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

Robert is joined again by Paul F. Tompkins to continue to discuss Rush Limbaugh.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
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 introduce

(00:25):
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 broadcasting from his studio in
I don't know, some fucking place with one liver tight
behind his back to make it fair for all of

(00:46):
the narcotics in his system. Robert Evans presenting, you don't
you don't like me? You don't you don't like my
pseudo Rush intro suffing, I'm not on.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Board, not not a fan of the introduction. This is
Behind the Bastards.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Uh, this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that will
never be as big as The Rush Limbaugh Show because
Sophie won't let me use cultic mind control techniques on
our audience.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
That is inaccurate.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Feel free. Okay, well we're back. The man you just
heard is Paul F. Tompkins, our guest for this exploration
of the life and times of Rush Limbaugh. Hi, everyone,
Hey Paul, how are you feeling? How are you? How
are you doing? An hour and a half into talking
about l rushbo.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Feeling great, feeling great, feeling. I feel energized that he
is dead.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, I too feel happy that he's dead.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah, it's fun. It hasn't worn off.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yet, it has it never will. It will always be
good that he's dead. There's a few people who are
like that, where it's like every now and then, I'm
just like, think back to the fact that Ryan hard
Heydrich is dead. It's like good, good for him, you know, good,
good for him. So, once upon a time, Paul, the
United States used to have a thing called the Fairness Doctrine. Now,

(02:10):
in short, the fairness doctrine required anyone with a broadcast
license to present controversial issues in a balanced way, providing
roughly equivalent time to present both sides of an issue. Now,
this was obviously a flawed rule. Some issues, for example,
like climate change, don't have two sides.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
There may be different sides, but like what the right
response is, but there's not two sides to the reality
of climate change, and while the but while the you know,
the fairness doctors, So the fairness doctrine not a not
a perfect not a silver bullet, uh sort of of
of thing. Im a jig. But while it was in place,
right wing media in the form that we have today
did not and could not exist now since the dawn

(02:50):
of the fake news era, which we're in now, a
lot of folks have talked about the time of guys
like Walter Cronkite, Right, when when you had newsmen who
basically every American trust, who could shift massive national issues
just based on their considered opinion. Right Cronkite calls of
Vietnam a quagmire, suddenly national opinion on its switches. And

(03:10):
a big part of why these guys were trusted is
they were required to lend equal weight to both sides.
They couldn't just be partisan shills. Now, this generally meant
that they would give kind of the conservative opinion and
the liberal opinion as opposed to the far left of
the far right. But it did mean that you didn't
have something as unbalanced as Fox News right.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Right, It's like the voter guide you get, yeah, exactly.
It gives you the measured and says some people say this,
some people say.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
This, yeah. And as flawed as the fairness doctrine was,
it was part of why most Americans lived in a
semi unified media ecosystem back in up prior to nineteen
eighty seven. Now, obviously this did not last. In nineteen
eighty seven, the FCC is the result of a court case.
The FCC rejected the fairness doctrine. Conservatives cheered this on

(03:56):
because fair media was seen by arch conservatives guys Roger
Stone as a big reason why Americans had broadly supported
the impeachment of Richard Nixon at the end of the
Watergate investigation. Watergate is one of these situations where when
the investigation starts, the vast majority of conservatives are against it. Right,
don't think Nixon did anything wrong. The evidence comes out

(04:17):
and opinion shifts and it becomes very popular to get
Nixon out of office. This is the last time that happens, Right,
This is the last time that like people's minds get
changed by the facts on a political issue in America.
And it's the last time this happens. Because the right
goes after the fairness doctrine after about a decade or
so of fighting, they're able to get it killed. And

(04:40):
the end of the fairness Doctrine was the necessary precursor
to the creation of a wholly separate, walled garden of
right wing content, which was seen by dudes like Roger
Ales as a necessary step to protecting right wing voters
from ever learning about other opinions, which would, they believed,
protect the next criminal right wing president from impeachment. Now,

(05:01):
after Limbaugh's death, the New York Times let Ben Shapiro,
noted novelist write a column about his professional idol. Benny
Shapps called the fairness doctrine quote, a standard that in
practice allowed for the domination of broadcast media by liberals
with sporadic commentary by conservatives. That's my Benny schaeff.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
I said, how good that was of an immigration.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
It's really quite good. It's really good.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
So Rush Limbaugh was aware from the beginning that his
whole career hinged on the fairness Doctrine's death. With his
and like he starts being a national voice in nineteen
eighty nine, two years after the end of the Fairness Doctrine,
that's not a coincidence. Now, with his unparalleled national platform
and his status as a chief thought leader of the
American right, Limball went about turning the fairness Doctrine into

(05:49):
his main boogeyman. I found a Vanity Fair article from
two thousand and nine that lays this out quite well. Quote.
The single most important issue in Russia's radio career is
now among the hot button issues and concern fit of politics.
The Fairness Doctrine, a formalized, fair and balanced rule for
covering the controversial issues on the nation's airwaves, which the
Reagan FCC killed in nineteen eighty seven. The most liberal

(06:10):
wing of the Democratic Party, which puts substantial blame on
talk radio for a generation of conservative dominance in Washington,
wants to revive the doctrine, which would pretty handily destroy
conservative talk. According to the official Seapack pulling of its members,
restoring the fairest Fairness Doctrine is the third most significant
Democratic Congress policy initiative opposed by the right wing raking,

(06:31):
only behind expanding government and public health care. So yeah,
there is with Russia's orchestration a rabidness to the cause.
Opposing the fairness Doctrine is up there with opposing abortion
and he's you know, he's a it's really him that's
responsible for making this such a popular issue. It starts
off as a thing that kind of high up extreme

(06:53):
right wingers, guys who had been Nixon's right hand men
push because they want to protect the next guy, like
and it gets popular though because of Rush Limbaugh, because
he sells it to the American conservative mainstream.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
It's funny, like sorry, but the idea that like with
the Nixon era after Watergate, Nixon, when Nixon resigns, that
is maybe the last time that there were real consequences, yeah,
for any for the for the highest office. Where after that,

(07:27):
you know, Clint's impeachment, Trump's impeachment, whatever, it doesn't mean anything.
It really is just like an asterisk in history, you know,
essentially of saying like just so you know, people, some
people thought this was bad and they and they said
so officially, but there's no real consequence for any of this.
So really what they're doing is saying, we cannot Nixon

(07:53):
should not have had a consequence. We got to make
sure that there's never a consequence ever again. And unfortunately
that men for everybody, for like from I don't know
what if if because if it didn't happen, if it
didn't happen after Bush, which there was not even an
impeachment for Bush, like for the Iraq war that we

(08:13):
all know now was bogus. If there was never going
to be a consequence for that, then it worked and
they're there and and from now on, like, when is
it ever going to happen again? When if it didn't happen,
then when is it ever going to happen again? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:30):
I don't think it can because this propaganda ecosystem turns
out people who would fight to the death rather than
have somebody who on paper is supposed to agree with
them face consequences for blatantly criminal activity, right.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
And then and then it also it conditions whether whether
you believe, whether you believe in, whether you're you're on
Russia's side or not, whether you're on that side of
things or not. It conditions everybody to feel like it's
okay that there's no consequences because what are you gonna do? Yeah,
it's just the way things are.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
You can draw a fucking line between kind of the
things that Rush starts because it has an impact on
liberals and the left too. Yeah, you've got this it's
it's and it's because obviously with the fairness doctrine, nobody
ever heard anything from the far left right. The far left,
in fact, was criminally prosecuted a lot of times for
their opinions in this period. But the positive thing about

(09:27):
the fairness doctrine is that it was a large part
of why there was a broadly agreed upon understanding of
the basic of basic reality in the United States. Right, Yeah,
that we don't have anymore. And when you lose that,
I kind of think when you lose that, the only
like things inevitably escalate to deadly violence. Yeah, yeah, and

(09:49):
that's bad, right, not that again, under the fairness doctrine,
Americans were led into Vietnam, or led into Grenada, We're
led into Panama, We're let into all these horrible, horrible things.
Obviously we like it. It did not mean that Americans
had an accurate understanding of the world, but when they
had an inaccurate understanding of the world, it was still

(10:10):
broadly similar. Right, And that is better than where we
are now. I guess I think it is at least
less toxic. I guess you could argue the United States
had more power, the government had more power to pursue
violent activity overseas and stuff. I don't know, I don't know.
It's a complicated issue. But whatever, whatever you can say
about rush Linball, he was not a dumb man. He

(10:33):
was a huge bigot, though, and that nineteen ninety New
York Times write up makes it clear that, among other things,
he was quick to realize that rampant misogyny was an
incredible marketing tactic. This was, as we discussed in our
last episode, always cloaked in a thick haze of irony. Quote,
this is rush We know that women in groups, same office,
same dormitory, Saint Barracks eventually have synchronized minstrel cycles. We

(10:56):
also know that there's this thing called PMS, and we
know it turns a woman into a hell. And we
know that PMS has been used as a defense against
a charge of murder. Here's my proposal. We have fifty
two battalions. We can prepare the nation so that we'll have,
on any given week of the year, a combat runny
battalion of Amazons to go into battle. Imagine that your
Manuel Antonio Noriega, you were in the Papal Nuncio in
Panama City. You feel safe. All of a sudden, you

(11:18):
hear this blood curdling scream outside. I am outraged, and
there is Sergeant Major molly Yard leading a battalion of
Amazons with pms over the hill. That would be enough
to scare the pants off of anybody.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Disgusting, not a.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Rush Rush Limba everybody.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
I mean, it's like, it's just not even that funny.
That's one of the things that sucks about Rush Limbaugh
is that he for somebody who did a lot of
bits and you know, was supposedly doing satire, he just
wasn't that funny.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
He wasn't. It's just that he was saying the bigoted,
terrible things that a lot of bad people wanted to say. Yea,
and the fact that it was so horrible and the
fact that it scratched their id made them laugh and
made them think he was a genius because somebody was
finally telling them it was okay to be as shitty
as they'd kind of wanted to be from the.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Beginning, because you put the tiniest effort into constructing these bits.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, and it's it's the same thing with all of
these You've got this kind of strain of comedians who
thinks that it's important that they be allowed to say
the inWORD. Not a single one of them has ever
told a good joke involving the inward, right, Exactly, it's
not funny. You're just going for shock value, right, that's
all you're trying to do, and that can be There's
not that. No good humor comes from shock value. But again,

(12:39):
I haven't heard a single good joke from a white
comedian involving the inward. Not that it would be appropriate then,
but I haven't heard one, you know. Like So, from
the beginning, the villains of the Rush Limbaugh expanded universe were,
as The New York Times explained, quote, black activists, gay activists,
abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists,

(13:03):
artists with erotic tendencies, and above all, the now Game
gang that's the National Organization of Women right. His hatred, Yeah,
Rushia said that his hatred for these people caused him
an uncontrollable urge to tweak.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
The simple fact of the matter, Limbaugh is apt to
inform dolphin savers and tree lovers is that we are
human beings, and we are the most powerful smartest species
and we can damn well do whatever we want. And
you can draw a line from this kind of the
way he's phrasing things. Here's like it's stupid to care
about the environment and animals because we're more powerful than them.
To the like the shit that Identity Europa and Patriot Front,

(13:41):
these like explicitly fascist organizations exist now will put up
these signs, like these posters of the United States that
say not stolen conquered right where it's like fuck the
indigenous people, we beat them and so we deserve all
this right. That's just an extension of what Russia is saying,
you know. Yeah, and he the fact that he he
made that mainstream is why they have a chance of

(14:02):
making that mainstream, you know.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
And the idea that it's so that that they that
he phrased it as this uh matter of personal choice
rather than like just common sense practical thinking, you know,
like do you really want to do you really want
to put your trash in two separate trash bands? You know,

(14:27):
And it's like, well, it's not so much that it's
a hassle. It's that we're gonna make earth unlivable for ourselves,
not that we're like, you know, fuck you the dodo
you should have you should have had claws or something.
It's that we're fucking ourselves, Like that's the why why
has that been? Why is that so hard to understand?

(14:49):
It's so hard to comply with and so hard to
uh uh keep as part of the narrative when because
the the logical extension is, what do you care? You'll
be dead by the time, by the time this shit,
by the time this shit affects people in a meaningful
way to you a meaningful way, you'll be dead. So

(15:11):
what do you care? And these are people that are
all allegedly all about the family, and it's like, well,
I mean, do you plan on having grandchildren, great grandchildren,
great great grandchildren? Like do you care about what? I
don't know. I don't. I'm not being funny now, and
I'm just being whiny.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
But what you're getting at, Paul, and what the core
of this is is that Rush doesn't believe in positive things.
And I don't mean positive in a good sense. I
mean he doesn't believe in things that should be done.
He believes in tweaking people. That is what he turns
American conservatism into. He turns it from we're conservatives, these

(15:50):
are the things we believe about how the government and
how society should be run, and to conservatism is owning
the Libs. That's where we are now, and that's what
this is is it's my politics are a sort of
rhetorical violence against the people I disagree with. Because improving
the world, changing or making positive alterations to the world

(16:11):
is difficult and complicated and involves a lot of debate
and trial and error. That's hard. All I want to
do is own the Libs. That's what Rush Limbaugh created,
brought into the world and turned into the entire That's
the only thing that's left in conservatism. Right, You've got
these odd You've got a couple of dudes left on

(16:31):
the right who actually believe in something like Mitt Romney
and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Not that what they believe in is great or that
I believe in it too, but they both have a
clearly have a principles that aren't just owning the Libs.
But they're on the fringe now because owning the Libs
is all the right has, ye.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
And it's just it's not it's not it's not standing
for something it's it's I it's like not what I
my politics are. I don't want somebody telling me what
to do. Yeah, I believe in a vague idea of
a John Wayne movie. And you know, things were better

(17:13):
in this bygone era before these people started to suggest
that maybe we can improve things. And that's where it ends.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, and it's it's it's very frustrated, Paul, because that
the core of that idea that like, I want to
be left alone. That's more or less my politics. That's
what led me to anarchism is like, don't fucking tell
me what to do, and I don't want to tell
you what to do, right, And that is what as
a kid I was taught conservatism was. But it's not

(17:40):
what conservatism has ever been. And I think a big
part of why why the Republican establishment embraces Rush is
that by the early nineties, in particular, by the mid nineties, definitely,
it has become clear that nothing that the right does
works for the actual people that vote them into office.
True down economics does not function, you know, it doesn't.

(18:00):
It's well documented objectively does not work the way they
say it does. They're fighting against environmental regulations damages the
world and makes it uninhabitable. Fighting against corporate regulations gets
a lot of their voters killed by dangerous working conditions
and stuff. All of the wars they get us into
are disasters and expensive and do not achieve the foreign

(18:21):
policy or even the basic national security goals they set.
Conservatism as Americans do, it at least does not work.
And when you know that, you can't go back to
the drawing table. You can't admit failure, you can't acknowledge
the mistake. What you can do is own the Libs,
you know. And that's why that's all it is now,
is owning the Libs. It's good. It's a good, healthy society, Paul.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
It's only gonna get better too, So we gotta get better.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
So Russia's justification for the outrageous caricature of a right
winger that he played on his show had always been
that these liberals and leftists advocate for black lives and
women's liberation and basic environmental safeguards were absurd, and as
Rush put it, I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd, that's
his own words. Once now, this turned out to be

(19:13):
an objectively good business because none of his listeners seemed
to find Rush himself absurd. The character he played became
the man he was, and the once a political wannabe
DJ turned into a mouthpiece for the very worst of
our society's impulses. One thing that made the Rush Limbaugh
Show groundbreaking was that, for the first time in an
explicitly political talk show, the focus was not on guests

(19:35):
or actual reporting or anything but the personality Limbaugh had created.
Rush was his own guest, and this was a deliberate
choice he made, and a very intelligent one to make
the show more profitable. If the focus of your show
is on the news and on what guests have to say,
you can kind of slot any person with a decent
voice in to replace the host. Right That limits how

(19:57):
much money you're going to make, and it limits of
the length of your career. Rush himself explained in an interview,
I wanted to be the reason people listened. That's how
you pad your pocket, that's how you establish yourself, and
that's very smart. He did, in fact, establish himself. In
nineteen ninety two, Rush's radio success finally got the TV
people listening. They decided to try him out as on

(20:20):
screen talent. He teamed up with Roger Ayles, the man
who would later invent Fox News, and together they produced
one of the most outrageous and vile news programs ever made.
It would sadly also turn out to be one of
the most influential. And now, Paul, it is time for
you and I to take a journey into this particular
piece of far right history. So this episode from nineteen

(20:43):
ninety two of the Rush Limbas Show opens with a
title card which features an image of a microphone with
the name Rush emblazoned on it and the words warning,
the views expressed on this program are not necessarily the
views of the staff, advertisers, or your local station, but
they ought to be. It's a lot of fun. Yeah,
it's good shit, man, it's good shit. So the episode

(21:05):
itself has a weirdly quiet intro, no music, just Rush
with a pointer standing in what looks like an office
with wall to wall bookshelves and TVs interspersed within the
books on the bookshelves. He introduces himself and he starts
talking about a recent conversation he had with President George H. W.
Bush on his radio program.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
So there continues to be more controversy surrounding my performance
with the President yesterday when he came by my radio program.
The press is telling you things that aren't true.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
But we have the tapes and.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
We have the truth me and we'll show you and
tell you both tonight.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
So that's telling. That's that's that's extremely important what he
does here. You have to remember Fox News was not
a thing yet at this time, fake news was not
a buzzword. Limbaugh is groundbreaking in that he was not
only critiquing mainstream news as being fake and lying, but
he's also telling his listeners I am the truth. This

(22:00):
paragraph from a write up by Rolling Stone gets to
the core of why I find what he's doing here
so terrifying. Quote. He wasn't selling political ideas and he
never has. He was selling political attitude, the swaggering certitude,
the mocking dismissiveness, the freedom to offend, the right to
assert your privilege without guilt or embarrassment. And partly because

(22:21):
he was modeling that liberation with such wicked glee, Limbaugh
was making himself indispensable. Within six weeks of tuning in regularly,
he would tell new listeners they be on the cutting
edge of social evolution. Best of all he promised, I
will do all your reading and I will tell you
what to think of it. I will do all your reading,

(22:41):
and I will tell you what to think of it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Wow, I know right. It's so abusive, it's so and
it's so bald. Yeah, it's right out there. It's like
he's not there's no, it's.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
Not like.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
A sort of obfuscating language. He is.

Speaker 6 (23:00):
He's saying very clearly, Yeah, what the deal is?

Speaker 3 (23:05):
This is unbelievable, And this.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Is the this is the logical extent of this. I'm
so smart, you know, I gotta tie half my brain
behind my back just to make it fair. You know,
I'm this big genius. I'm so smart. You don't need
to reader think. I'll do it for you and then
you too will be smart.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
And this is a huge that he spins a lot
of effort in reinforcing his intelligence. After this section of
the show, he goes on to introduce the other topics
of that episode, which include femin Nazi, glorious steinem in
review of the movie The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
Then we cut into Yeah. Then we cut to the
actual intro, which is terrible nineteen nineties talk show music

(23:44):
played over a series of mocked up news articles with
titles like EIB linked to higher IQ. Limba gets patent,
Limbaugh says no to presidential bid. Limbaugh checks brain on
donor's card. Limbaugh to carry a torch at the Mental Olympics. Again,
he puts a lot of effort into I mean, it's absurd, right,

(24:07):
but yeah, it clearly works. It worked on my parents,
you know, all of the people who raised me to
some extent, they're all convinced.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
He's fun.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, he's fun.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
But but he also says things that I like to hear.
But he's fun. He's just fun.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
He's fun.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I think also, you cannot underestimate the the effect of
the pointer. If you have, If you have, if you're
on television and you have you're you're walking out over
television with a pointer and you're pointing at something, it
looks very official.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Totally absolutely, That's why I have a point. Well I
have a gun, but it works the same way.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
So Robert, what are all your weapons in front of you?

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Well, I'm always I'm always surrounded by weapons.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
What's going to happen during this discussion?

Speaker 1 (24:59):
You know, have anything on you? Right now? I'm right here.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, you're not.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Fucking h here's my knife.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
There a nice little hunchback there that makes it good
for kind of close end work. Yeah, all right, now
we're all armed. We can properly get back to the show.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
I didn't realize this was a this was a knife
on the table show. I apologiz.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
This is this is I mean, there are like three
knives on the table, right, this is a significant number
of beau on the table.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
All right, I apologize.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
So the show proper starts after this point, after these
fake news articles kind of go through and Russia's first
subject on this episode is the then new TV series
Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown was obviously the titular character of
the show. She was a recovering alcoholic investigative journalist and
a primetime news anchor into single Murphy Brown was a

(26:01):
very feminist in progressive series for its day. Limba opens
his episode by expressing anger at the show's success, and then,
in what I would consider a fairly abusive manner, he
tells his audience why they shouldn't watch it.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Clip.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Oh, people on my radio show, didn't You probably watched
it too, but you didn't have to. You know why
you didn't have to because I told you you didn't
have to. I had the script. I told you everything
that was going to happen on this show. I told
you it wasn't funny. I told you it was defensive.
I told you this show was a little heavy handed.

(26:38):
I said that they're focusing on the wrong thing in
this show, and they really did. You've heard a lot
of people say a lot of things about this show,
but I'll tell you the most important thing is that
they got very defensive about what a family is. They
trot out all these various examples of what a family is,
and that's not what the Vice president or any of
the family values people.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's profoundly I think this is this You shouldn't have
watched this show because I told you not to, and
I told you not to because it's not good for
you to imbibe this. And I think it's important to
break down exactly what he's doing here. First off, he
is trying to physically separate his audience from mainstream American society.

(27:19):
Murphy Brown was a hugely popular show in this day.
He is literally telling them, you don't need to watch
this thing other people are watching because I am telling
you not to, and he justifies this by saying that
Murphy Brown is an assault on family values, which he
goes on to call functional values, because family is like
the ones portrayed on Murphy Brown were, in Limbaugh's eyes,
non functional. This is significant because Murphy Brown was a

(27:43):
single mother. She was one of the first single mother's
portrayed on American TV as not just existing but as
being a successful person and a competent parent. Was furious,
I can't let we can't let people watch this because
it will give them the wrong idea, and not just
about single mothers.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
I also think it's worth noting that on the show itself,
the idea of her being a single mother was a
plot point that was a story arc that they discussed
a lot on the show. It was a It was
not a blithe decision by the character. It was they
really talked about it because because it was a show

(28:26):
that did a lot of satire, talked about issues. The
discussion of whether or not she was going to have
the baby and what it meant to be a single
working mother was discussed at great length on the show.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, and that's why he wants, That's why it is
important to him to keep his audience away from it. Now,
that was not the only kind of groundbreaking thing about
Murphy Brown. The show was incredibly significant in its portrayal
of gay people in several episodes, most notably in nineteen
ninety two, when eineightteen ninety four, homosexuals were shown as

(29:02):
not just normal, functional members of society, but as existing
in significant numbers throughout American society. There's an episode where
like one of the characters buys a bar and it becomes,
through kind of like comedic hijinks or whatever, becomes a
gay bar, and he's like slowly realizes what it is.
But the point the episode was making is that gay
people are all around us. They're part of our community.

(29:23):
They are a significant, meaningful part of our society. This
was rare in mainstream television for the time, and it
made Rush Limbaugh furious. We have another clip here of that.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Just adults teaching kids doesn't matter what the composition is
of the family, and nobody has been critical that. When
Quail said that they glorified single mother is what he
was trying to point out, my friends was and I
think this show proved it last night. This is another
thing this show's got an agenda. And they say all
day long they don't have an agenda, but last night's.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Show proved it.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
It's okay that they have an agenda. Just say so,
like this show, we are perfectly upfront and honest about
what I am and what I believe on this show,
and we'll let that float out in the marketplace and
let you accept it as it is.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
There's no attempt here to fool you.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
There's no attempt here to deny what I am.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
But that's what they're all about. Now, this is also
really significant. So what Russia's doing here is he's framing
his objection to Murphy Brown as reasonable and not based
in hate. He's saying, I'm not against single mothers, or
I'm not against gay people or whatever. I am against
the fact that this show conceals its political agenda. And

(30:36):
I can see why people like most of my family
would have found this reasonable. But what's happening here is
very sinister because Murphy Brown was not trying to be
left wing. It was trying to make a point that
single parents and that gay people are regular human beings
who contribute to society. It was trying to point out
that single parents are valid and functional people. These should

(30:59):
not be political points, and recognizing the humanity of huge
chunks of the population should not count as an agenda,
but it was critical for Rush Limbaugh to turn it
into one, because if you can take the basic humanity
of marginalized people and make it a political talking point,
then you make it into something people can oppose on
principle and thus frame their bigotry as not hate but

(31:23):
simply a political stance that they have every right to.
Rush was not the first person to talk about the
gay agen or to oppose single motherhood, not even close.
But before him, the most prominent voices attacking these groups
of people were on the religious right, which had first
arisen as an organized political force in the late seventies.
They were obviously influential, but they were also obviously religious extremists,

(31:44):
and a lot of non religious conservatives and libertarian types
did not want to identify with fundamentalists. Rush, who had
a documented history of mocking religious conservatives, provided the more
libertarian right with a secular justification for bigotry against gay
people and single mothers and women in general, and that's

(32:07):
one of his great innovations.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Unfortunately, Yeah, he pioneered this idea that if you are
saying this is okay, this thing is okay, what you
are doing is saying that's it, that's somehow that's an
attack on me and what I believexactly. So the idea
of dan Quayle saying it glorifies single mothers. No one

(32:30):
that that show. No one was ever saying we should
do this instead right, we should be doing we should
be doing this instead of what you think is right.
This is what we should be doing, rather than just
saying can't isn't this okay? Like these these people exist.
Isn't that all right?

Speaker 2 (32:48):
These people exist, it's all right, and they shouldn't be
hated or punished or or ostracized. Being this for.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
Me, he's not even talking about a slippery he's just
saying that if you are saying this is okay, that
means you are saying the way we live is not okay. Yes,
and that's just not there at all. It's just not
there at all.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
But if he's if he's able to make it be
that way to his listeners, yeah, he can. Number one,
make sure they will always oppose these things that he
just finds gross. And number two, it further separates them
from mainstream society. This is the beginning of the splintering
of the mainstream American right from the United States, from

(33:34):
most of the people in this country. And it was
the beginning of making sure that there there was no
You cannot reconcile the right with the modern world, with
the rest of civilization, because you doing a different thing
than them is an attack on them, Like we're being
attacked because you're different, and so we get to fight you.

(33:56):
That's Russia's great innovation.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
And also that the way you think is the real America.
And yeah, not what these people think exactly.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
That's haunting. But you know what isn't haunting, Robert.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
The products and services that support this podcast, hopefully, hopefully
unless it's Raytheon, which is very haunted products. But that's
a story for another day. And we're back. So Paul,

(34:32):
I would love to go with this through this entire
episode with you. In fact, I would love to do
a reoccurring series where we just go through, point by
point every episode of Rush Limbaugh's TV show and talk
about it. I think it would be amazing.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
It is wild to see those clips. Yeah, yeah, what's
the what's the opposite of Pristian.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
It would be very I think fun and also intellectually valuable.
We just we have so much ground to cover. This
has to be the end of that episode of the show.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, we get to a rewatch of the We can't
do a rewatch podcast with the Rush Limbau Show.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, at least not not today. I think we've gotten
the point across and characterize what he's doing on the
show and why it was significant. Now, the Rush Limbaugh
TV Show was what you'd call a modest success. The
thirty minute syndicated series ran from nineteen ninety two to
nineteen ninety six, which is not a long run, but
isn't a super short run either, you know, it was.
It was not a huge hit, but it was successful.

(35:32):
That said, its actual impact on history was much greater
than its four seasons might suggest. As I said earlier,
Roger Ayles was the executive producer of Limbaugh's TV debut.
Limbaugh and Ales had met in nineteen ninety and Rush
would later say that their meeting was quote like finding
a soulmate. And I'm going to quote here from a

(35:52):
write up that I found on Quartz. The persona Ales
helped Limbaugh create on that show, something between a commentator,
political stratus, news anchor, and entertainer is exactly the kind
of act you can see today on Fox News. It
is not hard to draw a straight line from Limbaugh's
TV show to talking heads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
Like today's Fox News personalities, Limbaugh fancied himself as a

(36:15):
man of the people who railed against elitist liberal politicians
and voters. But as he did that, he was flying
his private jet around the country to whine and dine
with powerful figures. The myth he created of himself with
the help of Ales is the same myth that we
see pushed again and again on Fox News by its
biggest names. In retrospect, Ales may have been using Limbaugh's
TV act as a test run for Fox News to

(36:37):
see if the brand of conservative opinion that was working
on the radio could be translated to and expanded on TV.
In nineteen ninety six, the same year the Limbaugh Show ended,
Ayles co founded Fox News at the behest of the
media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Much of what ensued the liberal bashing,
fear mongering alternative reality in which Fox's Personalities Lived was
reminiscent of Ales's weird little Limbaugh talk shit experiment. So

(37:02):
this is really a test case for what becomes Fox News,
you know, And the year Limbaugh Show ends nineteen ninety
six is the year Fox News launches.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
What's strange to me is well, I guess because the
show was over. I guess the show, you know, the
viewership went down. I wonder why he didn't just stick
Limbaugh on Fox News in those in those.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Early days, he wanted to actually, okay, yeah, so like
Ales actually tried to get rushed to join the network
I think in two thousand and six, but Limbaugh kind
of preferred radio. I don't think he actually liked being
on TV very much, not to the extent that he enjoyed,
you know, doing his radio show. So I think that

(37:45):
was mainly the reason. But also by the time Fox
News really got going, Ales had a half dozen Rush
Limbaughs you know, right, yeah, which we'll talk about a
bit later. So throughout the mid and into the late
nineteen nineties, the Rush Limbaughs show was a bona fide
cultural thing phenomenon. Rush created the first fully monetized right
wing cult of personality within like the American media. At

(38:07):
least as you heard in the clips we played, Rush
discouraged his listeners from thinking for themselves. He was the genius,
and if you just agreed with him and thought the
way he thought, then you were, by definition also smart.
As a result, from the very early point, he gave
his fans the nickname ditto heads. The New York Times
explains the etymology of this term as it evolved on

(38:28):
his show. Ditto a time saving greeting used by callers
to avoid tedious repetition of the obvious. For example, you're wonderful, Rush,
and I agree with everything you've said. Dittohead then means
a Limbaugh fan. So you're like, literally, he's saying, my
fans are people who say and believe all of the
exact same things that I do and profoundly accomplice.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
They're absolutely going to praise me, and so in order
to save some time, let's just condense all the fawning
praise that you will, no doubt give me into one word,
so we know that what you're saying is, Rush, I
love you. You are everything to me, and I need you

(39:11):
to know that before we get into whatever fucking issue
were going to get into.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, you are the only thing that matters to me,
or at least your beliefs are, because I am so
empty as a person as a result of how capitalism
has hallowed me out and hollowed my class out, that
I have nothing but the hatred of liberals that you embody.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Until that first guy came along that had to implement megadiddos.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yes, yeah, and then there's megadiddos. And I can't even
get too much into some of the terms used on
the Rush Limba show because it makes me want to
punch things until my hands are broken, and I already
had that happen last year because of one of his fans. Anyway,
the core of the Rush Limbas show was not, as
he would always claim, advancing conservative ideology, but was instead

(39:57):
attacking liberals and the left, who he referred to as
kami libs or pink kami libs and I don't know again,
at this fucking gun class I was at last weekend,
the instructor was like, the far left wants to take
your guns away, and obviously I couldn't be like, actually,
the far left is pretty heavily strapped. It's liberal, but
like that's part of part that this idea that Joe

(40:19):
Biden is somehow a leftist, right, that he's a communist,
that you hear an Auch and you hear all over
the right. Now, that was Limba saying anyone who is
not a conservative is a far left, so it doesn't
matter that actually the Democratic Party is a profoundly conservative
political party and today's Democrats are basically the same as
Republicans were when I was growing up in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
There's also never any follow up on these these the
fearmongering claims whenever there's an election, like what happened to
the Obamas leeper cells, like he never are they still
in play? Is he still waiting to give them the word?
Like they never go back and say, oh, it turns
out that didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
It's this, I mean, that's kind of the thing about
Republican talking points. Like the other thing they kept panic
like like terrified during the Obama years, He's going to
take your guns. He's going to take your guns. He's
going to take your guns. Barack Obama did not one
single thing to restrict gun ownership in the United States,
whereas actually Trump actually did ban certain fire the bump

(41:20):
stock like, Trump put through more restrictions on gun rights
than not that I'm saying anything. Bump stocks are dumb,
but Trump objectively restricted gun ownership more than Obama. But
you never know it to listen to the right wing media.
It's it's preposterous.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
You people would know. No, no one's going to take
your guns.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
No one's going to take your guns. There's too many
of them. It's not that you know, we'll talk anyway.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
It's separate. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
As I said earlier, the core of Rushlimbaugh's actual ideology
was owning the Libs. His conservatism was built entirely around
attacking the other, and over his years on air, Rush
built up an audience of millions and eventually tens of millions,
who began to see political victory as being not about
achievements that improve life, but about tearing down and harming

(42:10):
the enemy. This is why you get to a point
where now mainstream Republicans are selling mugs with like that
are like the tears of my enemies are in the Yeah,
you know, I'm going to quote from the Rolling Stone here,
quote Any Republican candidate is better than any Democratic candidate
Limbaugh told his audience early on, which might sound kind
of innocuous on the surface, except that for Limbaugh, the
superiority of our side and the inferiority of them was

(42:33):
increasingly over the years a deadly serious matter. It became
tribal warfare, which you know, is kind of where we
are now. On January twenty third, nineteen ninety five, Time
magazine featured Rush Limbaugh on its cover. We see him
wearing a suit and smoking a cigar. Smoke curls up
out of his mouth behind the bold words is Rush

(42:56):
Limbaugh good for America? Now? It was obvious to anyone
who was paying attention that he was not. But for
the most part, the liberal media that Rush attacked and
demonized embraced him as kind of like the loyal opposition,
as an erudent foil to debate with, to argue against,
but nonetheless someone who deserved respect and honor due to
his success. Like you can see this in the episode

(43:18):
of Family Guy that Rush was on, right where it's
like he has these fun bickering arguments with the token
liberal on the show, but in the end they really
both like each other, you know, as opposed to what
Rush actually represented, which is the politics of violent elimination
of the opponent. And that's what's most amazing to me
is no matter what he said about the mainstream media,

(43:38):
about the liberal media, whatever, they fetted him, they praised him,
They made him like he was never treated as a pariah.
Barbara Walters said in an interview, people just can't get
enough of him. The Los Angeles Yeah, The Los Angeles
Times described him as a self styled commander in chief,
fighting his private culture war agains the many liberal do

(44:01):
gooder notions that interfere with his right to eat and
wear and spend whatever he damn well wants, and say
whatever he damn well pleases. C Span highlighted him in
a fawning interview that helped turn him into a household name.
Within a year of that interview, he was carried by
five hundred and thirty stations and listened to by an
estimated twenty five million Americans. He started writing books with
titles like The Way Things Ought to Be, each of

(44:22):
which dutifully went on to become a New York Times bestseller.
For a man who built his career attacking the liberal media,
Rush never received anything but encouragement and financial support from
his so called enemies. The fundamental hypocrisies that undergirded his
career were seldom called out. Rush Limbaugh had not even
registered to vote until he was thirty five years old,

(44:43):
two years before his show became a nation nationwide success.
The repeated double standards in his work and his life
never hurt his poll with his audience. For example, rush
Limbaugh repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, which
he was, but so was rush Limbaugh took the route
that most well the young Americans during Vietnam took and
found a doctor who would diagnose him with a bullshit

(45:04):
injuries that he couldn't be called up for service. When
he was eventually called on this by some journalists who
were doing their jobs, he responded, I had student deferments
in college, and upon taking a physical was discovered to
have a physical by the virtue of what the military says,
I didn't even know it existed, a physical deferment. And
then the lottery system came along when they chose your
a lot by birth date, and mine was high, and

(45:25):
I did not want to go, just as Governor Clinton didn't,
which on its own is a reasonable statement, except you
spent years attacking Clinton for being a draft dodge. Yeah,
huge draft.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Do funny and hypocritical.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
To me, my favorite draft dodge explanation of all time
is still Dick Cheney. I had other priorities.

Speaker 6 (45:46):
Yeah, I mean, that's just that's incredible.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
And it's true. Both Cheney and George W. Bush did,
like Rush, like Clinton, everything they could to not actually
go and fight in Vietnam. One of the things that
will always be the most curiating thing, one of the
most inferiating things to happen in American politics to me,
is the way in which John Kerry, who is a
whatever else you can say about him, fought courageously went

(46:12):
to wint despite the considerable privilege he was born into,
did an incredibly dangerous job, was wounded multiple times, and
risked his life repeatedly for the lives of his men. Right,
Vietnam was a terrible war we never should have been in.
It was fundamentally a moral on a national scale, but
on a human level. John Kerrey did the right thing,
which is not use his privilege to get out of

(46:35):
fighting in a war that other people of his class
got us into. And he was portrayed during that campaign
as like a liar and a craven coward. Well, George Bush,
who did everything he could to not fight in Vietnam,
was seen as this brave warrior hero. It's it's still
very frustrating. I don't even like John Kerry, but my god,

(46:57):
the man did the thing all of you say is
what you're say supposed to do as a man. Yes,
it's infuriating. It's infuriating. The Dittoheads continued to listen to
their idol slam Clinton for being a draft dodger, even
while they celebrated a man who, by his own admission,
had done the exact same thing. Rush would eventually rack
up three to four and I should have stayed here.

(47:18):
It's not bad to be a draft dodger. The Vietnam
War was again, horribly a moral. It's perfectly. It's what
is immoral is dodging the draft and then going on
to encourage to do nothing but encourage more wars that
involve American servicemen. Right, that's immoral. It is not a
moral to dodge the draft and say, hey, this was
a bad war. We shouldn't get involved in stupid, pointless

(47:40):
wars that just kill people. For the profits of a
tiny number Like that's bad. I'm not going to do it,
and I'm not going to support it. That's fine.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, it's doubly a moral when you're well past the
age where it would affect you where it's you're now,
there's another there's a later generation of people that will
be affected by this very uh, you know, a hypocritical
line of attack.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, it's the moral inconsistency that's infuriating. John Kerry actually,
and John Kerry did not support the Vietnam War and
became after he got out a very very outspoken voice
against it. But it's the if if Limbaugh had served
in Vietnam and then gone on to be a warhawk,
then at least he would be ideologically consistent. You know,
at least I could say Rush Limbaugh believes in something.

(48:25):
It's like John McCain. At least he fucking believed in something.
You know, it was terrible and fundamentally toxic as well,
but it was not He's not like Limbaugh. You know,
he is a person who has beliefs. I don't know that.
It's not like that line from the Big Lebowski, right, like,
say what you will about the tenets of national socialism. Dude,

(48:45):
at least it's an ethos, you know. So, Rush Limbaugh
was not a man who I think believed in mush much.
Other than the fame and wealth of rush Limbaugh. He
would eventually rack up three divorces and four why he
never had any children. Despite this, tens of millions of
conservatives listened to him opining on family values and traditional

(49:06):
morality on a daily basis. Rush called it functional values,
and one key aspect of his functional value system was
rejecting illegal drugs. At one point on his TV show
at the height of the drug war, Rush told his audience,
if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they
ought to be accused, and they ought to be convicted,
and they ought to be sent up the river. He
repeatedly called addicts junkies up the river. Yeah, you go

(49:30):
to prison if you do illegal drugs. Scene. He repeatedly
called addicts junkies and suggested that drug dealers deserved death
for their crimes. While he enthusiastically supported the drug war
and the use of the Carcerral state to lock up
mostly black men for selling drugs, rush Limbaugh was actively
trafficking huge amounts of opiate painkillers. Rush used his housekeeper

(49:50):
as a hookup, handing her cigar boxes filled with cash
in exchange for thousands of pills of OxyContin, hydrocodone, and
the like. In two thousand and three, she went public
and knocked on him to the police. When the story broke,
he was charged for his crimes, and Florida Sheriff's deputies
opened an investigation into a drug trafficking ring. We don't
know exactly what rushes, if he was just a customer

(50:11):
or if he had some other role in it, but
he was buying huge amounts of painkillers. I'm talking about
a guy who was spending probably hundreds of thousands of
dollars on his addiction.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
And did it come from Did he have some injury
that got him hooked on it.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Or yeah, he got it prescribed to him initially for
an injury and he got addicted like most people do. Hey,
this is this is not just with prescription painculls. Most
people who have a problematic addiction to a drug get
addicted because of something negative that happens in their life. Right, yes,
trauma or an injury or an emotional depression whatever. That's
most people who have a problematic addiction. Limbaugh said, anyone

(50:49):
who does that should go to prison. Then he did that,
you know, but he gets caught and he oh, yeah,
he gets pught. And when he gets caught, it is
a big story. In two thousand and three, his housekeeper
went public, wore a wire recorded him doing a drug
dealer deal, knocked on him to the police, and when
the story broke, he was charged for his crimes and

(51:10):
Florida Sheriff's deputies opened an investigation into that drug traffic
trafficking ring. His third wife left him. He checked himself
into rehab while his multimillion dollar a team of lawyers
went to work defending him in court. A legal battle
would go on for three years, during which time he
began doctor shopping to maintain his addiction. He was charged
again with fraud for concealing information to obtain prescriptions from

(51:32):
four different doctors who prescribed him roughly two thousand pain
pills during one six month period. The case would eventually
wrap up in two thousand and six when Limbaugh agreed
to a plea deal that allowed him to avoid prosecution
if he sought treatment and avoided other criminal activity. It's
very frustrating. Uh huh, oh, yeah, I actually didn't. I

(51:54):
didn't really, I wasn't really cognizant of all the legal
side of this. I just remember the hypocrisy of him
being you know, uh, just gobbling up yeah, shaming and
while he's gobbling down these pills.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
But I had no idea. I guess I didn't. I didn't.
I didn't bother exploring that side.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Of it, right, And like he doesn't even it's not
even a slap on the risk. It's like a little
light tap on the wrist. It's not even a slap
on the wrists. So fucking upsetting.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
And again, the immorality here is that he always advocated
criminal consequences for people who did exactly what he did,
and then he didn't go on to suffer them. And
that's what's It's not that, like, there's nothing morally wrong
with being addicted to painkillers. If it were legal, I
would absolutely be a painkiller addict. Seems it's it's the
But I'm also consistent about the fact that I don't

(52:48):
think doing or possession any subset should be exactly with
the exception of like, you know, some explosives, there's a
line to be drawn. I don't think people should have
certain aramis a lot. But Harold, speaking of Heroin, you
know who supports our podcast, Sophie, I don't know the
fine people at the Sina Loa cartel, So like right now, yes,

(53:18):
this is a cartel supported podcast, and I just want
to say, let's go to ads before I get us
in some trouble. Ah, we're back good times. So while
Rush was using his wealth and power to avoid the
legal consequences that he enthusiastically supported existing for the crimes

(53:40):
he committed, he continued to act as the voice of
America's conservative conscience. Mostly this meant being super racist. At
one point, on his TV show, he played video clips
of black men and boys standing in front of the TV,
and like, while he was playing these clips of black
men and boys, he would stand in front of the
TV and make gorilla noises and grunts, the apparent oak
being that black people were like monkeys, Like that's kind

(54:04):
of I don't know what else he could be saying.

Speaker 6 (54:07):
Pretty satirical, very satire satirical, Like, yeah, I think he
got that from a New Yorker cartoon.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
It would be like if Jonathan Swift actually murdered Irish
children and ate them and then was like, this is
a satire. Get it, you get it. The joke is
that their food rush repeatedly blamed corruption and violence in
African like the African nation national governments, as the fault
of black people getting rid of white colonial leaders, as

(54:37):
we see in this quote from two thousand and seven quote. Right,
so you go into Darfur, and you go into South Africa,
you get rid of the white government there, you put
sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was
bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of
certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, you do the
same thing.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
He's saying that because the black people got rid of
their colonial oppressors, that's why Africa's in bad shape. Not
the decades of trauma those governments pushed. Not the fact
that when those governments gave up colonial control, they put
people like Idiot Mean, who had been a British military
sergeant in charge of the government and turned out that
he was a fucking monster. Not because these governments, like
colonial governments, continued to suck wealth out of these countries

(55:17):
and support kleptocratic dictatorships that allowed them to suck more
wealth out. That made the country dysfunctional, and that led
to consistent, like decades and decades of violence. Not that
they supported ethnic groups one over the other like they
did in Rwanda which led to their one and genocide,
none of that. It's because they got rid of the
white people, even the white people didn't actually leave. You know,
it's super fucked up.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
I didn't know that he'd actually gone to the lengths
of trying to smear Nelson Mandela.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, communists, Jesus great. Uh, that's good stuff. I mean
in Nelson Mandela also was at one point some guy
somebody who supported like terrorism and stuff, which also is
totally justified. If your government is the apartheid government of
s South Africa. Terrorism is not necessarily the wrong thing
to do.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
No, I would say, it's not off the table.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
It's not off the table. Yeah, sometimes terrorists are right, Yes,
that is like you could argue that the founding fathers
of this nation, who despite their own bigotry and slave
like the government they were rebelling against also allowed slavery,
they were right to do terrorism to get rid of
having a king, because kings are bad, you know, Like, yeah,
terrorism is justified sometimes so. Rush was repeatedly critical of

(56:30):
professional sports for the presence of black athletes, as we
see in this two thousand and seven quote. Look, let
me put it to you this way. The NFL all
too often looks like a game between the bloods and
the crips without any weapons there. I said it.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
The inherent criminality of black people was a belief that
Rush held deeply, and he expressed it constantly. In nineteen
ninety three, he said the NAACP should have riot rehearsals.
They should get a liquor store and practice robberies. You're
saying this after the LA riots, you know, this is
like just this is what then? This is not people
reacting to horrible violence the only way that they can, right,

(57:10):
This is not a riot being the language of the unheard.
This is what the NAACP wants because.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
They're all prim much to criticize athletes. I bet he
couldn't even do like a jog.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
Yeah, it's it's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
The yeah, the talking point of like they just these
you know, these people they just love to riot.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah, they just loved her. Not these people are being
oppressed and murdered and finally, violence was the only thing
they could think to do because they were given no
other options, and they've reached the end of their human tether,
like the people I idolize who founded this nation.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
But yeah, look, slavery is over. What more do you want?
I mean?

Speaker 2 (57:47):
And when I say that, I don't mean to say
like that. Obviously, anyone rioting in Los Angeles in nineteen
ninety three was a thousand times more justified than George Washington.
And that said, I still think getting rid of a king,
all other things being equal, getting rid of a king
is a violid reason to do violence. Kings are bad.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
So Rush repeatedly argued that white people shouldn't be blamed
for slavery, saying it's preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for
slavery when they've done more to end it than any
other race. Any race of people should not have guilty.
If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery,
it's Caucasians. God, Rush, bitch, It's amazing how many Caucasians
fought to keep fought and died to keep slavery going.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
Rush, is this just like at this point when you
say things like that, right, he is what do you
think the percentage is of uh? For in Russia's mind,
I actually believe this or what is the most to
what is the most outrageous thing that I could say?

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I think he comes to believe it because these beliefs
become a well, I think what it is.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
It starts.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
He's not a political person, he doesn't care about politics.
He starts with a joke because he starts doing this
persona because it gets him listeners. But he's also a narcissist,
and these beliefs aren't political stances to him. They're aspects
of his personality. And his narcissism dictates that he comes
to believe it because believing it and defending these things

(59:11):
is the same as defending himself. And again, he's a
fucking narcissist. I think that's how it works.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
I like the Trump thing where he starts out telling
a lie, but then he repeats the lie enough times
that it becomes true to him because he is saying.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Yes, that's exactly the case. So another repeated rush Limbaugh
Bitt was attacking the daughters of Democratic presidents for being ugly.
In nineteen eighty eight, he called Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy
the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country.
In the early nineteen nineties, he declared Chelsea Clinton to
be the White House dog, which is like just very vile.

(59:51):
I don't even think it's like the Trump boys and
Evanka made themselves political figures, perfectly fine to insult and
attack them. You're never gonna hear me saying anything bat
about like Tiffany or barn because they're they're children, you know, like,
don't fucking talk about them if they don't make themselves
into a major part of things.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Now, Chelsea Clinton's done has it put herself in the
public eye, and it's perfectly fair to criticize her for
the thing she does in the public eye.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
But at that time when he was saying that shit,
she was but she was a child.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Yeah yeah, And what you're what he said about her
is a kind You can't be a good person and
say that about a child to an audience millions.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
In twenty twelve, when Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke went
before Congress to argue that contraceptive should be covered by
the Affordable Care Act, Limbaugh called her a slut and
a prostitute. It's it's hard. You can't overstate how vile
he was. When the Marty from Back to the Future.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Uh, Michael J. Fox.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Michael J. Fox, Yeah, made some political statements that Limbaugh
disagreed with limbab mimic having Parkinson's disease, to mock him
on his show, like such a bad person to say that, to.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Imply that Michael J. Fox was playing it up for
the cameras. Yeah, when he went testified before Congress. I
remember this. I remember this so well because Michael J.
Fox deliberately did not take his medication and said that
and said, I want you to see this is what happens.
And Rush Limbaugh accused him of like playing it up

(01:01:29):
like it's not that bad, and he's he's jiggling all
around like that's like burned into my brain forever.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
It's horrific. I mean, it's like and to say that
it would be it like, I think what he did
was perfectly reasonable. I'm not going to take my medicine
because you need to know what it is like for
people who don't have access to the medicine. I'm rich.
I have access to all the medicine I need here's
what it's like. If you don't, I want to make
this less abstract to you. Yeah, I had a friend.
One of the big things in terms of like me

(01:01:59):
changing my political attitudes, it started with like me changing
my attitudes on drugs, this conservative that like marijuana should
be illegal, that it was a moral. I had a
friend who's much older than I met on World of
Warcraft who had multiple sclerosis, and we were video chatting,
and she showed me how badly her hands shook before
she started smoking. Right, she showed me herself shaking, and

(01:02:19):
then she took a hit, which was difficult for her,
and I watched in real time how it affected her.
And I never again supported keeping that shit illegal, because
you can't when you see it, right, you can't. It's medicine,
not that most people use it use it medicinally, which
doesn't isn't wrong, like it's not wrong to use it recreationally,
But just the idea that what she was doing was

(01:02:39):
a crime made it clear to me how a moral
our drug laws were in a way that maybe if
I had like it would have taken longer otherwise, I
think clearly. So. Yeah, Anyway, Limba did occasionally face consequences
for his bald faced bigotry. In two thousand and three,
ESPN hired him as an on air commentator. Oh yeah, yeah,

(01:03:01):
And he was fired after like seven weeks because he
said Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb didn't deserve any of
the praise he received. So he said Donovan, Yeah, he
said Donovan McNabb didn't deserve the praise that he received
because quote, I think the media has been very desirous
that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black

(01:03:21):
coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think that there's
a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a
lot of credit for the performance of his team that
he really didn't deserve. People just like this guy because
he's black, not because he's a good quarterback. The media
is invested in black men being good quarterbacks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
You know, I like that you went into your Shapiro
voice for that quote.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
It's what the fuck man? You couldn't do what he's doing?
How dare you like? So this combat drew enough widespread
condemnation that Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN, but
obviously this had little to no impact on his bottom line.
Maybe it annoyed him personally, but it didn't hurt him financially.
By the early aughts, Rush was worth hundreds of millions

(01:03:59):
of dollars. He had a private jet, He had a
palatial mansion in Florida. He smoked cigars that cost more
than some people's cars. This is disgusting, but I think
any fair accounting of Limbaugh's career has to acknowledge how
impressive it was too. The early two thousand saw the
explosion of Fox News. This is the period where it
became the most watched news network in the country. A

(01:04:20):
slew of Limbaugh imitators rose up, men like Bill O'Reilly,
Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson, to name a few. While
these folks were all hugely successful and influential, none of
them ever eclipsed Rush. This is because, in addition to
wielding influence, Rush held actual, demonstrable political power. And I'm
going to quote the Rolling Stone again here. His sky

(01:04:43):
high ratings and the rabid fandom of his dittoheads, who
just happened to fit the profile of people who voted
frequently in Republican primaries, made it inevitable that the GOP
would come courting in nineteen ninety two, after he'd boosted
Pat Bmuchannon's pitchfork populist Make America First again challenged to
George Bush. The President became so hell bent on gaining
Limbaugh's favor for the general election that he not only
invited the host to the White House but toted his

(01:05:04):
bags personally into the Lincoln Bedroom. Limbaugh had only praised
for Bush from that day forward, at least until he
lost to Bill Clinton in November. That set a pattern.
Limbaugh might instinctively gravitate to the radicals, but he was
ultimately a team player, the national precinct captain of the
Republican Party, as Mother Jones described him two years later,
Limbaugh basically co captain the Republican Revolution with House Leader

(01:05:26):
Knute Gingrich. When their efforts produced a landslide that brought
seventy three anti government zelots to Congress. The host was
made an honorary House freshman and feded at a GOP
orientation in December, where the new members wore Rush was
right buttons and listened to his marching orders. This is
not the time to get moderate, he said. This is
not the time to start trying to be liked. Ronald

(01:05:47):
Reagan himself declared Limbaugh the number one voice for conservatism
in our country. And Rush was always very clear suck
and Rush was always very clear about where he wanted
to see the part head. Smaller government, stronger, more powerful corporations.
He said all he said outright, I consider myself a

(01:06:08):
defender of corporate America. Yeah, it would not be wrong
to view Rush Limbaugh as something of a cult leader.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion is,
in my mind, Limbaugh's embrace of the irrational politics. For

(01:06:29):
Rush Limbaugh was never about concrete results or observable reality.
It was a fight between good his side and evil
anyone who disagreed with him. And since those were the stakes,
it didn't matter if he light or spread conspiracy theories,
because the essence of what he was saying, that the
Democrats were monsters, was true. Nowhere is this clearer than

(01:06:50):
in his hatred of the Clintons. It started when George H. W.
Bush lost to Bill robbing Rush of a president who
would directly, you know, take him into the White House.
Right from an early stage, Rush realized that lying about
the crimes committed by Bill and Hillary was a more
productive route than criticizing them on policy, and so in
nineteen ninety four he announced Vince Foster was murdered in

(01:07:11):
an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton and the body was
taken to Fort Marcy Park, rolling Stone rights conspiracy theories
once the province of fringe right wingers, started to become
the mainstream Republican fair they are today during Clinton's two terms,
and Limbaugh was the great popularizer of the genre. Long
before Fox hosts began amplifying the fringier theories about American politics,

(01:07:31):
Limbaugh was busy mainstreaming wingnut world. The conspiracy cranks, the
John Birchers, the Christian Zionists, the science deniers, the info warriors,
their wildest fantasies, fears, and paranoias all came out to
play in the national prime time on The Rush Limbaugh Show,
repackaged by the host into a palatable fare for the
Republican masses. And this is this is significant because Russia

(01:07:52):
is demonizing of the Clintons, who there's plenty of very
value valid things to critique them on, but at the
end of the day, pretty normal neo liberal politicians. It's
even spread on the left. This idea that Hillary Clinton
is somehow more of a warmonger than other liberals, right,
is somehow like exceptionally bad. When she's not. She's very
much in line with everyone else in the party and

(01:08:14):
everyone else who has held those positions and is not
as bad as some of them. Right, She's more hated
by certain people.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
Even on the left.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
You'll find people are who are more directly aggressive towards
her than they are a fucking kissinger. And it's not
that she's not bad.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
She is, so is Bill.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
They're greedy, Bill's a rapist. They have supported, you know,
initia of the Iraq War, a number of violent actions
overseas that were disasters, but there they did that as
part of as all like within a large group of people. Right,
there's nothing about them that is exceptionally bad for the

(01:08:52):
the the crew that they run with, but this absolute
demonizing of them that has a real impact by the
on the twenty sixteen election. That's a big part of
what we get Trump is something that Rush Limbaugh pioneers,
the Clintons are not like my parents hated Trump, hated
Trump when he was running and voted for him because
their hatred of Hillary Clinton was it's beyond rational. Yes,

(01:09:16):
it's and again a lot of super valid criticisms of
Hillary Clinton. I don't think she should have ever been president. Also,
hard to say she would have been worse than Trump.
And if you are saying like she would have, for example,
been more killed more people overseas than Trump, you're not
actually paying attention to the death toll as a result

(01:09:37):
of American air strikes and missile strikes and drone strikes
as it changed from the Obama administration where Clinton was
Secretary of State to the Trump administration, because there was
a massive escalation in death under that, in addition to
a repealing of the rule about any sort of reporting
about civilian casualties from US air strikes. Trump was worse
on this sort of stuff, but you'd never know it anyway.
I don't want to get into a rant on this,

(01:09:58):
but like you can't it. It's almost impossible to analyze
the Clintons, their impact, their crimes, and their and their
and their their behaviors, their policies with any sort of
rationality because this they've been turned into goblins. Right. Yes,

(01:10:19):
it's very frustrating. Yeah, and it makes it it makes
it so that if you try to say, like, well, actually,
this thing you're criticizing them on isn't a reasonable thing
to or at least the way you're criticizing them isn't reasonable.
Suddenly you're defending them, and it's like, no, that's not
what I'm it's very I hate it, I hate everything.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Yeah. Sorry, It gets that that sort of specific personality
demonization gets in the way of actually accomplishing uh uh uh,
you know discussions of policy and where and where we
are as a country and how we do things. Because yes,
absolutely they were completely typical of the people that occupy

(01:10:59):
the White House any given a year, you know what
I mean. Yeah, and and to and like you know Hillary, uh,
even if she had killed as many people overseas as
Trump did, probably fewer people domestically in terms of policy
if you're talking about the if you're gonna talk get
into the pandemic and stuff like that, if she had

(01:11:21):
been elected and and you know, anyway, yeah, I totally
agree that it's like it's a very weird uh thing
that uh uh, that's that that absolutely sprung out of
the Rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 6 (01:11:38):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Personal demon personal demonization.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
That that that then gets into you know, like the
fucking Alex Jones ship where he's a demon. There's fly,
there's a fly on her.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
Yeah, exactly. It's this, it's this turning people from like, Okay,
let's analyze what this person's actually done, how it's worked,
when it's been successful, when it's been unsuccessful, when it's
been moral, when it's been a moral and to no,
she's just a criminal. She's just a warmonger. And we
don't have to analyze what she actually did or anything.
We don't have to. We just have to condemn her.

(01:12:12):
And it's not that she doesn't deserve condemnation for a
lot of things, but like for one thing, I don't know,
I don't want to fucking get onto a defending because
I don't like Hillary Clinton. But she's also has it
like it's very frustrating. Yeah, it's very it's all just
very frustrating. And he's and he creates this culture and
it spreads. Now it's not just the Clinton's now now

(01:12:34):
it's it's everyone. Right, you don't have to analyze people
that you disagree with. You come up with a three
word thing about them, and you spread these like like
Bill Clinton has committed crimes, he's a fucking rapist. You
don't have to make up that he and his wife
are having people murdered. It like, yeah, yeactly, Like he's
a rapist. That's bad. But of course a lot of

(01:12:55):
people calling him a rapist or rapists themselves, and they
have to make it up that now, no, he's a murderer.
You know. It's it's fucking bullshit. It's very frustrating. So
Rush also led the charge on demonizing and denying global
warming and climate change. In his book See I Told
You So, He declared that quite a few scientists are
now backtracking on there once dire predictions of melting ice

(01:13:17):
caps and worldwide flooding cut to Texas being submerged in
a layer of snow that destroys civil society. Ye, or
the entire West Coast burning down last year. Anyway. He
lampooned al Gore and scientists who warned about climate change
as quote a few hardline doomsayers who are sticking to

(01:13:37):
their thermostats. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
His conclusion was what you know and now it's it
never affected him.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
And it never affected him now he's dead.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Yeah, yeah, as far as he knows, he was right
about this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
He was right about this. Limball was unquestionably the single
most influential American conservative from about nineteen eighty nine to
at least two thousand and eight. Now, his star did
start to fade by the end of George W. Bush's term,
and there are a couple of reasons for this. For one,
he'd been outed as an opiate addict, gone to rehab
three times, and through it all, had repeatedly defended an

(01:14:17):
administration that led the United States into two disastrous and
expensive failed wars. By the time Barack Obama was elected,
many of the more libertarian minded right wing were starting
to reject the neo conservative ideology that Russia's been eight
years hyping up. Now, the fact that Barack Obama was
the man who finally broke eight years of GOP power
wound up being the salvation of Limbaugh's influence. Yes, he'd

(01:14:40):
encouraged the nation to burn through its treasure and influence,
losing two wars, but now a black man was president,
the floodgates of right wing racism opened wide. In the
first four years of Obama's term, the number of hate
groups in the United States rose by seven hundred and
fifty five percent. This surge in public anti black races.
I know, it's pretty shocking when you actually look at

(01:15:01):
the number.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
Yeah, the idea, there's a black president, We're gonna need
more hate groups. Guys, there's the hate groups, the extant
hate groups that we're not going to get it done.
We need more hate groups.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
There is a black president who in his actual policies
is not wildly different from George H. W. Bush. But like, yeah,
the fact that Barack Obama. Yeah, so this surge and
anti in public anti black racism was heralded, incited, and
led by Rush Limbaugh, the USA's most prominent bigot. There
are a lot of different clips that I could select

(01:15:37):
to make this point, Paul, but none is more appropriate
than this song that aired on Russia's program while Obama
was still on the campaign trail. Now, the context of
this is that Limba was talking about the fact that
Al Sharpton Barack Obama. Now, Sharpton had like a public
series of arguments, right, I think Sharpton was backing Hillary
at first. So this is this song that you're about

(01:16:00):
to hear. The singer is supposed to be Al Sharpton
singing about Barack Obama, and I'm just gonna let Sophie
play the clip.

Speaker 5 (01:16:06):
Now, Barack the Magic need Grow lives in d C.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
The LA Times.

Speaker 5 (01:16:17):
They call him that because he's not authentic like me
in the gap from the LA Paper said him make
guilty Whitespiel good.

Speaker 3 (01:16:29):
They'll vo for him and not for me because he's
not from the hood. See real black man like Snoop.

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
Dogg or me, Oh Farak.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
Have talked to.

Speaker 5 (01:16:43):
Talk and walk the walk, not come in late and one.
Oh Brock the Magic Niro lives in DC. The LA
Times they called him because he's.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
Our I think that's enough of that. Yes, pretty bad.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
I mean, I just I guess I just wish that
non comedy people would stay in their lane.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Yes, yeah, you know what I meaning?

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Bro Yeah, that that like the the the meter was terrible.
It it's bad.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
It's not it's not funny unless you're a bigot.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
You know, yeah, exact, unless you're a bigot.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
So Limball had other Obama zingers, saying at one point,
if he weren't black, he'd be a tour guide in Hawaii.
In two thousand and eight, he compared Obama to a
cartoon monkey. He repeatedly called Michelle moochell and why because
she's a cow, you know, and by the and all
the while he claimed that racism had nothing to do
with his hatred of Obama. Doesn't matter to me what

(01:17:49):
his races. He's liberal, that is what matters to me. Yeah, okay,
Barack the magic Negro guy. Yeah, I just I just
bring it up a ton, that's all. Yeah, I just
I can't can't talk about it enough. But I'm not
a big age.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
It's just convenient that he's black. It's not a problem
that I have with him, but it's convenient for me
for my satire.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
God, I hate this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:11):
So is he even doing satire at this point? Like?
Has he pretend? Has he dropped that pretense? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
I mean I can play you songs that like, there's
a bunch of Nazis that will go through and like
rewrite Disney songs to be about hating the Jews and stuff,
or about race traders and whatnot, because it's the kind
of thing that's easy to spread. Right, You make a
racist song and people laugh and at first it's a joke,
and then it becomes less of a joke. It's the

(01:18:36):
whole story, right, Yeah, that's exactly what Limbad's doing. You know,
it's not even all that much less racist. He just
doesn't say the N word. When Canada Obama became president, Obama,
Rush said, I hope he fails, explaining that rooting for
liberalism to fail is rooting for America to succeed. Limba

(01:18:57):
declared that stopping Obama was quote what I was born
to do. One of his tactics to this end seemed
to be stoking fears that because Obama was anti white,
he was trying to gin up a race war. In
two thousand and nine, Rush declared, in Obama's America, the
white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.
Clearly he would have preferred it when you know, I

(01:19:18):
don't know when white kids were burning down black kids'
schools in his hometown.

Speaker 3 (01:19:23):
Those were the days.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Those were the days, my friend, he thought they'd never end. Yeah,
it's great. Limba was not the only person who stoked
white resentment and anti black bigotry in this period. He
was not close to the only person, but he was
the man who had created the blueprint and the cultural
space that all of those other right wing media figures

(01:19:46):
acted in. Ben Shapiro was very open about the fact
that Limba was his hero and idol. Alex Jones altered
the way he spoke and altered the acoustics setup of
his Info Wars studio in order to more closely Resembleush Limbaugh.
In twenty ten, Limbaugh was picked to address Seapack, the
Conservative Political Action Conference. He was the main event that

(01:20:08):
year and gave what he called his first Address to
the Nation. Limbaugh was so central to the Republican Party
at this point that RNC Chairman Michael Steele was asked
on CNN if Limbaugh was the effective party leader. When
Steele claimed that Rush was just an entertainer. This pissed
off Rush Limbaugh, who attacked Michael Steele on air and
caused such an outpouring of right wing rage against the

(01:20:31):
RNC chairman that Michael Steele was forced to make a
public apology to Rush Limbaugh, kind of proving that he
was effectively the leader of the Republican Party.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
Yeah, you know, it puts me in mind of Howard
Stern coming into the Philadelphia market and forcing John Debella,
the host of The Morning Zoo, to apologize for being
on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Jesus, I didn't know that it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
So as leader of the Republican Party, Limbaugh spent the
Obama years repeatedly hammering home the idea that there could
not be peaceful coexistence between the right and left in
the United States. Quote from Rush, we live in two universes.
One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie.
Everything run dominated, controlled by the left here and around

(01:21:19):
the world is a lie. Every other universe where is
where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and
we deal with it again America, Yeah, the real America,
and there can be no coexistence.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
Yeah, this now, now we're in the age of you know,
because Biden said, you know, he's looking for unity. Anytimes
somebody's looking for unity, and uh, there is a there's
a criticism of a famous monster like Rush Limbaugh. The
response from the right is always, oh, where's the famous

(01:21:50):
unity where? Well, I thought you wanted unity, And it's like, well,
do you care about unity? You don't give a shit
about it. You're already living in a world that says
if you don't, if you don't come to believe the
things that I believe, you are against America. And you are.
You're the real racist, You're the real misogynist, you are

(01:22:13):
the real hater of of all things that are decent.
So it's I don't know how we I don't know
how we unfuck ourselves from this, from this situation.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Right yeah, I don't know that we can. But the
way to do it is not to not to yield
to these people, right yeah, it's it's it's not to
just let them get what they want, because what they
want is the annihilation of the other and honestly the

(01:22:45):
annihilation of themselves, because it's a fucking death cult at
this point, Like they can't be allowed to win. And
like the people, and that's not to say that every
aspect of what has what a traditional conservative ideology is wrong.
They have some points. That's why it brings people in
the idea that like you should always be wary about

(01:23:06):
giving the government control of things, You fucking should, you know,
Like absolutely, there's a space, there is a space for
conservatism in society. That is not what Rush Limbaugh turned
it into. Which is not to say that it because
fucking Reagan was president before Limbaugh came onto the scene,
and he was terrible and very toxic, Not like toxicity

(01:23:27):
in the Republican Party goes back very far. But also
it's not for nothing that the Republicans used to be
the party of Abraham Lincoln. You know, it's not there.
There is a way to have a conservatism that is
influential in society that isn't a fucking death cult. And
we have to at very least get back to that

(01:23:47):
if we're going to continue to be a democracy that
doesn't spiral inevitably into civil war. You know, I have
I'm a pretty committed leftist, but I also do not
seek a society that forces my beliefs on other people.
But you can't.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Give these people an inch because they'll take everything. That's
how they are, you know, That's what part what Rush
had a big impact in making them into. By twenty fifteen,
Rush Limbaugh had succeeded in leading a right word push
that finally prepared the Republican Party to nominate an obvious fascist,
Donald Trump. Limbaugh embraced Trump early on right wing radio

(01:24:28):
host and never trump er Joe Walsh, who is another
actually principled conservative, draws a direct line between Limbaugh and Trump. Quote,
the average Trump supporter loves Trump because he fights man.
He fights, not because of any policy or issue or
political philosophy. That's why they loved Rush before him. It
wasn't about conservatism. I still can't tell you after thirty

(01:24:49):
years what the fuck he believes in. But he knew
how to pray on audience's grievances and resentments, which is
what conservative talk radio does. Rush was the son of
a bitch. He'd lie about the dims and punch them
and make fun of them. That gave him a cult
like following from the beginning. Trump sort of inherited it,
and I Joe Walsh again not a grade I degree
agree with un much, but he's right on the money here.

(01:25:12):
He's analyzing it properly.

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
Absolutely, mm hmm. The thing I think the thing also
about Trump is like like Rush doesn't really have any
deeply held beliefs, right, like that, You couldn't say this guy,
even convincing himself, really cares that much about anything beyond
what's right in front of his fucking face that is
about him.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
All he cares about is his own aggrandizement. Yeah, right,
it's narcissism. Trump and Limbaugh are very similar.

Speaker 3 (01:25:39):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
Yeah, Rush bent the knee to Trump, declaring him everything
but the Second Coming, and we will not labor long
on Rush during Trump's years, Because once he had helped
shepherd his massive audience into Trump's arms, his cultural influence faded.
It was watered down by the sheer mass of right
wing idolaw ideologues who flooded the Internet. It increasingly urged
their followers to embrace around rationality, conspiracy, and fascism. In

(01:26:03):
February of twenty twenty, Rush led the charge denying the
reality of COVID nineteen. He called it the common cold
and mocked even his old ally Matt Drudge for caring
about the burgeoning plague. He urged his listeners against mask wearing,
calling it a symbol of fear. Rush had long denied
the dangers of smoking, particularly secondhand smoke, but this was
a new level for him. When Trump lost reelection to Biden,

(01:26:25):
Limbaugh immediately called the election a sham and joined the
chorus of voices claiming fraud. By this point, though he
was sick and the playing field was so flooded with
men who sounded like him, triggered the libs like him,
lied like him, that his voice hardly rose above the
din Rush had succeeded in building a right wing so
made in his own image that he no longer stood

(01:26:46):
out in it. His last show was February second. He
died less than two weeks later, killed by the lung
cancer he denied had anything to do with smoking, because
that was another thing Rush denied his entire career. Joe Walsh,
a former Limbaugh lover, found like when he was much younger,
he got into Talk Rady because of Limbaugh, eventually wound

(01:27:07):
up and to be fair before Trump rejecting Limbaugh in
a lot of ways, found the whole arc of Rush's
career to be terribly sad. Quote. I didn't think that
at the end of his life Brush would sell out
to Trump the way he has. He had every opportunity
this final year to come clean and be decent. I
mean he was still on this February lying about a
stolen election. He'll keep up this act till he dies,

(01:27:28):
and it's sad. When a writer from Rolling Stone asked
if maybe the reason he kept backing Trump was that
Limbaugh truly believed in what Trump said, Walsh countered with
a theory of his own quote, maybe knowing him, it's
one last big extended fuck you. Maybe it's Limbaugh saying
I'm not gonna bend to the Dims and anybody else,
no matter what, never to the end, I'm never gonna

(01:27:49):
do it. And at the end of this, I can't
help but think that there's something terribly meaningful in the
fact that Joe Walsh rejected Limbaugh in his later years,
and at his end Walsh gained prominence a voice of
the Rising Tea Party. He is very conservative, but his constant,
principled resistance to President Trump proves that he is not
a fascist. And it turns out what Limbaugh was really selling,

(01:28:11):
what he was preparing the American right for all along,
was fascism. If you want confirmation of this, you need
look no further than how America's most prominent neo Nazis
reacted to Limbaugh's death. Chris Cantwell was one of the
speakers and organizers of the deadly Unite the Right rally
in Charlottesville. He is a straight up Nazi. He assaulted

(01:28:32):
left wing counter protesters at the event, and when this
brought legal consequences on him, he filmed himself crying in fear,
earning the nickname the Crying Nazi. Can't Well gained prominence
among the alright as a podcaster with shows like Outlaw
Conservative and Chris Cantwell openly sees Rush Limbaugh as the
man who invented his style of content, who made his

(01:28:54):
career possible. He's in jail right now because he made
a bunch of illegal threats and stuff. But he was
interviewed for another fascist podcast by a guy named Jared
Howe on like right after Limbaugh's death, and in this
clip about to play the Crying Nazi, Chris can't Well
discusses his reaction to learning about Rush Limbaugh's death.

Speaker 7 (01:29:14):
And when I heard, you know, when I heard Catherine's voice, like,
I choked up, and I said.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Oh no, he knew, you know, And I, yeah, I knew.
And what is Catherine Limbaugh?

Speaker 7 (01:29:25):
I had actually, uh, she wrote a letter to Rush.
I because I kept hoping that, you know, I'd get
out of here in time that I could like call
into the show or drop an email. And I started realizing, like,
all right, he did filling host in two weeks. Uh,
if I'm going to contact this guy just I'm probably
gonna to do it by mail. And I was actually
gonna I forgot to do what I was gonna ask you,
to get me and see if there was an actress
that I could write to. And uh, it turns out

(01:29:47):
to a little late to this.

Speaker 3 (01:29:48):
Yeah, but you know when I when I heard.

Speaker 7 (01:29:51):
Her voice, I choked up. I said, oh no, Shelly Arvey,
and he knew exactly was going to teletal much because
you had to be dead and h oh yeah I
heard it when it happened, and.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
I was like you, so that's I mean, you know,
he's legitimately affected by this. He's mourning Rush Limbaugh, this Nazi,
and he's not the only Nazi mourning Rush Limbaugh. The
Daily Shoa is one of the most prominent Nazi podcasts
on the Internet. The word Shoa is the Hebrew term

(01:30:24):
it means I think it means calamity for the Holocaust.
So it's literally this is the Daily Holocaust and it
is maybe the most prominent Nazi podcast on the internet
now TDS, as its hosts call it has been on
the years for years at this point, since before Trump
was in office, and the hosts of The Daily Shoa
consider Limbaugh to be something of an idol. Now, these

(01:30:46):
guys are hardcore Nazis, so they consider Russia moderate and
they do demean him at times for that, but they
also recognize that he paved the way for their financial
success and cultural influence. And in this next audio clip
you can here several members of the Daily Show can't
emphasize that name enough. Learn live about Rush Limbaugh's death

(01:31:07):
and the emotional impact it has on them is undeniable.
News cucked on that. But that's what happened today.

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
Well, Svinn, that's bad news for you, buddy, Rush Limbaugh
is dead.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
Oh I'm serious. Wow, I mean, well, I guess I
can't see what he's saying about tex I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna dance on his gravey.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
He said a lot of really dumb things.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
But I'm still so kind of sad about that. Like,
I'm very sad about that. I wouldn't be here. If not,
I wouldn't be here, says host of The Daily Show.
Without Rush Limbaugh, I can't think of a more damning
thing to say in a man's passing but that he
was truly honestly mourned by Nazis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the

(01:31:50):
end of the day, that's what you can say about
Rush and that is the end of our episodes on
Rush Limbaugh. Wow you're doing, Paul, I'm good.

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
I mean, look, he said some dumb things and I'm
gonna dance on his grave.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
I'm absolutely gonna dance that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:04):
He sucked and I'm glad he's dead. He was a
bad person and I and I have to say on
social media when when the story broke people were talking
about it, there were a lot of people that wanted
to say, you know, you can you you know, you
can say whatever you want. But Rush was hugely successful,
more successful and you will ever be had more influence.

(01:32:27):
He was a millionaire. Guys take the w do you
know what I mean? Yeah, you can't. And this is
the problem with these guys, with Trump, with people like this,
is it's not enough for them to win. They need
people to lick the boots. They need people to say
you are the greatest. It is never enough for them.
It is never enough for them to be hated, to

(01:32:49):
be feared, to have all the marbles. They need you
to say I love you too. Yes, they need it.
And that is that is what the only solid us
I can take in a life like this is that
in the end, he didn't get the thing that he wanted,
which was everybody saying You're the greatest and I love

(01:33:11):
you and that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
Yeah it was and piss and a bunch of Nazis crying.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
If you if you make if this is what you
make of your life. This is how This is what's
going to happen, is that you're gonna have people saying
rest and piss. You're gonna have people saying this and
it's and and sorry. You can have all the success
you want. You're never going to get that love. It's
not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
And people are actively making plans to ship on your
grave because you materially harmed their lives, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
And the lives of peace and the lives of people
that they loved. You have you have made life that
much harder for generations.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
Of people that will come in of humans you have
Rush Limbaugh had a material, significant negative impact on billions
of people, many of whom are yet born. Yeah, anyway,
rest and piss brush. I wish this to cancer had
worked faster, you know. Yeah, anyway, Paul, you got some

(01:34:10):
pluggables to plug at the end of this episode.

Speaker 3 (01:34:13):
Yeah, I'm gonna be appearing on the Daily Show in
a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:34:20):
BIGS Fan, By the way, I want to I want
to shout out and give thanks to Daniel Harper of
the wonderful podcast I Don't Speak German, which is the
deepest dives you're going to find on Nazi content creators.
I guess you go Nazi thought leaders in the United States.
Very important work, Daniel Harper, I don't speak German. He
provided those clips to me. Thank you, Daniel, Yeah, sorry,

(01:34:42):
thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:34:42):
No, not at all. Uh. You can follow me at
p F Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram, and I have
a few podcasts that you can listen to, you know,
just all the usual stuff you can find out about
me on Paul Thompkins dot.

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
Com Amazing Tompkins dot com. Well that's going to do
it for us here at Behind the Bastards. So go
out into the world, tie one half of your brain
behind your back and then die because that would actually
kill you. That would immediately lead to your dot an
exposed brain. There's reason we have skulls people to keep

(01:35:20):
your brain inside of it. Yeah, anyway, by guys podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:35:49):
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