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Rush Limbaugh checks out at 70...

I’m glad he is dead, I hope he suffered tremendously. He contributed significantly and knowingly to the current state of politics in the US and he profited greatly from knowingly damaging the US.
 
Meadmaker said:
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.
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That might have been part of the act. No way to be sure.
 
Condolences to his family.

I've often said that Toupee Fiasco was an effect of modern conservatism, not a cause, although he's at best one of the worst US presidents to disgrace the office.

I say that to draw a distinction, and to give credit where credit is due - Limbaugh was a cause. Anti-intellectual, xenophobic, bigoted against anyone who isn't a straight white christian male (or female who didn't know her place), a hypocritical drug abuser. And in truth, he wasn't even an innovative bigot - just plain, century old bigotry, Hillary Clinton's a ball-buster, Barack da Magic Negro teaches black kids to hate America, cheerleader for multiple deadly pandemics. Even worse, he had many imitators in hatred on air - both on talk radio (especially once "morning zoo crew" radio died off") and on cable right-wing pseudo-news, and as far as I know, never explained why he liked to travel to Costa Rica to hang out with underaged boys.

No wonder he was celebrated by similar horrible people like Newt Gingrich or Toupee Fiasco. He was uniquely hateful, right up until he could no longer talk on radio at all, and thus one of the worst Americans this side of the Cvivil War.

And this is how he should be remembered.
 
Meadmaker said:
I actually liked Rush Limbaugh when he started out. He was funny, and [hl]he spent most of his time making fun of the more absurd aspects of the Democratic Party[/hl] 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 have to admit that my first reaction on reading the news of Limbaugh's death was, "Oh good!".

He was indeed good at making fun of the dumber and more absurd things that liberals or Democrats said and did. But there was always a message, often quite explicit, that this is how all liberals thought. It was a form of starwman argument, not necessarily of the person he was highlighting (but that happened sometimes too), but of liberalism as a whole. Find the dumbest statements or actions of "liberals" and use them to convince people that all liberals and Democrats are a bunch of idiots.
 
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I was never a fan and he spewed a lot of hate. How about that thing called Karma.

His sponsors will miss him and his fans. RIP Rush...
 
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 had pretty much been a longtime NPR listener until the whole Lewinsky thing broke. And while they covered it at first, very quickly every call-in show would have listeners complaining that they shouldn't be covering the Clinton impeachment, they should be covering the real issues that matter, etc. Very quickly NPR complied, and so I had to search the dial for coverage of the top news story and quickly found Rush's show.

I knew of him of course and while I had listened a few times before, I pretty much bought into the media narrative of him as an uninformed loudmouth. That changed pretty quickly once I started listening regularly. He was obviously quite well-informed, and he had an amazingly engaging speaking style. The show was entertaining and fast-paced and he always spiced it up with the parody songs by Paul Shanklin and other bits.

OTOH, it was a bit too repetitive and you know how that is; jokes are funny the first time around, but once you've heard the punchline, nobody wants to listen to the setup again. And for years after the Lewinsky affair he had a thing with the song Mambo No. 5, which drove me up the wall.

I know around here he's one of the villains and I don't care if most celebrate his passing. I'll probably do a little jig when Paul Krugman shuffles off the mortal coil, so it's not like I can claim the high ground.
 
I feel sorry for his family.
Not for him.

He promoted tobacco and it killed him.
 
JoeMorgue said:
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.
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Ad Kurt Vonnegut said in "Mother Night" (Vonnegut's best novel, IMO), "We are what we pretend to be."
 
CORed said:
Ad Kurt Vonnegut said in "Mother Night" (Vonnegut's best novel, IMO), "We are what we pretend to be."
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I feel like that idea has its limits. Was Ted Haggard actually straight after pretending to be for his whole life?

Clearly not.

And in the case of people like Limbaugh or Bill O'reilly, they pretend to be honest patriots telling it like it is. They're clearly not those things.

My takeaway from Mother Night was more that you can't do terrible things and help terrible causes and actions in the name of some greater good and pretend that those harms you created don't count. I'd say the reality is more that you are what you DO.
 
Brainster said:
I had pretty much been a longtime NPR listener until the whole Lewinsky thing broke. And while they covered it at first, very quickly every call-in show would have listeners complaining that they shouldn't be covering the Clinton impeachment, they should be covering the real issues that matter, etc. Very quickly NPR complied, and so I had to search the dial for coverage of the top news story and quickly found Rush's show.

I knew of him of course and while I had listened a few times before, I pretty much bought into the media narrative of him as an uninformed loudmouth. That changed pretty quickly once I started listening regularly. He was obviously quite well-informed, and he had an amazingly engaging speaking style. The show was entertaining and fast-paced and he always spiced it up with the parody songs by Paul Shanklin and other bits.

OTOH, it was a bit too repetitive and you know how that is; jokes are funny the first time around, but once you've heard the punchline, nobody wants to listen to the setup again. And for years after the Lewinsky affair he had a thing with the song Mambo No. 5, which drove me up the wall.

I know around here he's one of the villains and I don't care if most celebrate his passing. I'll probably do a little jig when Paul Krugman shuffles off the mortal coil, so it's not like I can claim the high ground.
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There's Brainster's origin story. Not quite as compelling as Joker, but it'll do.
 
CORed said:
But there was always a message, often quite explicit, that this is how all liberals thought.
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Definitely, and those who come after are at least as bad, or worse, and they have counterparts on the left.

There was a phase in the '90s when one of his favorite targets was "moderates", and he said the word as if it had those quote marks around it. He though everyone should be all conservative, all the time, and the lukewarm right-wingers were the worst of all.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Come on conservatives. Hurry up and do the "Oh yous all being meaniz" routine and get it over with.
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Far be it for Conservative members here to interfere with other's self-defining displays of character. On the contrary, I find the comments about Rush educational and entertaining. If I really think about it, I'm sure he would too.
 
I'm just "another horrible liberal" for not caring about the death of Rush Limbaugh.
 
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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Like when he called Chelsea Clinton the white house dog! Classic comedy there to insult a 12 year old girl.
 
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