REMEMBERING RUSH LIMBAUGH.

God has called in the loan, and the mainstream media still don't understand why he was such a phenomenon.  "A Republican conservative and die-hard supporter of former President Donald Trump to the end, Limbaugh was among Trump's most important enablers of his failed effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election with baseless claims of voting fraud."  It's true that Mr Limbaugh recently suggested the left was moving toward Potemkin elections, and if you read that excerpt carefully, you'll note that many of the things he feared became things he and the former president brought up.

Read on, though, and discover that what he was doing was calling attention to things the journalistic establishment of thirty or forty years ago would rather not have noticed.

Journalist Ze'ev Chafets, whose 2010 biography of Limbaugh ("Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One") grew out of a New York Times magazine cover story in 2008, says Limbaugh was one of the top two or three most important figures in Republican politics in the 1990s.

"The reason is his show was heard in every congressional district in the country, and certainly every state, by a huge number of Republicans who almost entirely made up his audience," Chafets says. "He was able, at a granular level, to affect elections. The year Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House (1994), he gave Limbaugh an honorary membership in (the Republican caucus in) Congress because of his influence."

"Coastal Americans" who didn’t listen to Limbaugh had no idea of his "gravitational pull" because they underestimated his communication talents and his smarts, at least initially, Chafets said."They didn’t understand because they thought he was a carnival barker talking to rubes," Chafets said. "He talked about issues, not gossip. His show (consisted of) three-hour monologues without notes and included minute details about arcane matters that most talk-show hosts could not do."

Mr Limbaugh used to quip about "being equal time," which was a pitch-perfect riposte to people who thought the so-called fairness doctrine delivered what it promised.

The 1987 repeal of the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine  gave Limbaugh his head to broadcast his controversial opinions without having to present opposing views. In July 1988, he launched his own show on a talk station in New York City, and he was off to the races: His star was rising, and people noticed.

Back in the day, the licensed radio and television stations were more careful about separating editorial content from just-the-facts news reporting, and that format kept the editorials to a minute or two, which meant anyone offering a "significant opposing viewpoint" had to limit that comment to a minute or two.  The extent of the controversy?  Not much: it was rare that a flaming socialist or an opponent of expressway construction got the opportunity to use that minute or two.

Mr Limbaugh, let the record show, did not get his start raising hell about water fluoridation or intact busing or any of the other old controversies.

Chafets, who grew up in Michigan, remembers when he first heard Limbaugh on the radio as he was driving one day near Detroit.

"Before Rush Limbaugh, you could not hear conservative thought on the radio in the USA – Rush is the first guy to provide that, the rock-and-roll DJ with the news. And that shocked people," Chafets said. "I could not believe it myself. I actually pulled over to listen to what he was saying. I couldn’t believe it."

I don't know enough about Mr Chafets's body of work to evaluate his belief system at the time he heard the program.  My understanding of the Limbaugh phenomenon has been that he called attention to stuff that people could see, and made it clear that they were not in error for seeing that stuff wasn't turning out as well as Conventional Wisdom had it.

That's how Mike Landry summarized the dittohead phenomenon.

As the Rush Limbaugh Show spread across America, conservatives began to learn that they were not alone -- Rush was brilliantly articulating their very thoughts.  I found him to be an insightful commentator: wading through complex, murky, controversial topics, and deftly grasping the real heart of an issue.  “So that’s what this is really about,” I frequently would think to myself following an analysis by Rush.

Despite reaching the mega-big time, Rush has confessed that he was a bit taken aback when media peers did not accept his success.  For instance, he once was publicly insulted at a broadcasting awards ceremony. But that comes with being firmly on the right.  Where conservative pioneer William F. Buckley’s wealth, cultural refinement, and Yale connection could grant him the establishment’s grudging respect and acceptance, Rush Limbaugh, college dropout from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, received none.  A caricature developed of Rush as a rude, loudmouthed shock jock (a newsmagazine once pictured him with flames coming out of his mouth on a cover he shared with ever-vulgar Howard Stern).  The familiar criticisms of all conservatives (racist, bigot, etc., etc., etc.)  are laser focused on Rush,  presumably by people who have never really listened to him. Yet, longtime listeners know how he cares for people, that he is about entertainment and information instead of shock, that he treats callers with respect, and that his opinions are carefully reasoned and compelling.

Mr Limbaugh's signoff show, just before Christmas, might have been his valedictory.

Well, back in late January when I received this diagnosis — and I was shocked. I was stunned, and I was in denial for about a week. I mean, I’m Rush Limbaugh. I’m Mister Big of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I mean, I’m indestructible. I said, “This can’t be right,” but it was. What I didn’t know at the time that I learned later in the course of the year was that I wasn’t expected to be alive today.

I wasn’t expected to make it to October and then to November and then to December — and yet here I am. Today I’ve got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today. God’s with me today. God knows how important this program is to me today, and I’m feeling natural in terms of energy, normal in terms of energy, and I’m feeling entirely capable of doing it today.

With this reflection.

I remember saying to all of you at that time that I had a little bit of understanding of something that had perplexed me for a lot of my life, and that was Lou Gehrig.

Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, New York Yankees, set the record for consecutive games played until Cal Ripken came along decades later and broke it. And on the day that Lou Gehrig announced that he had his disease that was forcing him to retire from Major League Baseball, he said to the sold-out Yankee Stadium, “Today I feel like the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

I didn’t understand that. I mean, here’s a guy who’d just been diagnosed with the most terminal of terminal diseases, and I said, “This can’t be real. He can’t really think he’s the luckiest guy in the world. This is just something that he’s saying because it will play well.” I don’t mean to be insulting Lou Gehrig; don’t misunderstand. I’m just saying, how in the world if you’re being honest can you feel like you’re the luckiest man on the face of the earth?

Because he had the opportunity to perform, and to earn the respect of the audience. There are worse ways to face the final curtain.  That show included a charge to the living.

We Americans have adapted to our problems. We’ve adapted to changing evolutionary things in our lives, in our country because of our freedom.

Our freedom has allowed our adaptability. If disaster is coming our way, we don’t just sit there and endure it. We come up with ways to avoid it, to beat it back, to overcome it, but we don’t just sit there and accept it. And, as such, we don’t just resign ourselves to the fact that they’re living in the darkest days because we, at least to this point, still have the greatest degree of freedom of any people on earth.

Now, it’s under assault and under attack and we all know this. But I don’t believe our darkest days are ahead of us. I never have. People have been asking, “You’ve always told us you’d tell us when it’s time to panic. Is it time?” It’s never time to panic, folks. It’s never, ever gonna be time to give up on our country. It will never be time to give up on the United States.

It will never be time to give up on yourself. Trust me.

It may not have been given to Mr Limbaugh to finish the task, and yet the militant normals, and more than a few less-politically-involved people who have been badly served by a year of coronavirus tyranny will not give it up. RIP.