Rush Limbaugh, Rest In Peace

“I’m your host, Rush Limbaugh, with half my brain tied behind my back – just to make it fair.”

Rush Limbaugh passed away this week.  It’s a credit to him that Microsoft® knows that I spelled his name right, and didn’t put a squiggly line underneath it.  He was big enough of a public figure that autocorrect programmers had to reckon with his fame.  Word®.

His fame came with money – a lot of it.  If the math of those who do such math is correct, he died with half a billion dollars in his bank account.  It doesn’t look like he spent all that much of what he made.  Sure, he had private planes and a mansion, but his main vocation was talking.

And, oh, how well he talked.

I first recall hearing him talking on a tinny AM radio station one lunchtime and saying . . . “Who is this guy?”

Was he always right?  Certainly not.  No one whose job is to talk to the American public for fifteen hours each week is always right.

But Rush Limbaugh was unique.  He fought back against Leftism with new weapons:  razor sharp wit, and razor shop logic.  Did he ever hesitate or was he ever at a loss for words when confronting Leftists?

Never.

His regular segments were (especially in the early days) examples of irreverence.  He didn’t make fun of the homeless in his Homeless Update.  He made fun of those who would infantilize humans through assuming that people who were homeless were the mental equivalent of children.

Rush did make fun of feminists, probably because he knew they were so sensitive that they’d react like a polar bear with a sunburn.  And the feminists did react – Limbaugh was the first one to trigger every feminist in the United States in the same week.

For me, he was proof of another thing:  that people on the Right can be funny as heck, and there’s a huge amount of humor potential when you punch Left.

When I grew up, there were exactly three stations that we got over our antenna up on Wilder Mountain:  ABC®, NBC™, and CBS©.  We got PBS® too, but nobody over Sesame Street™ age counted PBS®.  On the major networks when I grew up, the writers and actors and producers and executives of the major networks were Leftists, just like today.  The sitcoms and dramas featured Leftist values (mainly).  Most shows spewed proto Social Justice Warrior DNA into every episode.

The worst were the Very Special Episodes where people who were supposed to be funny spent 30 minutes (including commercials) learning Very Special Lessons.  Comedy was written by Leftists.  And that comedy was, itself, a demoralization operation.

It was so prevalent I recall thinking in eighth grade, “Is all humor inherently Leftist?”

I later discovered P.J. O’Rourke and was happy to note that the answer was, “no,” at least when it came to the written word.  Funny is funny.  And funny was not the exclusive domain of the Left.  In fact, funny is now the enemy of the Left, because funny exposes uncomfortable Truths.  In a world where Leftists praise boys running in track meets with girls and insist that there is no physical difference?

The humor writes itself.

Rush Limbaugh proved that what P.J. O’Rourke did for the written word could be done with the spoken word for fifteen hours a week of (generally) excellent broadcasting.  Until Limbaugh discovered golf.

Because he was Rush Limbaugh, he could spend an hour talking about golf to 20,000,000 Americans, 19,000,000 of whom had never picked up a mashie or a gimlet or whatever the clubs are called and still not lose the audience.

The man had the gift of making a continuous stream of engaging radio – which is hard to do.  With radio, you have to work to keep the attention of the audience.  Rush was a natural at mixing hilarity and ideas, but without ever getting to the point where he thought he had followers who would do his bidding rather than an audience that was there to be entertained.

I went through phases of listening to Rush.  When he started on golf, I listened less.  When my job took me away from his regular broadcast times, I didn’t listen at all.

When we moved to Alaska was perhaps the longest time I never listened to him.  In Alaska, the politics of the Lower 48 seemed absurd.  Sure Limbaugh was on the radio there.  And, yeah, I could have listened to him.  But for the most part in Alaska, the Lower 48 was what we called “Outside” – it was a world that was of only passing relevance.  Heck, the Chinese were there measuring Alaska to see if their furniture fit (it does), so we were more worried about having to learn to eat medium-rare bat and teach the Chinese how to play hockey than we were about petty squabbles in a land so far away.

But when we moved back to the Lower 48, national politics became significant again.  And Rush re-entered our lives.  In one way I miss the freedom of not caring about the Lower 48.  In another, I always knew that there would be a battle for freedom of thought, expression, ideas, and Western values, so coming back put us back in this space.  I probably wouldn’t be writing this if I were still in Alaska.

I just wouldn’t care.

But enough about me.  Rush was big enough that, in 1992, I think he was a major factor in making sure that George H. W. Bush wasn’t re-elected.  His honest criticism of H. W.’s “conservatism” was enough to make his listeners understand George was a Leftist who would conserve nothing.

He was the single biggest nemesis of Bill and Hillary Clinton.  He bothered them at a personal level.  Bill Clinton sat in Air Force One and blamed Rush Limbaugh for division in America on a radio interview.

No, Rush didn’t divide America, he gave the Right hope.  Would Bill Clinton have been impeached without Rush Limbaugh?  I don’t think so.  Rush was the leading edge of the wave of a new media – a media that wasn’t controlled, wasn’t a bought and paid-for version of the combined DemoPublican establishment.

In the last decade, I probably listened to him once or twice a month, at most.  Even so, his voice and ideas reached millions.

He talked about speaking into the golden Excellence in Broadcasting microphone.  No one of his talent will pass this way again, at least not in my lifetime.

In passing at 70, he gave me one final gift:  a reminder of our mortality.  Despite the money, despite the fame, despite the influence, we will all return to our Maker.

What you do with that time?  It’s up to you.

Dittos, Rush.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

32 thoughts on “Rush Limbaugh, Rest In Peace”

    1. The apartment is not in keeping with the image of someone whose 1993 income has been estimated at between $15 million and $20 million, but the chauffeured Lincoln Town Car he will take to work is.

      He used his money to buy *time*. Interesting article, but it could not be written today.

  3. The encomiums (and vilification) are everywhere, for Rush Limbaugh certainly had his fans and detractors. I knew of him, of course, but never tuned in of my own volition. Others did at my workplace, so I heard enough of his discourse through the years to know that he was a kindred spirit.

    What I wish to remark upon here, however, is your final paragraph, and the concept of our intrinsic mortality, which seems almost an afterthought in the context of this post as a whole. To wit, no matter how much of a Big Shot you are (or think you are) here in life, in the end you, me, Rush and everyone else are mere stardust.

    I think about this often as I stumble along toward that last lonely mile. Its a final journey that we each make completely and utterly alone. Same way you came in, so shall you go out. Your wealth, your wit and wisdom, your ‘status’ in the community – all meaningless. In the end its just you and your maker.

    True to my contrarian nature, I’ve requested that when I pass, the epitaph etched into granite over my remains read, “Sez who?”

  4. Your history with Rush pretty nearly parallels mine, although I bailed when he cheer-led Gulf War I (I was an early non-adopter; “tell me again why Americans should care who runs Kuwait, (c) 1961 or thereabouts?”). And he self-admittedly carried water for GOPe.

    But he was funny, and I remember what talk radio was like BR (Before Rush). A dull wasteland of Lefty.

    And now Lefty, and lots of Conservatism, Inc., is pissing on his grave. So, in memory of a guy, with flaws, who accomplished a hell of a lot, and had all the right enemies … megadittoes!

    By the way, I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but Arthur Sido has an excellent post on the subject today.

    1. Rush eventually came to (apparently) despise the GOPe almost as much as the left. But he was also a realist – in a two party system, who else are you going to vote for?

      1. … in a two party system, who else are you going to vote for?

        I understand your question, and sympathize. However, the question presupposes that voting is necessary, or even good. I disagree.

        I say this, knowing that I voted in this past election. My first vote in several decades. I did so not because I was enthused about the feckless Trump, but simply as an upraised middle finger to the Hive. The ensuing grotesque ballot-box stuffing surely illustrates that “we ain’t votin’ our way out of this,” does it not?

        Please don’t misunderstand me; I have much sympathy, and agreement, with roughly half the voters in this country. They are my people. But at the end of the day, the man (or woman) who votes for the lesser of two evils is still voting for an evil. As a man with whom I served on a school board used to say, “there’s no right way to do a wrong thing.”

        1. A “government” differs from a “protection racket” in that government has a “state religion”, promoted by an “established church”, which lies that government is not a protection racket. In the US the established church is the “public school system”.

          “Politics” is when humans use violence or threats of violence to force humans to do or stop doing actions. In a political situation where one side is innocent of harming anyone, the innocent victim is doing “self defense” and the attacker is doing “government”.

          Organized crime doesn’t become non-crime just because the number of gang members is large.

        2. A “government” differs from a “protection racket” in that government has a “state religion”, promoted by an “established church”, which lies that government is not a protection racket. In the US the established church is the “public school system”.

          “Politics” is when humans use violence or threats of violence to force humans to do or stop doing actions. In a political situation where one side is innocent of harming anyone, the innocent victim is doing “self defense” and the attacker is doing “government”.

          Organized crime doesn’t become non-crime just because the number of gang members is large. 10 persons stealing from you at gunpoint are a gang of muggers; 10,000 persons stealing from you at gunpoint are virtuous citizens engaged in their community. What is the headcount number between 11 and 9,999 where the political monkey troop instincts all humans inherited from great ape ancestors overrides your rationality?

    2. Yeah – George H.W. Bush didn’t get a second term, I’m convinced, because of Rush. And he never liked the Clintons, and vice versa.

      That is a great post over at Arthur’s place.

  6. Great post with heartfelt words we can all appreciate. I’ll never forget the time when Rush made light of Sandra Fluke’s plea for free birth control and a few of his advertisers bailed. Later in the year one (I forget who) tried to come back on and Rush proudly informed us how the EIB network blew them off. Epic.

  7. As I mentioned in my post on Rush, for people under a certain age it really is hard to understand what a huge influence he was. You know that he was effective because he was hated by so many awful people.

  8. Well said.

    Rush Limbaugh de-hypnotized me in 1993 when I started my business. He was a pioneer in radio and much more. Can’t prove it, but I think it was his success that prompted the creation of Fox News. Certainly he was the inspiration for the countless other conservative radio shows that now span the AM spectrum.

    The Left is now going all out for censorship, re-education camps and engaging in fever dreams of drone strikes on U.S. citizens. They won’t win (though they may well destroy everything in the process of losing), in large part because of Rush Limbaugh’s success and reach.

    “You can’t stop the signal, Mal.”

  9. First heard him when he started on WJFK -FM out of DC.
    Saw him back in 1994. Was in the audience at his TV show in NY
    WOW. Was it really that long ago?
    Miss ya Rush.

  10. It sucks that he died. My husband sometimes gives me a very high compliment by telling me ‘That’s just what Rush said!” . I will miss him even though I only got to listen to him on Fridays when hubby and I were driving somewhere together. My 25 yr old son subscribed to his thing so that he could listen anytime. I will miss that. RIP Brother.

  11. Talent on loan from God was another trigger phrase from the swami El Rushbo.
    He had the stones to play the magic Barack song and predicted that those who thought racism was over were in for a rude shock.
    I love FM radio and rock n’ roll and the saying…long haired maggot infested dope smoker phoney baloney plastic banana good time rock n’ roll FM types is still hilarious.
    The spatula city skit is from a Weird Al Yankovic album, my favorite is the Barnacle Brothers 60 second sale and the Algore riff with internet creator (sarc) and original climatechange/weather/warming czar Al Gore.
    For those of you in Rio Linda, California, another classic Rushism.
    Smoking? We don’t need any stinking smoking.

  12. Mr. Limbaugh’s mode of sincerely confident braggadocio* (Thank you Mr. Ricky, upstream for the cigar article) is a base requirement in machismo cultures (and probably many U.S. subcultures), attractive to normal women , irritating to Northern Euopean / culturally Luthern folks, and deeply, deeply triggering to narcissists.

    Apropos of something else I am trying to understand (Cult of personality) I was pointed at a book How to Deal With Narcissists. A lot of what Mr. Limbaugh was deliberately doing by choosing his mode of presentation are described in the books as ways to smoke out malignant narcissists operating undercover.

    Mr. Limbaugh was an excellent example of trying to be loyal to your team, while keeping your integrity. It’s a challenge.

    *For Northerners confident machismo whatsit is expressed by mild self mockery because one is not supposed to smuggle in self-praise. If you are really good enough, others will do it. And if not, sack up. Vanity is a sin 😋 Mr. Wilder is a dab hand at this. John Wright is also good, but inconsistent outside of live feeds, like YouTube shows. It still works as the braggadocio version though because his virtues and self-admitted failings are legit. What repels normal women and raises distrust in normal men is when the self-mockery is used as a way to smuggle in self-praise and get credit, while faking humility over make-believe vices. Icky on all levels.

    **Also “Word” … 😅

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