Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/why-rush-limbaugh-matters/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=seventh
February 8, 2020 6:30 AM
(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Why Rush Limbaugh matters
Florida governor Ron DeSantis spoke to Rush Limbaugh last fall at a gala dinner for the National Review Institute. The radio host was there to receive the William F. Buckley Jr. award. “He actually gave me one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had,” Limbaugh told his audience the next day. “He listed five great conservatives and put me in the list.” DeSantis’s pantheon: William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Limbaugh.
Good list. No media figure since Buckley has had a more lasting influence on American conservatism than Limbaugh, whose cumulative weekly audience is more than 20 million people. Since national syndication in 1988, Limbaugh has been the voice of conservatism, his three-hour program blending news, politics, and entertainment in a powerful and polarizing cocktail. His shocking announcement this week that he has advanced lung cancer, and his appearance at the State of the Union, where President Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, are occasions to reflect on his impact.
It’s one thing to excel in your field. It’s another to create the field in which you excel. Conservative talk radio was local and niche before Limbaugh. He was the first to capitalize on regulatory and technological changes that allowed for national scale. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed affiliates to air controversial political opinions without inviting government scrutiny. As music programming migrated to the FM spectrum, AM bandwidth welcomed talk. Listener participation was also critical. “It was not until 1982,” writes Nicole Hemmer in Messengers of the Right, “that AT&T introduced the modern direct-dial toll-free calling system that national call-in shows use.”
Limbaugh made the most of these opportunities. And he contributed stylistic innovations of his own. He treated politics not only as a competition of ideas but also as a contest between liberal elites and the American public. He also added the irreverent and sometimes scandalous humor and cultural commentary of the great DJs. He introduced catchphrases still in circulation: “dittohead,” “Drive-By media,” “feminazi,” “talent on loan from God.”
The template he created has been so successful that the list of his imitators on both the left and right is endless. Even Al Franken wanted in on the act. Dostoyevsky is attributed with the saying that the great Russian writers “all came out of Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’” Political talk show hosts came out of Limbaugh’s microphone.
Limbaugh’s success prefigured more than the rise of conservative radio. His two bestsellers, The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993), were the leading edge of the conservative publishing boom. And his television program, The Rush Limbaugh Show, produced in collaboration with Roger Ailes, was a forerunner of the opinion programming on Fox News Channel. “I had to learn how to take being hated as a measure of success,” he told a Boy Scouts awards dinner in 2009. “Nobody’s raised for that. And the person that taught me to deal with this and to remain psychologically healthy was Roger Ailes.”
Limbaugh is not fringe. His views fit in the conservative mainstream. He idolizes Buckley. “He was a fundamental individual in helping me to be able to explain what I believed instinctively, helping me to explain it to others,” Limbaugh said last year. The ideas are the same but the salesman is different. Limbaugh is Buckley without the accent, without the Yale credentials, without the sailboat and harpsichord. Limbaugh is a college dropout from Cape Girardeau, Mo., who spends Sundays watching the NFL and speaks in plain language. His background connects him to the audience — and to the increasingly working-class Republican voter.
Limbaugh entered stage right just as Ronald Reagan was making his exit. He took from Reagan the sense that America’s future is bright, that America isn’t broken, just its liberal political, media, and cultural elites. “He rejected Washington elitism and connected directly with the American people who adored him,” Limbaugh said after Reagan’s death. “He didn’t need the press. He didn’t need the press to spin what he was or what he said. He had the ability to connect individually with each American who saw him.” The two men never met.
Limbaugh assumed Reagan’s position as leader of the conservative movement. In a letter sent to Limbaugh after the 1992 election, Reagan wrote, “Now that I’ve retired from active politics, I don’t mind that you have become the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country. I know the liberals call you the most dangerous man in America, but don’t worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear ‘the way things ought to be.’”
In a long and evenhanded cover story in 1993 by James Bowman, National Review pronounced Limbaugh “the leader of the opposition.” Bowman quoted R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor of The American Spectator. “We need to have people who can dramatize ideas,” Tyrrell said. “You need that literary spark. Luigi Barzini had it; Buckley has it. And, though he’s a great talker rather than a great writer, Rush has it too.”
More than a decade later, after the Republican defeat in 2008, Limbaugh once again stepped into the breach. The media likened Barack Obama to FDR. Republicans wavered. Should they cooperate with President Obama in building a “New Foundation” for America? Limbaugh gave his answer on January 16, 2009. “I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half,” he said. “I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.” Limbaugh said he hoped Obama failed. “Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it?” The monologue, and the speech he delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., a month later, became a sensation. They set the tone for the Tea Party and Republican victories in 2010 and 2014.
Limbaugh did not mock Trump when the businessman announced his presidential campaign in June 2015. “This is going to resonate with a lot of people, I guarantee you, and the Drive-Bys are going to pooh-pooh it,” he said. He spent the primary reminding listeners of the importance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Trump was not an ideological candidate, he said. Trump was a missile aimed at the establishment. If ideology matters, then you should vote for Ted Cruz. “If conservatism is your bag, if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote,” Limbaugh said in February 2016, “there is no other choice for you in this campaign than Ted Cruz, because you are exactly right: This is the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan.” But, Limbaugh added, the feeling in the country might be so anti-establishment that Trump’s unusual coalition could win the presidency. It did.
To say that Limbaugh supports the president would be an understatement. Last December he introduced the president at a Turning Point USA summit. He mentioned a recent encounter on a golf course. Someone told him it is hard to defend President Trump. “I said, ‘What? Hard to defend the president? It’s one of the easiest things in the world to do.’ President Trump does not need to be defended.” The crowd cheered. A few seconds later Limbaugh said, “How do you defend Donald Trump? You attack the people who are attempting to destroy him. They’re trying to destroy you. They’re trying to transform this country into something that it was not founded to be.”
Bold, brash, divisive, funny, and amped up, President Trump’s style is similar to a shock jockey’s. His presidency is another reminder of Limbaugh’s staying power. The American right has been molded in his anti-elitist, grassroots, demotic, irreverent, patriotic, hard-charging image. Rush Limbaugh is not just a talk show host. He defines an era.
This piece was originally published on the Washington Free Beacon.
The Indispensable Man: Rush Limbaugh, 1951-2021 By Mark Steyn
Source: https://www.steynonline.com/11078/the-indispensable-manFebruary 17, 2021
It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Rush Limbaugh, a giant of American broadcasting, a uniquely talented performer, and a hugely generous man to whom I owe almost everything.
Rush died this morning, after a year-long struggle with lung cancer. I was scheduled to guest-host today's show. Instead, as you can hear, his beloved Kathryn will be introducing a special program put together by the EIB team to celebrate a great man's life and legacy. It's a hard thing to do - compressing a glorious third-of-a-century into three hours - but Snerdley, Kraig, Mike, Allie and everyone else I've worked with there for so many years will do their best.
Usually, in this line of work, if you're lucky, you get a moment - a year or two when you're the in-thing - and you hope to hold enough of that moment as it slowly fades away to keep you going till retirement. Rush did something unprecedented in the history of TV and radio. Commercial broadcasting began in the United States in 1920: The Rush Limbaugh Show came along two-thirds of a century later, became the Number One program very quickly, and has stayed at the top all the way to today - for a third of the entire history of the medium. And throughout all those decades Rush and his show stayed exactly the same: a forensic breakdown of the day's news, punctuated by musical parodies, satirical sketches, and Rush's own optimism and good humor, even through this last terrible year.
The comedy is what his many enemies and half his own side missed: Rush took politics seriously but not solemnly. In the early years of the war on terror, he introduced an Afghan version of himself "with talent on loan from Allah" and sold Club Gitmo merchandise for those seeking a tropical retreat from jihad. When Brokeback Mountain was in the news, the show ran trailers for Return to Saddle-Sore Canyon: "It's John McCain and Lindsey Graham as you've always wanted to see them!" Which, in my case at least, is true.
I know precisely when I first heard Rush. It was not long after he started the show and not long after I bought my pad in New Hampshire. I was driving some visitors from London through the North Maine Woods toward New Brunswick in that dead zone where the only thing that comes in is the soft-and-easy station on 94.9 FM from the top of Mount Washington. And then that died, and there was nothing, and I forgot to switch it off so it was automatically scanning up and around the dial as we chit-chatted in the car. And then suddenly it found some guy, and there he was talking about "the arts-and-croissants crowd" moving into your town, and reading out press releases from NOW (the National Association of Women), whom he called the NAGS (National Association of Gals), and playing Andy Williams' version of "Born Free" punctuated by gunfire to accompany any environmental story.
And, in my car, conversation ceased. My friends were what you might call slightly skeptical lefties, so they disagreed with what Rush said on the issues but they were rapt by the way he said it. Because they had never heard anybody say it like that before. It was a unique combination - absolute piercing philosophical clarity, and a grand rollicking presentational style honed through all the lean years of minor-market disc-jockeying. First, he perfected the style, and then he applied it to the content. When Clinton was elected, Rush opened his shows, for years, with "America Held Hostage, Day Thirty-Nine... Day Seventy-Three... Day Hundred-and-Twenty Four...", and when Newt's Republicans won the 1994 mid-terms he started with James Brown singing "I Feel Good".
One man doing what he wanted to do saved an entire medium - AM radio - and turned all its old rules upside down: Traditionally, morning drive is your big audience, and everything tapers off from there. Rush figured that everyone needs a local guy at that time, with traffic and weather updates, and that the opportunity to build a national show lay in the hitherto somnolent slot of noon-to-three Eastern/nine-to-twelve Pacific. And within a couple of years hundreds of stations were building the entire schedule around the midday guy. In the scheme of things, I am not sure how many of those stations will be able to keep that going without him.
Throughout his entire time on air, there were genius GOP consultants who, in reaction to any electoral setbacks, would insist that what the GOP needed to do was come up with a way to ditch Limbaugh. As I said on air many years ago: Really? For almost a third of a century, Rush's audience was over half the total Republican vote. How many do all you genius "Republican reformers" bring to the table? I've recounted previously the first time I was asked to guest-host, back in 2006, when I happened to be down in Australia and the Prime Minister, John Howard, asked me to some or other event a day or two hence. And I politely declined, saying I had to get back to America to host The Rush Limbaugh Show. "I hear that's a pretty big show," said the PM.
"Yeah," I replied. "Twenty-five, thirty million listeners."
"'Strewth," said Mr Howard. "Rush has more listeners than we have Australians."
Indeed. And all these GOP clever-clogs never explain, once you throw Rush and his millions overboard, what's going to replace them.
Powerful politicians and longtime fans were often surprised, upon meeting him, to find a man who was quite private and indeed shy - because, like many radio guys, he had no desire to have a public persona other than at the microphone. Unlike so many others in this business, Rush was hugely generous and totally secure. Unlike other shows of left and right, where the staff come and go every six weeks, everyone at the EIB Network has been there fifteen, twenty, thirty years. That includes, in a very peripheral way, yours truly. When I first started guest-hosting, I found it odd that, on the rare occasions Rush mentioned the subs, it would be to put them down. Because, I mean, who would do that? But Rush is the least insecure star on the planet, and I came to see that he was actually teaching the neophytes a very important lesson: You guys need to be completely secure too - because it's the only way to survive in this wretched media. I came to appreciate that being put down by Rush was actually a far greater compliment than him doing some boilerplate hey-he's-a-great-guy shtick. And one of the saddest days of my fifteen years with EIB was when I heard Rush a few months back expressing genuine, sincere gratitude for something I'd said about him a few days earlier. As I pleaded on air, I just wanted the old Rush back scoffing at his guest-hosts - so we'd know all was well in the world.
So I owe Rush the biggest break of my career in America, and I owe him even more for sticking with me after the CRTV breach of contract when certain extremely prominent figures on the American right were bombarding him with multiple texts and emails to fire me from the guest-host's slot. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have gone along with that. But he didn't. And that's the only reason I'm still around today.
I have come to admire him even more this last year. When he announced his diagnosis, we all knew this story only has one ending, and it's just a question of how many chapters there are leading up to it. Rush loved what he did more than anything in life except his family. He had no interest in going to Tahiti to watch the sunset. He wanted to be behind the Golden EIB Microphone every day that he could. So initially he took a couple of days off every three weeks for treatment, and then the two days became four, and the treatment weeks took their toll and spilled into the following week. But, through it all, he remained determined to do every single show he could - because, aside from anything else, he wanted to make sure he, his listeners, his brand, his stations did everything they could to put President Trump across the finish line on November 3rd.
Events didn't quite turn out the way he wanted - although they might have if more people had worked as hard as a man ravaged by Stage IV cancer did, in defiance of his doctors' prognostications. The last three months, when he and Kathryn had surely earned those Tahitian sunsets, took a terrible toll. But he stayed on the air until just a fortnight ago - because above all he wanted to keep faith with tens of millions of listeners, many of whom had been listening to him their entire lives and could not imagine a world without him.
We are about to find out.
I am well aware of the ironies of the headline. 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.
To modify Rush's tag line: Talent returned to God.
Mark Levin pays tribute to Rush Limbaugh: 'He made it cool to be a patriot' By David Rutz
Source: https://www.foxnews.com/media/mark-levin-pays-tribute-rush-limbaugh-cool-patriotFebruary 17, 2021
Conservative radio icon died Wednesday at age 70 from lung cancer
Fox News host and longtime conservative radio personality Mark Levin eulogized Rush Limbaugh Wednesday as someone who made it "cool to be a patriot" and spoke for tens of millions of Americans from behind his famed golden microphone.
"We lost a tremendous patriot," Levin told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. "I've known Rush for 25 years. I want your audience to know how much he profoundly loved them ... An incredibly wise man, a very, very smart man. A dear person. If you thought somebody needed help, he would help them. Nothing like what the liberal media has tried to do to him."
Limbaugh died Wednesday after a year-long battle with lung cancer. The conservative icon and author revolutionized the radio industry with the nationally syndicatead "The Rush Limbaugh Show" beginning in 1988, and he is widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in broadcast and political history.
Limbaugh was close with former President Donald Trump and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from him last year, and he made plenty of enemies on the left with his acerbic brand of commentary.
Levin, who hosts "Life, Liberty, and Levin" in addition to his syndicated radio show, hailed Limbaugh as a mentor who paved the way for him and other conservatives on talk radio and was generous with his time.
"I just want him to be remembered the way he should be remembered," Levin said. "A tremendous patriot of this country who refused to accept the attacks that came against this country from within. He refused to accept the ideological changes in this country. He defended the traditions of this country, and he spoke for tens of millions of us and, you know, I've met a lot of smart people in my life, dealt with a lot of smart people, never smarter than Rush, never wiser, and never kinder."
Levin called it a "tremendously sad day" for people who "salute the flag" and "embrace the military."
Limbaugh annnounced his diagnosis last January and continued to do broadcasts, taking time off occasionally for treatments and updating his audience on his health.
"We've lost a voice like no other and like there will never be again and particularly at a time when we need a voice like his," Levin said, later adding, "He made it cool to be a patriot. He showed people how to stand up against the tide, the endless tide of tyranny."
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.
Goodbye, My Brother --- for Now By David Limbaugh
Source: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/david/limbaugh040921.php3April 9, 2021
Losing Rush has been tough. Until a few very long weeks ago, he was always in my life. Like other siblings growing up in the same home, we shared experiences that were exclusive to us. Our parents instilled in us — and we thoroughly absorbed — their Christian values: their love of G od; their unconditional love for each other and for us; their belief in moral absolutes, of truth, of right and wrong; the paramount importance of family; the critical necessity of personal character and integrity; the value of human life; and the uncompromising duty to treat others with respect and compassion. No one perfectly succeeds in living out these Godly values, but our parents equipped us, lovingly disciplined us and guided us.
Though Rush is now known to the world as a consummate talker, what is not widely known is that he didn't start that way. He was first a listener — an information sponge, quietly inhaling knowledge at the feet of our dad.
Rush was initially unassuming, respectful and focused, as if dedicating the first part of his life to acquiring the building blocks that would later serve him and the millions he was to touch when he would grow to full intellectual and professional maturity.
From an early age, Rush was an avid reader, and he devoured the set of children's classics our dad provided and encouraged us to read, accumulating a knowledge of life, human trials and tribulations, and the way the world works.
Like our World War II fighter pilot dad, Rush loved aviation, even as a young kid. I lament that our dad didn't live to fly on the various jets Rush purchased by using the very knowledge and skills he acquired from him and our mom.
We loved baseball, and Rush was good at it. He had home-run power and became a good pitcher, not through an abundance of natural talent but by teaching himself how to throw curve balls, sliders and even knuckleballs, which he tried to teach me.
Almost everyone in our hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was a St. Louis Cardinals fan. But in a foreshadowing of his mischievous independence, Rush was a superfan of the Los Angeles Dodgers and in particular their shortstop, base-stealing phenom Maury Wills. Rush was obsessed with Wills' base-stealing acumen and wanted to emulate it. He was intrigued that Wills could reach full speed on his second step down the baseline, and Rush diligently worked on developing that for himself. We didn't go on many vacations as kids, but we went to a lot of baseball games in St. Louis and almost always when the Dodgers were in St. Louis for a series. Rush was so enamored with Wills that he wrote him a letter requesting an autographed picture, which I remembered when I serendipitously found the picture in my house during this last, very difficult year.
Rush practiced his skills as a broadcaster while turning down the volume on the television as we watched baseball games so he could call the games himself. Later, our parents gave him a Remco Caravelle, a toy that enabled him to broadcast on the actual radio airwaves within our home. Our mom and I logged many hours listening to his first days as a disc jockey and sports announcer.
Let's now fast-forward to his time in his adopted hometown of Sacramento, California, in the late '80s. He mainly loved that city because it was where he came into his own as a broadcast professional after so many fits and starts, simply because he found a program director with the wisdom and courage to let Rush be Rush.
I was struck by how much he brought our parents to life in the practice of his art — exhibiting their qualities, talents and values. Rush was blessed with the best of both. He was Rush and Millie writ large.
Our mother was a comic, a singer, a natural ham and an entertainer; our dad was unusually brilliant, the small college national debate champion, a lawyer's lawyer and the guy who would hold court in our living room to the fascination of our friends. But he never had the national platform that Rush would carve out for himself. Rush did our parents proud in a way that is indescribably gratifying to me.
As few others do, Rush lived life his way, and the world is immensely better because of his contributions. He was the tip of the spear from day one and took tidal waves of abuse from hateful leftists who devoted their lives to destroying him — and they failed. Rush was responsible not for the development of modern conservatism but for its explosion into the mainstream of American life. He paved the path for so many other great conservatives. The nation — and all of us — owe him deeply for this. He single-handedly resurrected AM talk radio.
Rush particularly inspired me to be the best I could be in both my law practice and my writing career. He entrusted me to handle his entertainment contracts and encouraged me to write columns and books. He pushed me to excel in both professions.
Rush was loving and unfailingly generous — the best brother, the best brother-in-law, the best uncle and the best cousin we could have had. In the weeks following his death, I have felt a deep and profound loss. We were in constant communication, supporting each other to the end. Every day since he died, I steadily find myself wanting to share something with him and instantly realize I can't and will not be able to again until we meet in heaven. That hurts.
But I thank G od for Rush's faith in Christ and for receiving him into a much better place, one with no more death, mourning, crying or pain.
One of the last things I said to Rush when he was still conscious and able to interact was, "I love you." He looked at me and replied: "I love you, too. Big time."
Goodbye, big brother. Thank you for being you and for being there for me all your life. I am so, so grateful for you — and may G od bless you forever and hold you in His loving arms.
David Limbaugh is a columnist, author and attorney practicing in Cape Girardeau, Mo. His latest book, "Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why The Democrats Must Not Win" at a 57% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.)
