Customer pressure forces firms to drop advertising on Limbaugh program

Appeals for a boycott of sponsors of Rush Limbaugh's radio program appear to be paying off.

Mattress retailer Sleep Train was the first to drop Limbaugh's program after he called law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" for testifying against allowing employers to opt out of providing birth control under employees' health insurance.

That firm is now being joined by other companies that appear to be wary of the negative publicity surrounding the Fluke affair. Sleep Train tweeted on Friday, “Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh do not align w/our values, so we made decision to immediately suspend all advertising on that program.”

A representative of Quicken Loans similarly tweeted, "Due to continued inflammatory comments– along w/valuable feedback from clients & team members– QL has suspended ads on Rush Limbaugh program."

Even the Cleveland Cavaliers have now dropped Limbaugh, with the basketball team's majority owner also citing Limbaugh's "inflammatory comments."

Other firms have replieed to customer inquiries by saying that they are reevaluating their advertising. According to Think Progress, however, several companies have yet to respond in any way to the controversy, including Carbonite, LegalZoom.com, and AutoZone.

Update: A Raw reader has written to say that he had expressed his concerns to Carbonite and received a reply saying, "We do not endorse political views or opinions of the companies, magazines, newspapers, TV stations or radio stations that we advertise on. We simply choose a range of programs designed to reach a broad range of people so they might hear about Carbonite."

Update #2: At 9:00 pm, Citrix (GoToMeeting) tweeted, "We have listened to our customers & have decided to cease our advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Show immediately."

Update #3: At 10:00 pm, Legal Zoom tweeted, "As of today, LegalZoom has suspended all advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show."

Update #4: AutoZone has also indicated that it does not knowingly advertise in Limbaugh's show.

H/T earicicle at Daily Kos.

Photo from Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office via Wikimedia Commons