He realized that his job might be in danger, sure.
They should do like they did with Chancellor K’mpec on Star Trek: The Next Generation and hit him with half a dozen pain sticks to make sure he’s dead.
Yeah. Apparently it took him two weeks to figure that out. What kind of sick fuck even thinks for one second that was as good idea? I mean, we all do stupid shit that we regret, but that’s beyond the pale. “Ah, but I used to work with him and he was a nice guy.” Fuck. That.
[Moderating]
Since a second thread on the topic was moved to the Pit, I’ve decided to combine the two into a single thread.
[/Moderating]
Babylonian Talmud – Berakhot 62a:
The Gemara asks: "And what difference (did it make) to Rabbi Nachman (that he was so insistent on the details of whether this man was modest)? Because it was taught “Just as the deceased are punished, so are the eulogizers and those who answer after them”. (The deceased are punished for transgressions committed in their lifetimes; the eulogizers and those who answer are punished for accepting the attribution of virtues that the deceased did not possess).
Yeah, he said: “Cough, cough…hack, wheeze, whimper…wheeze”.
Conservative objections to rejoicing about Limbaugh’s death have less to do with respect for the dead than “owning the libtards” by telling them to shut up.
When liberal icons die, we find out how “principled” these objections were.
Looks like someone is auditioning to replace Limbaugh:
Little isn’t always in reference to size. He could have been a six-foot two 180-pound sack of gorgeous and still would have been little, and still filled with hate.
I actually heard that show! Not a Rush follower, but on my commute I’d swap over to AM when the classic rock got too tired, 'cuz I didn’t have a CD player and it was commute-entertaining to hear what Rush was on about sometimes. The other bit he did on that show was how he’d heard that people in some theaters cheered - cheered! - when the (Clinton IRL) White House was blown up by the aliens.
I had a similar experience. I was not very political, but my friend listened to Rush during the day, and watched Glenn Beck in the evening. I began following them at his recommendation.
Rush would make a statement, and then spend a hour circling it, getting near it, brushing up against it, all the while outraged, but not doing much to support his statement. He was a master of talking and talking and not saying anything. And the ad breaks, so many ad breaks! Between talking and not saying anything, and all the ad breaks, I think it made it easier for him to not have to properly support his claims. After enough time passed, you’d forget that he still needed to, and you’d just accept what he said as true.
Beck was a little different. In the early days of his show, he’d sit there like a cross between Mr. Rogers and Walter Cronkite and lull you with his warm, friendly radio voice. He’d make a statement, then lead you down a train of thought that would eventually jump the tracks if you were actively listening, and if you also had other sources of news. If you depended on him for all your news, then you could easily get taken in. My experience watching him was like this.
“OK. . .OK. . .I’m following you. . .Wait. . .Is he going to account for the other thing? OK. . . but what about that other thing? You need to go back and address. . .You can’t. . .your conclusion is faulty, you left out an important factor. . .You can’t just. . .WAIT!”
Later on, I think Beck became more unhinged, and I’m not sure what his show was like then. I always imagine this.
So I became disenchanted with the right-wing by listening to the right-wing. I had to laugh a couple years back, when a friend that was caught up in the Fox News/Drudge report/Alex Jones circle of crazy asked his daughter, “How’d you get to be such a liberal?” and she told him, “By listening to the same things you do.”
Critical thinking will show you when arguments do not hold water, but it’s also important to know a con when you see it. When someone tells you, “You can’t trust all these guys, but you can trust me.” you’re being conned. Gaining your trust and turning you against those who could warn you is vital to any con. When a bunch of former DJ’s with delusions of political expertise say you can’t trust Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers, but you can trust them, that’s when you have to stop and think about who has more credibility.
Rush was instrumental in driving a wedge between friends, families and neighbors, and he helped make it harder and harder for politicians to compromise by painting one side as evil. For doing that willingly, gladly, and for profiting grossly from it, he should go to Hell. He and his RW cronies should have their own wing there.
In 1987 and 1988 I was stuck listening to Rush while riding my school bus 2 or 3 times a week (the bus driver was great: she flipped fairly each week between him and the local rock station. Seeing her chair dancing at stop signs I kinda knew which she preferred.)
10 years later I was stuck listening to him while getting out of the house once a week and spoiling my kids at the local Northern Exposure grocery Store Set in Iowa. I could ignore him because I was watching my kids so they didn’t do dumb stuff.
20 years after that… I seldom go into that grocery store. I tried being a “support local mom & pop stores” person. I just kinda gave up on buying stuff after getting $30-50 worth of groceries home and then finding, seriously, 7 to 10 year out of date stuff. Even after “the kids” were running the store. Green tinged meat because “the old people like “high” meat” … uh, maybe in the 50s to 70s, not in 2000+.
Hearing Rush while shopping and checking out… I have always wondered what the wife thought of me while he was rambling. She was my 2 older kids pre-school teacher (not affiliated with the school district). I helped out for the 3 years they were in her class. I had nothing better to do and she appreciated the unpaid help. She would have taught #3 but we both were pregnant at the same time.
I guess I was one of the “good ones”. Compared to some of my siblings.
I might go shopping there next week. They do have frozen lard (real pig fat) and side pork (frozen). They might even have some frozen Smelt. Oh, wait, that’s in April.
But at least I won’t have to hear his frothing or his condescension.
He was good at the skills of talk radio, of that there is little doubt. Few, if any, approach him in that regard. Talk radio isn’t as easy as it sounds.
RIP. I’m not usually one to speak ill of the dead but I can’t say as I’m at all upset by his death. Interesting how he loved both pro free trade and protectionist republicans and they all loved him. Some other dink will no doubt replace him in short order.
Kayleigh McEnany is sure not hard to look at but any dirty old man lust disappears the minute she starts to speak.
He really wasn’t.
Limbaugh was good at one specific thing, talk radio. He was famous because he was really good at it; he was otherwise unaccomplished, and had he not been good at talk radio you’d never have heard of him. His fame rested on being a conservative talk show host, and being very successful at it. Limbaugh is analogous to a professional athlete. People like Serena Williams or Tom Brady are famous because they’re really, really good at one job that’s very prominent in popular culture.
Trump wasn’t good at anything specific, or really especially good at anything at all. Trump was famous for being famous; he of course used to pretend to be “John Barron” and called into radio shows in efforts to raise his own fame. Trump was never even the biggest developer in NYC. He was much more analogous to people like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians, someone who became famous through sheer self-promotion after starting off with a rich family.
Dammit, merging these two threads broke over 40 links to my post I had spread about in chats, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I disagreed with the decision to move it to the pit in the first place, but said nothing, but now I realize what a half-baked decision that was.
Mods, believe it or not, some of us do promote this place and when you break our links that just makes our work harder.
He was really, really, really good at self-promotion and creating his own brand, as in for himself and his family, which is what any good con artist does. He had survival instincts.
Limbaugh was actually a professional media personality. He built an actual profitable media brand in its own right, and one that, like it or hate it, was basically run like a legitimate business - in the legal sense.
He’s most sincerely dead.
Non-talk radio people who have tried hosting the format have written about how unbelievably difficult it is to simply talk for the better part of 2-3 hours every day. It is indeed a unique skill set. I believe another example in the piece I read cited sports talk guy Colin Cowherd, who is routinely skewered, even by his regular listeners.
But the point is that those people can talk. Endlessly.
I still think Rush was performance art more than anything else. Yeah, he had execrable political and social views but once he found a receptive listening audience, he knew mostly that he found his path to riches. And he would say anything that would keep 15 million aggrieved lunatics glued to the dial. He initially started out skeptical of Trump but came around once he discovered that his ratings were otherwise dependent.
It’s a huge relief that he’s gone. If progressives ever fall prey to the same sort of media charlatanism, the country is doomed.