Click here for Charlie Pierce's take on the death of Rush Limbaugh, entitled "Rush Limbaugh Was a Blight on America," subtitled "The talk-radio titan was responsible more than any other non-politician for the spread of the prion disease from movement conservatism to the Republican Party. He ranks with Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy among the country’s most destructive demagogues."
Don't sugarcoat it, Charlie -- tell 'em straight.
He followed with an apt quote from Clarence Darrow: "I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."
Despairing of finding anything neutral to say, Charlie declares: "I have given up and decided to stand with Voltaire: "to the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
The truth is that Limbaugh was a titan of American broadcasting who saw the potential of deregulated talk-radio as a profit center and conservative vandalism as a hyper-sellable product. That’s it. That’s all of it. Outside of those things, he was a blight, responsible more than any other non-politician for the spread of the prion disease from movement conservatism to the Republican Party, and the index patient for Trumpism before any of us even knew what it was. He ranks with Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and very few others among the country’s most destructive demagogues.
Click here for comments on Limbaugh's death by the redoubtable Digby at Hullabaloo, in an article she wrote for Salon entitled "Limbaugh created our world. We just live in it."
His radio show almost single-handedly created the culture war narrative that has come to define conservative politics. It’s not that Limbaugh came up with every element on his own. There were plenty of racists, xenophobes, sexists, religious hypocrites and violent extremists long before he came along. But he found a way to synthesize their point of view into one over-arching worldview: coastal elites, Black people, immigrants, gays, feminazis and environmentalists are your enemy and they want to destroy America.
Seeing its organizing potential back in the early 90s, backbench congressman Newt Gingrich turned Limbaugh’s narrative into a partisan weapon, launching a program designed to teach fledgling, right-wing politicians how to talk about themselves as heroic warriors for the American way and portray their political opponents as depraved savages bent on destroying everything Real Americans hold dear. When the Republicans won the House majority for the first time in decades in 1994, Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the freshman class. The new House Speaker said he couldn’t have done it without him.
Gingrich was right. And there would have been no Donald Trump without Limbaugh either because there would have been no Trump base without him. Gingrich may have turned partisan, electoral politics into a blood sport but it was Rush Limbaugh who brought in the fans.
She goes on to say:
But if there’s one thing the entire country, regardless of party or ideology, can agree upon it’s that Rush Limbaugh is one of the most influential political figures of our time. His mean-spirited, crude “guy at the end of the bar” routine was the template for all of right-wing media and remains so today.
And she concludes:
Rush Limbaugh’s legacy will, unfortunately, live on in the Republican politicians who grew up listening to his derisive, contemptuous rhetoric and then watched as Donald Trump used it to wield power. He created a monster and we’ll, unfortunately, be living with it for a long time to come.
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