Rush to Judgment

Rush Limbaugh taught Americans to avoid looking both inward and outward objectively, invented hate radio, made countless millions for himself.

(Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images file)

by Rich Herschlag

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh's passing, the media has been largely if not entirely burdened with prohibitions against speaking ill of those who have departed. I beg to differ or at least to refine. I believe gratuitously mocking someone who has just passed may be crossing a line, but recalling exactly who they were and what they did is entirely called for. Limbaugh didn't seem to live by anything vaguely resembling a Golden Rule. In any case, when it’s my turn to go I would invite people to recall exactly who I was.

As far back as the 80s, I would find Rush on the dial as part of both informal opposition research and a sort of aural masochism that persists to this day. Rush's specialty was white middle class grievance. If you gave him no more than an hour, he could convince you that the trouble you were having at work, the difficulty you were having with your kids, and your imminent divorce were the result neither of your own failings nor of the fact that life itself is incredibly difficult and complex to navigate. Rather, these trials and tribulations were the result of liberal destruction of the United States as we once knew and loved it.

Moreover, the identifiable leaders of progressive politics (Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, name your communist) were not only personally responsible for your modern woes but sat around in backrooms in cabal-like fashion secretly mapping out your demise as part of both a mad perpetual power grab and a nonchalantly sadistic lifestyle.

This approach to talk radio took off because how could it not? An easy if somewhat arbitrary explanation for all one's suffering was satisfying, revelatory, and addicting no matter how full of crap it happened to be. "It's not my fault" became the battle cry of a generation of emotionally stunted bourgeoisie Caucasian dudes and their not much better halves.

In the process, Rush Limbaugh taught Americans to avoid looking both inward and outward objectively, invented hate radio, made countless millions for himself hawking hair growth and boner pills, and ultimately paved the way for the election of a president so steeped in the paranoia blame game he would nearly destroy American democracy in four cataclysmic years. You get three guesses who.

On the road to lowering the bar for what passed as political analysis, Rush trampled on anyone and anything vulnerable to trampling that his listeners would gobble up and his advertisers would turn a blind eye to. In labeling advocates of women’s rights “feminazis,” he established a corn-fed incel’s equivalency between those who lobbied for equal pay and those who tortured, shot, and incinerated millions of innocent human beings. As the worst NFL commentator in the history of Western civilization, and as someone who couldn’t have lasted ten minutes in a touch football game in the hallway of Clear Channel, Rush compared the game to a gang fight sans weapons between the Crips and Bloods.

He called Barack Obama “uppity,” ‘Halfrican American,” or “the Magic Negro,” depending on which day of the week you caught his show; likened Jesse Jackson to the photo on a criminal most wanted poster; and told a female African American caller to “take that bone out of your nose.” He compared U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor to a housekeeper by suggesting she be sent “a bunch of vacuum cleaners.”

As we peruse the internet archives for Rush’s greatest shits we realize a fitting tribute like this one or any other could barely scratch the surface of the verbal fecal matter he has left behind in the form of seething, small-minded sound bites. These puked up nuggets of undigested social insecurity could fill a book if the book were an encyclopedia of homespun cracker musings. Instead, they filled the brains of millions of intellectually lazy listeners looking for a shortcut to complacence and a scapegoat for the mediocrity that was their lives.

The pairing of Rush Limbaugh’s casual cutthroat approach to communication with what eventually became modern conservatism was virtually random. Given the right historical circumstances, Limbaugh could have prostituted his amoral talents to Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Pinochet or Caligula. That he was always “open for business” was exemplified by his Viagra-filled tours of known child sex hotspots and his parking lot purchases of OxyContin executed amidst advocating three-strikes drug laws especially for people of color. Limbaugh’s greatest contribution to planet Earth may be that although he may have fornicated with children, he never sired one.

Am I angry? Yes, I’m angry that after stating having a gay person turn his back on you was no insult, Rush and a million Levitra dollars convinced Elton John to croon at his wedding. But I’ll get over it. Am I dancing on Limbaugh’s grave? No. I won’t be traveling to St. Louis till after the pandemic. Is this attack on a second-rate blowhard too soon? No. It’s been almost two weeks. Has this column been tasteless? Well, you should have seen the one I wanted to write.

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