Rush Limbaugh

I always picture him as fatter and uglier.

In 1982, Slick Willie Clinton won the Arkansas Governor’s race as a “New Democrat.” He was as devoted a convert to Voodoo Economics as George H.W. Bush and just as hard right conservative. Clinton’s second tenure as Arkansas Governor was as full of trickle-down economics, austerity, and social program-cutting as any Republican administration. Yet, in the 1992 presidential elections, Slick Willie presented himself to a broader public as the second coming of Edmund Muskie. And a demented hobgoblin by the name of Rush Limbaugh started accusing him of being a communist.

That made about as much sense as calling Juan Peron a humanitarian or Frederick Douglas a White Supremacist. It was absurd. Yet, the more Clinton gave the Republicans everything they wanted, the harder Limbaugh accused him of being a bleeding-heart liberal. And rather than being ignored as the crank he was, it caught on. To this day, there are Democrats who insist that Bill Clinton was impeached over a blow-job when he was actually impeached and disbarred for life because he lied about it to a grand jury. That was Limbaugh’s purpose; to create such a smoke screen that both the Democrats and Republicans could ignore the facts and do whatever they wanted.

One of the most significant questions of the 1990s was how that fat, cigar-chewing bastard became so influential. Well, he was obviously born into it. The Limbaughs were part of the Missouri oligarchy. Both sides of his family were heavily involved in the John Birch Society. He had the family connections to have made it big in politics. Still, he wanted to be a radio broadcaster instead.

Initially, he crashed and burned. America has had shock jocks and abrasive personalities going back to the days of Will Rogers. But Limbaugh was so unhinged that he kept getting fired over his statements. He used the alias “Bachelor Ken” for some reason. I think it was so his on-air life didn’t interfere with his day job. He never kept a radio job for more than a year. Sometimes, he didn’t even survive for a month. Those were the days of the Fairness Doctrine, when broadcasting stations were required to air opposing views and were held accountable for misstating facts. Everybody from the Black Panthers to the DNC lined up to publicly refute Limbaugh’s bullshit with facts. He even initiated a few lawsuits, which is why “Bachelor Ken” always got canned.

Nepotism saved his butt. His family ensured he had a steady sales job for the Kansas City Royals. Otherwise, he would have had to find an honest job on his own, and finding a high-paying job with his credentials and work history was impossible even in those days. Eventually, he took a full-time position in the Royals’ marketing department. Due to his family’s political prominence, Rush quickly rose to the position of director of marketing. One might even quip that he was “rushed.” But the Limbaughs were a one-percent family, and they took care of their own.

Suddenly, the broadcaster who couldn’t hold a job was a VP and marketing director of a national sports team. He was playing golf and making deals with the people who fired him in the past. Rush, the stand-up guy, didn’t hold any grudges. He even started selling them universal life insurance policies for the old A.E. Williams company. He was introduced to some Washington insiders as a financial advisor. And he slowly wormed his way into the higher echelons of the RNC. His corporate lifestyle provided him plenty of leisure time, and he was already helping shape public policy. So when the fairness doctrine was eliminated, and radio stations didn’t have to worry about giving equal time to other views, Rush turned his talents to Talk Radio.

For those who don’t remember, Talk Radio was the social media of the late 20th Century. It was bad enough when it was just Howard Stern and the Whack Pack. But things started to go way south after the fairness doctrine ended. The insanity got worse and worse since the broadcasters could say anything with little or no consequences. Ed McLaughlin, CEO of ABC Radio, desperately sought somebody to knock Howard Stern from his throne as King of the Airwaves. History may never know if McLaughlin pitched a new radio show to his golf buddy Limbaugh or if Limbaugh went to McLaughlin. But Limbaugh returned to radio, and America may never recover from it.

Only this time, Rush sloughed off his “Bachelor Ken” persona like a viper sheds his skin, and it became the Rush Limbaugh Show. And the host was the real Rush Limbaugh. He spouted the same racist John Bircher shit he grew up with and believed with the fervency of a Jehovah’s Witness knocking on your door. That very sincerity was the cornerstone of his success. My neighbors in Blair House were ready for Rush. They were angrier than hell at Clinton and the Democrats, and Rush was calling Slick Willy a socialist. My neighbors didn’t have the education to know what a socialist was, except it was something terrible. And, of course, since Rush could be racist on the radio, they stopped believing that racism was wrong. And it was impossible to correct them. I count Rush Limbaugh and his shitty example to be the biggest step backward in social progress since the McCarthy Hearings.

I found it extremely easy to ignore Rush Limbaugh. I think it was because I went to public school in Florida. My Saint Augustine High School gym coach was just as bad as Limbaugh. I learned to tune racists out to preserve my sanity. For the life of me, I can’t remember hearing Limbaugh’s radio show at all. He came into my life as slowly as a cancer diagnosis. He was quoted everywhere; even if you didn’t listen to his show, you knew what he was. There wasn’t a comedian out there who wasn’t ready to make fun of him. But even ridicule is good publicity. His word and reputation kept growing. He became part of the environment. Rush Limbaugh was here to stay.

My luck ran out after my mother started watching his syndicated television show. It was on the air for about two or three years and was produced by Roger Ailes of FOX News fame. I distinctly remember sitting through three episodes but couldn’t hear anything Rush said. My mother would march up and down the room, yelling back at the hobgoblin on the TV screen. She would even throw small objects at the television screen. It was very entertaining, as you can imagine.

Then Mom left the room for a few minutes, and I was left alone to experience directly the southern fried hell, which was Rush Limbaugh. He was just like my old gym coach in Saint Augustine High School, only he had a salesman’s command of language. Limbaugh was being racist and ablest towards Rodney King and his disabilities. And he did it so wittily with puns and clever similes. I found myself trembling in outrage. When my mother returned, we were both yelling at the screen. Then I’d walk Mom outside so she could catch the hospital bus to dialysis and start fights with the elderly Dittoeheads.

That was another part of Rush’s appeal; he brought the bratty thirteen-year-old out in everybody. Rules of civility didn’t exist around him. He was a compassion-free zone where people could publicly release their bile without guilt or inhibition. It was an easy step from cursing out Rush on the TV screen to cursing out his fans in public. It started with lunatics like my mother fighting over whatever the idiocy the bloated cancer cell said that day. It slowly spread to the rest of the country. When I moved to California in 1996, Rush Limbaugh dominated political discourse.

Who was there to stop him? There was no more fairness doctrine. No requirements to air opposing views. And around 1996, courts ruled that news was entertainment. All journalistic standards had been stripped from the airwaves. And in the rare cases when somebody sued for defamation, Rush’s backers and allies had better lawyers. And nobody in broadcasting wanted to stop him.

It came down to Rush being good for business. As long as he was in the studio, neither Democrats nor Republicans ever had to worry about facts. The media became the battle of the strawmen. How many people fell off the unemployment rolls without finding employment didn’t matter. Bill Clinton was a liberal socialist because Rush Limbaugh said so. Nor did it matter how many taxes Clinton eliminated; Clinton was a socialist because Limbaugh said so. Rush Limbaugh defined the discussion. He had an incredible stage presence that kept every eye on him. And his drunken uncle politics struck a nerve in everybody. The nation was split between pro-Rush and Anti-Rush. And politics revolved around whatever he said.

The worst thing Rush and his media enablers did was normalize racism on the left. Never mind the right-wing, “minorities-are-subhuman” Ku-Klux-Klan-type racism. That’s going to be with us as long as we tolerate our regressive public school system. I’m talking about the “minorities-are-going-to-be oppressed-until-we-force-them-into-middle-class-white-culture racism.” It’s easy to forget that you’re infantilizing dark-skinned people when you can hide behind the outrageous statements coming out of the idiot factions of the Republican party. But Black People don’t need White liberals telling them what to do. Their time would be better served fixing the education system and health care systems they keep screwing up.

Black people in inner cities create their own systems. Public schools no longer teach critical thinking, so it’s taught in private homework clubs or church-sponsored after-school programs. The kids in these private, neighborhood-run programs get better educations than White kids in the suburbs. So, if you think kids in inner-city schools are badly educated, you’re sadly mistaken as well as racist. Limbaugh occasionally made valid criticisms of America’s failed education system and social programs, but they got lost in all his racist idiocy. And because Limbaugh made the criticism, the anti-Rush faction felt free to ignore the obvious fact that their education and social programs were badly failing.

Today, we’re still divided into the pro-Rush and Anti-Rush factions. Both sides are convinced that their politics is the only correct politics. Each faction is madly bent on destroying the other, to the point where they can’t focus on anything else. Any and all other views, suggestions, or wants are ignored because the only thing that matters is destroying the other side. Limbaugh was such a toxic bully that he made bullying acceptable in American society.

It’s only getting worse. Rush has long since taken over Hell’s Marketing Department, but the country is still how he left it; two cult-like political factions that can’t play well with others. And both the neoconservative and neoliberal news sources stole his act. Every talking head, from Tucker Carlson to Jon Stewart, uses Rush Limbaugh’s formula. Adopt a rigid political position that tolerates no criticism. Make cheap jokes at the expense of the other faction and mock all the critics, especially critics who avoid both factions. It’s easy, low-investment entertainment. And it keeps the money rolling in. That’s the only reason they do it; it brings in the money. It doesn’t matter that many Black families tune out the networks because they don’t want their kids learning to be bullies from the media. It’s profitable.

Thank god we only get one Antichrist per generation, and ours was Rush Limbaugh. Donald Trump is only a cheap black market knock-off of Rush. He may have stolen Limbaugh’s act, but he isn’t the unifying presence of the real Limbaugh. Limbaugh was a real mover-shaker and behind-the-scenes troublemaker. He could hold the Republican Party together because he was one of them. By 2008, he was the RNC’s spokesperson and de facto party head. Without him, the Republicans are falling into the same factionalism Rush started. And the Republicans are now being savaged by the cretins Limbaugh enabled during his rise to power. Ain’t karma a bitch?