It was a busy day, but I want to at least start this post about Rush Limbaugh, who died today of lung cancer, before it ended.
Three kind of people said negative things about Limbaugh: liberals/progressives who hated him for removing the Left’s monopoly of journalism, punditry and public debate; his targets, which were the political correctness mob, identity interest groups, and statists; and people who never listened to him and didn’t know what they were talking about. Rush Limbaugh was a transformation figure in broadcasting, politics and culture over many decades, and he should be recognized and honored as such. Yet do you know how I found out he had died? I saw this Boston Glove headline on an Associated Press breaking story:
“Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio host who employed vicious but influential rhetoric, dies“
Absolutely despicable. Limbaugh’s rhetoric was seldom “vicious,” though those who never listened to his show would usually talk about how nasty he was. To the contrary, he was usually the opposite; funny, light-hearted, witty, and almost always engaging and civil to callers when they took issue with him. He did not mince words, that is true, but his targets had long been protected by a general fear of calling them what they were. The AP story is typical of what the mainstream media will write about Rush, focusing on the various controversies he stirred up, some when his rhetoric was unduly harsh, as when he called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who argued that the government should pay for birth control, a “slut.” But that was the worst of Rush, and considering how long he spoke extemporaneously about hot-button topics for three hours five days a week, it is amazing that he didn’t have more misadventures. He apologized for the worst of them, particularly a period in which he mocked AIDS victims, saying later, “It’s the single most regretful thing I’ve ever done, because it ended up making fun of people who were dying long, painful and excruciating deaths, when they were not the target. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do.”
I speak for a living, also extemporaneously and fearlessly, and it is dangerous. Anyone in the field knows that it is inevitable that words will leave your mouth that you wish you could take back, and I grant a lot of understanding and “there but the grace of God go I” sentiments to a speaker, DJ,Talking head or frequent interview guest who has a bad moment. For the most part, Rush Limbaugh didn’t require any slack. He was superbly prepared, clear, articulate, and entertaining, while having the kind of voice and delivery that few could match in the history of radio.
He succeeded because he was talented and worked hard, and especially because he had guts. These factors, and good timing, allowed his show to change so much for the better that it is futile to try to cover his impact in a brief post. Limbaugh gave conservatives a voice and a sense that they could make a difference, while inspiring others to follow his lead. He weakened the Left by exposing its hypocrisy. He helped reveal how many conservatives there were in America, and almost certainly was a catalyst for Fox News to emerge as a desperately needed alternative to the mainstream journalism echo chamber. For this, he was hated; before Donald Trump, no national personality was the target of such venom. For his critics on the Left, those champions of insisting that mocking personal characteristics was a hallmark of bigotry, calling him fat was their favorite mode of attack.
The outpouring of hate today aimed at Limbaugh tells us what the American Left is becoming. Various celebrities and activists tweeted pure hate at Limbaugh now that he couldn’t respond, like feminist writer Andi Zeisler who wrote, “Rush Limbaugh was a shitty, cynical person who did everything he could to make the world meaner, dumber, and more divided. I’m glad he’s dead and I wish it had happened a lot sooner.” She falls into all three of the categories I mentioned at the beginning.
I’m not even going to look at what my Facebook friends have written about Rush today.
Here, in conytast are some highlights of the many fair and admiring assessments of the man and his legacy that I noted”
Critic, pundit and occasional Rush guest host Mark Steyn: “My father liked to caution me with the old saw that the graveyard is full of indispensable men. But, as the conventional bias of the legacy media yielded to something far more severe from the woke billionaires of Social Media, Rush remained the Big Voice on the Right, the largest obstacle to the complete marginalization of conservative ideas in our culture. All of us who labored in his shadows owe it to him to continue the fight.”
Conservative radio host Tammy Bruce (in a long series of tweets): “In the 90s I was a host on a talk radio station in LA, the same that aired Rush….He was so vilified by my then-crowd, I expected a monster. Instead, I met a remarkable, kind and encouraging man…He shook my hand & I was shocked that he was nice & genuinely curious about my radio work and activism. I realized I was going to have a fascinating conversation….Rush was not a monster, he wasn’t evil, he did not mean people harm, he wasn’t a bigot, or any of the other smears lobbed against him by my leftist associates. He approached me and everyone else as separate individual worthy of respect and with a desire to help and inspire….The impact of realizing that I’d been lied to about Rush was significant, but that as a conservative he represented more of what I felt was valuable & important was a revelation. …Rush created the potential of the medium, and set the tone for entertainment, analysis & education. Honest conversations open to everyone is anathema to the left which is why they’re obsessed w creating fear & the cancel culture….The ugliness of the left will be seen throughout today & the days to come in response to the death of Rush, an American titan & defender of conservative values…Rush may be gone, but now it’s up to all of us to continue his commitment to our great nation. Thank you sir, for the time you took with a arrogant & smug LA leftist feminist, one of the millions of lives you changed for the better.”
Dan McLoughlin, The National Review: “As caustic as Rush could be against Democrats and the Right’s various cultural foes, the essential thrust of his program in those days — and for many years thereafter — was upbeat, hopeful, even jaunty. Rush could thunder with a smile. He truly believed his ideas, but he also winked at the audience: He was an entertainer doing shtick, blowing smoke up his own rear, and you were in on the joke. Conservatism, Rush wanted you to know, was good for everybody, more people should try it, and it didn’t have to be stuffy or dour; it could be fun.”
Andrew Klavan, City Journal: “I do not cry for dead celebrities. I have just enough tears for the people I know and love. But I choked up when I heard that Rush had left the studio. He was silenced just at the moment when the elite and powerful would silence us all. Our politicians seek to demonize half the nation—Rush’s half. Our news media calls for censorship. Tech billionaires sit on their mountains of gold and gesture like foppish princes to tell us who shall speak and who shall not. Let us defy them, then. Let us all speak, and fearlessly. Let that be Rush’s monument. In a way, he built it himself.”
Ethics Alarms 
I think basically he is irreplaceable. Although FOX News has some execellent commentators including Tammy Bruce and Laura Ingraham, none possess the wit and humor that Rush was richly endowed with. He will be sorely missed especially during the Biden/Harris Presidency.
I don’t know if he’ll find the same audience, but I really like Mark Steyn and I hope that he inherits Rush’s platform. I was never a fan of Rush and rarely listened for more than a few minutes at a time, but when Steyn was filling in I never touched the dial.
Steyn is brilliant with a similar biting wit about him.
Limbaugh will be a tough act to follow. While I didn’t listen all that often, he was always insightful and entertaining. I never found him vicious or caustic but I was never in his sights. Maybe I would have a different idea if I were the brunt of his jokes. Conservatism took a big hit.
jvb
I’ve listened to Rush on and off since the lead up to the first Iraqi war. He was almost always entertaining and witty, and we will sorely miss him. He’s someone that cannot be replaced.
The Boston Globe’s headline was tame compared to the Huffington Post, who called him the “Bigoted King of Talk Radio” Liberals on Twitter have caused hateful hashtags like “Rest in Piss,” “Good Riddance,” and “Rot in Hell” to trend on the site. This is the true face of the left, and when someone shows you who they really are, you should believe them.
I just chose to zip it when RBG died, I had said while she was still alive that I didn’t like her or what she stood for, and that she was a senile, narcoleptic, dried-up old feminazi hag who was a decade past her pull date and was going to have to answer in the afterlife for all the abortions she enabled. I didn’t need to repeat it by dancing, or doing something else, on her grave now that she couldn’t defend herself. This outpouring of venom kind of makes me regret that I didn’t cut loose at the time, although even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have said anything that someone else didn’t already say better or that I hadn’t said already.
When Ted Kennedy died of cancer, I posted this:
“I hated Ted Kennedy in life, and I still hate him now that he’s dead. With JFK Jr. already in ashes and Caroline Kennedy’s political career sputtering, hopefully this family’s undeserved position as a political dynasty is finally over.”
Nothing all that impressive, and frankly it didn’t make me sound like anything other than hateful, and it didn’t score me any points with anyone. Now we’ve heard what those who’ve decided to spout off have to say, we shouldn’t give them any points either.
This is one time I’m grateful for Facebook’s algorithms: I’ve seen little Rush-bashing on my feed. And I avoid Twitter like the plague.
Jack, what you wrote about him – and the challenges of speaking unscripted – is absolutely true. That he did it so long, so hard, and with so few unforced errors is absolutely astonishing.
Rush Limbaugh was one of a kind, possessed of insight and courage beyond measure. He was always clear. He was a study in perseverance in the face of the most outrageous and unrelenting hostility. I suspect that’s at least part of why he and Trump were close; though Trump possesses little of Limbaugh’s insight and less of his clarity, he shares the perseverance. That alone is worthy of respect.
All the headlines I saw were very favorable. Similar to this one. “Bias makes you stupid” careful Jack…
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/926491419/talk-show-host-rush-limbaugh-a-conservative-lodestar-dies-at-70
“Very” favorable? In addition to the AP/Globe headline that I saw first, we have the LA Times saying he “Died As He Lived, Dividing America” (which is crap); “Rush Limbaugh Taught Republicans to Love an Angry, Racist Bully” (New York Magazine); “Rush Limbaugh, the Human Megaphone Who Hijacked the GOP, Dead at 70” (Daily Beast) and many others. “Conservative lodestar” is better than most, but from a source that makes it clear “conservative” should be called “the c-word,” it’s hardly a compliment.If “all” the headlines you saw were positive, you didn’t see many.
Much of the mainstream media was more positive about the death of Qasem Soleimani.
Rimshot.
Thank-you! I’m here all week.
And I just saw the New York Times headline: “Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio’s Conservative Provocateur, Dies at 70: A longtime favorite of the right, he was a furious critic of Barack Obama and a full-throated cheerleader for Donald J. Trump.” I have to ask, Rebecca: Huh???
Maybe if we refer to Rush as an austere cleric…
… who had an affinity for fine cigars.
Daily beast is hardly “mainstream” neither is Huffington post. At best it’s the left version Of a tabloid.
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/entertainment/2020/02/03/conservative-broadcaster-rush-limbaugh-through-years/4649552002/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-9272313/Rush-Limbaugh-voice-American-conservatism-died.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/conservative-radio-host-rush-limbaugh-dead-at-70/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h
I was on the news sites quite a while yesterday. I was a little surprised and I saw a lot of headlines that were civil. I know… surprised me too. Daily beast is garbage.
HuffPo has more views online than all but two other websites, by one count. Another had HuffPo 13th and The Daily Beast is 31st. Not bad. US News is 34th.
Ethics Alarms is 72,895th, and proud of it!
Daily Beast became “mainstream” when they bought (and drove into the ground) Newsweek. Newsweek kept its head above water for a while under DB ownership, but the Beast is so insufferable that Newsweek didn’t stand a chance.
You’re right “very” is a stretch, but it was better than I expected, which shows some cynicism on my part, I suppose. It came up to expectations. When it comes to headlines mine are pretty low. Daily Wire made a list too.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-media-reacted-to-rush-limbaughs-death
Rush announced his Stage 4 lung cancer a week or two after my dad found out he had Stage 4 lung cancer. We watched my dad wither away, bit by bit, until finally at the end of November, death took what was left. I was blessed to spend the last few months of my father’s life at his side, helping my mother care for him.
Knowing first hand what that cancer does to a person, I find the comments about Rush particularly awful. He lived only a couple of months longer than my father, and honestly, I’m not sure that’s a blessing. I had to remove myself from the internet yesterday, because I couldn’t bear to read the comments about his death. We are truly surrounded by some awful humans.
My mom died of cancer, though not lung cancer, in 2014. I saw what cancer does too. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s things like this that leave me believing that the whole left is composed of hypocrites who are everything they rail against. They claim to be tolerant, but tear into you the minute you disagree. They claim to be open-minded, but trash anything they don’t like. They claim to be for lifting up the disadvantaged, but they just use them as pawns. They claim to be kind, but would just as soon kill someone from the other side as look at him.
I found that I preferred talk radio over all other mediums. WMAL in DC plays throughout the day in our home. Much of the time it is just in the background as we do other things. Talk radio, I found, helps me formulate ideas so much better than I could do on my own. Like here at EA I have the opportunity to hear (or read) different viewpoints from people who have walked a lot of different paths than the one I have tread. Sure it is nice to hear someone validate your point but the real value is having someone point out the fallacy or error in your thinking before you get on your soapbox and make an utter fool of yourself.
For me, in some measures Ethics Alarms and the Rush Limbaugh show are similar. Each provides me with an opportunity to be exposed to well articulated ideas of the host and the opportunity to evaluate what others have to say. Like life, and totally unlike TV, talk radio and blogs like this are unscripted. Important precedent setting issues that you might have never heard about are found there. You can find the talking point topics anywhere. The AP or someone writes the article and then the print media or TV reproduces it.
I said to my wife when we heard Katherine announce his passing as we drove home from Sam’s Club yesterday I expect that his opposition will show themselves to be the bigots they claim to oppose. Their hate and venom will be on full display as they preen on and congratulate themselves on their moral superiority. They don’t seem to grasp the fact that an unsubstantiated perceived belief in one’s superiority is the basis for all of the offending “ists” such as racists, agists, ablists, misogynists etc. What I did not expect was that it would be as hateful as it was. For the life of me I do not know why people have no trouble wishing individuals dead who don’t walk in lock step with them yet will prostrate themselves on the alter of “wokeness” to prevent being cancelled themselves. That seems to me like giving your gun to the mugger.
Andrew Klavan captured my exact sentiments
“… I choked up when I heard that Rush had left the studio. He was silenced just at the moment when the elite and powerful would silence us all.
Our politicians seek to demonize half the nation—Rush’s half. Our news media calls for censorship. Tech billionaires sit on their mountains of gold and gesture like foppish princes to tell us who shall speak and who shall not. Let us defy them, then. Let us all speak, and fearlessly. Let that be Rush’s monument. In a way, he built it himself.”
I could not agree more with Klavan’s call to action.
Excellent observations, as always.
jvb
“having someone point out the fallacy or error in your thinking before you get on your soapbox and make an utter fool of yourself.”
With a lifetime of experience (generally unavailable until after you need it) of leaping before looking, I will unequivocally attest “you can say THAT again!”
Life is a b*tch, then Rush dies… Rush, the best friend I had for many years and never met.
I’m going to be a contrarian. I’m going to go out and say that digging up ways in which Rush failed the humanity test in the wake of his death is tacky and tasteless, and celebrating Rush’s death is the ultimate lack of self awareness, because it also fails the humanity test, but I see no reason to carry a whole lot of water for him.
At the risk of being tacky and tasteless, I’m going to defend the people criticizing Rush as being tack and tastless, but at least honest. I’m also going to suggest that you all know better, and are choosing to remember only “Good” Rush, but that choice doesn’t change reality, and it doesn’t make the tacky or tasteless criticisms untrue.
Take this for example:
“Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio host who employed vicious but influential rhetoric, dies“
“Absolutely despicable. Limbaugh’s rhetoric was seldom “vicious,” though those who never listened to his show would usually talk about how nasty he was. To the contrary, he was usually the opposite; funny, light-hearted, witty, and almost always engaging and civil to callers when they took issue with him.
See what happened there? They said that Rush “employed vicious but influential rhetoric” and you said “Yeah, but not always.”
Does no one remember AIDS watch? For those who weren’t tuning in during the 80’s: The weekly bit where he made fun of all the gay men dying from AIDS. What about the time that he went after a soup kitchen because it was run by East Indians and they dared to serve curry to homeless people?
Most of this is a product of the times, Rush was 70 years old and has been in radio longer than I’ve been alive. People change, the culture changes, I’m more than willing to believe that he was, at heart, a wonderful person. But over his career he said and did some egregiously shitty things, and I don’t blame the people who chose to remember them.
No, I said the opposite: “on occasion, but not usually.” And that’s accurate. I’m not even sure the Fluke line was vicious. He was making the point that saying taxpayers should pay for for one’s recreational; sex is presumptuous…and taking no responsibility at all for one’s own excesses. The AIDS episode was vicious…and I noted that specifically (which makes me wonder why you felt required to mention it again: why ask “does no one remember” when it was right in the post?), and Rush apologized profusely.
Meanwhile, I’m seeing references to Rush’s “Barack the Magic Negro” parody of “Puff the Magic Dragon” that deliberately ignores the context: a progressive writer’s artical about the “magic Negro” trop in movies, personified by Morgan Freeman, in which a single black character of special virtue and even supernatural wisdom and benign talents makes everything better. Matching that to the Left’s deification of Obama was spot on, and the parody was deft.
I was no Rush regular—I caught him on the radio for a while maybe once a week for a year or so. I heard that song, but I never heard viciousness, or even anger. Not so Michael Savage, or Mark Levin, (or Tammy Bruce), or Sean Hannity, or even Laura Ingraham, and others.
“No, I said the opposite: “on occasion, but not usually.”
I interpreted it as “yeah but not always” you meant, “on occasion, but not usually”, I’ll grant you there’s a difference, and your interpretation is obviously going to be right, but that’s irrelevant because either way, you give away the argument: Rush was, in fact, vicious and influential at least some of the time.
I think I remember him differently than you do; “AIDS Watch” wasn’t an episode, it was a regular segment on his show that continued on and off for years. That he showed remorse in his more moderate years is great, but no one has a duty to forgive him: He called it; He mocked people who were dying horribly tragic deaths because he didn’t like who they were sleeping with. We might not ever know for certain whether Trump was mocking a disabled reporter when he flailed his hands around at a podium, but we sure as hell know that Rush mocked Michael J Fox’s Parkinson’s and told his audience that Fox was faking it.
There was no target too small, there was no one off limits, there was no filter. Frankly, there were no values. None of the shitty things he did on a regular basis in any way resembled a conservative principle. He was just being mean. It would be an exercise akin to counting grains of sand in a bucket to attempt to compile the list of shitty things he did. And at some point the Rule of Goats applies: Even if your doing these things ironically, or as an act, you’re still doing them. And all the wonderful things you do extracurricularly don’t erase them.
If people want to remember him for all the good things he did, of which there were many, or as the grandfather of conservative media, that’s fine. Really, it is. It’s everyone’s prerogative to remember the people they looked up to the way they want to. But there has to be a limiting principle to this.
As an extreme example: Obviously, Rush is not comparable to Soleimani, but when Qasem Soleimani was killed, I celebrated his death. The grandfather of terrorist bombing plots was dead, the world was a better place without him. In no uncertain terms: Fuck that dude. And in my opinion, people who were angry at Soleimani’s killing, but celebrated Limbaugh’s beclown themselves. But the fact remains that there is an Overton Window of acceptable feelings towards the death of someone that seems *very* subjective.
Was Rush a good person that did bad things, or a bad person that did good things? I don’t know or care. I’m not celebrating his death, but don’t hold your breath for a heart-filled memorial.
The answer, however, is that he was a complex human being who did good and bad things, but the bad things were fleeting, and the good things were essential and necessary.
Let’s look at it this way: Did any obits of FDR focus on his epic violation of human rights by interning US citizens based on race? Or his allowing a largely anti-Semitic State Department to deliberately ignore the plight of the Jews? Or his bargaining away the rights of millions of Eastern Europeans to satisfy Stalin? Or his cruelty and betrayal of Eleanor? Or his reckless insistence on running for a 4th term when he knew he was dying? No they didn’t, and they shouldn’t have: he saved the nation and the world. That’s the lede.
I don’t compare Rush with FDR, but the same principle applies, or should.
“…but we sure as hell know that Rush mocked Michael J Fox’s Parkinson’s and told his audience that Fox was faking it.”
Wrong. I remember that bit. Rush was citing Michael J. Fox’s own words when he said in an interview that sometimes, before a public appearance, he would deliberately not take his medication so that his symptoms would be more obvious/exaggerated.
That’s a far cry from telling his audience that Fox was “faking” it.
–Dwayne
I’m sure in your mind, that was a really good counterpoint, but in reality you kinda just said “No! He didn’t shit on a nun, she was just an old lady.”
My patience with this topic is wearing thin. I’ve mentioned that clip a couple times, it’s one of the few that are readily available. If you don’t want to take my word for it, by all means, Google it. You might disagree with my characterization. That’s fine.
What I hope you won’t try is to say that whatever differentiation or context you’ll try to apply actually excuses what he did. Because that would make for a different conversation completely.
I don’t blame them either; I pity them. Evaluating the worth of a person based on some slight or laugh the person got at your expense without considering the total person is like a scab that you pick at until it becomes an infected and becomes an ugly scar. Letting go of your hate makes you far healthier mentally.
Sure, but like I said above: Was Rush a good man that did bad things, or a bad man that did good things?
Because what we can’t get past is that when you actually “consider the total person” of Rush Limbaugh, is that he said a lot of shitty things.
Rush Routinely said things so egregiously awful that they speak for themselves. They were signature significance. Was Rush a Pioneer? Absolutely!
He pioneered targeting the modern version of attacking the children of political opponents; During the Clinton administration, he brought up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, “Did you know there’s a White House dog?” Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years old at the time.
Rush’s shtick for years was punching down: Disabled people, the dead, children, and the homeless. Having an eleventh hour come-to-Jesus moment is great, but I’m not going to get in on the hero-worship.
We used to bemoan the coarsening of American politics here. I think if that topic comes up again, I’ll have a hard time taking some of you seriously.
Who’s hero worshiping? I never called him a hero, though he made ethics dunce a few times. He accomplished a great deal for the media, radio,journalism, and free speech. It took a warrior to break up the monopoly. An obituary or a public assessment needs to evaluate a career and societal impact. I have no beef with pointing out Rush’s many excesses, but since everyone keeps repeating the same ones, how many were there, really? The Chelsea/dog knock was one—I agree, inexcusable, wrong, despicable. It doesn’t outweigh the impact of the career, and the impact of the career doesn’t mitigate it.
I trust you: how often did you listen to Rush?
There was a time where I listened to him at least weekly, but it’s been a long time. I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop listening to him, but I phased him out somewhere around the start of Obama’s second term.
As to the number of incidents. How many were there really? No clue. These things weren’t few and far between, but they existed before it was easy to record and report on them. They were from a time when newspapers didn’t make a habit of regurgitating radio personality talking points as if they were news.
Here’s a story that I haven’t seen circulating, but was almost certainly one of the things that made led to me phasing out: There was a soup kitchen that was operated by an East Indian couple, Rush devoted a massive chunk of a show to calling them unpatriotic because they were serving curry to homeless people as opposed to good old fashioned American grub.
Imagine: Taking grave offense at people for feeding the homeless the wrong kind of food. I looked DAMN hard for the show, and the only reference I could find actually came from in the form of a tweet from someone claiming to be an owner:
I don’t know if this is one of the people actually involved, but I remember that show. I get it, there’s a lot of people out there looking for a reason to be angry with Rush, and they’re searching through his history to glom onto whatever they can…. But it’s not like he didn’t give them a whole lot of ammo and a tempting target.
I remember that one, and it is also one cited in many of the negative articles. I, like you, stopped listening to Rush around that time, but the fact that the same four or five examples are cited leads me to believe that they were indeed far and few between. I gave him as Ethics Dunce for saying that he wanted Obama to fail, but it’s pretty amazing to see mainstream media sources citing that when they were part of an effort to make sure his successor failed.
Addendum—Upon thinking about your argument, I am persuaded that the mocking of Chelsea is signature significance. That was hateful, and someone with reliable ethics alarms just doesn’t do that. The AIDs Watch was the result of ignorance and the entrenched societal bias against gays–I can forgive that, especially since Rush seemed to learn. As with the Trump-Haters who attacked Barron, however, mocking a little girl’s appearance on a national platform is cruelty without purpose other than cruelty.
Rush’s shtick for years was punching down: Disabled people, the dead, children, and the homeless. Having an eleventh hour come-to-Jesus moment is great, but I’m not going to get in on the hero-worship.
I would not describe his program as you have above only having been a listener for some of the years Limbaugh was on the air. I do recall some of the parodies but to suggest as some have that satirical parodies of Obama are evidence of racism has to be met with requiring the Wayans brothers to be labeled as racists for their “White Chicks” movie. Neither should be; it is a form of art. There were several other “parody” songs, “Every Cent You Make (I’ll Be Taxing You)” — a spoof of The Police hit “Every Breath You Take” – and “Bomb Iran”, a jab at the neoconservative foreign policy of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a play on the Beach Boys tune “Barbara Ann.”
I will explain that my experience with his program began during Bush 2 so my reflections are not based on an eleventh hour come to Jesus moment. What transpired in 1988 when he started the syndicated show or before that when he was bouncing around the airwaves trying to find his place among the Shock Jocks of that era such as Howard Stern, Don Imus and Doug Tracht- aka The Greaseman among others I don’t know. What I do know is that sophomoric sexualized and insult humor was the rage of that era and insults played well in Peoria and in Harlem.
You said:
He pioneered targeting the modern version of attacking the children of political opponents; During the Clinton administration, he brought up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, “Did you know there’s a White House dog?” Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years old at the time.
ME: I agree that is tasteless but I also don’t think we should limit our abhorrence to such insults to just children. I also don’t think we should be teaching our kids to hate anyone that does not believe progressive or conservative ideology but we are. “We the people” create or support the demand for such acts. So laying the blame on the supplier of that which we have an insatiable desire for is cowardly.
I believe the Left’s revered Howard Stern and The Right’s Don Imus pioneered insult radio but even they were not the first. Insult humor has been around for centuries. Don Rickles and Phyllis Diller made a career out of it. Dame Edna on Johnny Carson stated she was “. . .proud to be blessed with the ability to laugh at other people’s misfortune”. It was a joke.
None of the aforementioned shock jocks ever went beyond the sophomore level. You remember the schtick that paid the bills but fail to understand the overall message.
From CPAC
“We love people. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work.”
“We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government. We want this to be the greatest country it can be, but we do understand, as people created and endowed by our Creator, we’re all individuals. We resist the effort to group us. We resist the effort to make us feel that we’re all the same; that we’re no different than anybody else. We’re all different.”
“There are no two things or people in this world who are created in a way that they end up with equal outcomes. That’s up to them.” Rush Limbaugh
What of the above is disagreeable to you?
HT You have great intellect; you demonstrate it here regularly in 99% of your posts. I don’t think that anyone here is carrying water for anyone when they offer up respect for Limbaugh’s body of work or what it meant to them. For many this is especially true now as Silicon Valley and progressive tyrants promote and facilitate turning everyone that disagrees with the woke crowd into potential punching bags. These tyrants hide their hate behind the veil of plausible deniability of an algorithm that they claim ferrets out hate. Yet they do nothing to stop the economic and social destruction of their opposition when their minions use the platform weapons they provide to advance their goals of ideological genocide born from their own hatred of others.
Sometimes, it is nobler to say nothing than to dredge up a slight here or an insult there to prove that the man was not perfect. No one is. There have been many people in my life who have actually gone out of their way to diminish me but I never saw a benefit in bringing up my hurt when they passed simply so I could go on record to try to prove how much better a person I am than they were.
“I do recall some of the parodies but to suggest as some have that satirical parodies of Obama are evidence of racism has to be met with requiring the Wayans brothers to be labeled as racists for their “White Chicks” movie.”
I don’t know who you’re responding to, but it’s not me. I didn’t call Rush racist, and I haven’t brought up Obama, unless you think “Disabled people, the dead, children, and the homeless.” somehow describes him. No, I’m talking about disabled people, dead people, dying people, children, and the homeless. I’ve given examples of all of the above. Deal with my arguments, not the strawman you wish I’d made.
“ME: I agree that is tasteless but I also don’t think we should limit our abhorrence to such insults to just children.”
Then don’t… You nailed it… Rush was a shock jock, The obvious example was making fun of Michael J Fox’s Parkinsons, but he also based people on their height (only showing pictures of short people from the eyebrows up was a running gag), and constantly mocked fat people… Which was not only bad, but lacked self awareness.
“So laying the blame on the supplier of that which we have an insatiable desire for is cowardly.”
This is a horrible take. Hate the game, not the player? No. Unreservedly no. No one held a blowtorch to Rush’s feet and forced him to be an asshole. That was him. Again… People on here used to bemoan the coarsening of rhetoric in America. This guy didn’t help. He dragged conservatives into the mud with shock jocks like Howard Stern, and you’re defending him by pointing out he had an audience. These personal attacks on the disabled, the dying, the dead, children, the homeless, the short, the fat, and the list goes on and on was and is gross.
“You remember the schtick that paid the bills but fail to understand the overall message.”
I’m getting close to the point where I’m going to say unkind things about you as a person. The overall message? What hidden gem of a message was there in calling a 13 year old girl a dog? What erudite wisdom am I missing in mocking the way Michael J Fox twitched? “Oh but how the people laughed”, right? Count the fallacies.
“But Jeff, my point was that he just *said* these things so he could make his show popular, and that was important because conservatism needed his show”
Conservatism *might* have needed his show, but even if I grant that, you’re not making the argument for his goodness, you’re making the argument for his necessity. I referenced the rule of goats before, this applies here. Almost perfectly: Even if you’re only fucking the goat ironically, or to prove a point, you are still a goat-fucker. Your intentions doesn’t change the fact that the goat was fucked or that you were the person that did it.
“What of the above is disagreeable to you?”
You know… This is like a rolling gag of bad arguments. Rush gave a lot of speeches that I have absolutely no problem with. Lots of bad people can manage to have a perfectly reasonable conversation. I’m sure that even Hitler managed to say a couple of things that aren’t objectionable. The fuck do you think your point is? All the things I’ve listed still happened. And more. “Goodness” isn’t a zero sum game. The fallacy is “Ethics accounting”. But if I had to point at something I found objectionable? The lifetime of cheap shots followed up with the absolute lack of self awareness necessary to say something so hypocritical as this.
“Sometimes, it is nobler to say nothing than to dredge up a slight here or an insult there to prove that the man was not perfect. No one is.”
Is “nobody’s perfect” a fallacy?
I need you to realize that I’m drawing a line between celebrating someone’s death, and being honest about who that person was. I celebrate the deaths of very few people, and Rush doesn’t make it to the list. The world isn’t a better place with him not in it. But this conversations didn’t started because Jack condemned the people actively celebrating Rush’s death, which I think everyone agrees with shows a moral bankruptcy in both taste and values. This conversation started because Jack didn’t like how Rush’s obituaries were worded. He didn’t like that Rush’s political enemies were choosing to emphasis Rush at his worst. I get that, I said it up front: tacky and tasteless. I would not have chosen to do that myself.
But where’s the lie?
How did he have that running gag about short people on radio? (His TV show was unwatchable, and lasted–well, the sources can’t even agree on how long it was on, or how many episodes) Let’s say it was not a success.
Wikipedia tells me between 92 and 96, and while I was an even less frequent consumer of his TV show than I was his radio show, that jives with my memory.
One article spoke of his early days at a local radio station in Western Pennsylvania that was required to provide farm news according to its license. It was very boring stuff but evidently essential to the station’s keeping it’s FCC license. So, Rush had some fun with it and, city slicker style, mispronounced all the crop names and played cartoon-like barnyard noises in the background. The farm reports soon became the most popular segment on his show.
I didn’t listen to him often but the segments I did listen to were always humorous and engaging. I always read any of his columns posted on Real Clear Politics.
He was born a few months before I was. I’m just glad I quit smoking as a nineteen year old. R.I.P. buddy.
Throughout the 1980’s and the early 1990’s I had a job that required me to drive all over a tri-state area repairing commercial HVAC, boilers, kitchen equipment, etc, etc. During some of those long drives I would flip from the music that I’ve heard hundreds of times over to a radio channel to hear Rush’s show to pass the time. I really wasn’t a big fan of Rush but I greatly respected Rush for the politically alternative voice he shared, he’d get me thinking as I drove down the road. He was thoughtful and civil and, for the most part, reasonably accurate. His consistent conservative voice over the airways caused extreme progressives to cringe, Liberals to think a little more critically, and inspired other Conservatives to speak out and those are traits of an effective leader. Effective Conservative leaders are something we are in short supply of these days.
Strong Leaders Are Needed To Inspire Nationwide Grass Roots Movements To Support The Constitution & Confront Totalitarianism