He launched effusively sexist tirades, like this one quoted in a 1990 New York times piece: He compared Chelsea Clinton, then 13, to a dog, and made fun of the labor secretary Robert Reich, who suffered bone disease as a child, for being short. The style and the political pose established Limbaugh as godfather of generations of angry white men in the media, many of them on Fox News: Bill Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and their descendants, not to mention the conspiracy-minded networks that are challenging Fox for supremacy.
Like Trump, Limbaugh offered listeners a blend of grievance politics, cruel humor, arrogant showmanship and privileged smugness that Trump showed could win much more than ratings wars.
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He spent time off air and his career appeared to be idling before a comeback in the Obama years and then his full rehabilitation in the eyes of Trump and his supporters. In 2003, he entered treatment after becoming addicted to the painkiller Ox圜ontin following back surgery. Limbaugh was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame and National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Limbaugh is credited with helping to invent a new style of communication, the modern talk radio format – and, as critics would have it, a new means of amplifying hatred, laying the groundwork for a conservative media sphere that would culminate 30 years later in Pizzagate and QAnon. In a televised spinoff, Limbaugh did what he usually did – sit in front of a microphone, smoke cigars and rant – but with the added thrill for viewers of watching the spittle fly. That meant Limbaugh could go on at indefinite length, and even critics conceded his extraordinary ability to do so, hosting a three-hour radio show filled with breathless ranting, daily. Limbaugh did not find his brand as a conservative lightning rod and iconoclast until 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission repealed a 1940s-era rule mandating that radio stations allot equal airtime to both sides of any controversial issue. He worked as a disk jockey in high school and hosted radio programs in increasingly large markets in Pennsylvania, Missouri and California before landing a national gig at WABC. Limbaugh was born and raised in Missouri, his father a former pilot and mother a homemaker. “He was a demagogue who got rich off of hate speech, division, lies and toxicity. “Rush Limbaugh helped create today’s polarized America by normalizing racism, bigotry, misogyny and mockery,” tweeted the gun safety advocate Shannon Watts. Senator Ted Cruz called him “a tireless voice for freedom and the conservative movement”.īut not every elegy was as fond. Former vice-president Mike Pence said “he made conservatism fun”. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, hailed Limbaugh as a “generational media trailblazer”. “Whether loved him or not, they respected him.” He was a “fantastic man” and a “fantastic talent”, the former president said. Limbaugh with Trump at a rally in Missouri in November 2018. Trump, who awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, midway through a State of the Union address a year ago, called into Fox on Wednesday to praise Limbaugh and mark his death. Limbaugh may have created something much bigger by contributing to a style of politics that, three decades after the Rush Limbaugh show was first syndicated, produced the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.
The formula was wildly successful, and pointed the way for media organizations such as Fox News to satisfy the demand for opinion content that seemed devilishly honest if you identified with it – and hate speech if you did not. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.”
“Limbaugh offers him scapegoats,” Ivins wrote. In a 1995 Mother Jones cover story, the late columnist Molly Ivins singled Limbaugh out as a bully and called him a “major carrier” of “plain old nastiness in our political discussion”, describing the typical Limbaugh listener as a young white male without a college degree but with a firm sense that the world had done him wrong.
02:43 Rush Limbaugh, controversial conservative radio personality, dead at 70 – video report
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