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"I've got good news and bad news!"
"What?"
"That fat, racist, homophobic guy from Florida who mocked the disabled just died!"
"Great! What's the bad news?"
"It's not Trump!"
Once you're already destined for hell, there's not really much you can do or say to make things any worse. I guess I may get driven down a circle or two, from the Nixon Wing I'm currently booked at to the Deepest Pit of Despair that Rush Limbaugh now occupies.
Fair enough. Despite the right-wing trope that us Snowflake Libs would have understood him if only we'd listened, I did. Fairly faithfully, not as destination radio for me by any means, but I'd flip to it if I was in the car between 2 and 5 back in Rochester days (when that city's nutjob AM talker tape-delayed his show by two hours), or live between noon and 3 after moving here. In terms of presentation, it was a good program: he clearly did his show prep, kept the callers to a relative minimum and on topic, and until the last few weeks when he was clearly near his end, or anytime he was doing his shameful and bad imitations of Clinton or Obama, his voice was one of talent.
But that's not why I listened. That was a form of reconnaissance, or of Keeping Your Enemies Closer. From his sanctification of Ronaldus McDonaldus Maximus in his early years of syndication that included Reagan's final year in office, to his half-hearted defenses of both Bushes, through villification of the two Democrats who got two terms on his watch, to finally his going all-in with FPT from his escalator descension to his desperate insurrection, there was no redeemable content whatsoever.
Even though it seemed he was a scourge on the national landscape for generations, he was only 70 when cancer finally got him, so not even 10 years older than me. One of our former ministers grew up in his home town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and knew the Limbaugh family. That future Big Fat Idiot was just plain "Rusty" to them, and his family was disappointed by his failure to follow his professionally inclined grandfather and father, or lead his slightly younger brother, into the practice of law. Like many radio prodigies who came up through the 60s, he bypassed formal education and got his first on-air gigs at a very young age- most famously in Pittsburgh, using the nom du jock of Jeff Christie. (That was where he oddly succeeded a DJ named Jim Quinn, who I followed on the air in New York and then at night from Long Island while Quinn was on a blowtorch AM station in Buffalo. He's turned into an even crazier rightwing radio nutjob than Rush ever was, which is saying something.) In the 80s, when AM radio had almost completely faded as a music medium, Reagan's abolition of the Fairness Doctrine offered those licenseholders a new way to use their airwaves. There had been crazed conservatives on the radio before Limbaugh- Bob Grant on New York's WMCA comes to mind, routinely hanging up on disagreeing callers with "get off the phone, you dirty creep!"- but Rush hit at the perfect time. He was at least polite when a rare caller got through who didn't agree with him; he would later mock them as plants from the Evil Democrat Party One World Commie Bedwetter machine ("seminar callers," he called them, referencing alleged places that would teach you how to get on the air with him; I somehow never got invited to these, those brochures probably going to the same place as my monthly checks from George Soros.)
The two bookends of his politics that define him for me were the reactions to the two impeached presidents on his watch. When Clinton was acquitted in 1998 of lying over a BJ, five Republicans joining with the unanimous Democrats on his Senate jury, I was driving from Rochester to another court appearance, but tuned to the Buffalo signal out of sheer schadenfreude to hear the live version of what he would have to say. He launched into a diatribe about how the Senate had failed to uphold The Rule Of Law- decrying how the Senate could tolerate a liar in the most powerful office in the world, and about what a horrible message that would send. A quarter century later, on one of his final appearances behind the microphone, he took the opposite view when seven Republican senators joined with the unanimous Democrats on FPT's Senate jury, there was no mention of The Rule Of Law. His four years of constant lies didn't bother Rush one little bit.
His legacy will include a litany of mean-spiritedness that made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease, branded a law student as a "slut" for advocating for contraception, running cruel "update" segments on the homeless and about AIDS victims, and spending eight full years not giving an iota of credit to the nation's first Black president, announcing before his inauguration that "I hope he fails" and mocking him with a song parody in Al Sharpton-through-a-bullhorn voice titled "Barack the Magic Negro." His fans will defend or deflect all of these charges. I heard them. I drew my own conclusions. I stand by them. You sucked and now you're dead. See you on the other side.
"What?"
"That fat, racist, homophobic guy from Florida who mocked the disabled just died!"
"Great! What's the bad news?"
"It's not Trump!"
Once you're already destined for hell, there's not really much you can do or say to make things any worse. I guess I may get driven down a circle or two, from the Nixon Wing I'm currently booked at to the Deepest Pit of Despair that Rush Limbaugh now occupies.
Fair enough. Despite the right-wing trope that us Snowflake Libs would have understood him if only we'd listened, I did. Fairly faithfully, not as destination radio for me by any means, but I'd flip to it if I was in the car between 2 and 5 back in Rochester days (when that city's nutjob AM talker tape-delayed his show by two hours), or live between noon and 3 after moving here. In terms of presentation, it was a good program: he clearly did his show prep, kept the callers to a relative minimum and on topic, and until the last few weeks when he was clearly near his end, or anytime he was doing his shameful and bad imitations of Clinton or Obama, his voice was one of talent.
But that's not why I listened. That was a form of reconnaissance, or of Keeping Your Enemies Closer. From his sanctification of Ronaldus McDonaldus Maximus in his early years of syndication that included Reagan's final year in office, to his half-hearted defenses of both Bushes, through villification of the two Democrats who got two terms on his watch, to finally his going all-in with FPT from his escalator descension to his desperate insurrection, there was no redeemable content whatsoever.
Even though it seemed he was a scourge on the national landscape for generations, he was only 70 when cancer finally got him, so not even 10 years older than me. One of our former ministers grew up in his home town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and knew the Limbaugh family. That future Big Fat Idiot was just plain "Rusty" to them, and his family was disappointed by his failure to follow his professionally inclined grandfather and father, or lead his slightly younger brother, into the practice of law. Like many radio prodigies who came up through the 60s, he bypassed formal education and got his first on-air gigs at a very young age- most famously in Pittsburgh, using the nom du jock of Jeff Christie. (That was where he oddly succeeded a DJ named Jim Quinn, who I followed on the air in New York and then at night from Long Island while Quinn was on a blowtorch AM station in Buffalo. He's turned into an even crazier rightwing radio nutjob than Rush ever was, which is saying something.) In the 80s, when AM radio had almost completely faded as a music medium, Reagan's abolition of the Fairness Doctrine offered those licenseholders a new way to use their airwaves. There had been crazed conservatives on the radio before Limbaugh- Bob Grant on New York's WMCA comes to mind, routinely hanging up on disagreeing callers with "get off the phone, you dirty creep!"- but Rush hit at the perfect time. He was at least polite when a rare caller got through who didn't agree with him; he would later mock them as plants from the Evil Democrat Party One World Commie Bedwetter machine ("seminar callers," he called them, referencing alleged places that would teach you how to get on the air with him; I somehow never got invited to these, those brochures probably going to the same place as my monthly checks from George Soros.)
The two bookends of his politics that define him for me were the reactions to the two impeached presidents on his watch. When Clinton was acquitted in 1998 of lying over a BJ, five Republicans joining with the unanimous Democrats on his Senate jury, I was driving from Rochester to another court appearance, but tuned to the Buffalo signal out of sheer schadenfreude to hear the live version of what he would have to say. He launched into a diatribe about how the Senate had failed to uphold The Rule Of Law- decrying how the Senate could tolerate a liar in the most powerful office in the world, and about what a horrible message that would send. A quarter century later, on one of his final appearances behind the microphone, he took the opposite view when seven Republican senators joined with the unanimous Democrats on FPT's Senate jury, there was no mention of The Rule Of Law. His four years of constant lies didn't bother Rush one little bit.
His legacy will include a litany of mean-spiritedness that made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease, branded a law student as a "slut" for advocating for contraception, running cruel "update" segments on the homeless and about AIDS victims, and spending eight full years not giving an iota of credit to the nation's first Black president, announcing before his inauguration that "I hope he fails" and mocking him with a song parody in Al Sharpton-through-a-bullhorn voice titled "Barack the Magic Negro." His fans will defend or deflect all of these charges. I heard them. I drew my own conclusions. I stand by them. You sucked and now you're dead. See you on the other side.