1/13/2024 0 Comments Cancer rush limbaughIn 2003, Limbaugh admitted an addiction to painkillers and entered rehabilitation. He came with a checkered personal life that repeatedly put him in headlines. Limbaugh was a portly, cigar-smoking multimillionaire who drew his massive following with his message, not affability. Though he often enunciated the Republican platform better and more entertainingly than any party leader, he was an imperfect spokesman. He offered a litany of it all to his listeners, as he did in a 1991 broadcast he heavily quotes in his first book, “The Way Things Ought to Be.” In that single show, in one breathless segment, he railed against the homeless, AIDS patients, criticism of Christopher Columbus, aid to the Soviet Union, condoms in schools, animal rights advocates, multiculturalism, the social safety net and on and on. Such criticism echoed again and again in his lifetime, but Limbaugh seemed only to push further, assembling an ever-growing list of those branded enemies, of the issues the public was purportedly being fooled on, and the lies the mainstream media was supposedly feeding. “The kind of antagonism and vituperativeness that characterized him instantly became acceptable everywhere.” “What he did was to bring a paranoia and really mean, nasty rhetoric and hyperpartisanship into the mainstream,” said Martin Kaplan, a University of Southern California professor and expert on the intersection of politics and entertainment, who is a frequent Limbaugh critic. The brand of blunt, no-gray-area debate that Limbaugh popularized spread, from cable television to congressional town hall meetings, from voracious debates over health care to the rallies of the tea party movement. They followed, too, in pushing the bounds of civil dialogue. Limbaugh inspired the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, and countless lesser-known people who established conservative radio shows in their markets. “The Super Nova of American conservatism,” heralded Ann Coulter. Trump, in turn, heaped praise on Limbaugh, and during last year’s State of the Union speech, awarded the broadcaster the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.Īs news of Limbaugh’s death spread, Trump took to Fox News Channel to laud a man he deemed “a legend,” as tributes poured in from across the American right. His idol, Ronald Reagan, wrote a letter of praise that Limbaugh proudly read on the air in 1992: “You’ve become the number one voice for conservatism.” In 1994, Limbaugh was so widely credited with the first Republican takeover of Congress in 40 years that the GOP made him an honorary member of the new class.ĭuring the 2016 presidential primaries, Limbaugh said he realized early on that Trump would be the nominee, and he likened the candidate’s deep connection with his supporters to his own. the men at Lexington and Concord, didn’t feel that way.”įor all the controversy he embodied, he remained a GOP kingmaker. who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances,” he said the day after the insurrection. “There’s a lot of people out there calling for the end of violence. When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 despite all Limbaugh’s warnings, he didn’t simply voice regret, he said: “I hope he fails.” And with the ugly scenes of a mob insurrection last month at the Capitol still fresh, he was dismissive to calls for an end to violence, comparing the rioters instead to American revolutionaries. When a woman accused Duke University lacrosse players of rape, she was derided as a “ho,” and when a Georgetown University law student spoke in support of expanded contraceptive coverage, she was dismissed as a “slut.” When the topic was reproductive rights, he didn’t simply voice a pro-life stance, he suggested Democratic ideology in biblical times would have led to the abortion of Jesus Christ. To him, 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton was “a dog.” As the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, he made the dying a punchline. When a Washington advocate for the homeless committed suicide, he cracked a string of jokes. Fox, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, appeared in a commercial for a Democrat, Limbaugh mocked him and his tremors.
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