On February 17th, 2021, talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh gave his last breath and died of stage 4 lung cancer. He was 70 years old.
Now this commentator could go on with a string of crude comments and a litany of poisonous things that Limbaugh did when he was alive. I could point out the hypocrisy of a vocally proud cigar smoker who brazenly mocked the threat tobacco products posed to our health dying of lung cancer. The hypocrisy of a man that went through more marriages than Marilyn Monroe and yet complain about Bill Clinton’s affairs on his one and only wife.
But to just do that... would be a disservice.
Once upon a time, back when this commentator wrongly aligned himself with “conservatives”, I used to watch Rush’s short-lived TV show. I wasn’t in an area that could get his radio show at the time, so watching him on TV was the closest I could get to his nascent crusade. When I did move to Atlanta, the first program I wanted to hear was his. He wasn’t always right, I kept on saying to myself, but he was entertaining.
That was the great secret to Limbaugh’s media fame. He wasn’t a “journalist”. He wasn’t a “news” person. He wasn’t like the talking heads on Sunday Morning that would spend their time pontificating about the week’s events. Indeed, he would spend his time mocking all of those people. Ripping into them. Gaslighting them and minimizing their words. But he did it with laughs. He did it with satire and comedy and even some parody.
He wasn’t Walter Winchell. He was more the evil universe version of George Carlin. He was an entertainer. He was a media personality before I could even coin the term.
Eventually I would listen to those that would follow him on the Atlanta talk radio circuit. Local talent, some of whom would later become big-time media personalities, and others that stayed big only in the Atlanta area. They all emulated Limbaugh in one way or another. They wanted to be like him. Because they all wanted his fan base to love them just as much as they loved him.
And… truth be told, I wanted to emulate him when I started my first Internet radio show in the late 90’s. I wanted to be a libertarian version of Limbaugh, smacking the two-party duopoly with mockery and ridicule in the same vein as Limbaugh did by just going after the Democrats. Sadly, that didn’t work too well for me, although I was able to perfectly parody Rush for ShockNet Radio.
Limbaugh mastered the “book trick” that others would replicate. Namely, get a book published, then promote your book heavily on your show, and then answer any question that comes up about it with “you’ll just have to read my book to find out.” Then, go on vacation for a few weeks, write another book, get it published, and do the same thing all over again.
Mind you, this was before conservative groups reportedly gamed book sales to promote like-minded publications. But it worked. It freed him up to rip into liberal bastions, air mocking parodies, and let his legion of “dittoheads” call in to praise him.
But he didn’t do it alone. When President Ronald Reagan did away with the “Fairness Doctrine” for broadcasters, Limbaugh wasn’t even selling himself as a media personality at the time. It was designed more for the evangelical-owned broadcasters like Salem Media so they could push more of their ideas without having to bring in a counterpoint. So, by the time Limbaugh’s newly-syndicated show would air, a lot of those radio stations already had their own personalities spreading their own messages in the morning and evening commutes. They would prime the pump for Limbaugh, and then follow him with more of the same.
The other thing that happened was that liberals didn’t do anything to match it. They were upset about the death of the Fairness Doctrine, but they spent their time bitching about it and whining that it needs to be reinstated instead of doing the right thing and starting their own media. Or, worse, pretending like the doctrine was still in place and neutering their own message with conservative counterpoints.
Bill Maher’s show “Real Time” on HBO still does this. He still tries to find conservative personalities to interview or to have on his discussion panel, which only serves to minimize whatever message he tries to get out. He may get the last laugh, but the conservative personalities he brings on get credibility, and some of them really do not deserve it.
Liberals were very late to the game when it came to matching conservative media. Their first attempt was Air America, but that ended up going bankrupt. The closest to that is now the Progress channel on SiriusXM, which really rose to popularity following the election of Narcissist Donald Trump in 2016, Free Speech TV on DirecTV, which is mostly boring as hell, and a handful of syndicated radio shows. And if you listen to many of their personalities, you won’t hear the kind of entertainment – mocking or otherwise – that made Limbaugh’s show different from the rest. For all of their complaints about Limbaugh, they still fail to meet his appeal, because they never managed to replicate his method of salesmanship.
Yes, I said salesmanship. Because let’s get brutally honest here… of all the things that can be said about Rush Limbaugh, both good and bad, whether he is a pontificator, a pundit, a failed sports reporter, an author, or a comedian, Rush Limbaugh was always a salesman. He was always selling something, be it himself, a book, a cigar, a steakhouse, Manheim Steamroller, a candidate, or a political ideology. And it didn’t matter if he practiced what he preached, even when it was revealed he was a deaf pill-popping oxy addict dying from the very cancer he once mocked. His salesmanship was so good that his followers continued to buy what he sold even to his death.
This is what Rush Limbaugh truly left as his legacy. Legions of loyal followers that helped elect two presidents and actively curse three more. A customer-base eager for the next entertainer to amuse them and for clientele to champion their wares. Mock him if you will, disparage what he has done even in death, but as long as people failed to learn how he managed to reach out to those “dittoheads” and get them to buy what he sold, then, even in death, he will continue to thwart his critics and opponents.
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