Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, who entertained millions and propelled waves of Republican politicians, has died at age 70. He had announced to listeners last year that he had stage four lung cancer.
Limbaugh's death Wednesday morning was confirmed by his wife, Kathryn, at the start of his radio program.
Before right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, before Fox News, there was Limbaugh. His voice entertained millions of listeners, cheered conservatives hungry to see their beliefs reflected on the airwaves, and elevated long-shot Republicans to national prominence.
"I always say my real purpose is to attract the largest audience I can, and hold it for as long as I can, so I can charge confiscatory advertising rates," Limbaugh told NPR in a 2007 interview. "Every time I've said that, it's, 'Oh, he's just saying that! He doesn't care what he says! He's just trying to generate a big audience!' And that's not true. The benefit here is, I have the freedom to be entirely honest about my passions."
Limbaugh's clout in conservative circles was so great that he was wooed by three very different Republican presidents: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the latter a kindred spirit in many ways who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address in February 2020.
Limbaugh was an influencer before the age of social media, a hot-take machine before people stopped pausing to think about what they were saying ahead of sending those words out into the world. And he embodied a counterpunch to what many on the right contended was a liberal media establishment — even as he offended millions with his racist, sexist and homophobic routines and diatribes.
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was born in 1951 in Cape Girardeau, Mo., where there is now an official Rush Limbaugh hometown tour. His family maintained Republican ties: His grandfather had been an ambassador under President Dwight D. Eisenhower; his uncle was named a federal judge by President Ronald Reagan. His father was an attorney locally, while his mother was active in local Republican politics. He got his start at a station partly owned by his father, and his early years in radio were marked by clashes with bosses.
But after the Reagan administration set aside the Fairness Doctrine, which instructed broadcasters to present opposing views on controversial issues, Limbaugh unleashed his buoyant conservatism to great effect in Sacramento, Calif., and then New York City. And in his emergence on the national scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the man perfectly met the moment. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies would give Limbaugh a huge amount of credit for the GOP's rise in 1994, when the party took over the U.S. House and Senate for the first time in four decades.
"Talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide, Rush, and we know that," U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, part of the wave of Republicans who swept to office that year, said in honoring Limbaugh at an event staged by the conservative Heritage Foundation. "You were the voice that everyone else could follow."
She gave him a plaque that read: "Rush was right."
No one believed that more than Limbaugh himself.
"There's a whole psychology of doing the program the way that I do it," Limbaugh told NPR. "And there is a lot of schtick and a lot of humor to it. But the one thing that I don't do is make things up or say things I don't believe, just to cause a reaction. Because that takes no talent."
In the early-to-mid 1990s, Limbaugh hosted a TV show run by Roger Ailes, who went on to help Rupert Murdoch create and run the Fox News Channel. But radio proved to be Limbaugh's perfect medium.
The show ran for three hours every weekday. Limbaugh riffed on the news, largely without guests to interview. Instead, he read and responded to news articles with opinions and voices, pumping the program with satire and parody, puffing himself up while mocking himself thoroughly. He promoted conservative priorities such as deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, and muscular military intervention in the Middle East. He also cast doubt on established facts, including global warming, and propelled conspiracy theories, such as the baseless claim that Joe Biden's address to the 2020 Democratic National Convention had to be stitched together from numerous takes.
And Limbaugh staked his claim for a vision of the United States that resurrected a more seemingly traditional, more conservative and whiter past. In so doing, he trampled the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. He often traded on decades-old stereotypes to offend women, Blacks, Latinos, gays and liberals.
As a local host in Pittsburgh in the mid 1970s, Limbaugh later conceded to an interviewer for Newsday, he told a Black woman who called into his show that she should "take the bone" out of her nose and he would call her back. He told the reporter he regretted that. Broadcasting under his own name in New York City, Limbaugh claimed that all newspaper composites of wanted criminals resembled the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Over the years, he routinely questioned President Barack Obama's heritage and patriotism and mocked Michelle Obama's physique.
He could be especially cruel and offensive when his targets were women.
Limbaugh called Hillary Clinton a "FemiNazi" — a term he coined for feminists. He called a graduate student a slut for her advocacy for medical insurance to cover birth control.
"I wonder when she loses next, if she'll go back to the kitchen," Limbaugh mused on air when Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Then he adopted the tone of a Pelosi fan: "Look at Ms. Pelosi. Why, she can multitask. She can breastfeed, she can clip her toenails, she can direct the House, all while kids are sitting on her lap at the same time."
Most of the time, Limbaugh relished the ensuing outcries.
"The fewest number of words you can use to convey a point, the more power a point has," Limbaugh said in the NPR interview. "Now, I understand people are going to be offended. But I've had a policy all my life not to worry about offending people, because it's going to happen. It's a daily part of life."
And yet that could come with a cost. As ABC experimented with Monday Night Football, Limbaugh auditioned for a nonsports specialist slot. It went to the comedian Dennis Miller. He was hired in 2003 to be a commentator for a football program that aired Sundays on ESPN (ABC's sister channel). After four weeks, he was fired after disparaging then-Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who is Black.
"The media has been very desirous that a Black quarterback do well,'' Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."
Two days later, McNabb commented to the Philadelphia Daily News, "It's sad that you've got to go to skin color. I thought we were through with that whole deal." ESPN soon announced that Limbaugh resigned. On his radio show, however, he was unrepentant.
Over the years, Limbaugh allowed listeners into a more human dimension of his persona. There was his loss of hearing — at the core of a radio performer's abilities — that led to cochlear implants. He also acknowledged his addiction to opioids, as that became public knowledge elsewhere. And in early 2020, the frequent cigar smoker revealed his diagnosis of lung cancer. Trump bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him shortly afterward, calling him a fighter.
Limbaugh repaid the favor a few weeks before the 2020 election, turning hours of his broadcast over to the embattled president for a virtual rally just weeks ahead of Election Day, after Trump had contracted COVID-19.
Later that month, Limbaugh announced that his cancer was terminal. "It's tough to realize that the days where I do not think that I'm under a death sentence are over," he told his listeners. Limbaugh said the challenges he had faced were no bigger, and no more important, than theirs.
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