unusually subdued” manner to close his show by “imploring his audience not to murder innocent people,” writes the Cajun Boy for Gawker. Beck’s thoughts included, among other things, the warning that “Just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything,” and the assessment, “The next logical progression is email, phone, a gun? Only for a crazy person.” More»

Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck lead survey

(NEWSER) - The website ConservativeHome polled about 1,500 folks defined as Republican activists to find their favorite pundits. Here's the top 10:

1. Rush Limbaugh, 41%
2. Glenn Beck, 33%
3. Charles Krauthammer, 29%
4. Bill O'Reilly, 24%
5. Sean Hannity, 21%