He was then fired from a night-time show in Pittsburgh when new management took over. He did poorly at school, then quit Southeast Missouri State University after a year and found a job with a radio station in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, as “Bachelor Jeff Christie”, but was fired after he told a black caller he claimed to find difficult to understand to “take the bone out of your nose and call again”. His mother, Mildred (nee Armstrong), was the family clown, and encouraged “Rusty” in his love of radio. Limbaugh (pronounced “LIM baw”) was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, into a family of conservative judges that included his father, whose name was also Rush. In recent years the independent fact-checking site PolitiFact consistently rated Limbaugh high in terms of “pants on fire” untruths, and just as consistently at zero on truths. His listeners, whom he dubbed “ditto-heads”, ate it up, while those who were offended often tuned in to express their disgust. When he cut off callers on air, he would play a vacuum cleaner noise, shouting “caller abortion”. “Have you ever noticed how composite sketches of criminals always look like Jesse Jackson?” he asked. He argued that the existence of gorillas disproved evolution, characterised both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) and the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019) as “false flag” operations organised by leftists, and accused the Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe of allowing the Charlottesville rioting in 2017 to worsen in order to boost his presidential ambitions. Limbaugh set the tone for the internet age of politics, calling women’s rights activists “feminazis”, referring to HIV/Aids as “Rock Hudson’s disease” and claiming “environmentalist wackos” were “a bunch of scientists organised around a political position”. His broadcasts, featuring attacks on opponents as purveyors of “fake news”, became the template for TV’s Fox News, and at its peak this approach played a big part in Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” of 1994, which recaptured the House of Representatives from Bill Clinton’s Democrats. KEN: And what a memory that was on the EIB Network.Rush Limbaugh, who has died aged 70 after suffering from cancer, virtually created the style of political “shock jock” radio that made him so influential. RUSH: (interruption) Boy, you got a memory. And you said, “Here’s why the media does what they do, the same reason a dog licks himself: Because it can.” But what was the second point you were gonna make?ĬALLER: It’s your Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites, something you taught us about out here on the media, and after I stopped laughing I realized how right you were. RUSH: You’re remembering various things that happened in the late eighties in Northern California involving me. Yuba City was the worst the place in the world to live shortly after Chico was named the party school, and I went and did my program live from Yuba City and we started a refugee movement back down to Sacramento.ĬALLER: (chuckling) The other memory is from your Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites. You remember when…? What was it? Chico was named the party school, but what was the absolute worst place in the world to live? Redding? You went over to JB’s and he was the bartender there. Yes.ĬALLER: A friend of mine was a huge fan. RUSH: It was a missed opportunity for you. I didn’t know I was a conservative then but I didn’t listen to your show. RUSH: Way back 1980… Oh, those are some great days.ĬALLER: That was a year before you went national. RUSH: (laughing) Is that right? Way back! One, you were a celebrity judge in 1987 in Chico, California, when Chico State got named party school.ĬALLER: I was the deejay who played the music for the girls. You’re next on EIB Network.ĬALLER: Mega dittos from my safe space in the Mother Lode.ĬALLER: Gotta take you in the flashback machine real quick. RUSH: Patrick in Sonora, California, I’m glad you waited, sir. He nailed it again.” Here’s another example. KEN: Rush listeners for years have incredible memory recall, because the things Rush said, they’re not only insightful and funny, but they’re memorable, and we all walk away saying, “Oh.
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