SPECIAL REPORT
The Plot to Get Rush
By Jeffrey Lord on 3.27.12 @ 6:09AM
Hannity, Palin next targets: Who is Angelo Carusone?
It was a set up.
From start to finish.
A quite specific, quite detailed plot to get Rush Limbaugh, ruin his career, and drive him off the air.
Next targets? Sean Hannity and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Lots to cover here.
Let's start with Mr. Angelo Carusone.
Who is Angelo Carusone? Today he is now the "Director of Online Strategy for Media Matters for America."
But a few years back? He was just your basic left-wing law student with a standard left-wing passion. That passion? Totalitarian-style censorship.
Let's stop here for a moment for a brief bit of historical background -- not a detour but a very necessary context.
It is a big mistake -- a really big mistake -- to dismiss what's being done to Rush Limbaugh as just some crazy guys at Media Matters.
When we work our way through what Angelo Carusone and his Media Matters comrades and others are doing when they target Rush, or went after Glenn Beck, or plan to do in targeting Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin and who knows who after that (Levin? Laura?) remember: this is the way the Left -- the global left throughout history, not simply the American Left today -- has always behaved. A fanatical intolerance is part of the leftist DNA.
The late Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises described the leftist method of operation as "fanatical and intolerant." It works, he said, this way:
Socialism… works on the emotions…to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
Primitive instincts.
And that most primitive of human instincts? You got it.
Fear.
The skillful, clever use of fear (not to mention hate) is the defining trait of leftists throughout history. Fear is the primitive emotion the left feeds on like a junkie needs drugs. It is a trait repeatedly manifested in history by the use of intimidation or bully-boy tactics to assert raw power. It is the vividly identifiable scarlet thread of intolerance that has shown itself in one leftist movement after another on down through the centuries, regardless of nationality.
Leftist French Revolutionaries launched the "Reign of Terror," dragging terrified opponents to the guillotine. The moment Lenin's triumphant Communists overwhelmed Russia, notes The Black Book of Communism, the triumphant left "institutionalized the notion of 'enemy of the people.'" People so identified were to be "arrested immediately," charged with "crimes" like "abuse of one's position" -- essentially the American left's charge right now about Rush Limbaugh. In short order, millions of Soviet citizens in the new order were shot outright when not sent to the Gulag. In the 1930s the newly powerful National Socialists of Germany -- aka the Nazis -- began sending storm troopers to terrify Jews by painting crude yellow signs reading "Not for Aryans" on the windows of Jewish shopkeepers. Eventually, Jews were forced to wear a yellow patch in the shape of the Star of David, bearing a single word Jude -- Jew. In Mao's China, this leftist fanaticism appeared as the "Cultural Revolution," which targeted all manner of dissenters with both psychological intimidation as well as physical violence. One of the favorite weapons of Mao's Red Guards was "Chinese Roulette." The game? A group of dissenters would be rounded up and delivered to a firing squad -- but at the last minute only a random few would be pulled from the group and shot. The rest who had survived were said to have suffered something worse than death: a "bullet" of fear and repression inside the brain.
In America, the leftists beneath the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan lynched terrified blacks at night while running America's Democratic Party by day. No less than future president Ronald Reagan was threatened with having acid tossed in his face if he didn't cease fighting the infiltration of Communists in Hollywood. Today SEIU thugs are captured on video beating up those who dissent on Obamacare, calling their victim the "n--word".
Fear. Intimidation. Bullying. Racism. Hatred of the "other." Without these tactics, the left is naked in the war of ideas. By coincidence, R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator has a book coming out in May titled The Death of Liberalism.
There could in fact be no better sign of that death than the behavior of the left -- the typical behavior -- as evidenced in this entire episode. The Happy Warrior "politics of joy" of that cheerful liberal's liberal Hubert Humphrey is long, long gone.
So.
You thought the business of getting Rush Limbaugh off the air was because of a bad word choice about Sandra Fluke?
Think again.
The starting date for this latest in a long line of fear-inducing leftists --was, according to Angelo Carusone himself, "late 2009 and early 2010."
Got that?
In other words, a full two-plus years before Sandra Fluke ever appeared on the anti-religious liberty scene, Commissar Carusone (what other title is more fitting for a self-styled free speech monitor?) was hatching the plot to "Stop Rush." In the world of Internet domains, Carusone even had it registered as "Stop Rush.org."
Modeled after Carusone's earlier successful campaign to… yes, indeed… Stop Beck.
Take a gander here at Legal Insurrection, here at the Blaze, and here at the Village Voice to see how Carusone quite candidly goes about his self-appointed task as one of the revolutionary guards in the American Left's Political Police.
How does Carusone's storm trooper game work?
What does Media Matters do?
Remember. Angelo Carusone was going after Glenn Beck several years ago as a free-lancing leftist law student. His activities caught the attention of Media Matters, where Commissar Carusone is now officially ensconced as the group's "Director of Online Strategy."
Let's carefully comb through the record of Mr. Carusone in these various stories -- plus this Carusone interview here at a site called Raw Story. In which, on June 2, 2010, distinctly unknown in the national media at the time, the then-law student describes in detail what he is up to.
And let's add something else into this mix. Commissar Carusone, as noted, is now officially a direct employee of Media Matters. Recently the Daily Caller did a highly illuminating series on Media Matters. A series that revealed an out-of-control leftist machine filled with gazillions of leftist Big Money, headed by a man described as exhibiting "volatile and erratic" behavior who "struggles with mental illness" while parading around with the security entourage worthy "of a Third World dictator."
So let's add 2 plus 2 and see what 4 equals, shall we?
We will carefully list the tactics admitted to by Commissar Carusone himself. And add what the Daily Caller has reported about Media Matters. Remembering that the Commissar now works for Media Matters.
Here we go.
• Disrupt relationships with sponsors: Not unlike "Chinese Roulette," the object is to put a bullet of fear in the minds of the target's advertisers. Or, as a Chinese official was quoted in the Economist only last January in a story with a section titled "Chinese Roulette," give people (advertisers in the case of Rush) the sense they are "playing pass the parcel with a time bomb."
This was what Commissar Carusone did with Glenn Beck's advertisers. Now the target is Rush Limbaugh, with Carusone openly admitting he has talk radio host and Fox star Hannity and Fox commentator Palin in his sights.
So how, according to Commissar Carusone himself, does he go about his self-assigned task of putting that bullet of fear in the minds of advertisers? How precisely did he terrorize Rush Limbaugh's advertisers into believing they were "playing pass the parcel with a time bomb" -- and they, the advertisers in question, were about to lose?
First, the Commissar listens to a "supersized" batch of his target's broadcasts.
Then he selects something that offends him in broadcast X.
Next the Commissar "dispatches a letter or e-mail to corporate executives asking them if they are aware that their ads are running in an hour" when Beck or (fill in the blank…Rush, Hannity, Palin) said Y. "Y" standing for "insert newest offensive sound bite"…which is to say, words offensive to left-winger Carusone.
When did this happen in the Rush episode? When exactly did Carusone aim his weapon at the heads of advertisers and pull the trigger? When precisely did the latest leftist out to intimidate shoot his bullet of fear? Remember: Rush never said a word about Sandra Fluke until a Wednesday. Says Commissar Carusone in his Village Voice interview:
"I started talking to advertisers on Thursday, and got a lot of feedback on Friday, and I knew a lot of movement was taking place. This was important to think about from a business perspective."
Get it? The very next day -- Thursday -- the Commissar was at work instilling fear into Rush's sponsors. Result?
One of the advertisers on the receiving end of this kind of garbage was businessman Mark Stevens. As seen in this interview yesterday with Fox's Megyn Kelly -- and make a point of listening to it if you can -- Stevens had the guts to say he was the target of what he called "internal American terrorism" because he refused to drop his local ads that appear on the Limbaugh show in the New York market. Stevens pulled no punches. He understood exactly what was happening to him and had the guts to stand up to the bullies. And while he wouldn't say who was doing it -- he clearly knows. So too does Rush –--who cites Media Matters by name. So do we all.
And by the way, Stevens recognized exactly that what was happening to him and the people in his company -- one woman in particular -- was nothing less than an attempt to "invoke fear." In other words, Chinese Roulette had come to America. And Mark Stevens was being told he had to live with the bullet of fear in his head everyday -- and Mark Stevens boldly refused.
But not every advertiser has Mark Stevens' courage -- something Commissar Carusone understands full well.
Says the Raw Story article of Carusone's tactics: "Many times, that [is] enough to make advertisers pull their commercials, although Carusone admits that by now his reputation for peskiness may help grease the wheels." Thus… seven sponsors departed the Limbaugh show.
But not Mark Stevens.
• Methodically Catalogue Results of Smear and Fear Campaign: Next step? After having sprayed an AK-47's worth of bullets of fear at Rush's advertisers?
Commissar Carusone, Raw Story reports, then "catalogues his activities… which includes one running list of sponsors that have dropped the show and another of those that have not."
Stop right here.
This is the 21st century Americanization of a very old leftist tactic. It is described thusly in The Black Book of Communism, revealing how Stalin's "State Political Directorate" Commissars kept precise lists of exactly who among "enemy" social classes had been arrested, deported, or shot. Or, ominously, who needed to be. Say the authors of the procedure:
The mania for planning and maintaining statistics… was also an important weapon in the arsenal of terror.
This was exactly the Carusone procedure created for dealing with Glenn Beck.
This of course is, what causes Commissar Carusone to say of Rush's view of Fluke that Rush spoke "almost 50 smears for three days" about Fluke. Count 'em. Not 49 "smears". Not 51 "smears." Precisely 50. With not a soul asking: "Who gets to determine what is a smear?" Answer: Why, Commissar Carusone, of course.
This is straight from the playbook of Stalin's "State Political Directorate." One of the oldest tricks in the leftist playbook is given new life in 21st century online America. Using a site, found here, that Carusone says was "started… in 2009, 2010."
So if we go to StopRush.org, like clockwork in the evolution of leftist political police, we find what was described in that June 2010 interview. There it is, the "running list of sponsors that have dropped the show and another of those that have not." Indeed, at the very top of the site are sections labeled "Dropped Sponsors" and "Remaining Sponsors."
At the moment, the "Dropped Sponsors" list contains a mere 12, not the over 100 sponsors, as the pliant mainstream media would have you believe after being spoon fed by -- wonder of wonders -- Media Matters. The repeated and grossly inaccurate stories of advertisers fleeing the show a complete -- deliberate -- misrepresentation of how sponsorship in radio works. Seven of the twelve listed on StopRush.org were in fact national Rush sponsors, announced long ago in the first wave of leftist-engineered reaction to Rush's Fluke words. The "remaining sponsors" list is mysteriously empty -- because, says the site, of an update promised for….March 5. Weeks ago.
It makes no mention that Sleep Train, Rush's longtime sponsor, frantically realized -- too late -- that it had been conned and, after a barrage from Rally for Rush fans, sought to come back as a sponsor. An offer Rush refused.
But on the StopRush.org site's home page?
Here we find "Sponsor Updates" -- and it is here that one listing in particular illustrates the totalitarian mindset at work with Carusone and his leftist comrades.
Notice the company listed as "Brighter.com"? Brighter.com is an American entrepreneurial venture designed to provide dental care. It was never a national Rush sponsor à la Sleep Train. But how is it portrayed at StopRush.org?
First, here's this interesting graph posted at StopRush.org:
In a statement emailed to Media Matters, Brighter.com indicated ads on Rush Limbaugh were placed in error and they would take steps to ensure such ads do not air again in the future.
Catch the reference? "In a statement emailed to Media Matters….." And who, now, is Media Matters?
That's right. Media Matters is officially the employer of…Angelo Carusone.
And what follows next? This:
A spokesperson for Brighter.com contacted Media Matters and advised that this Brighter.com ad ran as a result of "inventory being placed indiscriminately by a media buying agency," stressed that Brighter.com did not deliberately advertise on this program, and confirmed that Brighter.com has "taken steps to assure this does not happen in the future." Media Matters will continue to monitor.
Catch that last sentence? "Media Matters will continue to monitor."
There, right there, is "Chinese Roulette" at work. The bullet of fear placed in the minds of Brighter.com's executives that their free market business in making dental care affordable is now on the bully's watch list.
If this were Germany in the early 1930s, the message to Brighter.com is the equivalent of the yellow paint on Jewish shop windows warning "Not for Aryans." It is the Media Matters equivalent of marking someone with that chilling "enemy of the people" stain, resulting in a listing with the State Political Directorate, the list carefully maintained by a Stalin Commissar.
Right there on the home page of StopRush.org is the descendant of the blunt threat of a lynching, once used by all those progressives under Klan hoods to threaten black Americans (when said progressives took time out from running Democratic Party conventions like this one). Right there on the home page of StopRush.org is the mind set of the "progressives" like those Black Panthers seen here outside a 2008 Philadelphia polling place, one menacingly wielding a nightstick -- following exactly in the steps of the progressive Klan. This is the modern equivalent of the low voice on the phone threatening to throw acid in actor Reagan's face. Let's continue.
• Propagandize the media: Says Commissar Carusone's simpatico "interviewer" in the Village Voice:
"Let me ask you about this: Sandra Fluke was a white, middle class woman. She was a law student…."
Sandra Fluke was much more than that. She was, in point of fact, a "white, middle class woman…law student" -- who was also a considerable leftist activist. Hereis her record, as recorded over here and as listed at her respective undergraduate and graduate universities, Cornell and Georgetown Law respectively:
At Cornell, where she graduated with a B.S. in Policy Analysis & Management; Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Sandra Fluke is listed as a participant in:
-- Students Acting for Gender Equality
-- Take Back the Night
-- Sexual Assault and Violence Indicators
-- The Vagina Monologues/V-Day College Campaign
-- Cornell Women's Resource Center Volunteer
-- Cornell University Student Assembly Committee on Women's Issues
-- Women in Public Policy
-- Take Back the Night
-- Sexual Assault and Violence Indicators
-- The Vagina Monologues/V-Day College Campaign
-- Cornell Women's Resource Center Volunteer
-- Cornell University Student Assembly Committee on Women's Issues
-- Women in Public Policy
At Georgetown, Sandra Fluke is listed as a participant in:
-- Women's Legal Alliance
-- Law Students for Reproductive Justice
-- GULC Anti-Human Trafficking Joint Committee
-- Georgetown Human Rights Action
-- Amnesty International
-- Innocence Project
-- Phi Alpha Delta
-- Georgetown Democrats
-- National Lawyers Guild
-- Law Students for Reproductive Justice
-- GULC Anti-Human Trafficking Joint Committee
-- Georgetown Human Rights Action
-- Amnesty International
-- Innocence Project
-- Phi Alpha Delta
-- Georgetown Democrats
-- National Lawyers Guild
This is the record of an innocent college student?
Of course not. This is the record of a more-than-budding left-wing activist, a feminized version of Angelo Carusone. A Commissarette in training.
So the obvious question. How many news stories were pitched by Fluke's left-wing handlers that both resulted in this public portrait of a demure, guileless school girl? Who pitched them? And who swallowed them?
• Use the Social Media: Who needs a firing squad to play Chinese Roulette when you have Twitter?
In that 2010 interview, Carusone was said to have "more than 7,000 followers on Twitter."
So when the national media obligingly spins the yarn of Rush versus Innocent College Girl… Commissar Carusone, now amplified by the millions of dollars in leftist Media Matters money and machinery, had but to tweet and… BANG!
See for yourself right here what is being tweeted from the Commissar to his left-wing legions. This is doubtless only one arena in which, ironically, free speech for some is being used in a plot to deprive others of the same right. Under the guise of attacking corporations and companies -- as if corporations and companies and the people who work in them are not entitled to their own free speech rights, and the right not to fear intimidation for selling soap or clean teeth.
Startled Rush sponsors were instantly receiving a seemingly self-starting barrage of angry anti-Rush tweets, e-mails, calls and snail mail -- many from people who were never customers in the first place. Without a clue that sponsors were -- and are -- on the receiving end of a quite well-tailored leftist tech campaign to frighten them into obeying the will of the Commissar and the free speech Political Police.
• The White House and its tie to Media Matters and Sandra Fluke: What's the difference between the Angelo Carusone the lone leftist law student of yesteryear -- and the Commissar Angelo Carusone of today?
Right. The Commissar works for Media Matters. The very same Media Matters identified in detail by the Daily Caller as having "close coordination with White House and news organizations."
Say again, close coordination with the White House.
And what was one of the notable aspects of the Rush-Sandra Fluke episode? Yes, indeed.
The President of the United States himself picked up the phone and made a highly publicized call to… Sandra Fluke.
And who has Bill O'Reilly reported as representing Sandra Fluke? Yes indeed. That would be ex-Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. And what did the Daily Caller reveal in that story linked above? This:
A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it's no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president's closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.It's not clear what the four spoke about -- no one in the meeting returned repeated calls for comment -- but the apparent coordination continued. "Anita Dunn became a regular presence at the office," says someone who worked there. Then-president of Media Matters, Eric Burns, "lunched with her, met with her and chatted with her frequently on any number of matters."
In other words: The White House coordinates with Media Matters. Anita Dunn, now departed from the Obama White House, returns for meetings with the Obama White House staff and Media Matters, and is a "regular presence" at the offices of Media Matters. And -- shocker -- it is Anita Dunn who now represents Sandra Fluke. Who is being used by Commissar Carusone and his Media Matters comrades as the reason to launch yet another attack on free speech. Not theirs, of course. Heaven forbid. Just those who are, shall we say, considered to be "enemies of the people" and all of that.
• Media Matters and the $100,000 Secret Donor Campaign to Attack Free Speech: Doubtless you've seen this gem. Secret donors putting up $100,000 for Media Matters to run ads in eight cities, asking for Rush to be removed from the airwaves. In other words, a bounty of $100,000 grand to end Rush's career. Here's the story as it first appeared in the Washington Times. Fox's Bill O'Reilly has correctly slammed the campaign as being "very fascist." Mr. O'Reilly is right, and he would know, being a longtime target of Media Matters himself.
But did you notice the source for the Media Matters story that appeared in the Washington Times? Here's two key paragraphs:
Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, Ga.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The cities were selected to support active local campaigns against Limbaugh or because of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market, said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters."What we're really looking for is a way to demonstrate the persistence of the effort and the fact that it is on a wide scale," Carusone said.
And there he is. Commissar Carusone speaks.
Now…there's more. Much more.
But let's summarize what we have here.
• The Left's Dependence on Fear and Intimidation: The left has centuries ago trademarked themselves as history's thugs, the grim, intolerant people with the brass knuckles and more if you get out of line and dare to speak your mind. From the guillotine of 1789 to the lists of enemies of the people in the 1920s to Chinese Roulette in the 1960s. In America it has run the gamut from the lynching of blacks to union thuggery to intimidating sponsors of talk radio in the twittering 21st century. It's all to the same purpose.
• Disrupt Relationships With Sponsors: A serious campaign has been underway to disrupt Rush's relationships with his sponsors. An effort launched two years -- two years -- before Sandra Fluke ever appeared on the scene.
• Keep Lists to Intimidate Sponsors: Ominous lists are kept of sponsors who have been bullied into giving up their First Amendment rights -- and those who have stoutly resisted.
• Propagandize the Media: The media is quickly propagandized with a false story. In this case, Sandra Fluke is portrayed as an innocent college girl when she is in fact a 30-year old longtime left-wing activist.
• Social Media: Use Twitter to play Chinese Roulette.
• The White House and Media Matters: "Close coordination" with the White House.
• The Media Matters $100,000 Secret Donor fund to attack free speech: A hundred grand bounty designed to both end Rush's career -- and assault your God-given right to free speech.
And one more thing.
What is it Angelo Carusone is quoted as doing in that 2010 Raw Story interview? A story that was in fact focused on Glenn Beck?
Here's the verbatim.
…Carusone is mounting similar campaigns targeting Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and CNN.
Beck is now off Fox's air.
The Rush campaign is now in progress -- but in spite of all this, in fact precisely because of all this, his audience is sticking -- not to mention getting pretty damn mad.
CNN? What did these poor struggling media mushies do? No idea. But they have somehow offended the sensibilities of Commissar Carusone.
But Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity? They have received their warning.
The Political Police are out there. Commissar Carusone is keeping his lists. The Media Matters secret donors, carefully operating in the shadows, have the bucks to enforce the Commissar.
Is this still America?
Only if we fight back.
About the Author
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.
