Sorry to be off topic, but I've joined Rush 24/7, and have a question.
What does Dittos refer to?
Hey, fanfan! Mega new 24/7 subscriber dittoes!
I don't know this for sure, so don't quote me...but I think it is a reference to the opinion that many of the "mainstream media" types have of Rush, that he just preaches to the choir, and his listeners are just a bunch of mind-numbed robots who get their marching orders from a...well, you fill in the blank.
And since they all agree (anyone who thinks that doesn't listen to the show), they all effectively say "ditto" ("right", or "I agree with that"). So Rush's fans took it as a badge of honor, which either got its cue from, or gave a cue to, Rush. Hence the "Dittocam", the "Dittoheads", etc.
Enjoy the experience! BTW, you should try the podcasting thing. He has much more "on the pod" than just a month's backlog of shows, and now that portable CD players and car stereos are available to play MP3 files, you can literally create a "Limbaugh Library", with months' worth of shows on one CD.
I don't know if anyone answered you question correctly. I have listened to Rush for 18 years and am also a 24/7 subscriber, and here is the correct definition of callers saying "Dittos" when they call up:
It does NOT mean, as most think, "I agree with everything you say." What it does mean is (and this is is a quote from Rush), "I love the show, and don't ever stop doing it." It's just a short way of saying that that evolved from one caller using it years ago.
I don't know if anyone has come up with the correct answer yet, but here it is:
In the early days of Rush's national syndication, he was a sudden, unexpected blaze of light in the unrelieved darkness of the leftist media monopoly.
It's hard to describe how happy -- and astonished -- some of us were to finally hear someone saying what we had been thinking. Thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of us thought we were the only one left who held to those beliefs, because there was no Internet and no communication with like-minded others. Many of us felt like we were the last man alive at Fort Desolation.
Hell, back in the early 1980s, even other Naval officers would give me the, "What a nutball" eyeroll if I talked about liberal media bias.
And then, like Jan Sobieski at the gates of Vienna, here was this man with his unabashed, bold, confident, humorous expression of the things that made us the ugly ducklings in an ocean of liberal hegemony.
I've only succeeded in communicating a fraction of what I would like to say about that...it was like being liberated from a Gulag. Free at last; free at last; thank God, I'm free at last! There was a feeling of immense joy and gratitude.
People would say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for smashing the liberal blackout of conservative thought in the media."
To get some idea, go to the Bakesale clips on the best of Rush on TV at 24/7. I watched them yesterday, and it almost brought tears to my eyes, remembering those heady days.
In the early days of Rush's show, caller after caller would spend time trying to express the thoughts I've touched on above. This was taking time away from the issues, so finally he said, hey, we all understand it, it's been said many times, so just use "ditto" as shorthand for all that.
Und dot's da real story.