This week marked the 30-year anniversary of the syndicated Rush Limbaugh show.
Love him, hate him, or indifferent to him, Rush has had more impact on media in general than any other single person in history. He came onto the scene in the 1980's just as the flower children of the 60's were coming into their own and had pretty well dominated most of the media. They were still doing journalism at that time but they were pushing more and more leftist ideology and concepts. Traditional American values and modern American conservative principles had pretty much vanished from the scene.
Entered Rush with a common sense, usually humorous and satiric, new kind of talk program. He was talking about politics, people, personalities, and concepts that millions of us had been thinking but were no longer hearing on the radio, television, or reading in the newspapers. No, we didn't always agree with him or appreciate everything he said, but we were hungry to hear much of what he had to say that nobody else was saying.
He was entertaining, but because of some very good scholarship, he was also informative. I know I found myself researching some of the facts he presented. And he got it right a whole lot more than he got it wrong.
Because of his amazing success, he paved the way for radio talk shows for many others and affected television as well. And because there were so many of us, he went from a handful of stations when he first started to hundreds propelling talk radio/news stations to #1 in their market pretty much everywhere in the country. Rush pretty much single handedly caused an entire new industry to be created.
Rush, like many highly successful people, is an imperfect person. He suffers from chronic obesity, has had difficulty sustaining personal relationships, became addicted to prescription drugs to the point it destroyed his hearing--he has cochlear implants in both ears that destroyed his enjoyment of music--but he overcame that which was a heroic feat as any recovering alcoholic/addict knows. And like many/most highly successful people, along with some valid criticisms, he has been misquoted, taken out of context, unfairly, dishonestly, mischaracterized.
The left, then and now, does not appreciate being challenged in anything and attack and try to suppress, harm, silence, and/or destroy the messenger rather than rebut what is said and/or offer a better argument. The left is neither open minded nor tolerant of ANYBODY who does not share their rhetoric and point of view. And they certainly went after Rush with a vengeance. And Rush didn't care. He went right ahead and called it as he saw it, did his thing, and has maintained the #1 slot in his genre for 30 years now.
That's pretty amazing. And it is right to acknowledge it.
Love him, hate him, or indifferent to him, Rush has had more impact on media in general than any other single person in history. He came onto the scene in the 1980's just as the flower children of the 60's were coming into their own and had pretty well dominated most of the media. They were still doing journalism at that time but they were pushing more and more leftist ideology and concepts. Traditional American values and modern American conservative principles had pretty much vanished from the scene.
Entered Rush with a common sense, usually humorous and satiric, new kind of talk program. He was talking about politics, people, personalities, and concepts that millions of us had been thinking but were no longer hearing on the radio, television, or reading in the newspapers. No, we didn't always agree with him or appreciate everything he said, but we were hungry to hear much of what he had to say that nobody else was saying.
He was entertaining, but because of some very good scholarship, he was also informative. I know I found myself researching some of the facts he presented. And he got it right a whole lot more than he got it wrong.
Because of his amazing success, he paved the way for radio talk shows for many others and affected television as well. And because there were so many of us, he went from a handful of stations when he first started to hundreds propelling talk radio/news stations to #1 in their market pretty much everywhere in the country. Rush pretty much single handedly caused an entire new industry to be created.
Rush, like many highly successful people, is an imperfect person. He suffers from chronic obesity, has had difficulty sustaining personal relationships, became addicted to prescription drugs to the point it destroyed his hearing--he has cochlear implants in both ears that destroyed his enjoyment of music--but he overcame that which was a heroic feat as any recovering alcoholic/addict knows. And like many/most highly successful people, along with some valid criticisms, he has been misquoted, taken out of context, unfairly, dishonestly, mischaracterized.
The left, then and now, does not appreciate being challenged in anything and attack and try to suppress, harm, silence, and/or destroy the messenger rather than rebut what is said and/or offer a better argument. The left is neither open minded nor tolerant of ANYBODY who does not share their rhetoric and point of view. And they certainly went after Rush with a vengeance. And Rush didn't care. He went right ahead and called it as he saw it, did his thing, and has maintained the #1 slot in his genre for 30 years now.
That's pretty amazing. And it is right to acknowledge it.
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