Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that I continually
failed to introduce like a professional, which is particularly shameful
this week because our guest is a very professional voice artist,
Mr Paul F. Tom Good. Thank you for having me.

(00:24):
Thank you for being here. Paul Um. You are the
voice of a lot of characters that that that a
lot of people enjoy. Uh. I think most famously to
me at least, UH is Mr Peanut butter Um to
the voice of a lot of characters that people hate.
That's true. That's true because if you're really achieving as
an artist, a lot of people are going to hate

(00:45):
anything that you do. That's the you're doing it right exactly.
And today we're talking about a truly historical success of
a creative mind. A man hated py tens of millions
of people and who should be hated by billions, a
man who has done, I would say, in calculable harm

(01:05):
to the future of human life and all life on
this planet. Mr rush Limbaugh. Yeah, Paul, what do you
have any kind of history with Rush Limbaugh, like in
terms of your upbringing and stuff. I don't know much
about how you grew up. Yeah, do you know what
I forgot. Uh that I forgot. First of all, I
forgot how long he's been around. And I remember watching

(01:25):
him in his earliest days on TV UM and watching
that show like as a goof the way, I would watch,
you know, the Morton Downey Junior Show or a little
Wally George or whatever, and just like, who is this clown?
And he's like doing this this sort of you know
what seemed like a character you know at the time,
because he I think he fancied himself an entertainer and

(01:48):
had a show that had little skits in it and
stuff like that, and I I thought he was just ridiculous,
and so uh, I watched him ironically and um, and
then things just got worse. Like I I sort of
got tired of it. I remember getting tired of it
and like, Okay, this is just like the same thing
over and over again, and it's not, um, it's not

(02:11):
pushing that uh that button in my ironic pleasure center anymore.
So I just stopped watching. But he, um, despite despite
my my jumping ship and you to do what he
was doing. He lost the Paul left Topkins demographic, but
he kept the my parents and everyone that raised me demographics.

(02:33):
So what was your upbringing particularly political? Would you say not,
you know what, not super political. I was raised, Uh.
My family was a um uh lower middle class, uh,
big Catholic family, UM in Philadelphia, in in a sort

(02:54):
of suburb called mount Airy, and we were both of
my My family was like lifelong Democrats, you know, Philadelphia Democrats.
And so that was kind of it, Like we were
just sort of um you know, uh like a conservative
liberal family. Uh and um, yeah, I I we we

(03:15):
didn't talk a lot about politics in the house growing up. Um,
and that was kind of it. But I knew that
we were. We were liberal Democrats, you know, who were
weirdly enough, guided by guided by I'm not even gonna
say faith. I think we were guided by my parents,
um sort of morals where they were greatest generation Depression babies. Um.

(03:40):
And uh they voted straight Democrat um. But they were
not like even though we were Catholic, it was like
we were not single issue voters, you know. Um, but
they but my family was my parents were brought up
with the same sort of um prejudices that people of

(04:02):
their generation were brought up with, you know. But but yeah,
politics did not figure in it. What it was like
when I got when I got uh, you know, a
little older and out of the house and everything, that's
when I started, um, you know, investigating my own politics.
And it was like a long a journey. You know.
That is very exciting to me. Um, just because you're

(04:23):
you're you, you came from kind of more of a
you know, a liberally background, and your introduction to Russia
Limbaugh was kind of watching it as a character, right. Yeah. Yeah,
I grew up very conservative. Um My parents were also
lower middle class, verging on poor. And when I was
like kind of little, a lot of economic anxiety, but
extremely conservative. I would say like our family religion was conservatism,

(04:44):
and so Russia Limbaugh was caught. Whenever I was driving
with my mom or my dad, Rush was on. We would,
we would, we listened to him. My parents talked about him.
So my upbringing with him was that this guy is
like the profit of of what's what's right, you know,
both in the political sense and in a moral sense. Um.
So I'm very excited about this, and I'm excited that
you know who Morton Downey Jr. Is because we're gonna

(05:05):
be talking about him a bit too. So yeah, Um,
Rush Limbaugh is it's hard to oversell this guy's influence
on our current state of Like, I think it would
be fair to say we're kind of like verging on
civil conflict right now between the right and left in
the United States. Yeah, for sure. Um so yeah, And
I think Rush Limbaugh has a huge might be the

(05:26):
man most responsible for that. I totally agree that his
influence cannot be Uh is it overestimated, like cannotated? It's
like I the day he died, I tweeted, I tweeted, Uh,
if I had to say something positive, I guess if

(05:48):
I had to say something positive, I'm glad Rush Limbaugh
lived long enough to get cancer and die. Um. And
then that got that got picked up by uh fox
news dot com. They did a round up of you know,
uh liberals celebrated Rush Limbaugh's death, which really was just like, Hey,
if you want to harass some people, here's here's pseudo rass.

(06:10):
And I had people, I had people in my mentions
on Twitter like saying things like, uh, you better pray
you never meet me, like like people implying violence because
I said I'm glad Rush Limbaugh is dead. I had
somebody call my call my house and say Rush Limbaugh

(06:33):
contributed far more good to society than you ever will
find for Rush Limbaugh. This guy, but I mean, this
guy had a show. He had a show. He wasn't
a legislator. He wasn't he wasn't like some some sort
of freedom fighter. This guy just had a show where
he said mean things, where where he repeatedly celebrated the

(06:56):
deaths of his enemies and made half a billion dollars
doing it. Okay, let's let's get into Russia's life. So
the first thing I learned about him when I started
digging him into him, that might be the thing I
learned about him that surprised me the most. Russia is
not short for anything. Russia is a full a full
first name, and in fact, Rush Limbaugh is the third

(07:17):
Rush Limbaugh in his family line. They are very proud
of that name. His grandpa, Rush Senior was born and
raised in Bollinger County, Missouri, so he and I are
both Missouri babies. He grew up into a world that
was changing rapidly. Rush Senior saw an electric light for
the first time when he was twelve. He took his
first railroad trip in nineteen o four. He always thought

(07:41):
that was one of those things. It was like, I
choose that. That is the most shocking thing about him.
He rushed Limba is not only his full name, it
is the only name his family seems to give their
firstborn sons. If he broke uh So Russia Rush Senior
became a lawyer. He opened an office in Cape are
do Um, Missouri, and he basically never left the town again.

(08:03):
He retired in nineteen ninety four at the age of
a hundred and two, which I mentioned because it suggests
that all those cigars rush us are Rush Limbaugh smoked
saved us about thirty two years more of his show.
I'm sorry, did you say he retired auto in nineteen
ninety four? Yeah? And then how long did he live
after that? I think he died. I think he died

(08:26):
immediately from what YE like. He's one of those guys
who worked until he died. Basically, some people are like that.
You know, his grandson was like that. Uh So Rush
Senior was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives when
he was forty. His main political issue was fighting FDR
and the New Deal, which shouldn't be surprising to anybody, right,

(08:49):
This is deeply deeply embedded in the Rush limball line.
In nineteen thirty six, Rush Limbas Sr. Was a Republican
delicate at the Republican National Convention, where he helped nominate
Alf Landon for the noble job of losing to Franklin
del Roosevelt in an election. You don't nobody, nobody was
better at campaigning than FDR. It was never a successful
thing to run against that. I know, somebody had to

(09:10):
be his Washington generals, Yeah, Outland and the Washington generals
of Republican politics. Uh So, my main source for the
early life and family history of Rush Limbaugh is a
fairly comprehensive, if I would say, kind of fawning biography
of Limbaugh by Zev chaffits uh and Zev it's a
weird first named ze apostrophe e v. Chaff It's uh.

(09:34):
He notes that over the course of decades of lawyering,
Rush Senior quote quietly but inevitably became well to do um,
which is an interesting way of phrasing it. Just like
there was no stopping and he just got it. Was
kind of a way of making it seem like he
just he didn't really want to become rich. He just
became rich. You know, that is the most suspicious sounding phrase. Inevitably,

(09:57):
quietly and inevitably got rich. Sinister, God, it is very sinister. Um.
So Rush Junior, who is our Rush Limball's father, was
born at some point Quick Google obviously he had been born.
Quick Googling didn't return a date. He's the only Rush
Limball without a Wikipedia page, which I guess kind of
a kind of a shot to him. Um. I could

(10:19):
have probably found it out if I'd really dug into it.
But it doesn't really matter that much for our purposes. Yeah,
he did what he had to do. He gave us Rush.
He gave us our rush. Y O U R Rush.
So Rush Junior is only important for the impact that
he had on our rush. He was a World War
two combat pilot, which is undeniably rad. You gotta give
him that, um, and his biography notes that he maintained

(10:42):
a military crew cut for his entire life. He was
heavy set and top data out at about three hundred pounds,
which earned him the nickname Big Rush, Big Rush, one
of those names. And you you cannot combat like your
Big Rush, sorry, Big Rush us. You can ask politely,

(11:03):
it's not gonna happen. Why are you in a big rush? Uh?
So Big Rush became an attorney because I'm always rushing around.
I'm always rushing around. So Big Rush became an attorney
like his dad and his brother, who eventually went on
to become a federal judge. Big Rush was a powerful
orator and often gave speeches in the town of Cape Girardo,

(11:25):
doing during holidays. His very conservative politics influenced these speeches,
and his most famous one was a tearful hagiographic speech
about our nations saintly founding fathers. Again, you can see
he clearly had kind of the same gift of gab
that our Rush has. And I you have to admit,
if you know anything about our Rush Limbaugh, he was
an undeniably talented broadcaster. He was very good at what

(11:47):
he did. That's why he had the impact that absolutely Yeah, now,
our Rush Limbaugh A Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the third to
give his full name, was born in Cape Girardo, Mississippi,
on January or Missouri sorry, January twelfth, nineteen fifty one.
By all accounts, he had a financially comfortable upbringing with
a brother and the parents who loved him. Baby Rush

(12:07):
spent his childhood and bubing a steady diet of his
dad's rants about scummy liberals and evil, conniving communists. One
of our Russia's childhood friends recalls of Big Rush of
his dad quote, We'd go over to his house sometimes
just to watch him watch the six o'clock news. He'd
sit in front of the television, drinking black cherry pop,
eating popcorn, and just railing at the anchorman and the reporters.
He'd yell at Dan Rather, they're all typical liberals, and

(12:30):
Rather's the worst one of the bunch. And we'd try
to keep him going. You know, Mr Rush, what do
you think about this? Mr? Rush? What do you think
about that? Sometimes he'd say Kender, that was this friend's name.
You're gonna be the first Dutchman on the moon. I
don't know exactly what he meant by that, but he
was trying to be friendly. I liked him, but he
was a harsh taskmaster with his sons. An odd comment.

(12:51):
So Rush has a has a brother or Russia and
a brother. He has a brother, David Um who was
his younger brother. No, no, no, I think it's the oldest,
the oldest son as the Rush gets the Rush name.
They didn't do a George for David becomes like a lawyer,
doesn't really leave Cape Gerardo and is like, um, you know,
he's he's he unlike his brother has a family, has

(13:14):
like a wife that he's you know, stays with and
all that stuff. Did he quietly but inevitably become wealthy.
I think yeah, I think he was bored wealthy. He
and his brother were both born rich as hell. Um
so and and our Russia's brother David provided an even
more telling glimpse of kind of what their childhood was
like under Big Rush. My dad stood out. Sometimes he
provoked people who didn't agree with him to violence. Once,

(13:36):
for example, he was in a bar slamming FDR and
a couple of guys jumped him and beat him up.
I never did ask him the details of that one,
but it was a couple of guys, not a fair fight.
I know that much. I have to assume he deserved
to get the ship kicked out of I'm gonna guess
he was saying something like, the people who got screwed
over in the Great Depression deserve to starve to death.
We shouldn't be helping that that's gonna be my guest.

(13:57):
And he got the ship kicked out of him by
some w p A guys something like that. If your
name is if your name is Big Rush and two
guys go after you, I think that's a fair fight.
That's a fair fight. You're big, you know. Yeah, he's
a little Rush, he's three hundred pounds. They're probably each
about a buck fifty. You know, their fight exactly, they're
fight by mass being poor. Yeah, that's so. Our Rush

(14:21):
was born into the Eisenhower Years, which will probably always
be remembered as like the high point of both capitalism
and the United States. This period of peak American exceptionalism
imprinted itself deeply on Russia's growing brain. His father was
made a special ambassador to India's legal system, Their family
got their first television. Um, yeah, yeah, he was. I

(14:43):
think it means you know, India's was newly independent in
the Eisenhower years, right, they had just the UK had
just left, they had just partitioned with Pakistan. They're developing
their own independent legal system, and they're a democracy that
was heavily based at least initially on the US. So
the president like kicked guys who were established lawyers like
Big Rush and also established Republicans to be a kind

(15:05):
of help set up the Indian legal system. Um, that's
kind of what happened. So yeah, his his father's a
big man in Republican politics. Rush grows up seeing in
the period where America is undeniably like like literally is
half of the global economy. Right, that's a very significant
thing for him. Um. So the family in the fifties
gets their first TV, but radio is still the dominant

(15:28):
method of entertainment in those days, and Russia's childhood and
earlier adolescence coincided with the birth of rock and roll
and the absolute peak of cultural relevance for DJs. Um
My dad grew up at a pretty similar period of time.
He's like seven or eight years younger than Rush. Um,
and he he grew up the only thing my dad
ever wanted to be was a DJ, and he wasn't

(15:48):
a radio DJ for like twenty thirty years. You know,
that was like the coolest thing that you could do, right.
You didn't have Spotify, you didn't have the Internet. People
learned about new music from DJs who were kind of
like pick what they were going to play on the radio.
It was the like the absolute rattus thing you could be,
and that's what Rush like. He he idolizes these big
DJs of the time, and that's all he wants to be.

(16:10):
For Basically, his entire young life is a DJ. Now,
when Rush was three Brown versus the Board of Education
was ruled on by the Supreme Court, which led to
the integration of U S schools now Zeve Chaffittz doesn't
write anything specific in the biography about how Rush Senior
talked about race to his son. I have not We
don't get any of that information. And I'm not necessarily

(16:32):
blaming Chappits for that because I think the Rush family
is very pr savvy. They don't talk about it. You know.
I don't know who he would have gotten that info from, um,
but our Rush would have definitely picked up on the
great deal of conflict in Cape Gerardo over racial matters. Uh.
Missouri is an odd state and that it is both
Midwestern and Southern. During the Civil War, it was split

(16:53):
between Yankee and Confederate sympathizers, and the town that Rush
grew up in had monuments to the dead of both sides.
There was tremendous resistance to the idea of integration of
schools in Missouri and in Cape Gerardo, and Zeve Chappitts,
to his credit, writes about this quote. In nineteen fifty two,
Kate built its white students a new school, Central High.
Blacks continued to attend Cobb High School, but the supreme

(17:15):
court and basketball changed that. Cape Gerardou took its high
school basketball very seriously and sometimes contended for the state title.
The nineteen fifty three team was expected to be a powerhouse,
but word got around that the kids from Cobb were
even better. An informal game was arranged between Central and
Cob High, says historian Frank Nichol cob one. Shortly thereafter,
Cob mysteriously burned down. Black students went to school and

(17:38):
churches and private homes that year. But a more permanent
solution was, yeah, they that's the kind of town. He
grows up and the black kids win at basketball and
they burned their school down. Wow. Yeah, Cape Gerardo is
a very racist town. Um and kind of more to
the point, like, we don't know exactly what what Russia's
dad would have said about any of this. We don't

(17:59):
know that he would have supported the burning down of
the black school. We don't know that he wouldn't though,
that's right. Um, and you know, the the conservatives were
definitely more on the don't integrate side of things, right. Uh. Now,
a compromise, a compromise was eventually reached in Cape Girardo,
and the compromise was that black kids would be allowed
to attend Central High but they would be put in

(18:21):
special classes that were taught by former teachers of Cobb,
the school that had been burned down. Um. This was
kind of integrating by not integrating. So there were black
and white kids in the same school, but not in
the same classes. And this is the way things were
in Cape Girardo when Russia Limballs started school. Um. So yeah,
that's you can infer from that what you will based

(18:42):
on some of the things Rush Limbaugh says and does
later in life. I think we're missing some important information
about what his dad thought about black people. Um. I
don't remember, if ever being concerned as to the investigation
of that fire. I don't think he would burn high school.
He might have done it like that is rampant an

(19:03):
irresponsible speculation on my part, but also uh, the only
reason I think he wouldn't have is that he wouldn't
have been able to run away from it. In mind,
from what I can tell, um, he didn't do well
in that fight, is all I'm saying. So Russia had
an upbringing that would have been fairly standard for a
rich kid of his era. He played basketball, he did shores,

(19:24):
He had plenty of friends. He was not an overly
active kid. He did not like sports. He hated his
one year in the cub Scouts. Russia the ball hates
the outdoors his entire life. Um, he did not like school,
but he was popular, largely because his family was rich
and had a huge basement with a pool table and

(19:45):
a bunch of other luxuries. The kids rush hung out
with during this time give us some of our best
hints about the darker elements of his childhood. One of
them told Zeve Chaffits quote, Russia's dad didn't suffer fools lightly.
He was always very disapproving of Russia his ambitions to
have a career in radio. Russia's mom was a kind,
gentle person, but his dad could be pretty rough. He

(20:05):
was not above calling down Russian David in front of
their friends, and when he did it, there was a
string of expletives attached. I saw that happen many times.
So kind of abusive, not I don't think, by the
standards of the time, and I haven't heard any of
that he was like leading his kids or anything, but
kind of mentally abusive. Again, probably more or less in
line with what most most men of his social class

(20:28):
would have been like to their kids. You know, I
don't think this was abnormal. I mean, how many how
many of these guys were born out of the the
the sort of ritual humiliation by their fathers in front
of an audience. Yeah, I think most of them. You know.
It's it's such a it's such a common thing that
I'm I guess I'm just glad my dad was a

(20:50):
guy who didn't say anything. Ever, Yeah, it's better than
humiliating you in front of your friends when you say
something he disagrees with. So every one of Russia's early
friends that I've seen interviewed is very consistent about the
fact that he was not political. From an early age.
He rarely, if ever talked politics, and he did not
express strong beliefs. One of his friends even remembers him

(21:12):
as a particularly good debater in school because quote. He
could argue either side of a proposition without missing a beat.
When he did express political opinions, they were generally conservative.
One friend noted that the only time he saw child
Rush express a strong political sentiment was after the nineteen
sixty presidential election when Rush was nine. Quote Rush wrote
wrote on a drywall, Kennedy one darn Nixon lost. Shucks.

(21:37):
So grows up conservative because his dad is conservative. But
it's clearly politics is not a big part of his
life from an early age. He's not like been Shapiro right,
where from the get go he's being sort of um
like focused into becoming a political commentator. That does not
happen with Rush Limbaugh. He's more from the darn shucks
school of the darn shucks school political commentary. Yeah. So

(22:01):
Rush got his first gig at age thirteen, working at
a downtown barber shop. He later told his biographer that
he liked the gig because it gave him a chance
to talk to adults, who he preferred to his peers
because I didn't think kids were interesting. When it came
to girls, Rush was as awkward as you'd expect. He
was bad at sports, heavy set, and not at all smooth.
In his biography The Rush Limball Story, biographer Paul Colford

(22:25):
recalls one particularly embarrassing incident during a game of spin
the bottle when Rush was a teenager. He spun the
bottle and it stopped at and it stopped pointing at
the prettiest girl at the party, which is how she's
described in this anecdote quote. She looked at him and gasped,
couldn't do it, not with him, that is, And everyone
in the room witnessed this humiliation. It was a wound
he would nurse forever. Uh, that's nice, thank you Bogher

(22:54):
for that. And it's one of those things, you know,
I think there's I'm sure this has an impact on
the kind of man he becomes, But also I think
most of us have a moment like that where we
have a crush on some person of the opposite or
the same sex and they're not into us, and it's
horribly embarrassing. It's a pretty and most of us don't

(23:15):
grow up to destroy civil society in the environment. Right, Yeah,
we've all been there, and Rush was there too. Obviously
this is a part of whatever toxic stew gets cooked
up at him. Um, But I don't know how Like
it's one of those things I think you can kind
of lean too much on. Oh, this is why he
was always forever humiliated by this thing, and that's why
he became the man. He was like, well, we all

(23:36):
have that in our past, and we all don't do
this ship. It's very much like the the original origin
story of Lex Luthor that uh yeah, Superman blew out
his hair. Superman Superman was responsible for him going prematurely bald,
and he became a supervillain because of this. Yeah, and
you know there are a lot of other bald men

(23:57):
in that world who don't become Superman. Yeah. Uh so,
Big Rush wanted his son to become a lawyer or
to do something else with a similar sort of gravitas. Right,
The Limbaughs were big men in Cape Girardo. They were
kind of like the the the primary, like the most
prominent men in the entire town. Um, and he Big
Rush wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and

(24:19):
do something respectable. Didn't have to be a lawyer, going
too politics, do something important, right, do something that he
can brag about to the other rich guys. Now, the
fact that young Rush only ever wanted to be on
the radio, infuriated his father. For his part, Rush seems
to suspect that his love of radio was born in
part from his hatred of school. Quote. My mother would
be fixing me breakfast and I'd be listening to the

(24:41):
guy on the radio. He'd be having fun, and I
was preparing to go to prison. I mean joined the
club Rush. Yeah, we all hate school. It's tradish everybody.
It never occurred to me to related to the guy
on the radio, like, how come he gets to have fun,
this grown adult, and I have to go to school? Yeah,

(25:04):
I mean there's a lot of kids. Let's I'll take
my adopted hometown Portland for example, a lot of kids
there who hate school. They don't destroy the entire planet.
They just break Starbucks windows on the weekends. And that's
much healthier. Rush. You can just buck up a Starbucks
if you're if you're nursing some rage at the educational
industrial complex or whatever. So despite his irritation, Big Rush

(25:26):
clearly did love his son, and when little Rush was sixteen,
his dad used some of his local clout to get
his son a part time job at the local radio station.
Rush started doing what you today call internship, you know,
fetching coffee, cleaning up, handling odd tasks here and there,
and eventually he was allowed to actually introduce and play
records on air. The summer before his senior year of

(25:48):
high school, Big Rush paid for his son to attend
a six week radio engineering course in Dallas. This was
a big moment for Rush. He was away from home
for the first time, living in a boarding house. He
started smoking cigarettes, thank god, and he got a license
that allowed him to actually and he got a license
that allowed him to actually run the radio without adult supervision.

(26:09):
Once he had this, station management let him hang out
alone all weekend and weekdays after school, playing records and
for the first time, presenting himself to an audience on air.
So he gets started. And this is one of those
things his dad. Clearly there are some abusive elements of
their relationship. His dad is not supportive of Russia's radio career,
but also is like his dad is, doesn't think it's

(26:30):
a good idea, but also enables him right like, not
just gets him a job, but pays for him to
get educated. So we get this is not a guy.
I'm sure you know he had his frustra strations with
his father. This is not a guy who grows up
with a dad who just doesn't get him and refuses
to support him. This is a very supportive upbringing this
kid has, even though his father's not yeah exactly. Um yeah.

(26:53):
So Rush you know, becomes kind of famous within his
you know, the team set at his town because he's
the guy with a radio show and in high school
and he was not at all political at this point.
His most well known bit involved reading the daily beauty
tips that the Associated Press sent out back then, UM,
which he like, and he would like kind of mock
the beauty tips because he thought it was silly that

(27:14):
the AP was sending out daily beauty tips. Which is fair,
it is that has a silly thing for the AP
to do. Um now. Russia's professional idol at this point
was a guy named Larry lue Jack lu Jack as
Chicago DJ, who was famous for his sense of humor
and comedic stylings. Rush Leader called him the only person
I ever copied. Lue Jack was known for audibly shuffling

(27:36):
papers during his monologues and different bits, a tactic Limbaugh
copied and used repeatedly through his decades on air. UM
and as a kind of like it significant bit. No, no, no,
it wasn't a bit, but it was like a thing
he would do to emphasize that, like I've got evidence
or I've got information here. You know. It was a
thing Rush, and it was a big Rush Limbaugh thing.

(27:57):
You know. It's it's how you convince people who maybe
aren't that credible that you you have good information. Right,
he's been handed, He's been handed that has information on it,
so it's true. But but lu Jack was not a
political guy, right, he was just he was not, and
he fucking hated Rush Limbaugh because when Rush got famous
in the early nineties, Rush was like, yeah, Larry lu

(28:19):
Jack is the only man I ever copied. And they
asked lu Jack about it, in his response is basically,
fuck that guy good Man. Yeah. Yeah, you can't. You
can't pick who finds you influentially, you know. Yeah. Um
So back in those days, again, being a radio DJ

(28:40):
was pretty much the coolest thing you could do, and
Russia's side job made him very popular at high school.
He even signed autographs on a few occasions. The work
was intoxicating, and Rush seemed to know at once that
this was what he wanted to dedicate his life to doing. Obviously,
his ambitions did not make his father happy, and during
Russia's last year of childhood, his dad would constantly yell
at him for wanting to waste his life on the radio.

(29:02):
No amount of paternal ill will was enough to pull
Rush Limbaugh away from his dream, though he was miserable
at home and his father. After with his father, after graduating,
he enrolled in a local college just to please the
old man, but he couldn't actually bring himself to go
to school very often. Sometimes his mother would drive him
to college just to make sure that he went. Rush
came of age during one of the most exciting and

(29:23):
tumultuous periods in US history. I mean, he's he's literally
becoming an adult in like nineteen sixty eight. I think, um,
like some ship went down that year. You know, there's
a lot of teenagers doing some exciting things. Um. Now,
given how Rush turned out, you might have expect him
to have been active and involved in the politics of
his time. But he was not. And to hear him
tell it now, or to hear him tell it when

(29:44):
he related this to his biographer, the civil rights movement
in the Vietnam years basically all passed him by. He
never attended political rallies. He only dimly remembers hearing of
Bobby Kennedy's death. When Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated,
his radio station asked him to help send out news
or ports for the local NBC affiliate because there were
uprisings all around the country, and Rush did this, but

(30:04):
he didn't actually engage with the news. He was not
actually interested in what was happening. He was just interested
in kind of the business of how news was disseminated.
Quote this is what he said later. I remember talking
to them about the broadcast business NBC. I was seventeen,
playing records on the radio, not commenting on news. I
don't recall feeling any concern. So that is how again

(30:25):
a lot of privilege. There are massive race based uprisings
and the number of US cities, hundreds of thousands of
National Guard troops are called up as after the civil
rights leader is is assassinated, the country is on the
brink of open conflict in Russia, limbol, I don't give
a funk, like I just want to play a record,
So you know, Wow, he's just a rich white kid,
you know, in the middle of Mazara. He doesn't give

(30:45):
a shit. It's so wild to think about someone being
alive at that time and not having a strong feeling
either way about anything. Yeah, he's not doesn't even have
strong hard right sympathies. He just doesn't give a about it.
That is like a kind of privilege that I can't
even begin to fathom. Yeah, and it is important that,

(31:06):
like he's not just taking the right wing side of things.
Were like, well have Martin Luther King? He was a comedy.
He just doesn't care, Like none of this even makes
it into his mind. Like the idea that you would say,
Martin King, who is that again? That which guy Bobby
who got killed? Kind of what demly aware that assassinated? Yeah,

(31:29):
it's it's quite a thing. Uh So I'm going to
quote now from a right up in the New York
Times that ably summarizes Rush Limbaugh's early twenties. Quote. Love
of radio eventually one out over formal education, and he
dropped out of a local college after a year, appalling
his parents. Then began a long, checkered odyssey typical of radio.

(31:50):
Limbaugh held and lost jobs in several cities working under
different names and broadcast styles. He was Rusty Sharp and
Jeff Christie. He was a DJ, a newsreader, a talk host.
In each place he developed components of what would later
emerge as the Limball style. In Pittsburgh, he was a prankster,
convincing listeners that he could see them through a new
experimental picture phone. So he's kind of like a drivetime

(32:13):
morning DJ, like, yeah, we're gonna I don't know, I
can't do the DJ voice, but like playing like sound
bits and doing doing gags. Like he's very like not
even really a shock jock yet because he's not like
combat that has that's like starting to evolve in this
period of UM. I did find some audio from Run
of Russia's very first broadcast in nineteen seventy four, while

(32:35):
he was still in Pittsburgh, and I think it's interesting
because in it you can hear Rush in mid transition
from that drive time DJ voice to the voice of
the Rush Limball who would help breed a modern American
fascist movement. So here he is on w x z's
Solid Rock and Gold show. So without further ado, here
is Rush Limbaugh in nineteen seventy four Billy Cook's rights

(33:00):
and gypsies. See the exciting the Dolphin rated p G
and now showing at the Ark Moore Drive in Bellevue.
Bethel said him a camp Horn drive in Carnegie said,
and send him a world. They have the Dolphin offs
showing in the Hampton plasack hen Hills region and run
the leader Sea of the Dolphin now at these the
Wiggly South Hills South Park Drive in the South Hills
Drive in and Subset Drive. And I certainly hope you

(33:22):
people are writing all of this down. Don't miss a
Day of the Dolphin. It is now showing so very
silly as all radio from the nineteen seventies sounds today, right,
his most radio today sounds. But also like there's you
would never have guessed based on his early performances that
he was going to become what he became. Right, No,

(33:43):
I mean, look, he has undeniably great voice, very good
at parting information like the actual factual information in this
movie is for short playing here at this time, Day
of the Dolphin. Yeah, I can't wait to see it. Yeah,
it's the exciting movie. Day of the Elphen. But that
he's just straight reading things that you cannot misinterpret in

(34:05):
any way, um, if if only he's stuck to that.
But uh, yeah, I I it's so, I guess I. I
I don't want to get ahead of us, get ahead
of ourselves. But the idea that this guy would not
be content doing just this, UM is like what when
does it the idea that it turns like I don't know,

(34:29):
I don't know. I'm sorry, we'll we'll get to that.
But I think it's fair to say this is what
he loved and he would have been perfectly happy if
he could have made a good we're getting to kind
of like a Hitler at art school story where like, yeah,
maybe if he'd gotten to keep being a drivetime radio DJA,
things would have been better, you know, I had. I
had a conversation with a friend of mine, um who

(34:50):
who also does podcasts and radio and for neither of
us it is our thing, our first thing, but we shared, ah.
We we had a conversation where we we shared our
love of being good at reading copy, like when you
have to do ads, there is something that's weirdly satisfying

(35:11):
about like, oh, I sound like a guy on the radio,
like doing a good job at reading this and making
it sound natural and whatever and it's like there's like
there's isn't that enough is enough that there's there's it
is a good feeling when you nail an ad read. Yeah,
it's I mean, I think I think everyone who does
a who who who does a job? That like, I

(35:33):
think it pretty much everyone who has worked. There's a
joy in professional competence of any time you know you're working.
You know, if you're like if you're if you're running
like the cash cashier the grocery store, right when you
get really good at bagging, like it's this, oh, the
the the kind of ecstasy of competence, right where you
can kind of lose yourself in a task, you know,
and be, like him as good at this thing as

(35:53):
I can be, even if you don't like the job.
There's a satisfaction in that. And I think Rush was
happy in this area doing He wasn't rich, he wasn't influential,
but he was doing a thing he loved well and
he was happy in this in the in this period
in the early seventies, um so his early material in Pittsburgh.
It is interesting to me because it's exactly the opposite
of what you'd expect from him. One of his reoccurring

(36:15):
bits was the Friar Shuck Radio Ministry of the air,
where he relentlessly mocked the radio preachers that he saw
coming into the station on Sundays. He thought these guys
were grifters and he hated them. The center of this
bit was that no matter your problem, God would solve
it if you'd send the radio preacher a hundred dollars um.
That's interesting to me, and this is like a real

(36:36):
like running theme in his early careers. He made fun
of preachers all the time, of the exact kind of
religious grifters that later helped make him a wealthy man.
It's very interesting to me. Um. Yeah, there's also He
also would read letters from fans h and at one
point he read a letter that he said was from
a young woman who wanted to be a DJ and

(36:58):
was worried that her gender would hold her back. Here's
what he told her on the air. This is interesting
to me too. You just have to master two techniques,
and I'm going to explain them right now. Number one,
the use of microphone. To use it, simply turn the
microphone to the on position and talk into it. The second,
which is the biggie, is queuing up the record, get
the record you want to play, take it out of
the appropriate shuck, slap it onto the turntable, take the

(37:20):
arm in the needle, placed it on the outside editor
of the record. Then turn the record until you hit
here the beginning of the record. Back it up a
quarter of a turn, and when you get through talking,
the record will start. After you have mastered those two techniques,
girls change your sex, And you can interpret that a
couple of ways. That about the man splaining about how
to turn on a microphone and then he goes, oh, wait,

(37:41):
you can't do it. Well that that. I think there's
two ways to interpret this. One of them is what
you've said, Sovie, that he was just being incredibly sexist.
One of them is that he might he might have
been acknowledging anyone could do this job, but you won't
be able to as a woman because of sexism in
the industry. And I'm really not sure which one he
was going for. Their Yeah, could be both. There is

(38:02):
a kind of lording it over, like you know, this
is a dumb job, but you're still not allowed to
do it. You're still not allowed to do it, ladies. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that that's probably probably accurate. It's probably a bit of
you know what, all ladies are allowed to do products?
Is it at Sophie? Is it participate in capitalism as consumers? Yes,
it is participating. Well, ladies, stick it to Rush Limbaugh

(38:26):
by engaging positively with the system. He spent his life
propping all right, ship. You know I didn't like the
phrase to stick it to Rush Limbab very much. Neither
did I, Sophie. There's some mats ah, we're back. We're
back from those ads. And Paul, I can see the

(38:48):
glow on your face that only comes upon a man's
face the first time that he gets to help advertise
the fine products and surfaces brought to us by the
people at Raytheon. Are you feeling good Paul about now?
Now you are inextricably tied to wonderful products like the
RN I and X knife missile. I Yeah. As a
boy growing up in Philadelphia, I dreamed of advertising from missiles.

(39:15):
That's that's what everyone wants to do, right since Caveman
painted on walls. They dreamed of Raytheon. And now we
are in the privileged position of getting to sell their products.
And I couldn't be happier. Here's what sucks. Ray Theon
is such a cool name, so good. Yeah, I mean
this in this ongoing bit I do. I often like

(39:36):
the RNA and X missile. I think it is made
by Lockheed Raytheon's chips. I believe in it, to be fair.
It's just the name Ray Theon. It's such a good,
shady defense industry. Like it's the name of a company
that ends the world right, like you're talking about like
like a you know, they're going to make a sky
net that kills us all at some point. Their name
is just too on point to not be Yeah. Um

(39:59):
so back to back to Limbaugh. Rush was popular in Pittsburgh,
and his busses appreciated everything but his long windedness. They
repeatedly sent him memos that stated it shut up and
play the records, and for a while he was content
to mostly just do that. But in nineteen seventy four,
the economy took a nose dive and Rush was fired.
He had to move back home with his family, where

(40:20):
he lived for seven miserable months. His dad repeatedly badgered
him to move on and start a real career, but
Rush was committed to radio and eventually he landed a
new gig in Kansas City, where he started taking listener
phone calls for the first time. This was the dawn
of the era of insult comedy, a sort of mean
spirited comedy based on pranks and you know, primarily executed

(40:42):
by shock jocks. Guy's Body by Howard Stern really who
entertained via ostentatious cruelty hungry and I don't know if
I don't know, if you'll if you'll know or not?
Like talk talk radio, how much of a thing is
it at this point of people calling into radio stations
to have conversations with broadcasters. It's starting at this point, right,

(41:06):
This is really kind of the birth of talk radio,
and and rushes on the ground floor of that. Right,
does it does it start with sports or does it
start with with issues? I think it starts with issues.
It starts with their Before what we know is talk radio,
you had had people who would take calls and talk
about politics, both on TV and on the radio. And
one of the things that Rush changes to skip ahead

(41:26):
a little bit is that those guys had mostly been interchangeable, right,
They were just sort of fielding calls and engaging with
with callers Rush and that kind of turns into with
these shock jocks more of kind of a comedy based entertainment.
You have these pranks, you have insults, you have all
this stuff. So it kind of it it evolves out
of a thing that had been going on for much longer. Um.

(41:47):
It's an extension of the idea of the The original
idea of the DJ was maybe a personality, but his
main thrust was I'm giving you this music that you crave,
and that's why you like me is because I'm gonna
maybe get I'm gonna maybe get tracks before other people
get them, and you're gonna hear You're gonna hear this
stuff first. But there's still a thing of it's not

(42:09):
about my personality necessarily. It's mainly about I am the
i I'm I'm, I'm, I'm the Santa clause of music.
I'm giving you these things and that's why you like me. Yes,
and I have access to them first and all this stuff.
So Rush kind of as this, you know, he kind
of sees the writing on the wall white. He loses
his gig as a traditional DJ because that is starting

(42:32):
to become less profitable, right, and there's you know, in general,
the economies taking a shitter. Um so he he he
realizes that kind of the way things are going is
more based around personalities and and comedy and entertaining people,
and he starts to pivot to that. Um so this
is uh. There's a well, an interesting quote that Rush

(42:53):
himself wrote in one of his many interminable books about
how he felt about kind of pivoting to insult comedy. Quote.
I found out something about myself, something that was quite disturbing.
I found out I was really really good at insulting people.
For example, the topic one day was when you die,
how do you want to go? I want to go
the cheapest and most natural way I can. One nice

(43:15):
lady caller from Independence, Missouri said. My response was easy,
have your husband throw you in a trash bag and
then in the Missouri River with the rest of the garbage.
When I went home after it, after a day of this,
I didn't like myself. Is that being I don't know
if that's being good at insulting people. Yeah, that's not
really so, that's just that's just ready to insult people. Yeah,

(43:37):
it is, though. One of the things people will state
and I can't categorically say this, but it seems accurate
based on my recollections of the show. Is even when
people would disagree with Rush on the air, he wasn't
an asshole to them, Like he was not cruel to
to his callers to their faces. Right, he would say
cruel things about liberals, but when people would call in,
he would not like call them monsters. He would not

(43:57):
like he he seems who have genuinely not liked insulting
people to their faces or at least over like directly
insulting people over over the phone or whatever. Um. While
he was disturbed by this, he was not disturbed by racism,
mainly racism against black people. Yeah, yeah, here's where we're going. Um.

(44:20):
At one point during his call in show, he claimed
he had a black collar, and he came claimed to
not be able to understand the man's accent. Limbaugh hung
up on this black man after saying, take that bone
out of your nose and call me back, Which is

(44:40):
I mean? He says it was, Well, we'll get to that.
At another point, he asked his audience, have you ever
noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? UM? Now,
during a nineteen interview, after he had kind of risen
to political prominence, Newsweek asked Limbaugh if he thought these
statements had been racist. He replied, you may interpret it

(45:01):
as that, but I know, honest to God, that's not
how I intended it at all. Gee, don't get me
on in this one. I am the least racist host
you'll ever find. Now, if we're going to try to
analyze Rush from the length of his career, I think
we can say two things. He's probably being honest when
he said that he felt bad about insulting colors because
he did not continue to do that. He is probably

(45:22):
being dishonest when he says that he's not racist, because
he continued to say incredibly fucking racist things about black
people consistently throughout his entire career. Yeah. I mean, the
the the number one indication that someone is racist when
they say that the least racist I has that ever
been said by him by a non racist person. Usually

(45:43):
with somebody, it's always got to be. It's always gotta be.
Not only am I not racist, I am the least
racist person you're ever gonna meet. It's like you don't
maybe don't go that far. Because it's so easily disproved,
also followed by the I don't see color people, I
don't see color. I would say I think most of
the people I think I don't see color. People tend

(46:05):
to be performative Obama voters, the I am the least
racist person in the world. People tend to have strong
opinions on why they should be able to say the
N word, like that would be the split between the
right and the left version. Yeah yeah, and both of
you are fucking racist, so shut up. Yes, yes, she's

(46:28):
she's found out about our opinions on Lichtenstein, which I
refused to apologize for. In the fucking Swedes, my god,
the sweet yeah you do have is shoes with the Swedes.
I have huge issue particularly blue sweet. Um, what did
uga chackamin? Why did you say that at the start
of that song? Okay? Sorry? Rush was Rush was still,

(46:51):
at this point in his career, completely a political His
roommate and close friend at the time later told an
interviewer he was scary smart about everything, but I can't
recall us take talking much about current events. He was funny, though.
I was an audience of one uh Limbaugh's years in
Kansas City were not super successful, and he seems to
have recalled them somewhat sourly. As The New York Times summarized,

(47:13):
Limbaugh likes to say, everything I did in Kansas City,
I failed at He got fired from the station and
quit radio forever to become an executive with the Kansas
City Royals baseball team. Five years later, he quit the
Royals convinced his career there was stymied, and went back
to radio, this time as a news commentator. Again, he
got fired for being too controversial. Also in Kansas City,
he married twice, both marriages eventually ending in divorce. What

(47:36):
are the do we know what the sources of the
what the what the type of controversies? Yes, we're about
to get into that. Okay, yeah, we're about to get
into come on. So it was in Kansas City where
Rush Limbaugh, conservative commentator, made his first public appearance after
getting pushed out of the Royals. No one really liked

(47:57):
him there. He had one friend who was on the
team and that's why he to keep the job. And
when that guy got traded, they pushed him out because
they all hated him. Um So, after getting pushed out
of the Royals. He got a gig at k m
b Z, a local station. He started satirizing what he
considered to be a left wing caricature of a right
wing political commentator. Right the initial right wing rush. Limbaugh

(48:20):
was satire um, and he was being purposefully controversial and
unreasonably extreme in order to make a comedic point. This
was a joke. Initially this did not go over well
with his middle of the road Mormon station manager, but
it made Limball popular with his audience. See, Limbaugh had
caught onto the fact that radio was in the middle
of a revolution. This was the era where the first

(48:42):
big shock jocks, men like Don Imus and Howard Stern,
began their a sense to start them. I found a
wonderful write up about this era on long Reads which
argues that the first radio shock jock was a talk
radio star named Joel Pine in the nineteen fifties, and
I'm gonna quote from this now. We might do an
episode on Pine at some point. His unconventional style, dressed
up to dress down pinko's and women's libbers and riff

(49:05):
on rather than read reports, was neither news nor entertainment.
It seemed to be best described well The New York
Times and Time both did Anyway as an electronic peep show.
The personality free press of the time considered Walter Cronkite
the most trusted man in America and Johnny Carson the funniest,
but Pine, with a syndicated show on more than two
radio outlets, was the most machiavellian when it comes to

(49:27):
manipulating media Icons of Talk author Donna Holper told Smithsonian
Magazine he was the father of them all. Pine briefly
descended from his soapbox in the mid sixties for a
week's vacation after bringing a gun to his show during
the Watts Riots, suggesting the world wasn't quite ready for
his kind of conservative appeal. So Pine is doing the

(49:47):
Rush limbob bit in the fifties and early sixties, but
America is not ready for that yet. Right, he can
get even fifties Americans like this guy's racist into like
and a fucking lunatic. Yeah. So, now, just so I
understand Rush's this satire that he was doing. Yeah, the
idea was here is what uh left wing people think

(50:12):
right wing people are like? And yeah, the point he
is trying to make is they see us as they
see the left wing sees the right wing as uh,
extreme and hateful and um, you know, racist and closed minded, Like,
is that is that the point I was trying to make.

(50:34):
I think so, because he he he even says like
it was a satire right Like, That's how it's portrayed
in his biography that he was kind of his personality
was satiric in nature. Um and and that's kind of
the only way I can interpret it is that he
was trying to satirize what like kind of the loony
right winger, you know, but through the through the lens

(50:54):
of here's how the left sees them. I that's that
was never said direct Yeah, it sounds like it's a
it's a protective phrase of like, I was not satirizing
these guys directly. I was not satirizing right wing people.
I was satirizing how left wing people see right wing. Yes,

(51:15):
that is how I have interpreted what I've read. Yeah, okay,
yeah that does sound like a base covering kind of thing. Yeah,
it a bit. I I do think he started not
believing everything he said. It started as a joke and
him intentionally to provoke controversy, because controversy brings in listeners
and gets gets attention, gets word of mouth. That's why

(51:35):
he was doing it. And the story of Rush Limbaugh
is these these kind of purposefully absurdly extreme satire becomes
what he really believes and is you know, so he's
he's an a political guy who's like this is what
this is, what this is what politics sounds like to me.
I guess, yeah, I think so, and I yeah that
that's how I interpreted. Well, we'll go we'll go over

(51:57):
that more so. Obviously, Pine kind of the fur right
wing radio shock jock had peaked too early and kind
of I guess to steal a phrase from the Nazis
shown his power level to early during the Watts Riots,
and he got kicked off the air. Rush, though, started
getting political at exactly the perfect time. This was the
early nineteen eighties. Howard Stern came onto the scene in

(52:19):
eight four. Don Imus had risen to prominence in the
nineteen seventies. I Miss was another guy my dad listened
to a lot growing up. Um, I Miss in the
morning was like a big part of getting ready for school.
Don Imus is going to be in the fucking TV
and you were like, this guy's having so much fun
and I have to go to prison. I have to
go to prison. This guy's having fun. He's talking about
nappy headed hose, which was like the phrase that he

(52:40):
I forget what it was in reference to, but like
that's what got him in trouble. Um. It was a
women's basketball too. It was a women's basketball team because
don Imus was also very rasist um. So yeah, the
world was still not quite ready for the rush Limball.
We knew uh during while he was like starting to
be political at k m b Z, but a diet
version of what he would become was now acceptable. And

(53:03):
one man who recognized the potential of limbosh Stick was
Norm Woodruff, a consultant to the station who became the
acting program director at Sacramento's k f b K network.
Kf b K needed a new right wing talk radio
host after firing their previous one, a guy you mentioned
at the start of this episode named Morton Downey Jr.

(53:23):
Morton was extremely popular and he was very extreme in
his antics. This had allowed his local station in Sacramento
to repeatedly draw national attention because he would say purposefully
controversial things. This did backfire on Morton Eventually, when he
told a racist on air joke about a Chinaman, which
was a thinly veiled attack on a local city councilman

(53:45):
named Tom Chen, Downey Jr. Was fired and went into
the world of television, where he would somehow say simultaneously
blaze a trail for both Tucker Carlson and Jerry Springer.
We will do an episode on him someday because he's
a very um but his for today he matters because
his firing number one, his success proved that being a

(54:07):
purposefully controversial right wing bigot was really profitable for radio station,
and because when he got fired, Sacramento had a hole
in the station's roster that they needed to fill with
another racist right wing shiphead, just one who was not
quite as racist as Morton Downey Jr. Rush limboss stepped
up and said, not being quite as racist as that

(54:28):
guy is my middle name for now, for now, Eventually
I will be much worse. So Rush Limbaugh moved to Sacramento.
When he started at the station, his new boss Would
Ruff told him, we want controversy, but don't make it up.
If you actually think something, if you actually believe it,

(54:50):
you can tell people why. We'll back you up. But
if you're going to say stuff just to make people mad,
if all you want to do is rabble rouse, if
all you want to do is a find and get noticed,
that's not what we interested in, and we won't back
you up. He was clearly lying. I think this was
asked covering by the station, right, Yeah, but they would
never would never ever push back on his bigotry. But

(55:13):
you know who does push back on bigotry. Paul adds
the products and services that support this podcast. So we're back. Uh.
And at this point, Rush Limbaugh has launched himself as
a a right wing shock jock, and he is an

(55:34):
instant hit zeve Chaffit's rights quote. The station let him
go on the air solo, unencumbered by sidekicks or guests,
and encouraged his highly personal right wing monologues. For the
first time in his career, he was marketed heavily and aggressively.
There were billboards around town showing a finger hitting a
button captioned how would you like to punch Rush Limbaugh?

(55:55):
Rush was so pleased by these that he sent Brian
a snapshot. Morton Downey Jr. Had been a big star
in Sacramento with a five share of the market five
percent of people listening to the radio in a given
fifteen minutes segment. Limbaugh tripled that he was sharp edged
but good humored. The new morning host espouses many of
the same beliefs of his predecessor, Morton Downey Jr. Reported
the Sacramento b but he skates a little further from

(56:18):
the edge of the hole in the ice. Rush was
rewarded for his success with a six figure salary, an
estimable income in the mid nineteen eighties, even by his
father's standards. More important, for the first time in his life,
he really mattered. He was invited to deliver speeches just
like Big Rush. He was an occasional commentator on television
and wrote newspaper collumps. Politicians and celebrities sought him out.

(56:39):
He and Michelle, his wife at the time, bought a
new house and furnished it with products he had he
endorsed on air. So he's a hit. You know, this
is the start of and it's really just almost straight
up from there for the rest of his career. He
finds his niche and he runs with it again. He's
he's a very intelligent, talented man. Anybody else will find

(56:59):
the big ru part really funny. It is very funny.
It's very funny. It's still funny now. I have long
argued that Sacramento is the very mouth of Hell itself,
and the fact that Russia Limbaugh first saw success as
a right wing firebrand there serves to support my hypothesis. Again,
his conscious decision as an entertainer was to be a

(57:21):
satirical version of a right wing polemicist, deliberately exaggerating the
things he did believe for comedic effect. The audience thought
he was funny, but I don't think they got the joke.
And there is some evidence for this, when an Ohio
evangelist a lot of evidence. Yeah, so I think the

(57:41):
earliest evidence for this, I should say, is when an
Ohio evangelist very publicly claimed that the theme song from Mr.
Ed held a Satanic message when played backwards. You know,
we're kind of talking about the Satanic Panic period during
this Rush found this ridiculous, and again, he had a
long history of mocking the evangelical religious right, so when
he heard this, he told his listeners that a Slim

(58:03):
Whitman recording also contained a backwards message of from satan
Zeve Chaffitz writes that to his delight, many Limbaugh listeners
took Limbaugh at his word and flooded the station with
phone calls promising to destroy their Slim Whitman albums to
keep the Devil out of the house. Rush considered this
a hilarious plank, prank. He did not apologize or as

(58:24):
far as I know, correct the record. So we see
in this he's joking, right, he is not. Again, his
whole history is mocking these people. He does not believe this,
but he doesn't correct people because it gets he realizes, Oh,
they're engaged, they're destroying stuff. That means I have power, right.
I think he even found it kind of. It might
have been something that kind of addicted him to this,
This idea that like I can make even if I'm

(58:47):
deliberately being absurd and lying, I can make people take
action based on those absurdities. That's got to be addictive,
and I think it is for him, is absolutely undeniable,
and especially like if you spend time on Twitter, and
if you've ever been like I have on occasion, deliberately
stupid on Twitter and gotten sincere replies to something that

(59:07):
is so obviously a joke, So obviously a joke. It
absolutely is fun. There's nowhere around that. There's nowhere around
that seeing people take you at your word when you
say something that's so patently absurd is it's joyful. It
does give you a real jolt, And there's a This

(59:29):
is a bit of a different case, but I think
there's some similarity. So last summer, you know, I was
covering a lot of the protests in Portland, Oregon, including
doing a lot of live streaming, and very early on,
the police put a fence up around the police station
and there would be marches where like a couple of
thousand people would march to the fence and somebody would
like touch the fence and the police would tear gas

(59:49):
like six square blocks of traffic. And I started calling
it the sacred Fence, and the joke, like the comment
that I was making is that the police are endangering
the lives of thousands of citizens to protect a a
fence because it's sacred to them, right. That went viral
within the city and there were dozens of protests at
the sacred Fence, as everyone called it, including numerous attempts

(01:00:11):
to tear it down and I know that the way
that I framed it had a significant impact on a
lot of people, um, Getting hurt, damaging, defense, getting arrested. Uh.
And it it was both kind of intoxicating and it
also scared the hell out of me. It was one
of the reasons why I pulled back to some extent
on some aspects of my coverage because I got really
worried about the kind of impact that you can have

(01:00:34):
on people by doing that sort of thing. I didn't
want to be It was very concerning to me. But
it was also I'd be lying if I said there
wasn't an element of it that I wanted to do
more stuff like that. And I didn't, but I wanted to,
you know. But and that's that that is the key,
the key difference of uh, you know you seeing something that, um,
catch just catch, just fire in a forgive the phrasing,

(01:00:57):
but catch fire in a in a charge situation. Um.
And how easily people can glom onto something when everything
is so churned up. UM, And then realizing like, oh,
words have power, I have to be careful rather than
words have power. Here we go, here we go, Let's
use it to sell gold. Uh. So Russia's domestic life

(01:01:26):
while he's enduring all this professional success. His domestic life
life with his I think she was his second I
think she was his third wife. Actually, um, I don't know.
He had a couple. He had a lot of wives.
I think actually, no, this was his second wife. His
domestic wife life with his second life at this period
was less than joyful. He was famous and popular, constantly
fitted for dinners and invited to big events. And his wife,

(01:01:47):
Michelle was much less successful. Um. She quit her job
to be as assistant, but she hated the work. It's
a nightmare that they were not a good it. Michelle
loved the outdoors. Rush Limbaugh despise them. Um. Two of
his colleagues tell a story from around this time of
how they convinced him to go rafting once that I

(01:02:09):
think is telling about Russia Limball's personality. So this is
one of Russia's friends talking about at the time they
took Rush Limbaugh on a on a rafting trip in
whatever river it is that goes through Sacramento. Quote, it's
a very very mild ride. Bob gave Russian oar and
told him to abide. You're gonna really love this if

(01:02:32):
you have to know before I start the story, you
have to know we're on a Yeah, Bob gave Russian
oar and told him to absorb the blow of the
canyon wall to give us a little spring back into
the current. Rush Panicked stuck the oar out his arms
stiff as a board, and upon impact he fell overboard.
We got rushed back in the raft and the next

(01:02:52):
day he spent the entire three hours of his show
talking about his horrendous whitewater grapple with the Grim Reaper.
What a fucking baby. I've had people fucking shoot at me,
and I've people showed me with artillery. I've never spent
three hours talking about it, le fucking baby. Uh So,

(01:03:17):
Sacramento is where Limbos started picking up what would become
a voluminous list of mostly self inflicted nicknames. He was
l Rushbo, the all knowing, all caring, all sense of
sensing Maha Rushie. He was also a harmless little fuzzball
and the epitome of morality and virtue. He started claiming
that his show was hosted by the E I B

(01:03:38):
or Excellence in Broadcasting Network, which did not exist. This
joke mainly served as a vehicle for Rush to express
his grandiosity, he declared himself on the cutting edge edge
of societal evolution, swore that he was serving humanity, and
had himself introduced as having talent on loan from God.
His opinions were quote dot meanted to be almost always

(01:04:01):
right nineties seven point nine percent of the time by
the Sullivan Group, which also did not exist. And again
he's joking. And also at a certain point he starts
meaning all of this very literally, right, Like that's kind
of how narcissists were. So it may surprise people to
know that Russia to hear that Russi Lumba's career was

(01:04:23):
launched into the stratosphere in Sacramento, because California is, to
most people outside of California at least, a bastion of
liberal politics. Now, if you actually live and spend time
in the state, you know, like, for example, if you've
ever been to fucking uh, I don't know, what is
that uh, Orange County right where if you've been up
near Reading there's a ship. Look like, there are more

(01:04:43):
right wing Californians than there are right wingers than there
are in like a number of US states. Right Like,
California has a ton of right wingers, and it has
a long powerful conservative political tradition. California gave us Ronald Reagan.
It gave us Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in one of
the most surreal turns and political history, is now among

(01:05:03):
the only rational voices on the right in the United States.
Um so, yeah, California has a powerful right wing and
yes they are, especially in the last twenty something years,
overwhelmed by the much more numerous liberals and leftists. But
in this fact is one of the hints to Russia
Limballs rise. You see, Sacramento is located kind of north

(01:05:24):
of the center of California, not far from some of
the most productive farmland in the country. It is also
not far from north central California places like Reading, which
are right wing strongholds. The conservatives who live in these
areas tend to be very extreme in their beliefs, and
that's partly a response to the liberal and left wing
like government that they live under. They see and this

(01:05:46):
is not they are not entirely or even largely wrong
in seeing this. They see themselves oppressed by many of
the rules liberals in the cities put in terms of
things like gas taxes, right you're living in if you're
a farmer, you know in central or northern California. A
gas tax that is reasonable for people in l A,
San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento is a a hardship on you,

(01:06:07):
and you're not contributing to the kind of pollution in
the cities that the gas taxes are meant to fight.
You know, the strict gun laws and stuff. There's a
lot of things reasons these people have to be angry,
and Rush Limbaugh became their voice. Um so these these
this kind of infuriated very radical right wing who hates

(01:06:28):
the liberals and left that governed California have a voice
in Rush Limbaugh. He obliges their sensibilities with a ceaseless
stream of attacks on liberal California. And that's what makes
him huge is because there's millions of right wingers in
California and Rush limbab becomes like, yeah, he's their voice.
You know, um you could you might even be able
to argue that nowhere but California could have produced Rush

(01:06:51):
Limbaugh as he became uh yeah, so I'm gonna quote
from the book Rush Limbaugh an army of one here
he mocked the multicultural style of California by proposing to
keep uglow Americans off the streets. Militant feminists became feminazis.
The green movement was full of environmental wackos. The American
left became comie Pinko. Liberals and the residents of Rio Linda, California,

(01:07:14):
were synonymous with stupidity. A ringing Debtalate Detalate. Detalate introduced
news updates on what he regarded as the absurdities of
liberal activism. Liberals, of course, hated him, which he found inspiring.
When they attacked him as a dim wit, he responded
by claiming that he was so much smarter than his
critics that he could vanquish them with half my brain
tied behind my back. Just to make it fair. Before long,

(01:07:37):
Rush was too big to stay in Sacramento, which is
again the very mouth of Hell itself. He was introduced
to Ed McLaughlin, the former head of ABC Radio who
had started his own big radio company based out of
New York City. McLaughlin had listened to Russia's show and
decided it had the potential to go national. He offered
Russia partnership, and after some haggling, Russia agreed, He moved

(01:07:57):
to New York and made the E. I B Network
a reality. Rush was thirty seven years old at this point,
in twenty one years into a career of doing almost
nothing but broadcasting on the radio. Again, the voice of
the so called populoust American right. Never did anything but radio,
really um In nineteen eight he launched a new version

(01:08:18):
of The Rush Limbaugh Show, this time for an audience
across the nation. It's sort of hard to find his
stuff from the late nineteen eighties, but I found this
guest appearance he did not long after in nineteen on
another colleague show for the same network. It gives you
an idea of where his radio personality was by this point,
and of how he presented himself right, of how he

(01:08:39):
kind of introduced himself anytime he was coming on the air.
So that's that's we're gonna play this now. This is
kind of the birth of the Rush Limbaugh. We all know, uh,
we all know now one of radios and great broadcasters,
and he's with us today in this studio. We invited
Rush thrill. It's my time. You know. I smoked a
little dope to get ready for this in here and

(01:08:59):
I'm ready to go, man to time. One brain behind you,
half my brain tied behind my back. Just to make
it fair, well, I'll tell you one thing. I use
my talents on loan from God. Man. I heard you
get a little loan from ABC Catas when you renegotiating
a new contract. No, I loaned Limb some money and
I brought you a gift Los Angeles Times. Great, they

(01:09:23):
were saying, well, I wowed him there, didn't as nice?
Have a big article on how you flopped in the
New York Times six minutes before nine. It's like you
started out with just as like a small group of
stations on your start with fifty six and our three
and thirty seven, with the weekly audience about six and
a half million, an average quarter r of a million.
Seven must listen to radio talk show in America. Universe.

(01:09:48):
That's that's Rush Limbaugh at kind of when he goes
viral to them. What do you think about that? About
that how he presents himself on here, What does that
say to you? It's so um, it's so the the
fully formed version of him that that I first experienced,
and like he's really going for it, like he's really

(01:10:10):
he's really uh, like he's so aggressive in it and
and like saying I'm gonna come Like clearly the the
intention is I'm gonna come on your show and I'm
gonna take it over, and I'm gonna I'm gonna be
the the the the I'm gonna be the alpha here.
I'm gonna dominate you, um with this. The the l

(01:10:31):
A the present presentation of The l A Times is
because why that guy got fired from the l A Times. No.
I think he'd been in Los Angeles and they savaged
him in a review. Okay, so it's it's um, you know,
it's that Frankly, it's like it's all the ship that
I hate. Yeah, it's it's so, it's it's aggressive, it's mean,

(01:10:54):
it's um, you know, it's he's also correcting him on
one of his you know, uh eight catch phrases. You
know you have to get a ride. I say it
like this every time. This is the way it goes. Um,
you know, it's just, uh, it's a drag. It's it's
it's a drag. It's also I think there's a thing
that he's doing here. When we talk about all these phrases,

(01:11:16):
half my brain tied behind my back. Uh, you know
the god, all these different phrases that were that he
continuously used for decades. I I don't want to. I
don't know. I hope this doesn't seem a little pompous,
but I kind of make a comparison between that and
like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Right, this like the
way that anytime you've got home or introducing it's always
like you know, the there's certain phrases. Anytime Achilles comes up,

(01:11:39):
he uses the same kind of phrases, same couple of
phrases to introduce him. These descriptive phrases, um to introduce
a character that are repeated constantly throughout the because it's
a because it was a spoken story, right, Like that's
where you're supposed to deliver it. That works. It gets
in people's heads. They associate those phrases with those characters.
Russia is kind of doing. This is an old tactic,
but it works. Um. It's the same thing Trump does

(01:12:01):
with his impulse and insults Crooked Hillary, right, sleepy Joe. Um.
These are effective tactics, and that's what Russia is doing
to to inculcate his followers, primarily with this idea that
he is a genius, right, and it again he's joking,
but he's also not because this ship buries itself in
your brain. Um, he's he's he knows what he's doing.

(01:12:22):
It's he's a very savvy person. Yeah, it's like when
you when you people like that that that understand the
importance of branding over having an actual thing to say.
Like it honestly, the the what you what the content
is secondary to the presentation of here's who I am.
I'm going to tell you through repetition, this is my

(01:12:45):
whole thing. It's like they're they're you know, comics. That
to me, it always makes me think of comedians that
um majored in marketing in college. And then it's like, okay,
but are they actually that funny or did they just
are they able to really sell themselves so well that
that the content is secondary to the image. You have

(01:13:06):
two kinds of people who really are able to build
a following. People who are able to build a following
because folks genuinely just enjoy that the work that they're
bringing into the world, they like their personality, they like
what they're doing. And then you have folks who are
able to build a following primarily because they do cult leadership. Right, Yeah,
that's the that's what the marketing comedians, right, that's what
this is cult leadership. This is how you do it. Um.

(01:13:26):
We do a little bit of that here. Um. But
we're all guilty a little We're all guilty a little bit.
And I'll be guiltier when I get I don't know,
a couple of hundred people killed by the FDA in
my mountain top compounds, which I you know is always
the goal. Paul, You're very welcome if you would like
to have an armed standoff with thes How you know
you're successful. That's how you know you're successful when a
three letter agency burns you down. By anyway, I don't

(01:13:50):
need to Waco this time, UM want to that's a
good one. Yeah, Well I took an almost an hour
to Wanny for Robert to mention Waco, good job. I'm
getting you know, I I realized I was wacoing a lot,
trying to cut back. You know, here is first wake up.

(01:14:14):
But we'll we'll talk off air, Paul about synergizing our
cults in the near future. Anyway, So Rush did not
tone himself down at all after he went mainstream. In fact,
he grew more extreme, and he seems to have quickly
forgotten that he was ever practicing satire. At the very
height of the AIDS crisis, rush launched a new segment

(01:14:35):
on his show, the AIDS Update. And I find it
interesting how different sources report on this. When Limbaugh died,
it was obviously a big story, the fact that he'd
done this AIDS update. Uh. And it was in fact,
limbaugh AIDS Update was like the second or third most
googled term alongside his name the day he died. Snopes
and Newsweek both published prominent fact checks on this story.

(01:14:55):
But Zeep Chaffitz's biography of Limbaugh came out well before
Rusha's death, and before the AIDS up dates were really
talked about all that much outside of, you know, the
community they most impacted, uh and not. I think it's
interesting how Zev wrote about it, not knowing that this
was one going, one day, going to become a significant story.
So this is how Zev wrote about the AIDS Update.
After an ACT UP demonstration at St. Patrick's Cathedral in

(01:15:17):
New York City that disrupted a mass, Limbaugh chastised militant
homosexuals for their disrespectful behavior, and shortly thereafter began broadcasting
irreverend and tasteless AIDS update segments produced introduced by Dion
Warwick's I'll Never Love This Way Again in his traveling
stage show The Excellence and Broadcasting Tour. He did a
bit when he put a condemn over the microphone to

(01:15:37):
illustrate safe speech. So that's how the AIDS update was
kind of framed by Zev before it was a big story.
Now here's how Snop's characterized it in their fact check
after Limbaugh died. And I think and before that, like
already that doesn't sound good that. No, I don't think
zev is trying to whitewash it. I think that he
just doesn't see it story even just plainly stated that

(01:16:00):
it's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible, and it sounds worse when
Snopes goes into more detail on this quote. At the
height of the HIV AIDS crisis, The Rush Limbaugh Show
featured an AIDS update in which Limbaugh joked about an
epidemic that had claimed more than a hundred thousand lives
between nineteen one and nineteen ninety. Specifically, Limbaugh targeted gay
men who had died. In addition to joking about their deaths,

(01:16:21):
Limbaugh reportedly played songs during the segment, including kiss Him Goodbye,
I'll Never Love This Way Again, and Looking for Love
and All the Wrong Places. Snopes dot Com uncovered an
interview when The Cedar Gazette from nineteen ninety in which
Limbaugh said the segment was politically oriented and based upon
my reaction to what I considered to be extremism in
the political mainstream by a group of people. Per The
Cedar Gazette, Limbaugh said his target is not AIDS victims,

(01:16:44):
but militant homosexuals who blamed church and government officials for
the epidemic. The AIDS update is meant to offend them,
Limbaugh said, damn right. According to a nineteen nine Los
Angeles Times article, it was a popular segment, but it
also created outrage among AIDS activists, something not helped by
Limbaugh repeat reportedly saying gays deserved their fate. Mocking the

(01:17:05):
horrific deaths of gay people isn't something that will get
a conservative radio host fired today, So obviously this was
never more than a mild bump in Limbo's career. Back
in nineteen ninety and it says a lot about where
the right would go that a segment dedicated to mocking
joyfully the deaths of people he disagreed with was popular,
right that would become the mainstream for Republicans. Now, in

(01:17:27):
nineteen ninety, it was still a thing he had to
apologize for. Uh. And that year is the year he
became officially famous. Nineteen ninety. He had his first live
TV appearance on June two, when c SPAN did a
special on talk radio. Um and yeah, so this is
like he he does kind of have to sort of
say that he regretted uh doing this, that he felt
like he was kind of attacking people who um um

(01:17:50):
like he he was like, I didn't mean to be
mocking people who had died. I was trying to attack
these militant activists and so I stopped. Yeah, who are
so far are still alive? Yeah? Um? Anyway, that so
he does a TV appearance on c SPAN in nineteen
nine on June second, which is kind of his first
big TV appearance. Um. And then The New York Times

(01:18:11):
is a big profile on him. Uh. From that quote,
with its characteristic attention to production values, the network simply
set up a camera inside a spare w a b
C seventy seven studio in New York and let the
self proclaimed most dangerous man in America roll cut to
a shlub in a cheap white dress, shirt, black tie
and hastily barber shopped helmet of hair, already wiping sweat
and grumbling about the TV lights planted behind his desk,

(01:18:33):
and Mike interrupting the station's young newscaster, Kathleen Mahoney. She's
trying to do her five minute top of the Hour
update oddly for nineteen ninety while wearing a mask because,
as she explains, the host had warned her, it could
be dangerous to let his listeners identify her on TV
as a liberal feminist. He was only joking. Limbaugh insists,
you said wear a bag over my head. Maloney says.

(01:18:53):
Limbaugh keeps threatening to yank her mask off, complimenting her
beauty and interjecting impatiently, the news just holds up everything here.
I'm trying to make the news worthwhile. There's a lot
in there. Jesus, that's his that's a New York Times
important a Span appearance. Yeah, he's like both saying you
should cover your face because my listeners will harass you
for being a liberal feminist and also take off that

(01:19:16):
mask let everyone see your pretty face. Like he's simultaneously
both threatening her and um and sexually harassing her. It's
it's good. It seems there's something about that that seems
so modern. What mean? Yes, I feel that he's because
he brought, he created the right, you know, so you

(01:19:40):
can see it, you know, in nineteen that's what he's doing. Yeah, now,
nineteen nineties, As I said, also when The Gray Lady
published their first full feature dedicated to l. Rush Bow.
The article is fascinating and valuable since it seems like
few copies of his early nineteen two episodes exist, So
this New York Times right. It provides with several fascinating

(01:20:01):
insights into how Russia's show evolved during this period, and
more to the point, into where American conservatism was about
to follow in his wake. At one point, a critic
calls in, This is again the New York Times writing
about his show from an episode we don't have anymore.
So at one point in the show, a critic calls
in and tells Rush quote, I believe you are doing

(01:20:21):
a great disservice by using the program to convince people
that if poor people are not successful, it is their fault.
You were just a paid advocate of the rich and
you despise the poor. Now that's very accurate. The author
of the New York Times article notes that, perhaps due
to his guilt over his crueler shock jock days, Rush
is very polite to his liberal callers, and this is
what The New York Times writes as Russia's answer. You

(01:20:44):
misunderstand my point. There is nothing wrong with being rich.
It's not evil. Most rich people earned it by virtue
of hard work. This has always been the country that
people come to because there has always been a chance
for opportunity. And if you start punishing the people who
bust their tail to be prosperous, then you're going to
unmotivate people to try that. I am not a paid
defender of the rich. I'm a proud promoter of the
American way of life. Yeah, what are the I guess

(01:21:09):
that's a thing. You can just say that most rich
people earned their money, Like, yeah, it's it's a it's
objectively untrue. But yes, you can say that untrue. But
I guess if you if you are born to wealth,
but then you also get a job that makes you
even wealth. Yeah, that's like work. I mean, look at
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, still Gates, all guys who were

(01:21:31):
born to wealth, they were born crazy rich. They weren't
born with fuck you money, but they were born into
wealth and then they were able to get fuck you
money because of the he And there's a lot written
about that. You know, Bill Gates having access to a
computer in an era when basically no one did. Uh
Bezos being able to secure a huge loan from his
parents in order to help start his first business. Uh.

(01:21:51):
Elon Musk also getting a loan from his dad to
start a business. You know, it's the way it always
works for these people. And they they spend that as
self made you know, um, yeah, because in their mind
it's true. Because in their mind it's true, and they
do work hard. And if you work hard, you can
convince yourself that you've earned it, as opposed to like,
I worked hard, but it only like I can say
I worked hard, I can also say I am only

(01:22:13):
financially successful because I got lucky. And I know other
people who worked as hard as I did, who have
not been nearly as financially successful. And it's not because
of a lack of talent. It's because I got a
break that they didn't, you know. That's and leaving leaving that,
leaving that part out is how you were able to
convince other people that that that the majority of people

(01:22:34):
who are the majority of people are a wealthy through
hard work. Yeah, it's nonsense. So that New York Times
piece reveals that by nineteen ninety, Rush was already popular
enough to draw massive in person crowds, and this was
unheard of for a talk radio personality. Today we're well
acquainted with right wing thought leaders who can draw thousands

(01:22:55):
upon thousands of fanatically loyal followers to in person gatherings.
But was really the first. From the Times quote, there
are towns where he hasn't heard, unheard and unheard of,
and then there are places like Tampa, where the announcement
of a Rush Limbaugh stage show sold out the seat
Ruth Eckert Hall in four days. The occupants of those
seats are out of them and cheering when Limbaugh appears

(01:23:16):
in a three piece tuxedo. They're like the crowd for
a country western concert, says Dan Woollet. The halls director
of operations. After sizing up the crowd in the lobby
surprisingly youthful and more beer than wine drinkers. You're gonna
have fun tonight, Limbaugh tells them. And at the same time,
you're gonna learn some things. Pacing constantly, he does some
jokes that poke fun at the Japanese and the liberal media.

(01:23:39):
One of his jokes is that Judgment Day comes and
the Washington Post article banner reads world ends tomorrow. Women
minorities hardest hit. It's like that's the you know, you
see what he's going for their Yeah, I see what
he's going for. Yeah. Later in his live show, Russi
engaged in a popular bit wherein he brings a piece
of ship to a modern art gallery, and the joke

(01:24:00):
is that, like, modern artists so dumb that if you
like poop and take right, it's very obvious. This is it.
You can find Ben Shapiro making the same basic joke
decades later. And the gift of it is that just
of it is that, you know, liberals are so dumb,
they'll stare at ship if you tell them it's art.
The Times introduces this bit and then moves on to
something that I found chillingly relevant quote. Art criticism is

(01:24:21):
a Limboss staple. He believes there is a culture war
going on between those upholding decent values conservatives and the
commie lib hordes trying to devalue human life and worst
undermine private enterprise. Limbos sermon on art brings out the
evenings only heckling a female cry of censorship. Oh no,
Limbo protests he never spoke that word, but seconds later

(01:24:43):
he allows that censorship isn't really so bad. It has
been used throughout this nation's history as a means of
maintaining standards. Means maintaining standards. Yeah, what the funk is

(01:25:03):
he talking about? What he's talking about is spreading the
needle that the right is now the sit like right,
the main I went I was in fucking I took
a concealed handgun course in Texas because I'm getting my
out of state permits so I can be armed in
more parts of the United States because of all that
is like going to cooking school in Paris. Yeah. Well,
and and the thing started with like a thirty minute

(01:25:26):
lecture from the instructor on cancel culture, Like this is
the big thing within the right. I know, I know,
I know this is the big thing within the right
now and it it Limbaugh is starting both like saying like, well,
the liberals want to like censor us when I want
to cut out all ideas they disagree with, and then
he he moves on to saying, but also, it's okay

(01:25:47):
to censor people sometimes, right, because this is what the
right believes. It's cancel culture if you, if people don't
like it and if they suffer financial consequences for being racist.
But it's not cancel culture if they go out of
their way to censor left wing and liberal voices, which
they do through things like school books. Right, objectively true,
well documented. This is how the right works. Um, I

(01:26:09):
don't know when listening is going to disagree, but it's frustrating,
but it is. It is absurd, the idea of of
you know, like, it's it's cancel culture if you, if
you compare being conservative to being a jew in late
nineteen thirties Berlin to like it should be illegal to

(01:26:30):
give the finger to the flag. It's amazing, And that,
Paul is the end of part one of what is
going to be like three hours of talking about rush
Limballow deserves, but how to do it. I mean, he
deserves this much time, not in a good way, but

(01:26:51):
in a we need to understand what this man has
done to us all. Absolutely. And it's also if you're
if you're willing to go to bat for Rush Limbaugh
because you think it's mean that somebody is glad that
he's dead. Um, let's lay it all out and here's
here's why some people might might not be so sad. Yeah,

(01:27:13):
evidence both that he deserves to have his death cheered
and also that he loved laughing at people's deaths. Ye,
you're in a way, you are, you are. It's what
he would have wanted. But you know what I want
right now, Paul, I want you to plug your plug doubles. Well,
let's see. Uh. You can find me um on social
media at p F Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram. I

(01:27:37):
have a bunch of podcasts going on at any Human Time,
UM Freedom Uh, which I co host with Lauren Laftas
and Scott Ackerman, and Stay of Homekins, which I co
host with my wife. We started a podcast during the
pandemic and unfortunately we are still doing it. Um uh

(01:27:57):
and I do UH. I do shows. The first live
streaming improv shows the first Monday of every month with
my friend Lauren Laptus um and um that all those
tickets can be found at Paul left thompkins dot com
slash Live. Well, speaking of cancel culture, this episode is
now over and thus canceled because of the lips. It's

(01:28:19):
done by Bye m h.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins