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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and you know
we're still coming down from our end of the year celebration.
I'm headed off to Cees where we'll be doing reporting
before it could happen here and better offline, we're going
to be coming back for the new year soon. The
Oprah episodes will be in the can. Very excited to

(00:24):
introduce you all to that, but for this week, we're
going to be going back to a rerun, so please
enjoy the story of Rush Limbaugh. Welcome to Behind the Bastards,
the podcast that I continually failed to introduce like a professional,

(00:47):
which is particularly shameful this week because our guest is
a very professional voice artist, mister Paul F. Tom Good.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thank you for being here. Paul, 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 mister peanut Butter also.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
The voice of a lot of characters that people hate.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
That's true. That's true because if you're really achieving as
an artist, a lot of people are going to hate
anything that you do.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's the that's you're exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
And today we're talking about a truly historical success of
a creative mind, a man hated by tens of millions
of people and who should be hated by billions, A
man who has done, I would say, in calculable harm
to the future of human life and all life on
this planet, mister rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh 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.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Do you know what I forgot that I forgot? First
of all, I forgot how long he's been around. And
I remember watching him in his earliest days on TV
and watching that show like as a goof the way,
I would watch, you know, the Morton Downey Junior Show
or Wally George or whatever, and just like, who is
this clown? And he's like doing this this sort of

(02:16):
you know what seemed like a character, you know at
the time, because he I think he fancied himself an
entertainer and had a show that had little skits in
it and stuff like that, and I I thought he
was just ridiculous, and so I watched him ironically, and
and then things just got worse. Like I, I sort

(02:39):
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 it's not
pushing that that button in my ironic pleasure center anymore.
So I just stopped watching. But he, despite despite my
my jumping ship and you to do what he was doing.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, Tomkins demographic, but he kept the my parents and
everyone that raised me demographics. What was your upbringing particularly political?
Would you say?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Not, you know what, not super political. I was raised. Uh.
My family was a uh lower middle class, uh, big
Catholic family in Philadelphia, in in a a sort of
suburb called Mount Airy, and we were both of my

(03:34):
My family was like lifelong Democrats, you know, Philadelphia Democrats,
and so that was kind of it, Like we were
just sort of you know, uh like a conservative liberal family. Uh.
And yeah, I I we we didn't talk a lot
about politics in the house growing up, and that was

(03:57):
kind of it. But I knew that we were. We
were liberal demo crats, 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' sort of
morals where they were greatest generation Depression babies, and uh,
they voted straight Democrat. But they were not like even

(04:23):
though we were Catholic, it was like we were not
single issue voters, you know, but they but my family
was my parents were brought up with the same sort
of prejudices that people of their generation were brought up with,
you know. But but yeah, politics did not figure any.
It was like when I got when I got you know,

(04:45):
a little older and out of the house and everything,
that's when I started, you know, investigating my own politics.
And it was like a long journey.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
You know, that is very exciting to me, just because
your your you, you came from kind of more of
a you know, a liberally background, and your introduction to
Rush Limbaugh was kind of watching it as a character, right. Yes, yeah,
I grew up very conservative. My parents were also lower
middle class, verging on poor in when I was like
kind of little, a lot of economic anxiety, but extremely conservative.

(05:17):
I would say, like our family religion was conservatism, and
so Rush Limbaugh was caught. Whenever I was driving with
my mom or my dad, Rush was on. 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 the moral sense. So I'm very

(05:38):
excited about this, and I'm excited that, you know who
Morton Downey Junior is, because we're gonna be talking about
him a bit too. Absolutely, So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh is
It's hard to over sell 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,
for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so yeah, And I

(06:00):
think Rush Limbaugh has a huge might be the man
most responsible for that.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
I totally agree that his influence cannot be Uh is
it overestimated?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Like, yeah, he cannot.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
It's like I I the day he died, I tweeted,
I tweeted, Uh, if I had to say something positive,
I guess if I had to say something positive, I'm
glad Rush Limbaugh lived long enough to get cancer and die.
And then that got that got picked up by foxnews

(06:34):
dot Com. They did a roundup of you know, uh,
liberals celebrating Rush Limbaugh's death, which really was just like, hey,
if you want to harass some people, here's here's sudo harass.
And I had people, I had people on my mentions
on Twitter like saying things like, uh, you better pray

(06:54):
you never meet me, Like people implying violent because I
said I'm glad Rush Limbaugh is dead. I had somebody
call my house and say, this, Rush Limbaugh contributed far
more good to society than you ever will.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Fine, God, my God.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, where where he repeatedly celebrated the deaths of his
enemies and made half a billion dollars doing it. Yes, 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. Rushi is not short for anything.
Russia is a full a full first name, and in fact,

(07:51):
Rush Limbaugh is the third Rush Limbaugh in his family line.
They are very proud of that name. His grandpa, Rush
Senior was born and raised in Bolinger 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 oh four.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Real name, I thought that.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
I always thought that was one of those things I know.
It was like I choose that. That is the most
shocking thing about him. He rush Lama is not only
his full name, it is the only name his family
seems to give their firstborn sonsy a apro so, Rush
Senior became a lawyer. He opened an office in Cape Girardou, Missouri,

(08:37):
and he basically never left the town again. He retired
in nineteen ninety four at the age of one hundred
and two, which I mention because it suggests that all
those cigars Rushmoke w r Us are Rush Limbaugh smoked
saved us about thirty two years more of his show,
Sweet I'm.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Sorry, Did you say he retired at one hundred.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
And two in nineteen ninety four? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:57):
And then how long did he live after that?

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Did he get to So I think he died. I
think he died immediately from what Yeah, Like he's one
of those guys who worked until he died. Basically some
people are. His greatest son was like that. So Rush
Senior was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives when
he was forty. His main political issue was fighting FDR

(09:20):
in the New Deal, which shouldn't be surprising to anybody, right,
this is deeply, deeply embedded in the Rush Limbaugh line.
In nineteen thirty six, Rush Limbaugh Senior was a Republican
delegate at the Republican National Convention, where he helped nominate
Alf Landon for the noble job of losing to Franklin
Delano Roosevelt in an election. You don't nobody was better

(09:41):
at campaigning than FDR. It was never a successful thing
to run against that family.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
I know, somebody had to be his Washington generals.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, alf Landon, the Washington generals of Republican politics. 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 Zeve Chaffitz and Zev.
It's a weird first name ze apostrophe. Ev chaffits. He

(10:10):
notes that, over the course of decades of lawyering, Rush
Senior quote quietly but inevitably became well to do, which
is an interesting way of phrasing it. Just like there
was no stopping it. 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.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, that is the most suspicious sounding phrase.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Long time, inevitably, quietly, in inevitably got rich. Sinister yea godah,
it is very sinister. So Rush Junior, who is our
Rush Limbaugh's father was born at some point. Quick googling
obviously he had been born. Quick Googling didn't return a date.
He's the only Rush Limbaugh without a Wikipedia page, which

(10:51):
I guess kind of a kind of a shot to him.
I could have probably found it out if I'd really
dug into it. But it doesn't really matter that much
for our purposes.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, he did what he had to do. He gave
us rush.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
He gave us our rush. Yes, our rush, our rush.
So Rush Junior is only important for the impact that
he had on our rush. He was a World War
II combat pilot, which is undeniably rad You gotta give
him that, and his biography notes that he maintained a
military crew cut for his entire life. He was heavy

(11:21):
set and top dad out at about three hundred pounds,
which earned him the nickname Big Rush o.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Big rush Man, one of those nicknames you you cannot
combat like Big Rush. Sorry, Big Rush, Sorry, Big Rush.
You can ask politely, It's not gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Why you in a big rush? Uh? So Big Rush
became an attorney.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Sorry, because I'm always rushing around.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
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
Girardeau during holidays. His very conservative politics influenced these speeches,
and his most famous one was a tearful hagiographic speech

(12:08):
about our nation saintly founding fathers. Again, you can see
he clearly had kind of the same gift of gab
that our Rush has. And you have to admit if
you want to, if you know anthing about our Rush
Limbaugh he was an undeniably talented broadcaster. He was very
good at what he did. That's why he had the
impact that absolutely.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah. Now our Rush Limbaugh A Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the
third to give his full name, was born in Cape Girardeau, Mississippi,
on January or Missouri sorry, on January twelfth, nineteen fifty one.
By all accounts, he had a financially comfortable upbringing with
a brother and a parents who loved him. Baby Rush
spent his childhood and bubing a steady diet of his

(12:45):
dad's rants about scummy liberals and evil, conniving communists. One
of Our Russia's childhood friends recalls a 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
eat popcorn and just railing at the anchorman and the reporters.
He'd yell at Dan Rather, they're all typical liberals, and
Rather's the worst one of the bunch. And we'd try

(13:07):
to keep him going. You know, mister Rush, what do
you think about this? Mister Rush, what do you think
about that? Sometimes he'd say kinder. 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,
that's so weird.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
So Rush has a has a brother, or.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Russia has a brother. He has a brother, David, who
was his younger brother. No, no, no, I think that's
the oldest. The oldest son is the Rush gets the
Rush name.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, they didn't do it George for me.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, David becomes like a lawyer, doesn't really leave Cape
Girardeau and is like, you know, he's he's he unlike
his brother, has a family, has like a wife that
he's you know, stays with and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Did he quietly but inevitably become wealthy.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I think yeah, I think he was bored wealthy. He
and his brother were both born rich as hell. So
and and our Russ'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 for example,
he was in a bar slamming FDR and a couple
guys jumped him and beat him up. I never did

(14:16):
ask him the details of that one, but it was
a couple guys. Not a fair fight, I know that much.
I have to assume he deserved to get the shit
kicked out of him. Yeah, 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 should
stay helping them. That's gonna be my guess. And he
got the shit kicked out of him by some WPA guys,
something like that.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
If your name is if your name is Big Rush
and two guys go after you, I think that's a
fair fight.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
That's a fair fight. You're big, you know.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, he's a little Rush.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
He's three hundred pounds. They're probably each about a buck fifty.
You know, their fight exactly, the fight by mass thin poor. Yeah,
that's so. Our Rush was born into the Eisenhower years,
which will probably always be remember. It is like the
high point of both capitalism and the United States. This
period of peak American exceptionalism imprinted itself deeply on Russia's

(15:08):
growing brain. His father was made a special ambassador to
India's legal system. Their family got their first television. Yeah, yeah,
look because he was I 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,

(15:30):
and they're a democracy that was heavily based at least
initially on the US. So the president like picked guys
who were established lawyers, like Big Rush and also established
Republicans to be kind of helped set up the Indian
legal system. Wow, that's kind of what happened. So yeah,
his father's a big man in Republican politics. Rush grows

(15:51):
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. So the family in
the fifties gets their first TV. But radio is still
the dominant method of entertainment in those days, and Russia's
childhood and early adolescence coincided with the birth of rock
and roll and the absolute peak of cultural relevance for DJs.

(16:15):
My dad grew up at a pretty similar period of time.
He's like seven or eight years younger than Rush, and
he grew up the only thing my dad ever wanted
to be was a DJ, and he wasn't a radio
DJ for like twenty thirty years.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
You know.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
That was like the coolest thing that you could do.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
You didn't have Spotify, you didn't have the Internet. People
learned about new music from DJs who were kind of
like picking what they were going to play on the radio.
It was like the absolute raddest thing you could be.
And that's what Rush like. He idolizes these big DJs
of the time, and that's all he wants to be
for basically his entire young life is a DJ. Now,

(16:49):
when Rush was three, Brown versus the Board of Education
was ruled on by the Supreme Court, which led to
the integration of US schools now Zeve Chaffits 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 blaming
Chaffits for that, because I think the Rush family is

(17:11):
very pr savvy. They don't talk about it. You know,
I don't know who he would have gotten that info
from but our Rush would have definitely picked up on
the great deal of conflict in Cape Girardeau over racial matters.
Missouri is an odd state and that it is both
Midwestern and southern. During the Civil War it was split
between Yankee and Confederate sympathizers, and the town that Rush

(17:31):
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 Girardeau, and Zeeve Chaffits
to his credit rights about this quote. In nineteen fifty two,
Cape built its white students a new school, Central High.
Blacks continued to attend Cobb High School, but the supreme
court and basketball changed that. Cape Giardu took its high

(17:55):
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 Cob were
even better. An informal game was arranged between Central and
Cob High, says historian Frank Nicol, Cob won. Shortly thereafter,
Cob mysteriously burned down. Black students went to school and
churches and private homes that year, But a more permanent

(18:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah. Cape Girodeau is a very racist town and kind
of more to the point, like, we don't know exactly
what Russia's dad would have said about any of this.
We don't 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, and you know, the conservatives were

(18:45):
definitely more on the don't integrate side of things right now.
A compromise was eventually reached in Cape Girodo, and the
compromise was that black kids would be allowed to attend
Central High but they would be put in special classes
that were taught by former teachers of cob the school
that had been burned down. This was kind of integrating
by not integrating. So there were black and white kids

(19:06):
in the same school, but not in the same classes.
And this is the way things were in Cape Gerarda
when Rush Limbaugh started school. So yeah, that's you can
infer from that what you will based 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.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, I don't remember, if ever being concerned as to
the investigation of that fire.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
I don't think he would burned down. He might have
done it like that is rampant and irresponsible speculation in
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, he didn't do well in that fight, is

(19:52):
all I'm saying. So Rush had an upbringing that would
have been fairly standard for a rich kid of his era.
He played basketball, He did chore, 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 rushing them ball. Hates the outdoors his entire life.

(20:14):
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 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 Zev Chaffets quote,
Russia's dad didn't suffer fools lightly. He was always very
disapproving of Russia's ambitions to have a career in radio.

(20:37):
Russia's mom was a kind, gentle person, but his dad
could be pretty rough. He 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 that he was like fading his
kids or anything, but kind of mentally abusive. Again, probably

(21:00):
more or less in line with what most most men
of his social class would have been like to their kids.
You know, I don't think this was abnormal.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, I think most of them.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
You know, It's like it's such a it's such a
common thing that I guess I'm just glad my dad
was a guy who didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
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 as a particularly good debater in

(21:49):
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 on a drywall Kennedy Ie darn Nixon lost. Shucks.

(22:12):
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 Ben Shapiro, right,
where from the get go he's being sort of like
focused into becoming a political commentator. That does not happen
with Rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Right, He's more from the darn shucks school of the darn.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Shucks school political commentary.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
So 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 nineteen ninety three biography, The Rush Limbaugh Story,

(22:59):
biographer Paul Colford 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.

(23:19):
It was a wound he would nurse forever. Oh ah, yeah,
that's nice.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Uh, thank you biographer for that.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
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 grow up to
destroy civil society in the environment. Right, Yeah, we've all

(23:56):
been there, and Rush was there too. Obviously this is
a part of what ever toxic stew gets cooked up
at him. But I don't know, 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 have that in our past,
and we all don't do this shit.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
It's very much like 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 super villain because of this. Y.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, and you know there are a lot of other
bald men in that world who don't become Superman. Yeah.
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. And he Big Rush

(24:53):
wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and do
something respectable. Didn't have to be a lawyer, going to politics,
do something important, right, 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.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
My mother would be fixing me breakfast and I'd be
listening to the guy on the radio. He'd be having fun,
and I was preparing to go to prison.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
God, I mean join the club, Rush.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, we all hate school.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
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 full grown adult, and I
have to go to school.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, 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.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Rush.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
You can just buck up a Starbucks if you if
you're nursing some rage at the educational industrial complex or whatever.
So despite his irritation, Big Rush 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

(26:11):
what you'd today call internshit, 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 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

(26:32):
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. 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,

(26:55):
and this is one of those things his dad clearly
there are some abusive elements of their relationship. His dad
is not supportive of Rush's radio career, but also is
like his dad doesn't think it's a good idea, but
also enables him right, like, not just gets him a job,
but pays for him to get educated. So this is
not a guy I'm sure you know he had his

(27:15):
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 his father's not yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
So Rush, you know, becomes kind of famous within his
you know, the teen set at his town because he's
the guy with the 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, which
he like, and he would like kind of mock the
beauty tips because he thought it was silly that the

(27:50):
AP was sending out daily beauty tips, which is fair,
it is that has a silly thing for the AP
to do.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Russia's professional idol at this point was a guy named
Larry lou Jack Lujack, a Chicago DJ who was famous
for his sense of humor and comedic stylings. Rush leader
called him the only person I ever copied. Lujack was
known for audibly shuffling papers during his monologues and different bits,
a tactic Limbaugh copied and used repeatedly through his decades

(28:17):
on air, and as.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
In kind of like his signature bit no.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
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. You know. It's it's how you convince people
who maybe aren't that credible that you you have good information.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Right, Yeah, he's been handed he's been handed to this
ream of paper that has information on it. So it's true.
But but Lujack was not a political guy, right he was.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
He was not, And he fucking hated Rush Limbaugh because
when Rush got famous in the early nineties, Rush was like, yeah,
Larry Lujack is the only man I ever copied. And
they asked Lujack about it, and his response was basically,
fuck that.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Guy, bless you good man.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, yeah, you can't pick who finds you influentially, you know. Yeah,
So back in those days again, being a radio DJ
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

(29:26):
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.
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 with his father, after graduating,
he enrolled in a local college just to please the

(29:48):
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
tumultuous periods in US history. I mean, he's literally becoming
an adultho in like nineteen sixty eight. I think like
some shit went down that year, you know, there's a
lot of teenagers doing some exciting things. Now, given how

(30:11):
Rush turned out, you might 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 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 Junior was assassinated, his radio station asked

(30:34):
him to help send out news reports for the local
NBC affiliate because there were uprisings all around the country,
and Rush did this, but 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

(30:56):
on news. I don't recall feeling any concern. So that
is how we again a lot of privilege. There are
massive race based uprisings in the number of US cities,
hundreds of thousands of National Guard troops are called up.
As after the civil rights leader is assassinated, the country
is on the brink of open conflict in Russia, Limbache,
I don't give a fuck, Like I just want to

(31:16):
pla him a record. So you know, Wow, he's just
a rich white kid, you know, in the middle of Missari.
He doesn't give a shit.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
It's so wild to think about someone being alive at
that time. Yeah, and not having a strong feeling either
way about anything that's going on.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, he's not doesn't even have strong hard right sympathies.
He just doesn't give a fuck about it.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Right. That is like a kind of privilege that I
can't even begin to fathom.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, and it is important that, like he's not just
taking the right wing side of things, where like we
have fu Martin Luther King, he was a comedy. He
just doesn't care, Like none of this even makes it
into his mind.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Like the idea that you would say, Martin Luther King,
who is that again?

Speaker 1 (31:54):
That which guy Bobby who got killed?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Kidd of what dimly aware? That diminated?

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, it's it's quite a thing. So I'm going to
quote now from a write up in The New York
Times that ably summarizes Rush Limbaugh's early twenties. Quote. Love
of radio eventually won 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.

(32:25):
Limbaugh held and lost jobs in several cities, working under
different names and broadcast styles. He was Rusty Sharp and
Jeff Christi. He was a DJ, a newsreader, a tak host.
In each place he developed components of what would later
emerge as the Limbaugh 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

(32:49):
morning DJ, like yeah, we're gonna I don't know, I
can't do the DJ voice, but like playing like soundbits
and doing doing gags. Like he's very like not even
really a shock jockey yet because he's not like that
has that's like starting to evolve in this period of time. Yeah,
I did find some audio from Run of Russia's very
first broadcast in nineteen seventy four while he was still

(33:11):
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 Limbaugh
who would help breed a modern American fascist movement. So
here he is on wxz's Solid Rock and Gold Show.
So without further ado, here is Rush Limbaugh in nineteen
seventy four.

Speaker 6 (33:32):
Also appearing with SHAWNAA at opening the show. I'llby Billy
Cook's Rainbows and Gypsies. See the exact name of Dolphin
rated PG. Now showing at the Ardmore Drive in Bellevue,
Bethley Senema, camp Horn Drive in Carnegie, set him A
and Cinema World Nay of the Dolphin, also showing in
the Hampton Plaza, McKay Cinema, OH Penn Hills Region and
Ronji the leads ce Day of the Dolphin.

Speaker 5 (33:52):
Now at these the Wiggle South Hills, South Mark Drive In,
South Hills Drive In and Sunset DEEO Drive In. I
certainly hope you people are writing all this down. Don't
miss a Day of the Dolphin. It is showing so.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Very silly as all radio from the nineteen seventies sounds today, right,
he has 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.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
No, I mean, look, he has undeniably great voice, great noise,
very good at imparting information like actual factual information. This
movie is for sure playing here at this time day
if the Dolphins. Look, yeah, I can't wait to see it. Yeah,
it's the exciting movie Day of the Dolphin. But that
he's just straight reading things that you cannot misinterpret in

(34:41):
any way, if only he'd stuck to that. But yeah,
I it's so. I guess I don't want to get
ahead of us and get ahead of ourselves. But the
idea that this guy would not be content doing.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Just this.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Is like what when does it the idea that it
turns like I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah, I'm sorry, we'll get to that.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
But I.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
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 DJ,
things would have been better.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
You know, I had I had a conversation with a
friend of mine who who also does podcasts in radio,
and for neither of us it is our thing, our
first thing, but we shared a we we had a
conversation where we shared our love of being good at
reading copy like you have to do ads. There is

(35:44):
something that's weirdly satisfying about like, oh, I sound like
a guy on the radio. I'm doing a good job
at reading this and making it sound natural and whatever,
and it's like there it like there's isn't that enough?
Isn't that enough? That there's there? It is a good
feeling when you nail an ad read.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, look, it's I mean, I think I think everyone
who does a who who does a job that like,
I 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 at a grocery store,
right when you get really good at bagging, like it's this, oh,

(36:22):
the the the kind of ecstasy of competence right where
you can kind of lose yourself in a task, you know,
and be like I'm as good at this thing as
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 period 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. So his early material in Pittsburgh

(36:46):
is interesting to me because it's exactly the opposite of
what you'd expect from him. One of his reoccurring 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

(37:06):
if you'd send the radio preacher one hundred dollars. That's
interesting to me, and this is like a real 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. Yeah, there's also he also would read
letters from fans, and at one point he read a

(37:29):
letter that he said was from a young woman who
wanted to be a DJ and 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

(37:50):
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 arm and the needle,
place it on the outside edge of the record. Then
turn the record till hear 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

(38:10):
you can interpret that a couple of ways.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
That about the man explaining about how to turn on
a microphone and then he goes, oh wait, you can't.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Do it well that that. I think there's two ways
to interpret this. One of them is what you've said, Sophie,
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 there, yea, yeah,
it could be both, Because it could be both.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
There is a kind of lording it over, like you know,
this is a dumb job, but you're still not allowed
to do it.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
You're still not allowed to do it ladies. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that that's probably probably accurate. It's probably a bit of it.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
But Robert, you know what all ladies are allowed to do?

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Products?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Is it at Sophie? Is it participate in capitalism as consumers?

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yes, it is participating or capitalism.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Ladies. Stick it to Rush Limbaugh by engaging positively with
the system he spent his life propping.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
All right, shit, you know I didn't like the phrase
stick it to Rush Limba very much.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Neither did I, Sophie. Here's some mats. Oh we're back,
we're back from those ads, and Paul, I can see
the 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

(39:32):
the people at Raytheon. Are you feeling good, Paul about now?
You are inextricably tied to wonderful products like the R
nine X knife missile.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
I Yeah, as a boy growing up in Philadelphia, I
dreamed of advertising for missiles.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
That's what everyone wants to do, right, Yeah, since cavemen
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.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Here's what sucks. Raytheon is such a cool name.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
It is great.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's so good.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, I mean this in this ongoing bit I do.
I often just like the RNIX missile I think is
made by Lockheed. Raytheon's guide it to be fair. It's
just the name Raytheon is 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

(40:30):
at some point. Their name is just too on point
to not be Yeah. So back to Limbaugh. Rush was
popular in Pittsburgh and his bosses 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

(40:50):
nineteen seventy four, the economy took a nose dive and
Rush was fired. He had to move back home with
his family, where he lived for seven miserable months. His
dad repeatedly badge 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

(41:10):
was the dawn of the era of insult comedy, a
sort of mean spirited comedy based on pranks and you know,
primarily executed by shock jocks guys The Body by Howard Stern.
Really you entertained via ostentatious cruelty hungry as.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I don't know, if I don't know, if you'll if
you'll know, or not. Like talk radio, how much of
a thing is it at this point of people calling
in to radio stations to have conversations with broadcasters.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's starting at this point, right, This is really kind
of the birth of talk radio, and Rush is on
the ground floor of that.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Right, does it start with sports or does it start
with issues?

Speaker 1 (41:51):
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 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

(42:12):
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 evolves out of a thing
that had been going on for much longer.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Right, 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

(42:45):
it's not about my personality necessarily it's mainly about I
am the I'm I'm I'm, I'm the Santa Claus of music.
I'm giving you these things, yes, and that's why you
like me.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yes, And I have access to them first and all
this stuff. Yeah. Right, so Rush kind of as this.
He kind of sees the writing on the Walwaite. He
loses his gig as a traditional DJ because that is
starting to become less profitable, right, and there's, you know,
in general, the economies taking a shitter. So he realizes

(43:16):
that kind of the way things are going is more
based around personalities and comedy and entertaining people, and he
starts to pivot to that. So this is uh, there's
a well an interesting quote that Rush 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

(43:39):
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
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 after a day of this,

(44:01):
I didn't like myself.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Is that being I don't know if that's being good
at insulting people.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, that's not really, that's just.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Being ready to insult people.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Though.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
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 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 like He seems to have genuinely not

(44:37):
liked insulting people to their faces or at least over
like directly insulting people over over the phone or whatever.
While he was disturbed by this, he was not disturbed
by racism, mainly racism against black people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
here's where we're going. At one point during his call

(44:57):
in show, he claimed he had a black collar, and
he he claim 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 or I mean he says it was. We'll

(45:17):
get to that. At another point, he asked his audience,
have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted
criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? Now during a nineteen ninety 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 as that, but I know,

(45:37):
honest to God, that's not how I intended it at all. Gee,
don't get me 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
callers because he did not continue to do that. He
is probably being dishonest when he says that he's not

(45:59):
raised because he continued to say incredibly fucking racist things
about black people consistently throughout his entire career.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, I mean, the the the number one indication that
someone is racist when they say that the least racist
has that ever been said by him by a non
racist person, usually with yeah, it's always got to be,
it's always got to be. Not only am I not racist,
I am the least racist person you're ever gonna meet.

(46:26):
It's like you don't maybe don't go that far because
it's so so easily disproved.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Also followed by the I don't see color people.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
I don't see color. I would say I think most
of the people. I think I don't see color. People
tend 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 exactly. Like that would be the split
between the right and the left version it is yeah, yeah, yeah,
and both of you are fucking racist.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
So shut the.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Fuck up, jimmy me, Robert right.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Yes, yes, she's found out about our opinions on Liechtenstein,
which I refused to apologize for. In the fucking Swedes,
my god, the Swedes, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
You do have issues with the Swedes.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
I have huge issue particularly blue Swede. What did you
who get shakamine? Why did you say that at the
start of that song? Okay? Sorry? Rush was Rush was still,
at this point in his career, completely apolitical. His roommate
and close friend at the time later told an interviewer
he was scary smart about everything, but I can't recall

(47:36):
us talking much about current events. He was funny, though
I was an audience of one. 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,
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

(47:57):
City Royals baseball team. Five years later, he quit the Royals,
convinced his career there was steymiat 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.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
What are the do we know? What the sources of
the the what the type of controversies?

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yes, we're about to get into that. Yeah, Okay, yeah,
we're about to get in this. Sorry, 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 him there. He had
one friend who was on the team, and that's why
he got to keep the job, and when that guy

(48:37):
got traded, they pushed him out because they all hated him.
So after getting pushed out of the Royals, he got
a gig at KMBZ, a local station. He started satirizing
what he considered to be a left wing caricature of
of right wing political commentator. Right the initial right wing
Rush Limbaugh was satire and he was being purposely controversial

(48:59):
and reasonably 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 Limbaugh popular with his audience. See Limpaugh
had caught on to the fact that radio was in
the middle of a revolution. This was the era where
the first big shock jocks, men like Don Imus and

(49:20):
Howard Stern, began their as sense to stardom. I found
a wonderful write up about this era on Longreads, which
argues that the first radio shock jock was a talk
radio star named Joe Pine in the nineteen fifties, and
I'm gonna quote from this now we might do an
episode on Pine at some point. Quote His unconventional style,
dressed up to dress down pinko's and women's libbers and
riff on rather than read reports, was neither news nor entertainment,

(49:44):
it seemed to be best described. While 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
hundred radio outle, was the most machiavellian when it comes
to manipulating media icons of talk. Author Donna Halper told

(50:06):
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 Rush Limbaugh bit in the fifties and early sixties.

(50:26):
But America is not ready for that yet. Right, even
fifties America's like, this guy's racist and like and a
fucking lunatic.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Yeah. So, now, just so I understand Russia's this satire
that he was doing. Yeah, the idea was, here is
what left wing people think 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

(50:56):
the right wing as extreme and h hateful and you know,
racist and closed minded. Like is that is that the
point he was trying to make.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
I think so, because he's 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. 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 looney right winger,
you know.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Okay, but through the through the lens of here's how
the left sees them.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
I That's that was never said directly.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yeah, it sounds like it's a it's a 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, that is
how I have interpreted what I've read. Yeah, okay, yeah
that does sound like a base covering kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yeah, it a bit. I do think he's started not
believing everything he said. It started as a joke in
him intentionally to provoke controversy, because controversy brings in listeners
and gets attention, gets word of mouth. That's why he
was doing it. And the story of Rush Limbaugh is
these kind of purposefully absurdly extreme satire becomes what he

(52:19):
really believes and is you know.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Yes, so he's an a political guy who's like this
is this is what this is what politics sounds like
to me.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
I guess, yeah, I think so, and I yeah, that's
how I interpreted. We'll go over that more so. Obviously,
Pine kind of the first 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

(52:49):
the perfect time. This was the early nineteen eighties. Howard
Stern came onto the scene in eighty four. Don Imus
had risen to prominence in the nineteen seventies. Imus was
another guy my dad listened to a lot growing up.
Imus in the morning was like a big part of
getting ready for school. Don Imus is going to be
on the fucking TV.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
And you were like, this guy's having so much fun
and I have to go to prison.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
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 I forget what it was in reference to,
but like that's what got him in trouble.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
It was a women's basketball team.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Yeah, it was a women's basketball team. Because don i'mis
was also very racist. Sure, so yeah, the world was
still not quite ready for the rush limball. We knew
h during while he was like starting to be political
at KMBZ, but a diet version of what he would
become was now acceptable. And one man who recognized the
potential of limbasch stick was Norm Woodruff, a consultant to

(53:43):
the station who became the acting program director at Sacramento's
KFBK network KFBK 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 Junior.
Morton was extremely popular and he was very extreme in
his antics. This had allowed his local station in Sacramento

(54:07):
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
named Tom chin Downey Junior was fired and went into
the world of television, where he would somehow simultaneously blaze

(54:28):
a trail for both Tucker Carlson and Jerry Springer. We
will do an episode on him someday because he's a
very plential guy, absolutely, but his for today he matters
because his firing number one his success proved that being
a purposefully controversial right wing bigot was really profitable for
radio station, and because when he got fired, Sacramento had

(54:50):
a hole in the station's roster that they needed to
fill with another racist right wing shitthead, just one who
was not quite as racist as Morton Downey junior, rush
Limbas stepped up and said, not being quite as racist
as that guy is my middle name. For now, for now,
Eventually I will be much worse. So Rush Limbaugh moved

(55:16):
to Sacramento. When he started at the station, his new boss,
Woodruff told him, we want controversy, but don't make it up.
If you actually think something, if you actually believe it,
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 of fend, then get noticed.
That's not what we're interested in, and we won't back

(55:37):
you up. He was clearly lying. I think this was
ass covering by the station.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, but they would never would never
ever push back on his bigotry.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
But you know who does push back on bigotry. Paul
ads the products and services that support this podcast. So
we're back. And at this point rush Limbaugh has launched
himself as a right wing shock jock, and he is

(56:09):
an instant hit zeev chaffits rights quote. The station let
him go on the air solo, unencumbered by sidekicks or guests,
and encouraged his highly personal right wing monologus. 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.

(56:31):
Rush was so pleased by these that he sent Brian
a snapshot. Morton Downey Junior 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 minute 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 Junior, reported
the Sacramento b but he skates a little further from

(56:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
He was an.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Occasional commentator on television and wrote newspaper columns. Politicians and
celebrities sought him out. He and Michelle, his wife at
the time, bought a new house and furnished it with
products he endorsed on air. So he's a hit.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Again, he's a very intelligent, talented man.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Anybody else to find the big Rush part really funny?

Speaker 1 (57:37):
It is very funny. It's very funny. Now we're in
It's still funny.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
I have long argued that Sacramento is the very mouth
of Hell itself, and the fact that Rush 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 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

(58:06):
they got the joke. And there is some evidence for
this when an Ohio evangelist, a lot of evidence. Yeah, So,
I think the earliest evidence for this, I should say,
is when an Ohio evangelist very publicly claimed that the
theme song from Mister Ed held a Satanic message when
played backwards. You know, we're kind of talking about the

(58:27):
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 Whitman recording also contained a backwards
message of from Satan. Zeef Chaffitz writes that, to his delight,
many Limbaugh listeners took Limbaugh at his word and flooded

(58:48):
the station with phone calls promising to destroy their Slim
Witman albums to keep the Devil out of the house.
Rush considered this a hilarious plank prank. He did not
apologize or as 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

(59:12):
he realizes, Oh, they're engaged. They're destroying stuff. That means
I have power, right. I think 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 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 me.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
It 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 is so obviously a joke, so
obviously a joke, it absolutely is fun. There's no way

(59:51):
around that. There's no way 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 like
a real jolt.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
And there's a This 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

(01:00:24):
gas 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
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

(01:00:47):
to tear it down. And I know that the way
that I framed it had a significant impact on a
lot of people getting hurt, damaging a fence, getting arrested,
and 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

(01:01:07):
about the kind of impact that you can have 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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
But and that's that is the key, the key difference
of uh, you know, you seeing something that catches catches
fire in a forgive the phrasing, but catch fire in
a in a charged situation, and how easily people can
glom onto something when everything's so churned up, and then

(01:01:44):
realizing like, oh, words have power, I have to be
careful rather than words have power.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Here we go, here we go, let's use it to
sell gold. So Russia's domestic life while he's enduring all
this professional success, his domestic life with his I think
she was his second. I think she was his third wife.
Actually I don't know. He had a couple. He had

(01:02:11):
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 feted for dinners and invited to
big events, and his wife, Michelle was much less successful.
She quit her job to be as assistant, but she
hated the work. That it's a nightmare that gives me

(01:02:32):
the Yeah. They were not a good fit. Michelle loved
the outdoors, rush Limbaugh despised them. Two of his colleagues
tell a story from around this time of how they
convinced him to go rafting once that I think is
telling about Rush Limbaugh'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

(01:02:53):
it is that goes through Sacramento. Quote, it's a very
very mild ride. Bob gave Russian or and told him
to Oh, you're gonna really love this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
You have to know before I start the story, you
have to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Know we're on a baby.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Bob gave Russian ar 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 ore
out his arm, stiff as a board, and upon impact
he fell overboard. We got rushed back in the raft
and the next day he spent the entire three hours
of his show talking about his horrendous whitewater grapple with
the Grim Reaper about a fucking baby. I've had people

(01:03:41):
fucking shoot at me, and I've people showed me with artillery,
and I've never spent three hours talking about it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Baby.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
So Sacramento is where Limbaugh started picking up what would
become a voluminous list of mostly self inflicted nicknames. He
was l Rushbo, the all knowing, all caring, all sensing
Maha Rushi. He was also a harmless little fuzzball and
the epitome of morality and virtue. He started claiming that
his show was hosted by the eib OR Excellence in

(01:04:15):
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 documented to be almost always right ninety seven point

(01:04:38):
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, yes, right, Like that's kind of how narcissists were.
So it may surprise people to know that Rush to
hear that Rush Limba's career was launched into the stratus

(01:05:00):
in Sacramento because California is, to most people outside of
California at least, a bastion of liberal politics. Now you
actually live and spend time in the state, you know, like,
for example, if you've ever been to fucking I don't
know what is that Orange County right or if you've
been up near reading, there's a shitloak like there are
more right wing Californians than there are right wingers than

(01:05:21):
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 in political history, is now among
the only rational voices on the right in the United States.

(01:05:42):
Yeah 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 Rush
Limbaugh's rise. You see, Sacramento is located kind of north
of the center of California, not far from some of

(01:06:02):
the most productive farmland in the country. It is also
not far from north central California places like Redding, 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
government that they live under. They see and this is
not they are not entirely or even largely wrong in

(01:06:25):
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 La San Diego, San Francisco,
Sacramento is a hardship on you, and you're not contributing
to the kind of pollution in the cities that the

(01:06:46):
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. So these this kind of infuriated very radical
right wing who hates the liberals and left that govern
California have a voice in Rush Limbaugh. He obliges their

(01:07:09):
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 Limbaugh becomes like, yeah,
he's their voice. You know it, you could. You might
even be able to argue that nowhere but California could
have produced Rush Limbaugh as he became uh yeah, so

(01:07:30):
I'm going to quote from the book Rush Limbaugh an
Army of One here. He mocked the multicultural style of
California by proposing to keep Ugglo Americans off the streets.
Militant feminists became feminazis, The green movement was full of
environmental wackos. The American left became commie pinko. Liberals and
the residents of Rio Linda, California, were synonymous with stupidity.

(01:07:52):
A ringing ded Ded Dedalate 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, Rush was too

(01:08:13):
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 Russ's show and decided it had
the potential to go national. He offered Russia partnership, and
after some haggling, Russia greed. He moved to New York

(01:08:34):
and made the EIB 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 populist
American right. Never did anything but radio, really. In nineteen
eighty eight, he launched a new version of the Rush

(01:08:54):
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 ninety one 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
kind of introduced himself anytime he was coming on the air.

(01:09:17):
So that's that's we're going to play this now. This
is kind of the birth of the Rush Limbaugh. We
all know, we all.

Speaker 6 (01:09:23):
Know now one of radios and great broadcasters, and he'sa.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
With us today on the study. We invite a name
Rush Limbaugh. That my ry, Hey thrill. It's about time,
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
I smoked a little dope to get ready for this
in here, and I'm ready to go, man to one
goal to time, one brain behind you back, Oh half
my brain tied behind my back. Just to make it fair, Well,
I'll tell you one thing, Yes, I use my talent
on loan from god.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Man. I heard you got a little loan from ABC.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
Can't say when you negotiating a new contract. Oh, I
loan Limb some money, and I brought you a gift
Los Angeles Times.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Oh great, good.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
Wowed him there, didn't I that's nice having a big
article on how you've flopped in the New York Times
six minutes before nine o'clock.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
You started out with just like.

Speaker 4 (01:10:09):
A small group of stations on your shot with fifty
six an hour of three hundred and thirty seven, with
the weekly audience about six and a half million, an
average quarter of our acuum of a million, seven most
listened to radio talk show in America.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
That's that's Rush Limbaugh that kind of when he goes
viral for the listin what do you think about that?
About that how he presents himself on here? What does
that say to you?

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
It's so it's so the the fully formed version of
him that I first experienced, and like he's really going
for it, like he's really he's really like he's so
aggressive in it, and and like saying I'm gonna come

(01:10:53):
Like clearly 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 with this, the
the La the present presentation of the La Times is
because why that guy got fired from the La Times.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Yeah, I mean, like no, I think he'd been in
Los Angeles and they savaged him in a review, right, Okay, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
So it's it's you know, it's that Frankly, it's like
it's all the ship that I hate.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Yeah, yeah, it is, it is.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
It's it's so it's it's aggressive, it's mean, it's 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
it right. I say it like this every time. This
is the way it goes. You know, it's just uh,
it's a drag. It's a drag.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
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, half my brain tied behind my back. Uh,
you know, the uh from God, all these different phrases
that were that he continuously for decades. 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,
like the Iliot and the Odyssey, Right this like the

(01:12:08):
way that anytime you've got home or introducing it's always
like you know, the there's certain phrases. Anytime Achilles comes up,
he uses the same kind of phrases, same couple of
phrases to introduce him, These descriptive phrases 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

(01:12:29):
people's heads. They associate those phrases with those characters. Russia's
kind of doing. This is an old tactic, but it works.
It's the same thing Trump does with his impulse insults
Crooked Hillary, right, sleepy Joe. These are effective tactics, and
that's what Russia is doing to inculcate his followers, primarily
with this idea that he is genius. Right, and again

(01:12:50):
he's joking, but he's also not because this shit buries
itself in your brains. He knows what he's doing. He's
a very savvy per.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Yeah, it's like when you when you people like that
that that understand the 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 gonna tell you through repetition,
this is my whole thing. It's like they're they're you know,

(01:13:22):
comics that uh to me, it always makes me think
of comedians that majored in marketing in college. Yeah, 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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
You have 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. It,
this is how you do it. We do a little

(01:14:02):
bit of that here, 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 mountaintop compound, which
I you know is always the goal. Paul, You're very
welcome if you would like to have an armed standoff
with the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
You know you're successful.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
That's how you know you're successful when a three letter
agency burns you down. By anyway, I don't need to
Waco this time. I do love Waco. That's a good one.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Yeah, I'm so improudb We took in almost an hour
twenty for Robert to mention Waco.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Good job. Yeah, I'm getting you know, I I realized
I was wacoing a lot, trying to cut back, you know,
get a little less.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
And then here he is first Waco.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
But well, 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
in fact, he grew more extreme, and he seems to
have quickly forgotten that he was ever practicing satire. In
nineteen ninety, at the very height of the AIDS crisis,
Rush launched a new segment on his show, the AIDS Update.

(01:15:13):
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 Aid's Update, and it was,
in fact, Limbaugh Aid's 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.
But ZEEV. Chaffits's biography of Limbaugh came out well before

(01:15:33):
Rush's death and before the AIDS updates were really talked
about all that much outside of the community they most
impacted 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 Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City
that disrupted a mass Limbaugh chastised militant homosexuals for their

(01:15:57):
disrespectful behavior, and shortly thereafter began broadcasting irreverent 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 condom over the microphone to illustrate safe speech.
So that's how the aid's Update was kind of framed
by Zeve before it was a big story. Now here's

(01:16:20):
how Snopes characterized it in their fact check after Limbaugh died.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
And I think before that, like already that doesn't sound
good that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
No, I don't think Zeeve is trying to whitewash. Yeah,
I think that he just doesn't see it as a
big story.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Yeah, even just plainly stated that is it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Yeah, it's terrible, and it sounds worse when Snopes goes
into more detail on this yeah quote. At the height
of the HIV AIDS crisis, the Rush Limbaugh Show featured
an AIDS update in which limbad joked about an epidemic
that had claimed more than one hundred thousand lives between
nineteen eighty one and nineteen ninety. Specifically, Limbaugh targeted gay
men who had died. In addition to joking about their deaths,

(01:16:57):
Limbaugh reportedly played songs during the segment include kiss Him Goodbye,
I'll Never Love This Way Again, and looking for Love
in All the Wrong Places. Snopes dot Com uncovered an
interview in 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,

(01:17:20):
but militant homosexuals who blamed church and government officials for
the epidemic. The AID'S update is meant to offend them,
Limbas said, damn right. According to a nineteen ninety eight
Los Angeles Times article, it was a popular segment, but
it also created outrage among AIDS activists, something not helped
by Limbaugh reportedly saying gays deserved their fate. Mocking the

(01:17:41):
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 mile bump in limbaugh'squreer 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 nineteen

(01:18:03):
ninety it was still a thing he had to apologize for,
and that year is the year he became officially famous.
Nineteen ninety. He had his first live TV appearance on
June second, when c SPAN did a special on talk radio.
And yeah, so this is like he he does kind
of have to sort of say that he regretted doing this,
that he felt like he was kind of attacking people

(01:18:24):
who like 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.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Work so I fear that alive?

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
Yeah yeah, who are so far still alive for the moment? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
That So he does a TV appearance on c SPAN
in nineteen ninety on June second, which is kind of
his first big TV appearance, and then The New York
Times does a big profile on him from that quote,
with its characteristic attention to production values, the network simply
set up a camera inside a spare WABC seventy seven
studio in New York and let the self proclaimed most
dangerous man in America a roll cut to a shlub

(01:19:01):
and a cheap white dress shirt, black tie, and hastily
barbershopped helmet of hair, already wiping sweat and grumbling about
the TV lights planted behind his desk, 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.

(01:19:24):
He was only joking. Limba insists, you said wear a
bag over my head, Maloney says, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Fuck Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
That's a New York Times reportan of 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 mask let everyone see your
pretty face. Like he's simultaneously both threatening her and sexually
harassing her.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
It's wild that It's good. It seems there's something about
that that seems so modern. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Yes, yes, yeah, that could. He's because he broughtly created
the modern right, you know, so you can see it,
you know, in nineteen ninety that's what he's doing. Yeah, now,
nineteen ninety is as I said. Also, when The Gray
Lady published their first full feature dedicated to el Rushbo,
the article is fascinating and valuable, since it seems like

(01:20:29):
few copies of his early nineteen eighty eight to ninety
one ninety two episodes exist. So this New York Times write,
it provides us with several fascinating 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 are writing about his show from

(01:20:49):
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 a great disservice by using
the program to convince people that if 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

(01:21:10):
notes that perhaps due to his guilt over his crueler
shock jock days, Russia is very polite to his liberal callers,
and this is what The New York Times writes as
Russia's answer. You 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

(01:21:31):
the people who bust their tale to be prosperous, then
you're going to unmotivate people to try that. I am
not a paid defender of the rich. I am a
proud promoter of the American way of life. Yeah, what
are the.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
I guess that's a thing. You can just say that
most rich people earned their money, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
Yeah, it's objectively untrue. But yes, you can say that
objective untrue.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
But I guess if you are born to wealth, but
then you also get a job that makes you even wealthy, yeah,
that's hard work.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
I mean, look at Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates,
all guys who were born to wealth. They weren't 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. Bezos being able to secure a huge

(01:22:23):
loan from his parents in order to help start his
first business. 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 spin
that as self made, you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Know, yeah, because in their mind it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
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 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,

(01:23:01):
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
And leaving that, leaving that part out is how you
were able to convince other people that that the majority
of people are away, the majority of people are a
wealthy through hard work.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
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 upon thousands
of fanatically loyal followers to in person gatherings. But Rush

(01:23:35):
was really the first. From the Times quote, there are
towns where he is unheard, unheard and unheard of. And
then there are places like Tampa, where the announcement of
a Rush Limbaugh stage show sold out the twenty two
hundred seat Ruth Eckert Hall in four days. The occupants
of those seats are out of them and cheering when
Limbaugh appears in a three piece tuxedo. They're like the
crowd for a country western concert, says Dan Woollet, the

(01:23:57):
hall's director of operations, after sizing up the crowd in
the law 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. One of his jokes is that
Judgment Day comes and the Washington Post article banner reads

(01:24:19):
world ends tomorrow, Women, minorities hardest hit. It's like that's
the you know, you see what he's going for there, Yeah,
I see what he's going for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:24:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Later in his live show, Russi engaged in a popular
bit wherein he brings a piece of shit to a
modern art gallery. And the joke is that, like, modern
art is 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 gist of it is. That gist of it
is that you know, liberals are so dumb they'll stare
at shit if you tell him it's art. The Times

(01:24:51):
introduces this bit and then moves on to something that
I found chillingly relevant. Quote art criticism is a limbas staple.
He believes there is a culture war going on between
those upholding decent values conservatives and the kammie lib hordes
trying to devalue human life and worst undermine private enterprise.
Limba's sermon on art brings out the Evening's only heckling,

(01:25:12):
a female cry of censorship. Oh no, Limbaugh protests, he
never spoke that word, but seconds later he allows that
censorship isn't really so bad. It has been used throughout
this nation's history as a means of maintaining standards.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Some means of maintaining standards. Yeah, what the fuck is
he talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
What he's talking about is threading the needle that the
right is now the scent 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
permit so i can be armed in more parts of
the United States. Because of all.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
That is like going to cooking school in Paris. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Well, and the things started with like a thirty minute
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 Limbaugh is starting both like saying like, well,
the liberals want to like censor us, want to cut
out all ideas they disagree with, and then he moves

(01:26:21):
on to saying but also, it's okay 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 in liberal voices, which they do through things
like school books. Right, objectively true, well documented. This is

(01:26:43):
how the right works.

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
I know no one listening is going to disagree, but
it's frustrating.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
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
give the finger to the flag.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Yeah, 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 Limbaugh.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
Wow, way more time than he deserves.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
But how he had to do it. I mean, he
deserves this much time, not in a good way, but
in a we need to understand what this man has
done to us all absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
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. Let's lay it
all out and here's here's why some people might might
not be so sad that a human life is of evidence.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah, evidence both that he deserves to have
his death cheered and also that he loved laughing at
people's deaths.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
Yeah yeah, in a way. Yeah, you are, you are.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
It's what he would have wanted. But you know what
I want right now, Paul, I want you to plug
your pluggables.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Well, let's see. Uh. You can find me on social
media at PF Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
I have.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
A bunch of podcasts going on at any given time, Freedom,
which I co host with Lauren Lapis of Scott Ackerman
and Stay Off Homekins, which I co host with my wife.
We started a podcast during the pandemic and unfortunately we
are still doing it. Uh and I do UH. I

(01:28:34):
do shows the first live streaming improv shows the first
Monday of every month with my friend Lauren Lapus and that.
All those tickets can be found at Paul F. Tompkins
dot com slash live.

Speaker 1 (01:28:46):
Well, speaking of cancel culture, this episode is now over
and thus canceled because of the libs it's done by Bye.

Speaker 3 (01:28:59):
Behind the Bars is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(01:29:20):
at Behind the Bastards

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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;}CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins