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Rush Limbaugh checks out at 70...

Meadmaker said:
I actually liked Rush Limbaugh when he started out. He was funny, and he spent most of his time making fun of the more absurd aspects of the Democratic Party and the left wing, but that was 30 years ago.


Over the years, he stopped doing his funny bits. He was just serious all the time. He became boring. He also paved the way for people much worse then him. Without Limbaugh, there would not have been a Hannity. I have a feeling that whoever replaces him will be worse. I think Limbaugh really believed what he was saying, BS and all. I never got the impression that he was a very intelligent man. Some of those who came after just realized there was a market as long as they convincingly spewed right wing hate rhetoric without hesitation. They strike me as much smarter than Limbaugh. They're lying about a lot of what they say.


Coincidentally, I was just listening to his show with guest host Mark Steyn (sp?) yesterday, and Mark was saying that Rush was just a little under the weather but he will be roaring back in just a few days. I guess he wasn't right about that.
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I remember watching his tv show decades ago while I ate my lunch and it was better than judge judy. Since then he has not been as entertaining, even as compared to judge judy.
 
Meadmaker said:
I actually liked Rush Limbaugh when he started out. He was funny, and he spent most of his time making fun of the more absurd aspects of the Democratic Party and the left wing, but that was 30 years ago.
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Yeah, I listened to him then too. He went national in 1988 and was a replacement for the Owen Span show I listened to at the time when Owen retired. He was mildly amusing with his "Gorbasms" and the like, but a little went a long way.

Shortly afterwards, I'm pretty sure that I saw him interviewed on a TV segment in which he said it was all an act designed to get ratings. It rang true to me, but nobody seems to remember that interview.

I was very surprised that he became as huge as he did a few years later, and I wonder to what extent he had started believing his own "schtick".

70 is not very old, especially when he often mentioned his still-working attorney grandfather who was 104. Smoking those cigars can kill you!
 
I remember how he said back in 2015 that smoking wasn't bad for your health (no worse than eating carrots, iirc) and that we should be thanking smokers. So, I guess thanks for smoking, Rush.
 
Ron Obvious said:
Yeah, I listened to him then too. He went national in 1988 and was a replacement for the Owen Span show I listened to at the time when Owen retired. He was mildly amusing with his "Gorbasms" and the like, but a little went a long way.

Shortly afterwards, I'm pretty sure that I saw him interviewed on a TV segment in which he said it was all an act designed to get ratings. It rang true to me, but nobody seems to remember that interview.

I was very surprised that he became as huge as he did a few years later, and I wonder to what extent he had started believing his own "schtick".

70 is not very old, especially when he often mentioned his still-working attorney grandfather who was 104. Smoking those cigars can kill you!
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See, that's the thing about Rush. I think it truly was a schtick. He was way too smart to have believed the kind of crap he said, which makes him all that much more evil for having done it.

I'm sure he had a team of writers, but to go on the radio daily like that for decades, to exert that kind of influence, he was sort of uniquely talented in that regard. His penchant for persuasive speaking; I have colleagues who, even though philosophically and politically opposed to his ideals, have studied his argument/speach style to try and become more effective.

He could be funny too. I would occasionally check in just to see what "conservative America" was thinking.
 
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His show used to be a good place to check the barometer of the center-right, and right wing members of our society. And a good place to study fallacious argumentation style.

Other than that, good riddance.
Although, as I age, it disturbs me more and more to see someone die as "young" as that. Reminders of mortality are never welcome.

ETA: Ninja'd by 1 minute!
 
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Come on conservatives. Hurry up and do the "Oh yous all being meaniz" routine and get it over with.
 
Pterodactyl said:
See, that's the thing about Rush. I think it truly was a schtick. He was way too smart to have believed the kind of crap he said, which makes him all that much more evil for having done it.

I'm sure he had a team of writers, but to go on the radio daily like that for decades, to exert that kind of influence, he was sort of uniquely talented in that regard. His penchant for persuasive speaking; I have colleagues who, even though philosophically and politically opposed to his ideals, have studied his argument/speach style to try and become more effective.

He could be funny too. I would occasionally check in just to see what "conservative America" was thinking.
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I didn't take him as sincere either, although I only started hearing much of him a bit later than some folks on here.

The facts were so thoughtfully twisted, there just seemed no way people could encounter primary sources and legitimately read them directly that way. I think people can and do sincerely BUY that spin, but I don't think one can be sincere in creating it. You can't twist fact so artfully without knowing you're twisting facts. There's too much craft in there too much specific choice to think it could be done unconciously.

I think he clearly was a believer in some stuff and the broader conservative values. But the specific content, the particular claims, the particular arguments?
 
Ah, so OxyContin snorting man checked out, ever evading the standards he demanded of others.
 
He did a few; few and far between; moments where just enough self-referential humor made it to the surface for me to entertain the possibility, the slight possibility, that at least some of it was an act.

His friendship was Seth McFarlane is hard to factor in, for instance.
 
Cavemonster said:
I didn't take him as sincere either, although I only started hearing much of him a bit later than some folks on here.

The facts were so thoughtfully twisted, there just seemed no way people could encounter primary sources and legitimately read them directly that way. I think people can and do sincerely BUY that spin, but I don't think one can be sincere in creating it. You can't twist fact so artfully without knowing you're twisting facts. There's too much craft in there too much specific choice to think it could be done unconciously.

I think he clearly was a believer in some stuff and the broader conservative values. But the specific content, the particular claims, the particular arguments?
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Agreed, likely a conservative that found a way to score coin by taking it over the top. But just like Alex Jones, that **** is no way to make an honest living. People listen to that bile and get spurned to action.
 
And he was the harbinger of modern Conservatism's trend of turning into the skid when it comes to hypocrisy, being so openly and just on the nose hypocritical to the point of absurdity that is really came across as an intentional affect.
 
Pterodactyl said:
See, that's the thing about Rush. I think it truly was a schtick. He was way too smart to have believed the kind of crap he said, which makes him all that much more evil for having done it.
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I got exactly the opposite impression. He would talk about hating school, and about not being a good student. He was clearly anti-intellectual. I would hear him contradict himself and say illogical things. i.e. not just wrong, but illogical. He just struck me as not very bright at all.

He wasn't a complete idiot. He just wasn't a great thinker.

At least, that's the impression I always had of him.
 
Rush had been in that game for a long time. The problem with the "Oh it's just a persona" thing is you can't have a persona that makes up that much of your public image" and expect to keep those walls fully up for 5, 6 decades.

If Rush was a character the character became the person by the end.

And that's not even factoring in my standard "Being an ******* is an action so pretending to be an ******* is still being an *******" rule.
 
I somehow agree with both Meadmaker and JoeMorgue (that he wasn't a great thinker and that it also wasn't a schtick) while at the same time maintain he had a certain knack for as Cavemonster said "thoughtfully" twisting the facts.
 
Rush Limbaugh used to intro his stories about AIDs death with the song "“I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” At the time, the disease was widely believed to only kill homosexuals and was fodder for right wing mockery.
 
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