The Press Box - Rush Limbaugh's Legacy

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Bryan and David take a look at the controversial legacy of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh following his death. They examine how the conspiratorial and bigoted nature of his personality left a lasting impact on conservative politics and media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Ryan Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here. This is an emergency episode of the press box to talk about the death of Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio host who died today at the age of 70. Limbaugh had been suffering from advanced lung cancer, which was diagnosed just over a year ago. In October, Rush set on his show stage four, as they say, is terminal. I never thought I would see October 1st.

I never thought I would. David, this is going to be one of those honest obituaries. We're going to talk about the stuff Rush said on his radio show. We're not going to pull any punches here, I don't think. But before we get to that, if it's even possible to put that to the side just for a second, can we just talk about Rush Limbaugh radio host as in what he did with the medium, what he did to the medium? Yeah, sure. Because I just, I remember back in the 90s, you and I were in middle school.

I knew nothing about politics. I did not understand at all the level of ugliness that Rush Limbaugh was sort of spouting on the radio. But I remember hearing that show, which seemed to be on in every like parents of Volvo in Fort Worth, Texas. And I remember just being struck by the way he could do a. radio show for three hours by himself. Just like hold the whole thing. You know, he took calls and all that stuff. Occasionally had guests on there.

But there was something and you understood why that show was so popular and so, you know, so big. It was because he had this presence, this weird, almost indescribable presence on the air. Yeah. I mean, he was like a, I mean, now it's sort of easy to point and say. and sort of identify him, although you'd probably more readily identify other people by comparisons to Limbaugh. But at the time,

he was, you know, one of one. And you could probably draw, you know, you'd probably say he was like sports and sports radio hosts at the time. Obviously, there was a sort of ideological comparison to like coast to coast AM or something like that that you could make, right? I mean, like it's, wasn't the first conspiracy theory to take a microphone. To host a...

Okay, okay. On conspiracy terms, I'll take it. But do not, do not say mean things about Art Bell on the podcast. I certainly would never. But there was the feeling that, you know, setting aside the actual politics and just general depravity of what he was doing. I mean, he was an incredibly talented broadcaster. And you got the feeling that he kind of could have done anything. You know, he could have hosted any kind of show for three hours on the air and probably would have

been pretty compelling doing it. He just right-wing politics were the sort of medium that he chose. And that was a decision that sort of changed American politics forever. And what was amazing is that he did the show every day alone or virtually alone. You know how hard that is? Like David and I are trying to do 45 minutes twice a week and we're basically wheeling each other around in wheelchairs because the other one starts. thought and can't finish it or, you know, it doesn't know what they're going to say or something

like that. This dude was up there just all by himself for hours and hours and hours a week, which was just crazy. And your point about it being different is totally right because in the 90s, talk radio was like the cutting edge medium. And it just sounded different than everything else. You know, TV news was pitched at this particular level. And remember, we'll come back to cable news in just a second.

But there was no really, no such thing as cable news except, you know, Bernard Shaw on CNN. But here was this new medium which was speaking in a completely different way. We're not doing that false niceness of TV. We're not doing this. We're just coming, we're coming right at you. And what's going to make us different is not only the content, but the way we say it. And that's what's going to hook people on the shows. Yeah, I mean, Limbaugh was, I mean, to look at him, he was about as buttoned up literally as you could get.

I mean, he looked like a cartoon attorney with his name on the sign out front, right? I mean, he just had the suspenders, the ties, the fine, the shirts, the cigars, his physique, all that stuff went into it. But there was definitely a kind of off-duty vibe to what he was doing, right? I mean, this was not, what he was competing with in a lot of ways was this sort of very, very buttoned up national news that at that point, like you said, I mean, it was not, did barely resemble what we see today. Yeah. And the national news was either his explicit or implicit subject all the time.

I remember once talking to Colin Coward about this. And he was like, you know, the whole premise of talk radio is everybody's lying to you but me. That's the premise. that was absolutely the premise of the Rush Limbaugh show. Yeah, for sure. All those other people out there, the media, the politicians, your next door neighbor who's a liberal, they're all lying to you. I am the one guy who is telling you the truth.

So you got to listen to me. And you got to listen to me all the time. Yeah, I mean, we saw that. Obviously, the Fox News is the, all of the big shows in Fox News are sort of videological airs of his for a lot of different reasons, but particularly. you could see that in the beginning of of Bill O'Reilly's like the no spin zone and all you know all the sort of

we re-report you to side stuff from Fox News the sort of the the implicit or explicit statement that we are we are doing this honestly in a way that the world you know that you're and you're used to being fed lies by whatever the mainstream

it. Totally other people are bound by political correctness. They're bound by ideology. They're bound by the standards of the newsroom. I don't have any of that. The talk radio host says, I'm giving it to you straight. I'm the, I'm the last person. Another striking thing about Rush Limbaugh back in the day. The single biggest subject of talk radio is how great the talk radio host is. Yeah. That was Rush. What would he said? Talent on loan from God. He said that all the time on the talent on loan from God. His second book was called

See I Told You So. Again, very, very similar to O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, where the subject of the show is the host more than anything else. I remember as a kid hearing that Pretender song that

somehow became Rush Limbaugh's theme song. The do, do, do do do do, do all the time. His producer, whom he called Bo Snurdley, the guy's real name is James Golden. I have no idea how James Golden became boast nerdly. He was a big character.

You and I've talked on this show about how Donald Trump is a lifestyle brand in addition to being the former president of the United States. Rush was a lifestyle brand. Yeah, well, for sure. Back in the 90s. He sold ties. Like, people went out and bought Rush Limbaugh neckties at a department store. They were ties that he designed, right?

They were like watercolor paintings that Rush Limbaugh himself had created somehow. I always thought they weren't exactly the kind of tie you would have expected Rush to have picked. No, not at all. There was something, there was a kind of like a modern art museum quality to the tie. Yeah. But yeah. It wasn't just like golf balls on teas or something like that. You know, it's very.

Or just, you know, bright colors and primary colors and right angles. It was the opposite of all that, which was a little, which was interesting. Yeah, two bestselling books, the first of which was the way things ought to be. 1992. He had a TV show. If you are interested in the development of right wing thought in America, go down the YouTube rabbit hole on that. He published the Limbaugh letter. Do you remember this, David? Which was kind of like the bantha tracks of right wing talk radio. Like here is my letter about my show. That was a thing. Female listeners were invited to buy a bumper sticker that said Limbaugh babe. You put that on your car if you were so inclined. And there was also a cottage industry of anti-Rush stuff. Yes, I'm glad you mentioned this. Please go on.

You remember like that like so Rush Limbaugh was in like every 90% of the Volvos you and I got in when we were in middle school. It was on the radio. Like you said you got in your friend's mom's car and it would already be going. Yeah. The Pretender song was already was already bumping through the speakers. But then there was like 10% of Volvos. that were like competing Volvos, and they would have a flush Rush bumper sticker on the bumper.

Like Rush Limbaugh was the singular subject that we were all talking about somehow. Maybe that's meaningful. It's like before Rush Limbaugh, there were some political conversations, the environment, I'm sure many others, they really could only happen

through the medium of bumper stickers, like both sides of the spectrum. Somebody would have a bumper sticker, somebody would come up with an opposing bumper sticker. But Rush sort of, Rush broadened that, right? He sort of busted those walls down to let us have these, these irritating conversations on a public platform.

Yeah. Remember there was like a Bill Clinton bumper sticker and then like a year later after he got elected, there was, don't blame me, I voted for Bush. Right. All of American life was having conversation via bumper sticker in the 90s again. You had to be there if you have no idea what we're talking about. Is there any doubt Rush created the template for Fox News? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, there's a million examples, I'm sure, that pre-day Rush, but a lot of the people who were populate Fox News ended up coming from the radio, right, and coming from kind of learning under his wing. And I thought that, I mean, Rush managed to, despite all of his detractors, Rush was seen kind of in the news genre. And I think that sort of, The fact that he was accepted in that way sort of blazed the trail for, you know, the blurring of those lines. Yes. I mean, I just remember the first time I saw like the argument shows on ESPN and I was watching him. I was like, oh, I know what they did.

They just took sports talk radio, the style of it, the heat of it, the passion of it. And they just had the hot takes of it. And they just put it on TV. And it was the same thing with Fox News. Like you were watching that early Fox News stuff and a little bit on the other net. Would you like, oh, they just took what was working on the radio and made it into a TV show? Like nothing happens on Sean Hannity's show. There's like, what, a graphic next to him with like a semi funny title or on Tucker Carlson?

They interview a guest every so often. But like, it is a man talking into a camera in almost exactly the same way Rush Limbaugh was talking. into a radio mic. It's true. I mean, and, Hannity obviously has a three hour,

I think a three hour show of his own. It certainly was three hours in the past. You mean, you look at people like Hammer, like, you know,

in sports world, Stephen A. Smith, and you're tempted to ask how they get it done, right? How do you come off a three hour radio show

and then do an hour long TV show in the same day? And it is sort of, in some sense, that the radio show is the dry run, right? I mean,

it's the dress rehearsal for what ends up going on the air. There's not a ton of difference. And all of that stuff. sort of spins out from from rush limbo it's funny i mean you know tv is always drawn from radio the earliest tv shows were i mean like you know dramatic tv shows were filmed radio serials and you know that sort of thing and the newscasters on-air voices went straight from one world to the other but i guess there's still we're still drawing from it in in sports and in politics when it works it works

and you know why it's cheap what do you need i need a host and i need a set and And I'm pretty much good. Now, it's got to be a host who's, like, compelling and can look into the camera and actually make people not just want to turn it off since nothing's really happening on your screen. But, like, that's why it works. And it was weird. It sort of took everybody that long to figure it out. I mean, I also think in terms of the Fox News template, like, conspiracies were a big, big subject on right wing talk radio in the 90s. Let us let us not forget or let us try to forget Vince Foster and that whole business.

as we've seen with the 2020 election and voting machines and all that stuff, that has transferred almost perfectly to Fox News or Fox Business, or wherever you want to say. All the fear stories we read now about how Fox News or maybe like an alt-right website or Q&On message boards or whatever have broken the media, those were written about right-wing talk radio in the 90s. The mainstream media looking at this thing that was kind of encircling it and criticizing it and terrorizing it and going,

what's that? You know, why are people listening to that instead of listening to us? That was very much a rush thing. I mean, the whole, you know, washing machine cycle of the right wing media

is that like someone has to like say the thing first, right? And then someone else can report on it and someone else can report on that. And Rush Limbaal was, had a very big platform to say the thing first or to, you know, you know,

amplify someone else's, conspiracy theory or lie or whatever else. I mean, he was one of the biggest voices, if you want to get into content, I mean, we can turn that corner, but he was one of the biggest voices using the phrase death panel back when, you know, after Barack Obama got elected and was, and was, you know, putting together Obamacare. And that's, you know, not that by a long shot, the most sort of galling thing that he did. Totally. And that's a, that's a great point, because just like Fox News is the place where right-wing talking points get road tested and tweaked and improved and you see what works because you see what the audience is responding to like, oh, let's let's throw the migrant caravan on. And then like 10 minutes later, all the congressional candidates are running on the migrant caravan, right?

That's become like the topic to scare the shit out of everybody. That was absolutely rush. We're going to come up with these things. he's going to either amplify them on the radio or slightly change them on the radio, and it's going to be this kind of feedback circle that exists on the right in a way it doesn't exist on the left. Yeah, I mean, we compare to the talk radio. I mean, a lot of people will, you know, obviously there's some comparison to Howard Stern

or Don Imis or sort of the other people who were big names and radio sort of at the same time. And, you know, there was nothing on the left ever like Rush Limbo. And part of the reason for that is because that audience was listening to Howard Cern. They weren't looking for a left-wing political radio figure to listen to. What Rush Limbaugh did was sort of, I mean, you talk about a lifestyle brand. I mean, he did sort of identify an audience in the country that was underserved. And, you know, people were interested in listening to counterintuitive political takes. Which is the nicest way we can possibly put.

it. But yeah, I mean, no, absolutely. I mean, but it's, you know, there, there was, there was an audience there, um, that did not, that does not exist on the left in the same way, you know, the attempts at air America and all kinds of other things included. And, and he identified that and obviously Fox and a million other people who profited off on, off of its sense. Yeah. I mean, that's, I, I feel the left has been like chasing the whole idea of we need our own Rush Limbaugh for how many decades now? Remember, remember, remember, Air America and that whole attempt to do that. And it was all this idea of like, okay, the right has this very efficient information or disinformation transferral mechanism. Why don't we have something like that? And as you point out, the biggest problem was people are just like, yeah, I'm already watching like John Stewart, right? Or I'm listening to NPR or I'm listening to Howard or I'm listening to whatever I'm listening to.

And I just don't, I don't really want this. Like there's not a hole in my life. Exactly. Well, I mean, I think what the significance of Rush Limbaugh is greater than being a radio host or being a media host, really. I mean, I think that the reason, if you're on the left and you're really thinking who is our Rush Limbaugh, do we need a Rush Limbaugh? Who can fill that role? I mean, Rush Limbaugh, in so many ways, his biggest role was being the leader of the party when the party was rudderless, right? I mean, when there was, he started during the Reagan era, but his greatest prominence has come during

the Clinton era and during the Obama era. He was, you know, the nominal leader of the Tea Party movement, not because he really jibed with their stated goals or that he helped start or whatever, but because that era was sort of defined by not having a leader, right? I mean, that was a, that was a Republican Party in search of a new identity, and he was the loudest voice in the room. You know, he was a, he was a, there was a, I think in the New York Times, Obit, there was a, it said that Trump's election came to him as a relief. He's like, finally, I can go back to being a fan and stop being a leader or something to that effect. You know, but that was his, that's why he was so powerful, you know, because he was more or less consistent

in his, you know, bigotry and conspiratorialness and whatever else. And he was always there, even when, you know, the biggest names in Republican politics weren't. So he just brought us to the next point. Did Rush Limbaugh create the template for Donald Trump? Yeah, I think he did. I mean, I think that, you know, in the period since Trump left office, and certainly, especially in the past couple of, you know, week or two dealing with his impeachment trial, I've thought a lot about just the concept of Trumpism, because Trump didn't originate any of the stuff

that built, quote-unquote, Trumpism, right? But they, but, but, but he sort of unified it in a very, in a sort of gross way. Uh, in a, you know, Trump, a spray-tanned package, I guess. But it makes more sense in the context of rushism or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Trump was sort of the logical endpoint of, of what Russia had been doing for decades, right? It's a sort of, it's not so much a political, a cogent political system as it is just sort of, of a, you know, the unfiltered sort of pathos of caveman conservatism or whatever, you know, I mean, it's just, it's like, it's just a nut job slice of what, of, you know, the sort of extreme

version of conservatism. And it, but it's what came to define in some ways the entire movement. Wrapped in the package of entertainment, right? Like, this is, this is kind of like a long monologue, right? That's Donald Trump on the stump. That's Rush Limbaugh. It's a long, it's a long, monologue featuring insults, featuring something like comedy, featuring racism, oh yeah, featuring misogyny, featuring all those kind of things in this kind of package. And by the way, goes back to the, no, you can't trust anybody but me, right? That was Rush Limbaugh, that was talk radio, that was Donald Trump. The length, and we talked about the length of the show and the length of, you know, Trump's speeches,

there was a huge, there was, there was a, there was a, and Trump's, when Trump is running for And then as he was president, giving speeches, you know, pep rallies or whatever, there was a huge degree to which the mainstream media just didn't know what to do with it, right? I mean, it's like, if Trump was out there giving five minutes stump speeches, then everybody would know how to take that on. And in some sense, how to take him down. But because he just went on for an hour and a half, like he was hosting a radio show, it's like, it's, you know, probably the same reason why Rush was able to get along, I mean, to go on as long as he did. If Rush, if Rush took the exact same content he was working with in the past two years and put it on Fox News,

he probably would have been canceled, literally, not just figuratively, you know, but he was able to exist sort of outside, despite being as the most influential, probably person over the past two decades in conservative politics, he sort of existed, except for a few bright shining moments

outside of the consequence of being a media figure of that significance. Yes, and I feel like media matters sort of got on to him a couple of years ago, whenever he started doing the, video feed of his show because it just made it like watchable for somebody at media matters and they could do like a so like here is the atrocious thing rush limbaugh said today clip but it did it did feel you're exactly right it did feel like talk radio somehow just because of the way it was transmitted or the pre podcast era where you you just had to actually record a show to get it or subscribe to some weird thing instead of being able to just grab it on your phone when it was done it just sort of vanished into the ether somehow Sure. So you could say stuff and not get away.

I mean, you know, it's funny. Like, I remember when Al Franken wrote his book about Rush Limbaugh, which was on the shelf of the Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, Lower East Side apartment back in the day. That was one of the first places I had seen all the things Rush Limbaugh said in one spot. Well, he kind of aggregate. He was kind of like doing the media matters aggregation. of Rush in addition to doing to Rush what Russia had done to so many people. Yeah, I mean, I remember just from like, the main joke basically about that out of Franken book was that he wrote a book.

I mean, he wrote a book like Rush Limbaugh wrote books, right? I mean, Limbaugh was one of the original people who sort of broke the book selling algorithm, right? That there were just that his books would be on the tables of Barnes & Noble in hardcover for just years upon years, right? I mean, you're just like, like, no one had, like, honestly, like, I'm sure there, I'm sure there's a, the books, but it was like, who else did that besides, like, up to that point besides, like, John Feinstein or something like that? You know, I mean, just like some, like, really epicical Father's Day sports book or some, you know, military history.

I don't know. Rush Limbaugh would crank out, oh, go, you have an answer? Well, I just, I just have a memory of going to, like, Sam's Club in the 90s. Yeah. And you remember Sam's Club had like 1,000 copies of each book, like stacked on the floor. And it would, you would just kind of do this, like, swivel. It would be Rush Limbaugh, new book, Earth and the balance. by Al Gore, Norman Schwartzcoff's memoirs

over there, and then like one thing by John Grisham or Stephen King. Like Rush was a part of that group. And it's like, I mean, and dude, think about like, it does testify to how big he became that Al Franken later to become a U.S. Senator just wrote a book about Rush Limbaugh. Yeah. Like that was, that was a, which itself was a bestseller, right?

That was like a marketable book. I am going to take down Rush Limbaugh. That was something that Al Franken, well-known comedy writer, a later politician, did with his time. And that was, you know, the only example of sort of the other side of the aisle doing that sort of thing, right? I mean, like we said, very little radio presence on the left. The Daily Show was not, did not exist, or at least did not, was the Craig Kilbourne version in those days. and so didn't exist in any real way. And yeah, there was just like a book

Making Fun of Rush Limbaugh's books that sort of became a rallying cry for the entire sort of tongue-in-cheek left. How do you feel that Rush Limbaugh sort of sat within conservative magazines and conservative thinkers like the ones at National Review

or the Weekly Standard? I have this memory that he was sort of, despite the fact that his product was quite a bit different than a lot of the stuff you read in those places, that he was, they were okay with him. Like I found this National Review cover that said the leader of the opposition, I believe this is from the 90s. And Rush,

it's Rush's head like on the body of one of the founding fathers. If I'm seeing this correctly, like Bob Dole and Jack Kamper standing behind him, also dressed like founding fathers. But I feel that like he was kind of accepted, cherished, tolerated by that world in a way that, like, if his left-wing equivalent have existed, would not have been, you know, tolerated by liberal magazines and liberal companies. Yeah, I mean, and again, the balance there between whatever Limbaugh was and whatever, quote,

unquote, the mainstream or the, you know, the quote-unquote respectable right was, I mean, that would come to define the entire party moving forward, right? I mean, in some sense, there's no distinction, if you look at some of the people in politics now. But at the time during his rise, yeah, I think he actually took some of the pressure off, right? I mean, he, like we talked about, he could float ideas on the air without, without, you know, any real consequence. And he could also say the thing that no one else wanted to put their byline next to, right? And they could report on what he said. They could, they could be serious because he existed as sort of the buffoon.

And I don't even mean that entirely as an insult. You know, he would just, he put it, he could put himself out there in a way that. that I think other people would not have done. I went on YouTube and found an episode of his television show. And by the way, you really owe it to yourself to go look these up because if you just imagine what do you think the audience of the Rush Limbaugh television show would be like in the 90s? It will be exactly what the audience of this show actually was. All the people just wildly applauding when Rush sitting at a desk would make a joke.

But they went to commercial. And for some reason, the YouTube captured the commercial. And the commercial was William F. Buckley asking people to subscribe to National Review. And it was a real, like, hand, you know, passing of the torch moment. Here's Rush Limbaugh, who has become absolutely gigantic. And William F. Buckley is like making a plea on the commercial of the Rush Limbaugh TV show to please subscribe to National Review. You know, it was just like, you could just absolutely in that like 20 second C with the power. rankings of like conservative thought were.

It was pretty amazing. I don't want to soft pedal what Rush Limbaugh said on the air, David. The, the awfulness. Let's go through some lines that were compiled by CBS. Here's Rush Limbaugh on race. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There I said it.

By the way, the key in that line is not, I mean, there was an incredibly racist line. But the there I said it is sort of encapsulates the entire thing. It's like this is what we've all been thinking the whole time, and I am the man who will say this racist thing so all you racists can have the runway to repeat it. Which is also so Trumpy. So Trumpian. Right?

I'm going to say the thing that everybody at this rally is thinking. I'm going to be the one to say it. We could go on. This was a notorious one of his. Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? Ooh, that is also extremely racist. On women, quote, women still live longer.

than men because their lives are easier. Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society. I love the women's movement, especially when walking behind it. That's a rushism. It went on, LGBTQ, immigrants, everything. There is this whole awful laundry list of things that he said on the radio. And as you say, for most of the history of that show, pretty uncollected. you know, I mean, there were certainly like lots of newspaper stories about Rish Limbaugh.

I imagine in interviews he did over the years, he was confronted with a lot of these statements and said whatever he said about them. But differently than like Fox News operates now or a Trump speech or something where all that is cataloged, they just, it just wasn't collect. Yeah, I mean, if you look online now, you look on Twitter and stuff, you see a lot of conservatives who are sort of making a bad faith or just maybe, I mean, I'm not going to get to faith here. just maybe a bad comparison between Rush and an RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and saying things like, well, you know, either a lot, you know, the liberals said a lot of dumb stuff and RBG died or said, we weren't allowed to say anything bad, so you can't say anything bad about Rush now or the inverse, whatever. I mean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't have a national microphone to say racist and sexist and otherwise bigoted things and

conspiratorial things, right? I mean, there, Rush them. And perhaps would not have said those things had she not. No, no, no, that's the point, right? I mean, she did, there was no, Rush Limbaugh is a, I mean, he's one of one just like he was at the beginning in so many ways, you know? I mean, I get, don't speak ill of the dead and sure and fine. And if that's what you believe, then don't. And yes, Rush Limbaugh was, has survived long enough to become a sort of jovial American pop

cultural figure despite being racist and bigoted and sex. and everything else, right? I mean, and despite being the cause directly or indirectly of a lot of bigotry in America. But it really is a testament to the work that he did and the conservative, you know, as the kind of figurehead of the conservative movement that we're here having a conversation about whether, about how we treat conspiratorial bigots in the afterlife, right? I mean, he like, he mainstreamed not just the bullshit that he said, but the way that he acted, the way that he conducted himself, that, like, we have.

have to have a conversation about treating him as a as a important public intellectual or you know a medal of honor recipient or whatever else and while we can just like easily pull up a catalog of him saying some of the worst things any human is said into a microphone over the past couple of decades yeah that was that was to go back and forth on the obit thing we were talking about it was it marty schotenheimer the other day like how the obit obit headline wasn't in the was in the washington post but like rush Limbaugh. Yeah.

Rush Limbaugh, that guy. That's who, whose stated thing was I am not pulling punches. I am telling it like it is. That's where you would then pull up, you would be required to pull a punch when doing the obit or something like. I just, that seems very weird.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Steve Allman sitting in for Erica Cervantes. We are back soon, tomorrow, Monday. sometime, David, with more lukewarm takes on the media. I see you then.

I think this is the time when I say mega dittos, just for effect.