Best thing for the OP to do, is listen and judge for himself. Here’s a link to a local radio station that streams live online. Rush is on every weekday from 11-2 Central Time.
Honestly, it takes a few weeks of steady listening to “get” his routine. Personally, I find him to be a great broadcaster and quite engaging.
He did a bit back in 2002 that was pretty funny, where he was the Taliban’s version of Rush Limbaugh, broadcasting from a cave in Afghanistan. You probably had to hear it.
There’s also two stories from when he was a DJ in Sacramento that were kind of funny…one where he bought a tie over the phone and managed to convince the clerk that he could see over the telephone, and another, around the time when people claimed there were backwards messages in rock music (remember that?), and he made the claim that if you played one of Slim Whitman’s songs backwards, it told you to worship Satan. He tells that second story here.
The only one thing I’ve figured out about this man is that he has to take the abosulte opposite view about everything the Democratic party stands for, especially the president. Actually, it’s not just him doing that but to me, it seems like he takes it to extremes.
Two points:
I’ve never heard Limbaugh mention any other kind of feminist. They are all “feminazis.”
I’ve been a feminist since 1971 and I’ve never actually met any woman who fits the description that you’ve given. I’ve never read material advocating or claiming any of those things. There is a difference in advocating choice and in insisting that women work outside the home.. Limbaugh tried to muddy the differences.
Limbaugh manipulates people with lies so that he can make more money. The people that he manipulates make a difference in the quality of life for millions of people – generally the most vulnerable of the world. What kind of a man would do that year after year after year?
Do only liberals care about the victims of such a man? (And I have been known to vote for a Republican a couple of times.) I think I can be open-minded at least a little. I don’t try to put down conservatives. My comment is about Rush Limbaugh only and not about any political group.
Limbaugh was pretty explicit about the fact that few feminists qualified as “feminazis”. I haven’t listened to Limbaugh since the early nineties but IIRC, he used to say there were only around 25 or so in the entire country. And I recall that Andrea Dworkin, famous for claiming that all sex was rape, counted as one of them.
And while I understand your point about his having an influence that could negatively affect the lives of certain people, whether among the most vulnerable or not, I would also contend that his political opposites do the same. In fact, many of us on the conservative side of politics believe that liberal ideology and liberal solutions to social problems have been and are very, very harmful to the quality of life for almost everyone.
Look at all the young, single mothers struggling to raise one or more children by themselves, often by having to work two jobs. And look at their children, being raised virtually on their own and without parental guidance. And look too at all the kids who’ve grown to adulthood and who are functionally illiterate because their schools thought it was better for their self-esteem to pass them whether they were learning anything or not. And look at all the people whose lives have been lost or ruined due to drugs, gangs and the glamorization of the criminal lifestyle.
And then of course many of us feel it is harmful to human character, happiness and the ability to get the most out of life when you have a society where people come to rely on the state to provide for their needs, making themselves virtual serfs to the government and dependent upon it and the decisions it makes in order to get through life.
In my opinion many more people - and a significant number of them among the most vulnerable of society - are stuggling with more and greater difficulty due to the consequences of liberal permissiveness over the last forty years than was ever the case before, and I believe that Rush Limbaugh feels much the same way. So to whatever degree it could be said that the attitudes and beliefs that he espouses harm some people, I think both he and I would argue that the alternative results in greater harm to a greater number of people, and thus, given that someone is always going to struggle no matter what, the ideology that serves the most people in the best way is the one to strive for, and to his mind and mine that way is through the promotion of conservative values.
And yes, old friend, you are almost singular around here in your ability to become involved in political discussions while at the same time not putting down the opposition. I’ve thought many times that if all liberals were like you I would not only have far less trouble with liberalism, but would I’d have a lot more trust in how it was implemented.
More than anyone else here you seem to truly live by the values you espouse and I admire that very much. I hope that the post above doesn’t seem unnecessarily harsh or undiplomatic, but it’s late and I’m tired and I may not have been as diplomatic as I could have been in my response. Please know that no disrespect was intended if so.