While he’s definitely a blowhard, and I haven’t found his “comedic” segments funny for a while, I appreciate him for being willing to cut through some of the shitty, mushy rhetoric that permeates political discussion. He also calls out the left for some of it’s worst ideas which we need. Lastly, he’s not a lying sack of shit bent on destroying the country, so discussing him in the same breath with Rush is flat wrong.
Whiny seems about right. Also angry, confused and mean.
When I was a kid, in the 1970s, buddies in high school could get their Class Z FCC license easily and host on the radio in the middle of the night. They all had big dreams. Local radio produced local stars, the serious news guy, the drive-time team. Limbaugh was part of the end of that. New technology let big companies centralize local radio. New federal rules let big companies buy and destroy it.
As for Rush, when he started he was a happy warrior. You could hear the smile in his voice. He was a voice of reason during the OJ trial for example. But others copied what he did and as time went on he became angry and mean. At some point or another he became impossible to listen to.
All in all, he should have retired many years ago.
This is essentially what I came into this thread to say. I have had friends and relatives pass due to lung cancer. It would have been more interesting, based on his radio show, for him to die of complications from the AIDS virus…
What about Maher’s history of racist remarks? That is Limbaughesque.
This was fuckin’ ‘Laugh Out Loud’ funny, right here! 
Limbaugh was a disgusting, hateful piece of excrement. I briefly flirted with conservative politics in my late teens (maybe this is a common form of youthful rebellion for people whose parents, like mine, are ardent liberals) and listened to a number of popular right-wing hosts on occasion. I thought G. Gordon Liddy was sort of endearing, in a crazy-grandfather kind of way; he led an interesting life, at any rate, and had a unique perspective. Sean Hannity (this was back when it was Hannity & Colmes) and Bill O’Reilly seemed like thoughtful, if arrogant, TV journalists making a reasonable pushback against political correctness. Michael Savage was a little too mean-spirited for me to enjoy, but I thought he was at least witty.
Rush Limbaugh, though, I only tried to listen to once during this phase (which would have been around 2003-2004) and couldn’t take more than a minute of his show. He was just SO hateful, SO snide, SO crude, and SO utterly full of himself. I mean I COULD NOT tolerate listening to him. It was like he was a goblin from hell. Everything in his voice exuded the worst possible qualities that a human being can have.
There’s not a single thing I’ve read about Rush’s life and legacy that makes me feel even an iota of regret that he’s gone.
No, they aren’t, and it’s not close. Limbaugh is cartoon evil. Maher is, at best, insensitive or stereotyping. But he’s also a comedian, so we’re not talking apples to apples even if the language were in the same galaxy.
Hehehee, I was honestly confused by the references to the “homeless guy” until this. I didn’t remember his father being homeless.
I was raised in a split household. My mom was liberal, but very religious. My dad was less religious, but pretty conservative. I couldn’t find Limbaugh even funny, taking him seriously wasn’t an option. Even though my dad voted for both Bushes, his main news avenue was PBS, and this guy sounded like a fucking preacher from my perspective. My absurd republican preacher spot was already filled by Bob Larsen. Limbaugh could never top the joys of driving around smoking weed and listening to Brother Bob talk about how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were making kids satanists. Hell, eventually even Brother Bob ran out of good material eventually, or I got a job that conflicted with his schedule.
Sadly, even though Rush has died and Larson still walks the earth, the former induced more damage and less entertainment than the latter. Hopefully neither of them has much lasting influence beyond the grave.
I’m not going to cheer for him dying, but I’m not going to say I’m upset about it, either. Mostly just indifferent. I reserve grave-dancing for extreme cases, and Rush was too pathetic to count. The only good thing I can grant him is that he was a Steelers fan – so at least he had that going for him. (Say hi to the Chief, Rush)
Other than that, well, I can’t work up any emotion. I think a lot of his act was just that – an act, but it’s not like that made it any better.
He was not a ‘hateful little man’. He was an obese, bloated sack of hate. I hope he is burning in hell even as we speak, but I have a feeling tha devil is giving him a desk and microphone to torment the newbies who have exited this mortal coil.
Poor Rush Limbaugh. He died much, much too late.
Oddly enough, the columnist Dave Barry wrote an article about the whale incident. It got posted to the internet uncredited, and he would subsequently get copies of the story from fans telling him that he should write an article about it.
I knew Rush, I worked with him. He was an OK guy. A dedicated professional.
Forgive them, Rush, for they knew you not.
Or has it?
Got to love that the Onion keeps current.
Some of Limbaugh’s other fine moments:
During his radio show, he said,
Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.
Before he went national he had a call-in show in Sacramento. A black man called in to argue with him, and Limbaugh told him,
Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.
He also once said,
Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?
For some reason, ABC hired him as a commentator for Monday Night Football. He lost the job for saying this about black quarterback Donovan McNabb during a broadcast:
I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.
He said this about Michael J. Fox, who was asking for more funding for research into Parkinson’s Disease, which he (Fox) suffers from:
In this commercial he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. This is the only time I’ve ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. He can control himself to keep himself in the frame of the picture. And he can control himself enough to keep his eyes right on the lens, the teleprompter. But his head and shoulders are moving all over the place. This is really shameless, folks. This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.
He also once accused the Obama administration of sending lesbian farmers to attack rural states (I am not making this up).
What has always struck me about Limbaugh is that much of the time he wasn’t even making an argument. He was just spewing invective.
He read out the names of AIDS victims and laughed at them. He was a piece of shit.
Hopefully he can’t hear you because he’s screaming too loud in Hell.
Dude, he might have been nice to the help, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t evil garbage that made the world worse.
That’s “Jesus on the cross” type quote.
Are you saying that the Rush Limbaugh you knew was akin to Jesus of Nazareth…?
Greg Sargent interviewed Rick Perlstein about Limbaugh’s legacy. Perlstein’s written a critically acclaimed series of books chronicling the rise of the American right from the 1950s on. An excerpt:
Sargent: The treatment of the opposition as the enemy manifests itself pretty neatly in the Trump years, doesn’t it? And ultimately in Marjorie Taylor Greene and the storming of the Capitol .
Perlstein: The thing about the QAnon phenomenon is that what the Democratic Party actually is — pluralist, timid, rather centrist — makes it hard to portray them as evil unless you make up something. The fact that QAon made up this idea that they’re literal cannibals is so telling of the weakness of the material they have.
Limbaugh primed the audience for that kind of fiction about Democrats.
Sargent: How responsible for the Trump presidency, the disasters that flowed from it, and the effort to violently overturn U.S. democracy is Rush Limbaugh?
Perlstein: Very responsible. Extremely responsible.
A word about this:
If Hitler treated the people well that he dealt with personally, would that matter? Of course not.
Limbaugh should be judged by his effect on the larger world, because his effect on the lives of the relative handful of people he dealt with directly was trivial compared to that.
I’m curious did Rush comment on the Jan 6 insurrection? He was very sick and I can understand speaking out would be daunting.
Rush planted the seeds of right wing conservatism. It grew far bigger and nastier than even he could have expected.