Speaker 1: M broadcasting from his studio in I don't know, some
Speaker 1: fucking place with one liver tight behind his back to
Speaker 1: make it fair for all of the narcotics in his system.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans, you don't know, you don't like me, You
Speaker 1: don't you don't like my my pseudo Russian intro stuffing.
Speaker 1: Not on board, not not a fan of that introduction. Um,
Speaker 1: this is behind the bastards. This is behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: A podcast that will never be as big as The
Speaker 1: Russia Limbaugh Show because Sophie won't let me use cultic
Speaker 1: mind control techniques on our audience. Um, that is inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Feel free. Okay, well we're back. The man you just
Speaker 1: heard is Paul F. Tompkins, our guest for this exploration
Speaker 1: of the life and times of Rush Limbaugh. Everyone, Hey, Paul,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? How are you? How are you doing?
Speaker 1: An hour and a half into talking about l Rush
Speaker 1: Bow Feeling great? Feeling great, feeling. I feel energized that
Speaker 1: he is dead. Yeah, I I too feel happy that
Speaker 1: he's dead. It's fun. It hasn't worn off yet, it
Speaker 1: has it never will. It will always be good that
Speaker 1: he's dead. There's a few people who are like that
Speaker 1: where it's like every now and then, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: think back to the fact that Ryan hard Hydrick is dead,
Speaker 1: and it's like good, good for him, you know, good
Speaker 1: for him. So, once upon a time, Paul, the United
Speaker 1: States used to have a thing called the fairness Doctrine. Now,
Speaker 1: in short, the fairness doctrine required anyone with a broadcast
Speaker 1: license to present controversial issues in a balanced way, providing
Speaker 1: roughly equivalent time to present both sides of an issue.
Speaker 1: And then this was obviously a flawed rule. Some issues,
Speaker 1: for example, like climate change don't have two sides, right,
Speaker 1: there may be different sides, but like what the right responses,
Speaker 1: but there's not two sides to the reality of climate change. Um,
Speaker 1: and while the but while the you know, the fairness starts.
Speaker 1: So the Fahren's doctrine not a not a perfect not
Speaker 1: a silver bullet, uh sort of of of thing of
Speaker 1: a jig. But while it was in place, right wing
Speaker 1: media in the form that we have today did not
Speaker 1: and could not exist now since the dawn of the
Speaker 1: fake news era which we're in now, a lot of
Speaker 1: folks have talked about the time of guys like Walter Cronkite, right,
Speaker 1: When when you had newsmen who basically every American trusted,
Speaker 1: who could shift massive national issues just based on their
Speaker 1: considered opinion. Right Cronkite calls Vietnam a quagmire, Suddenly national
Speaker 1: opinion on its switches. Um. And a big part of
Speaker 1: why these guys were trusted is they were required to
Speaker 1: lend equal weight to both sides. They couldn't just be
Speaker 1: partisan shills. Now, this generally meant that they would give
Speaker 1: kind of the conservative opinion and the liberal opinion as
Speaker 1: opposed to the far left of the far right. But
Speaker 1: it did mean that you you you didn't have something
Speaker 1: as unbalanced as Fox News right right. It's like the
Speaker 1: voter guide you get, yeah, exactly. It gives you the
Speaker 1: measured and says some people say this, say this yeah.
Speaker 1: And as flawed as the fairness doctrine was, it was
Speaker 1: part of why most Americans lived in a semi unified
Speaker 1: media ecosystem back in up prior to nineteen eighties seven. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously this did not last. In nineteen eight seven, the FCC,
Speaker 1: as the result of a court case, the FCC rejected
Speaker 1: the fairness doctrine. Conservatives cheered this on because fair media
Speaker 1: was seen by arch conservatives guys like Roger Stone as
Speaker 1: a big reason why Americans had broadly supported the impeachment
Speaker 1: of Richard Nixon at the end of the Watergate investigation.
Speaker 1: Watergate is one of these situations where when the investigation starts,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of conservatives are against it. Right, don't
Speaker 1: think Nixon did anything wrong. The evidence comes out in
Speaker 1: opinion shifts, and it becomes very popular to get Nixon
Speaker 1: out of office. Um, this is the last time that happens. Right,
Speaker 1: This is the last time that like people's minds get
Speaker 1: changed by the facts on a political issue in America. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's the last time this happens. Because the right
Speaker 1: goes after the fairness doctor, and after about a decade
Speaker 1: or so of fighting, they're able to get it killed. Um.
Speaker 1: And the end of the fairness doctrine was the necessary
Speaker 1: precursor to the creation of a holy, separate, walled garden
Speaker 1: of right wing content, which was seen by dudes like
Speaker 1: Roger Ales as a necessary step to protecting right wing
Speaker 1: voters from ever learning about other opinions, which would, they
Speaker 1: believed protect the next criminal, white right wing president from impeachment. Now,
Speaker 1: after Limbaugh's death, the new York Times let Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: noted novelist, write a column about his professional idol. Benny
Speaker 1: Shapps called the fairness doctrine quote, a standard that in
Speaker 1: practice allowed for the domination of broadcast media by liberals,
Speaker 1: with sporadic commentary by conservatives. Us of an imitation, It's
Speaker 1: it's so rush. Limball was aware from the beginning that
Speaker 1: his whole career hinged on the fairness doctrines. Death with
Speaker 1: his and like he starts being national voice in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, two years after the end of the fairness doctrine.
Speaker 1: That's not a coincidence. Now, with his unparalleled national platform
Speaker 1: and his status as a chief thought leader of the
Speaker 1: American right, Limbaugh went about turning the fairness doctrine into
Speaker 1: his main boogeyman. I found a Vanity Fair article from
Speaker 1: two thousand nine that lays this out quite well. Quote.
Speaker 1: The single most important issue in Russia's radio career is
Speaker 1: now among the hot button issues and conservative politics. The
Speaker 1: fairness doctrine a formalized, fair and balanced rule for covering
Speaker 1: the controversial issues on the nation's airwaves, which the Reagan
Speaker 1: FCC killed in nineteen seven. The most liberal wing of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, which puts substantial blame on talk radio
Speaker 1: for a generation of conservative dominance in Washington, wants to
Speaker 1: revive the doctrine, which would pretty handily destroy conservative talk.
Speaker 1: According to the official Seapack polling of its members, restoring
Speaker 1: the Fairest Fairness Doctrine is the third most significant Democratic
Speaker 1: Congress policy initiative opposed by the right wing raking, only
Speaker 1: behind expanding government in public healthcare. So yeah, there is
Speaker 1: with Russia's orchestration, a rapidness to the cause. Opposing the
Speaker 1: Fairness Doctrine is up there with opposing abortion. And he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's it's really him that's responsible for making
Speaker 1: this such a popular issue. It starts off as a
Speaker 1: thing that kind of high up extreme right wingers, guys
Speaker 1: who had been Nixon's right hand men push because they
Speaker 1: want to protect the next guy like Nixon. And it
Speaker 1: gets popular though because of Rush Limbaugh, because he sells
Speaker 1: it to the American conservative mainstream. It's funny, like the
Speaker 1: sorry but the idea that like with the Nixon era
Speaker 1: after Watergate, Nixon, when Nixon resigns, that is maybe the
Speaker 1: last time that there were real consequences for any for
Speaker 1: the for the highest office. Where after that, you know,
Speaker 1: Clintons impeachment, Trump's impeachment, whatever, it doesn't mean anything. It's
Speaker 1: it really is just like an asterisk in history, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially of saying like, just so you know, people, some
Speaker 1: people thought this was bad, and uh they and they
Speaker 1: said so officially, but there's no real consequence for any
Speaker 1: of this. So really what they're doing is saying, we
Speaker 1: cannot Nixon should not have had a consequence. We got
Speaker 1: to make sure that there's never a consequence ever again.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately that meant for everybody for like for I
Speaker 1: don't know what if because if it didn't happen, if
Speaker 1: it didn't happen after Bush, which there was not even
Speaker 1: an impeachment for Bush, like for the Iraq war that
Speaker 1: that we all know now was bogus. If there was
Speaker 1: never gonna be a consequence for that, then it worked
Speaker 1: and there there and and from now on, Like when
Speaker 1: is it ever going to happen again? When if it
Speaker 1: didn't happen, then when is it ever going to happen again? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't think it can because this propaganda eca system
Speaker 1: turns out people who would fight to the death rather
Speaker 1: than have somebody who on paper, is supposed to agree
Speaker 1: with them face consequences for blatantly criminal activity, right, and
Speaker 1: then and then it also it conditions whether whether you believe,
Speaker 1: whether you believe in whether you're you're on Russia's side
Speaker 1: or not, whether you're on that side of things or not.
Speaker 1: It conditions everybody to feel like it's okay that there's
Speaker 1: no consequences, because what are you gonna do? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just the way things are. You can draw a fucking
Speaker 1: line between kind of the things that Rush starts because
Speaker 1: it has an impact on on liberals and the left too.
Speaker 1: You've got this. It's it's Beau and and it's it's
Speaker 1: because obviously with the fairness doctrine, nobody ever heard anything
Speaker 1: from the far left right the far left, and in
Speaker 1: fact was criminally prosecuted a lot of times for their
Speaker 1: opinions in this period. Um. But the positive thing about
Speaker 1: the fairness doctrine is that it was a large part
Speaker 1: of why there was a broadly agreed upon understanding of
Speaker 1: the basic a basic reality in the United States, right
Speaker 1: that we don't have anymore. And when you lose that,
Speaker 1: I kind of think when you lose that, the only
Speaker 1: like things inevitably escalate to deadly violence. Yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's bad, right, not that again, under the fairness doctrine,
Speaker 1: Americans were led into Vietnam, were let into Grenado, were
Speaker 1: led into Panama. We're letting to all these horrible, horrible things.
Speaker 1: Obviously we like it. It did not. It did not
Speaker 1: mean that Americans had an accurate understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: But when they had an inaccurate understanding of the world,
Speaker 1: it was still broadly similar. Right, And that is better
Speaker 1: than where we are now. I guess I think it
Speaker 1: is at least less toxic that. I guess you could
Speaker 1: argue the United States had more power, the government had
Speaker 1: more power to pursue violent activity overseas and stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. It's it's a complicated issue.
Speaker 1: But whatever, whatever you can say about Russ Limball, he
Speaker 1: was not a dumb man. Uh. He was a huge
Speaker 1: bigot though, and that and that came any New York
Speaker 1: Times right up. Makes it clear that, among other things,
Speaker 1: he was quick to realize that rampant misogyny was an
Speaker 1: incredible marketing tactic. This was, as we discussed in our
Speaker 1: last episode, always cloaked in a thick haze of irony.
Speaker 1: Quote this is Rush. We know that women in groups,
Speaker 1: same office, same dormitory, same barracks eventually have synchronized minstrel cycles.
Speaker 1: We also know that there's this thing called PMS, and
Speaker 1: we know what turns a woman into a Hellian. We
Speaker 1: know that PMS has been used as a defense against
Speaker 1: a charge of murder. Here's my proposal. We have fifty
Speaker 1: two battalions. We can prepare the nations that will have
Speaker 1: on any given week of the year, a combat ready
Speaker 1: battalion of Amazons to go into battle. Imagine that your manual,
Speaker 1: Antonio Noriega, you were in the Papal Nuncial in Panama City.
Speaker 1: You feel safe. All of a sudden you hear this
Speaker 1: blood curdling scream outside. I am outraged, and there is
Speaker 1: Sergeant Major mole Yard leading a battalion of Amazons with
Speaker 1: PMS over the hill. That would be enough to scare
Speaker 1: the pants off of anybody, everybody. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: it's just not even that funny, That's what it's not.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that sucks about Rush Limbaugh
Speaker 1: is that he for somebody who did a lot of
Speaker 1: bits and you know, I was supposedly doing satire. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't that funny. He wasn't. It's just that he
Speaker 1: was saying the bigoted, terrible things that a lot of
Speaker 1: bad people wanted to say, and the fact that it
Speaker 1: was so horrible, and the fact that it scratched their
Speaker 1: I made them laugh and made them think he was
Speaker 1: a genius because somebody was finally telling them it was
Speaker 1: okay to be as shitty as they kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to be from the beginning, because you put the tiniest
Speaker 1: effort into constructing these bits. Yeah, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the same thing with all of these You've got this
Speaker 1: kind of strain of comedians who thinks that it's important
Speaker 1: that they be allowed to say the N word. Not
Speaker 1: a single one of them has ever told a good
Speaker 1: joke involving the N word. Right, it's not funny. You're
Speaker 1: just going for shock value, right, that's all you're trying
Speaker 1: to do. And that can be There's not that. No
Speaker 1: good humor comes from shock value. But again, I haven't
Speaker 1: heard a single good joke from a white comedian involving
Speaker 1: the in word. Um, not that it would be appropriate then,
Speaker 1: but I haven't heard one. You know, like so from
Speaker 1: the beginning, the villains of the Rush limbaugh expanded universe were,
Speaker 1: as The New York Times explained, quote black activists, gay activists,
Speaker 1: abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists,
Speaker 1: artists with erotic tendencies, and above all, the now Game
Speaker 1: gang that's the National Organization of women. His hatred Russia
Speaker 1: said that his hatred for these people caused him an
Speaker 1: uncontrollable urge to tweak. Quote. The simple fact of the
Speaker 1: matter Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphins, savers and tree
Speaker 1: lovers is that we are human beings, and we are
Speaker 1: the most powerful, smartest species, and we can damn well
Speaker 1: do whatever we want. And you can draw a line
Speaker 1: from this kind of the way he's phrasing things. Here's
Speaker 1: like it's stupid to care about the environment and animals
Speaker 1: because we're more powerful than them. Um to the like
Speaker 1: the ship that Identity Europa and Patriot Front, these like
Speaker 1: explicitly fascist organizations exist. Now we'll put up these signs,
Speaker 1: like these posters of the United States that say not
Speaker 1: stolen conquered right where it's like, fuck the indigenous people,
Speaker 1: we beat them and so we deserve all this right.
Speaker 1: That's just an extension of what Russia is saying, you know,
Speaker 1: and he the fact that he made that mainstream is
Speaker 1: why they have a chance of making that mainstream, you know.
Speaker 1: And the idea that it's so that they that they
Speaker 1: that he phrased it as this uh matter of personal choice, um,
Speaker 1: rather than like just common sense practical thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: like do you really want to do you really want
Speaker 1: to put your trash in two separate trash cands? You know,
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, it's not so much that it's
Speaker 1: a hassle. It's that we're gonna make earth unlivable for ourselves,
Speaker 1: not that we're like, you know, fuck you the dodo
Speaker 1: you should have you should have had claws or something.
Speaker 1: It's that we're fucking ourselves. Like that's why why has
Speaker 1: that been? Why is that so hard to understand? It's
Speaker 1: so hard to comply with and so hard to uh
Speaker 1: uh keep as part of the narrative when because the
Speaker 1: logical extension is, what do you care You'll be dead
Speaker 1: by the time by the time this ship, by the
Speaker 1: time this ship affects people in in a meaningful way
Speaker 1: to to you, a meaningful way, you'll be dead, So
Speaker 1: what do you care? And and these are people that
Speaker 1: are all allegedly all about the family, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you plan on having grandchildren, great grandchildren,
Speaker 1: great great grandchildren? Like do you care about what? I
Speaker 1: don't know? I don't, I don't. I'm not being funny
Speaker 1: now and I'm just being just being whiny. But what
Speaker 1: you're getting at, Paul, and what the core of this
Speaker 1: is is that Rush doesn't believe in positive things. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean positive in a good sense. I mean
Speaker 1: he doesn't believe in things that should be done. He
Speaker 1: believes in tweaking people. That is what he turns American
Speaker 1: Conservatism into. He turns it from were conservatives. These are
Speaker 1: the things we believe about how the government and how
Speaker 1: society should be run. And too conservatism is owning the Libs.
Speaker 1: That's where we are now. And that's what this is
Speaker 1: is is my politics are a sort of rhetorical violence
Speaker 1: against the people I disagree with. Because improving the world,
Speaker 1: changing making positive alterations to the world is difficult and
Speaker 1: complicated and involves a lot of debate and trial and error.
Speaker 1: That's hard. All I want to do is own the Libs.
Speaker 1: That's what Rush Limbaugh created, brought into the world and
Speaker 1: turned into the entire that that's the only thing that's
Speaker 1: left in conservatism. Right, You've got these odd You've got
Speaker 1: a couple of dudes left on the right who actually
Speaker 1: believe in something like Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwartz an
Speaker 1: egger right. Not that what they believe in is great
Speaker 1: or that I I believe in it too, but they
Speaker 1: both have a clearly have a principles that aren't just
Speaker 1: owning the Libs. But they're on the fringe now because
Speaker 1: owning the Libs, as all the right has. Um, it's
Speaker 1: just it's not it's not it's not standing for something.
Speaker 1: It's it's I. It's like, not what I my politics are.
Speaker 1: I don't want somebody telling me what to do. I
Speaker 1: believe in a vague idea of a John Wayne movie.
Speaker 1: And you know, things were better in this bygone era
Speaker 1: before these people started to suggest that maybe we can
Speaker 1: improve things and that's where it ends. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very frustrating, Paul, because that the core of
Speaker 1: that idea that like I want to be left alone.
Speaker 1: That's more or less my politics. That's what led me
Speaker 1: to anarchism is like, don't fucking tell me what to do,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: And that is what as a kid I was taught
Speaker 1: conservatism was. But it's not what conservatism has ever been.
Speaker 1: And I think a big part of why why the
Speaker 1: Republican establishment embraces Rush is that by the early nineties,
Speaker 1: in particular, by the mid nineties, definitely, it has become
Speaker 1: clear that nothing that the right does works for the
Speaker 1: actual people that that vote them into office. Down economics
Speaker 1: does not function. You know it doesn't. It's well documented objectively,
Speaker 1: does not work the way they say it does. They're
Speaker 1: fighting against environmental regulations damages the world and makes it uninhabitable.
Speaker 1: Fighting against corporate regulations gets a lot of their voters
Speaker 1: killed by dangerous working conditions and stuff. All of the
Speaker 1: wars they get us into our disasters and expensive, and
Speaker 1: do not achieve the foreign policy or even the basic
Speaker 1: national security goals they sat Conservatism as Americans do it
Speaker 1: at least does not work. And when you know that,
Speaker 1: you can't go back to the drawing table. You can't
Speaker 1: admit failure, you can't acknowledge the mistake. What you can
Speaker 1: do was own the Libs, you know, and that's why
Speaker 1: that's all it is now, is owning the libs. Um,
Speaker 1: it's good. It's a good, healthy, healthy society, Paul. It's
Speaker 1: only going to get better too, so we gotta get better.
Speaker 1: So Russia's justification for the outrageous caricature of a right
Speaker 1: winger that he played on his show had always been
Speaker 1: that these liberals and leftists advocating for black lives and
Speaker 1: women's liberation and basic environmental safeguards were absurd, And, as
Speaker 1: Rush put it, I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. That's
Speaker 1: his own words. Now this turned out to be an
Speaker 1: objectively good business because none of his listeners seemed to
Speaker 1: find Rush himself absurd. The character he played became the
Speaker 1: man he was, and the once a political wanna be
Speaker 1: DJ turned into a mouthpiece for the very worst of
Speaker 1: our society's impulses. One thing that made the Russia Lmbough
Speaker 1: Show groundbreaking was that, for the first time in an
Speaker 1: explicitly political talk show, the focus was not on guests
Speaker 1: or actual reporting or anything but the personality Limbaugh had created.
Speaker 1: Rush was his own guest, and this was a deliberate
Speaker 1: choice he made and a very intelligent one to make
Speaker 1: the show more profitable. If the focus of your show
Speaker 1: is on the news and on what guests have to say,
Speaker 1: you can kind of slot any person with a decent
Speaker 1: voice in to replace the host. Right that limits how
Speaker 1: much money you're going to make, and it limits kind
Speaker 1: of the length of your career. Rush himself explained in
Speaker 1: an interview, I wanted to be the reason people listened.
Speaker 1: That's how you pad your pocket. That's how you establish yourself,
Speaker 1: and that's very smart. He did, in fact establish himself
Speaker 1: in Rush's radio success finally got the TV people listening.
Speaker 1: They decided to try him out as on screen talent.
Speaker 1: He teamed up with Roger Ailes, the man who would
Speaker 1: later invent Fox News, and together they produced one of
Speaker 1: the most outrageous and vile news programs ever made. It
Speaker 1: would sadly also turn out to be one of the
Speaker 1: most influential. And now, Paul, it is time you and
Speaker 1: I to take a journey into this particular piece of
Speaker 1: our right history. So this episode from two of the
Speaker 1: Russia Limbos show opens with a title card which features
Speaker 1: an image of a microphone with the name Rush and
Speaker 1: blazoned on it, and the words warning, the views expressed
Speaker 1: on this program are not necessarily the views of the staff, advertisers,
Speaker 1: or your local station, but they ought to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good ship, man, it's good ship. So the episode
Speaker 1: itself has a weirdly quiet intro, no music, just rushed,
Speaker 1: with the pointers standing and what looks like an office
Speaker 1: with wall to wall bookshelves and TVs interspersed within the
Speaker 1: books on the bookshelves. He introduces himself and he starts
Speaker 1: talking about a recent conversation he had with President George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush on his radio program. So there continues to be
Speaker 1: more controversy surrounding my performance with the president yesterday when
Speaker 1: he came by my radio program. The press is telling
Speaker 1: you things that aren't true. But we have the tapes
Speaker 1: and we have the truth me and we'll show you
Speaker 1: and tell you both tonight. So that's telling. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's extremely important what he does here. You have to
Speaker 1: remember Fox news was not a thing yet at this time,
Speaker 1: fake news was not a buzzword. Limbaugh is groundbreaking in
Speaker 1: that he was not only critiquing mainstream news as being
Speaker 1: fake and lying, but he's also telling his listeners I
Speaker 1: am the truth. This paragraph from a write up by
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone gets to the core of why I find
Speaker 1: what he's doing here so terrifying. Quote. He wasn't selling
Speaker 1: political ideas and he never has. He was selling political attitude,
Speaker 1: the swaggering certitude, the mocking dismissiveness, the freedom to offend,
Speaker 1: the right to assert your privilege without guilt or embarrassment.
Speaker 1: And partly because he was modeling that liberation with such
Speaker 1: wicked glee, Limbaugh was making himself indispensable. Within six weeks
Speaker 1: of tuning in regularly, he would tell new listeners they'd
Speaker 1: be on the cutting edge of social evolution. Best of all,
Speaker 1: he promised, I will do all you're reading and I
Speaker 1: will tell you what to think of it. I will
Speaker 1: do all you're reading and I will tell you what
Speaker 1: to think of it. Yeah. Wow, it's so and it's
Speaker 1: so bald. Yeah, it's right out there. It's like he's
Speaker 1: not there's no, it's not like um uh sort of
Speaker 1: obfuscating language. He is to say very clearly what the
Speaker 1: deal is, this is and this is the this is
Speaker 1: the logical extent of this. I'm so smart, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta tie half my brain behind my back just
Speaker 1: to make it fair. You know, I'm this big genius.
Speaker 1: I'm so smart. You don't need to read or think.
Speaker 1: I'll do it for you, and then you two will
Speaker 1: be smart. And this is a huge thing. He spins
Speaker 1: a lot of effort in reinforcing his intelligence. Um. After
Speaker 1: this section of the show, he goes on to introduce
Speaker 1: the other topics of that episode, which include feminazi glorious Steina,
Speaker 1: interview of the movie The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
Speaker 1: Then we cut into Yeah. Then we cut to the
Speaker 1: actual intro, which is terrible nineteen nineties talk show music
Speaker 1: played over a series of mocked up news articles with
Speaker 1: titles like E I B linked to higher i Q.
Speaker 1: Limbaugh gets patent, Limbos says no to presidential bid, Limbaugh
Speaker 1: checks brain on donor's card. Limbaugh to carry a torch
Speaker 1: at the Mental Olympics. Again, he puts a lot of
Speaker 1: effort into and it's absurd, right, but it clearly works.
Speaker 1: It worked on my parents, you know, all of the
Speaker 1: people who raised me. To some extent, they're convinced he's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's fun. But he also says things that I like
Speaker 1: to hear. But he's fun. He's just fun. He's fun.
Speaker 1: I think also You cannot underestimate the um the effect
Speaker 1: of the pointer. If you have, if you have, if
Speaker 1: you're on television and you have a you're you're walking
Speaker 1: on over television with a pointer and pointing at something,
Speaker 1: it looks very official. Totally absolutely, That's why I have
Speaker 1: a point. Well I have a gun, but it works
Speaker 1: the same way. Um. So, Robert, what all your weapons
Speaker 1: in front of you? Well, I'm always I'm always surrounded
Speaker 1: by weapons. What what's going to happen during this scusion?
Speaker 1: You don't have anything on you right now? Mae? Right here? Yeah, strapped,
Speaker 1: Paul fucking here's my knife there. That's lovely nice, A
Speaker 1: nice little hunchback there. That makes it. Yeah, alright, now
Speaker 1: we're all armed. We can properly get back to the show.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this was this was a knife on
Speaker 1: the table show. I apologie. This is this is I mean,
Speaker 1: there are like three knives on the table right, this
Speaker 1: is a significant number of that's a beauty on the table.
Speaker 1: I apologize. So the show proper starts after this point,
Speaker 1: after these fake news articles kind of go through and
Speaker 1: Russia's first subject on this episode is the then new
Speaker 1: TV series Murphy Brown Murphy Brown was obviously the titular
Speaker 1: character of the show. She was a recovering alcoholic investigative
Speaker 1: journalist and a primetime news anchor and a single mother.
Speaker 1: Murphy Brown was a very feminist and progress progressive series
Speaker 1: for its day. Limbaugh opens his episode by expressing anger
Speaker 1: at the show's success, and then, in what I would
Speaker 1: consider a fairly abusive manner, he tells his audience why
Speaker 1: they shouldn't watch it. Clip. Oh, people on my radio
Speaker 1: show didn't You probably watched it too, but you didn't
Speaker 1: have to. You know why you didn't have to because
Speaker 1: I told you you didn't have to. I have the script.
Speaker 1: I told you everything that was going to happen on
Speaker 1: this show. I told you it wasn't funny. I told
Speaker 1: you it was defensive. I told you this show was
Speaker 1: was was was a little heavy handed. I said that
Speaker 1: they're they're focusing on the wrong thing in this show,
Speaker 1: and they really did. I have You've heard a lot
Speaker 1: of people say a lot of things about this show,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you the most important thing is that
Speaker 1: they got very defensive about what a family is. They
Speaker 1: trot out all these various examples of what a family
Speaker 1: is and that's not what the Vice president or any
Speaker 1: of the family values people. That's profoundly abusive. I think
Speaker 1: this is this You shouldn't have watched this show because
Speaker 1: I told you not to, and I told you not
Speaker 1: to because it's not good for you to imbibe this
Speaker 1: um And I think it's important to break down exactly
Speaker 1: what he's doing here. First off, he is trying to
Speaker 1: physically separate his audience from mainstream American society. Murphy Brown
Speaker 1: was a hugely popular show in this day. He is
Speaker 1: literally telling them, you don't need to watch this thing
Speaker 1: other people are watching because I am telling you not to.
Speaker 1: And he justifies this by saying that Murphy Brown is
Speaker 1: an assault on family values, which he goes on to
Speaker 1: call functional values, because families, the ones portrayed on Murphy
Speaker 1: Brown were, in Limbaugh's eyes, non functional. This is significant
Speaker 1: because Murphy Brown was a single mother. She was one
Speaker 1: of the first single mother's portrayed on American TV as
Speaker 1: not just existing but as being a successful person and
Speaker 1: a competent parent. Was furiously not into it. I can't
Speaker 1: let you can We can't let people watch this because
Speaker 1: it will give them the wrong idea, not just about
Speaker 1: single mothers. I also think it's worth noting that on
Speaker 1: the show itself, the idea of her being a single
Speaker 1: mother was a uh a plot point that it was
Speaker 1: a story arc that they discussed a lot on the show.
Speaker 1: It was not a it was not a blive decision
Speaker 1: by the character. It was um. They really talked about
Speaker 1: what it because because it was a show that did
Speaker 1: that did a lot of satire, talked about issues the
Speaker 1: The discussion of whether or not she was going to
Speaker 1: have the baby and what it meant to be a
Speaker 1: single work mother UM was discussed at great length on
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, and that that's why he wants, That's
Speaker 1: why it is important to him to keep his audience
Speaker 1: away from it. Now. That was not the only kind
Speaker 1: of groundbreaking thing about Murphy Brown. The show was incredibly
Speaker 1: significant in its portrayal of gay people. In several episodes,
Speaker 1: most notably in nineteen two and nine four, homosexuals were
Speaker 1: shown as not just normal, functional members of society, but
Speaker 1: as existing in significant numbers throughout American society. There's an
Speaker 1: episode where like one of the characters buys a bar
Speaker 1: and it becomes through kind of like comedic hijings or
Speaker 1: whatever becomes a gay bar, and he's like slowly realizes
Speaker 1: what it is. But the point the episode was making
Speaker 1: is that gay people are all around us. They're part
Speaker 1: of our community. They are a significant, meaningful part of
Speaker 1: our society. This was rare in mainstream television for the time,
Speaker 1: and it made Rush Limbaugh furious. We have another clip
Speaker 1: here of of that just adults teaching kids doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what the conversation a composition is of the family, and
Speaker 1: nobody has has been critical that when Quayle said that
Speaker 1: they glorified single mothers, what he was trying to point out,
Speaker 1: my friends, was and I think this show proved it
Speaker 1: last night. This is another thing. This show has got
Speaker 1: an agenda. And they say all day long they don't
Speaker 1: have an agenda, but last night's show proved it. It's
Speaker 1: okay that they have an agenda. Just say so, like
Speaker 1: this show. We we are perfectly upfront and honest about
Speaker 1: what I am and what I believe on this show,
Speaker 1: and we'll let that float out in the marketplace and
Speaker 1: let you accept it as it is. There's no attempt
Speaker 1: here to fool you, there's no attempt here to deny
Speaker 1: what I am. But that's what they're all about. Now
Speaker 1: this is also really significant. Um So what Russia is
Speaker 1: doing here is he's framing his objection to Murphy Brown
Speaker 1: as reasonable and not based in hate. He's saying, I'm
Speaker 1: not against single mothers, or'm not against gay people or whatever.
Speaker 1: I am against the fact that this show conceals its
Speaker 1: political agenda. And I can see why people like most
Speaker 1: of my family would have found this reasonable. But what's
Speaker 1: happening here is very sinister, because Murphy Brown was not
Speaker 1: trying to be left wing. It was trying to make
Speaker 1: a point that single parents and that gay people are
Speaker 1: regular human beings who contribute to society. It was trying
Speaker 1: to point out that single parents are valid and functional people.
Speaker 1: These should not be political points, and recognizing the humanity
Speaker 1: of huge chunks of the population should not count as
Speaker 1: an agenda, but it was critical for Rush Limbaugh to
Speaker 1: turn it into one, because if you can take the
Speaker 1: basic humanity of marginalized people and make it a political
Speaker 1: talking point, then you make it into something people can
Speaker 1: oppose on principle and thus frame their bigotry is not
Speaker 1: hate but simply a political stance that they have every
Speaker 1: right to. Rush was not the first person to talk
Speaker 1: about the gay agenda, or to oppose single motherhood. Not
Speaker 1: even close. But before him, the most prominent voices attacking
Speaker 1: these these groups of people were on the religious right,
Speaker 1: which had first had risen as an organized political force
Speaker 1: in the late seventies. They were obviously influential, but they
Speaker 1: were also obviously religious extremists, and a lot of non
Speaker 1: religious conservatives and libertarian types did not want to identify
Speaker 1: with fundamentalists. Rush who had a documented history of mocking
Speaker 1: religious conservatives, provided the more libertarian right with a secular
Speaker 1: justification for bigotry against gay people and single mothers and
Speaker 1: women in general. And that's one of his great innovations. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he pioneered this idea that if you are saying this
Speaker 1: is okay, this thing is okay, what you are doing
Speaker 1: is saying that's that's somehow that's an attack on me
Speaker 1: and what I'm so the idea of dan Quile saying
Speaker 1: it glorifies single mothers, um no one that that show.
Speaker 1: No one was ever saying we should do this instead right,
Speaker 1: we should be doing we should be doing this instead
Speaker 1: of what you think is right. This is what we
Speaker 1: should be doing, rather than just saying can't isn't this okay?
Speaker 1: Like these these people exist. Isn't that all right? These
Speaker 1: people exist, It's all right, and they shouldn't be hated
Speaker 1: or punished or or ostracized for being this. He's not
Speaker 1: even talking about a slippery slope. He's he's just saying
Speaker 1: that if you are saying this is okay, that means
Speaker 1: you are saying the way we live is not okay.
Speaker 1: And that's just not there at all. It's just not
Speaker 1: there at all. But if he's if he's able to
Speaker 1: make it be that way to his listeners, then he
Speaker 1: can number one, make sure they will always oppose these
Speaker 1: things that he just finds gross. And number two, it
Speaker 1: further separates them from mainstream society. This is the beginning
Speaker 1: of the splintering of the mainstream American right from the
Speaker 1: United States, from most of the people in this country.
Speaker 1: And it is the beginning of making sure that there
Speaker 1: there was no You cannot reconcile the right with with
Speaker 1: the modern world, with the rest of civilization, because you
Speaker 1: doing a different thing than them is an attack on them,
Speaker 1: Like we're being attacked because you're different, and so we
Speaker 1: get to fight you. That's Russia's great innovation. And also
Speaker 1: that the way you think is the real America and
Speaker 1: not the people think that's haunting. But you know what
Speaker 1: isn't haunting, Robert, the products and services that support this podcast, hopefully,
Speaker 1: hopefully unless it's Raytheon, which is very haunted products. But
Speaker 1: that's a story for another day. And we're back. So Paul,
Speaker 1: I would love to go with this through this entire
Speaker 1: episode with In fact, I would love to do a
Speaker 1: reoccurring series where we just go through, point by point
Speaker 1: every episode of Rush limbas TV show and talk about it.
Speaker 1: I think it would be amazing. It isn't wild, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the opposite of Proustian? Yeah? Um, I
Speaker 1: it would be very I think fun and also intellectually valuable.
Speaker 1: But we just we have so much ground to cover,
Speaker 1: we that that this has to be the end of
Speaker 1: that episode of the show. Yeah. We can't do a
Speaker 1: rewatch of the We can't do a rewatch podcast with
Speaker 1: the Rush Limbo Show. Yeah, at least not not today. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we've gotten the point across and characterize what
Speaker 1: he's doing on the show and why it was significant. Now,
Speaker 1: the Rush Limbaugh TV Show was what you'd call a
Speaker 1: modest success. The thirty minutes syndicated series ran from n
Speaker 1: which is not a long run, but isn't a super
Speaker 1: short run either. You know it was. It was not
Speaker 1: a huge hit, but it was successful. That said, it's
Speaker 1: actual impact on history was much raider then its four
Speaker 1: seasons might suggest. As I said earlier, Roger Ales was
Speaker 1: the executive producer of Limbough's TV debut. Limbaugh and Ales
Speaker 1: had met in nineteen ninety, and Rush would later say
Speaker 1: that their meeting was quote like finding a soul mate.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote here from a write up that
Speaker 1: I found on courts the persona Ales helped Limbaugh create
Speaker 1: on that show, something between a commentator, political strategist, news anchor,
Speaker 1: and entertainer is exactly the kind of act you can
Speaker 1: see today on Fox News. It is not hard to
Speaker 1: draw a straight line from Limbaugh's TV show to talking
Speaker 1: heads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Like today's Fox
Speaker 1: News personalities. Limbaugh fancied himself as a man of the
Speaker 1: people who railed against the latest liberal politicians and voters.
Speaker 1: But as he did that, he was flying his private
Speaker 1: jet around the country to wine and dine with powerful figures.
Speaker 1: The myth he created of himself with the help of
Speaker 1: Ales is the same myth that we see pushed again
Speaker 1: and again on Fox News by its biggest names. In retrospect.
Speaker 1: Ales may have been using Limbaugh's TV act is that
Speaker 1: test run for Fox News to see if the brand
Speaker 1: of conservative opinion that was working on the radio could
Speaker 1: be translated to and expanded on TV. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the same year the Limbaugh Show ended, Ales co founded
Speaker 1: Fox News at the behest of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Speaker 1: Much of what ensued, the liberal bashing, fearmongering alternative reality
Speaker 1: in which Fox's personalities lived was reminiscent of aless weird
Speaker 1: little Limbaugh talk show experiment. So this is really a
Speaker 1: test case for what becomes Fox News, you know, And
Speaker 1: the year Limbaugh Show in six is the year Fox
Speaker 1: News launches. What's strange to me is well, I guess
Speaker 1: because the show was over, I guess the show, you know,
Speaker 1: the viewership went down. I wonder why he didn't just
Speaker 1: stick Limbaugh on Fox News in those in those early days,
Speaker 1: he wanted to actually, um yeah, so uh like like
Speaker 1: Ales actually tried to get Rush to join the network
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand six. Um, but each kind
Speaker 1: of preferred radio. I don't think he actually liked being
Speaker 1: on TV very much, not not not to the extent
Speaker 1: that he enjoyed, you know, doing his radio show. UM
Speaker 1: So I think that was mainly the reason. But also
Speaker 1: by the time Fox News really got going, Ales had
Speaker 1: a half dozen Rush limbas you know, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about a bit later. So throughout the mid and into
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, the Rush Limbaugh Show was a
Speaker 1: bona fide cultural phenomenon. Rush created the first fully monetized
Speaker 1: right wing cult of personality within like the American media.
Speaker 1: At least as you heard in the clips we played,
Speaker 1: Rush discouraged his listeners from thinking for themselves. He was
Speaker 1: the genius, and if you just agreed with him and
Speaker 1: thought the way he thought, then you were, by definition
Speaker 1: also smart. As a result, from the very early point,
Speaker 1: he gave his fans the nickname ditto heads. The New
Speaker 1: York Times explains the etymology of this term as it
Speaker 1: evolved on his show. Ditto a time saving greeting used
Speaker 1: by callers to avoid tedious repetition of the obvious. For example,
Speaker 1: you're wonderful Rush, and I agree with everything you've said.
Speaker 1: Dittohead then means a Limbaugh fan, So you're like, literally,
Speaker 1: he's saying, my fans are people who say and believe
Speaker 1: all of the exact same things that I do. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're absolutely going to praise me. And so in
Speaker 1: order to save some time, let's get let's just condense
Speaker 1: all the fawning praise that you will, no doubt give
Speaker 1: me into one word, so we know that what you're
Speaker 1: saying is, Rush, I love you. You are everything to me, um,
Speaker 1: and I need you to know that before we get
Speaker 1: into whatever fucking issue we're going to get into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're the only thing that matters to me, or at
Speaker 1: least your beliefs are, because I am so empty as
Speaker 1: a person as a result of how capitalism has hollowed
Speaker 1: me out and hollowed my my class out, that that
Speaker 1: I have nothing but the hatred of liberals that you
Speaker 1: embody until that first guy came along that had to
Speaker 1: implement mega dittos. Yes, yeah, and then there's mega dittos.
Speaker 1: And I can't even get too much into some of
Speaker 1: the terms used on the Russia Limbo Show because it
Speaker 1: makes me want to punch things. Until my hands are broken.
Speaker 1: And I already said that happened last year because of
Speaker 1: one of his fans. Anyway, the core of the Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh show was not, as he would always claim, advancing
Speaker 1: conservative ideology, but was instead attacking liberals and the left,
Speaker 1: who he referred to as kami libs or pink kami libs.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I again at this fucking gun
Speaker 1: class I was at last weekend. The instructor was like,
Speaker 1: the far left wants to take your guns away, and
Speaker 1: obviously I couldn't be like, actually, the far left is
Speaker 1: pretty heavily strapped. It's liberals think are but like, that's
Speaker 1: part of part that this idea that Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: somehow a leftist right, that he's a communist, that you
Speaker 1: hear an auch and you hear all over the right. Now,
Speaker 1: that was Limbo saying anyone who is not a conservative
Speaker 1: as a far left, so it doesn't matter that actually
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is a profoundly conservative political party. In
Speaker 1: today's Democrats are basically the same Republicans were when I
Speaker 1: was growing up in the nineties. Um. There's also never
Speaker 1: any follow up on these these the fearmongering claims whenever
Speaker 1: there's an election, like what happened to the Obama sleeper cells,
Speaker 1: like he never are are they still in play? Is
Speaker 1: he still waiting to give them the word? Like they
Speaker 1: never go back and say, oh, it turns out that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. It's this, I mean, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: thing about Republican talking points. Like the other thing they
Speaker 1: kept panic like r like terrified during the Obama years,
Speaker 1: He's gonna take your guns. He's gonna take your guns.
Speaker 1: He's gonna take your guns. Barack Obama did not one
Speaker 1: single thing to restrict gun ownership in the United States, um,
Speaker 1: whereas actually Trump actually did ban certain fire the bump stock.
Speaker 1: Like Trump put through more restrictions on gun rights than
Speaker 1: not that I'm saying bump stocks are dumb, but Trump
Speaker 1: objectively restricted gun ownership more than Obama. But you never
Speaker 1: know it to listen to the right wing media, it's
Speaker 1: it's preposterous you that by now people would know, no,
Speaker 1: no one's going to take your guns. No one's going
Speaker 1: to take your there's too many of them. It's it's
Speaker 1: not that you know, we'll talk anyway. Absolutely, yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: As I said earlier, the core of Russia. Limbaugh's actual
Speaker 1: ideology was owning the Libs um his his conservatism was
Speaker 1: built entirely around attacking the other, and over his years
Speaker 1: on air, Rush built up an audience of millions, and
Speaker 1: eventually tens of millions, who began to see political victory
Speaker 1: as being not about achievements that improve life, but about
Speaker 1: tearing down and harming the enemy. This is why you
Speaker 1: get to a point where now mainstream Republicans are selling
Speaker 1: mugs with like that are like the tears of my
Speaker 1: enemies are in the Yeah, you know, I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the Rolling Stone here quote Any Republican Canada is
Speaker 1: better than any Democratic candidate, Limbaugh told his audience early on,
Speaker 1: which might sound kind of innocuous on the surface, except
Speaker 1: that for Limbaugh, the superiority of our side and the
Speaker 1: inferiority of them was increasingly over the years a dead
Speaker 1: least serious matter. It became tribal warfare, which you know,
Speaker 1: kind of where we are now. On January three, Time
Speaker 1: magazine featured Rush Limball on its cover. We see him
Speaker 1: wearing a suit and smoking a cigar. Smoke curls up
Speaker 1: out of his mouth. Behind the bold words is Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh good for America. Now, it was obvious to anyone
Speaker 1: who was paying attention that he was not. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, the liberal media that Russia attacked and
Speaker 1: demonized embraced him as kind of like the loyal opposition,
Speaker 1: as an erudit foil to debate with, to argue against,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless someone who deserved respect and honor due to
Speaker 1: his success. Like you can see this in the episode
Speaker 1: of Family Guy that Rush was on right where it's
Speaker 1: like he has these fun bickering arguments with the token
Speaker 1: liberal on the show, but in the end they really
Speaker 1: both like each other, you know, um, as opposed to
Speaker 1: what Rush actually represented, which is the politics of violent
Speaker 1: elimination of the opponent. Um. And it's that. That's what's
Speaker 1: most amazing to me is no matter what he said
Speaker 1: about the mainstream media, about the liberal media, whatever, they
Speaker 1: fedded him, They they praised him, They made him like
Speaker 1: he was never treated as a pariah. Barbara Walters said
Speaker 1: in an interview, people just can't get enough of him.
Speaker 1: The Los Angeles Yeah, The Los Angeles Times described him
Speaker 1: as a self styled commander in chief, fighting his private
Speaker 1: culture war against the many liberal do gooder notions that
Speaker 1: interfere with his right to eat and wear and spend
Speaker 1: whatever he damned well wants, and say whatever he damn
Speaker 1: well pleases. C Span highlighted him in a fawning interview
Speaker 1: that helped turn him into a household name. Within a
Speaker 1: year of that interview, he was carried by five hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty stations and listened to by an estimated twenty
Speaker 1: five million Americans. He started writing books with titles like
Speaker 1: The Way Things Ought to Be, each of which dutifully
Speaker 1: went on to become a New York Times bestseller. For
Speaker 1: a man who built his career attacking the liberal media,
Speaker 1: Rush never received anything but encouragement and financial support from
Speaker 1: his so called enemies. The fundamental hypocrisy seas that undergirded
Speaker 1: his career were seldom called out. Russia. Limbaugh had not
Speaker 1: even registered to vote until he was thirty five years old,
Speaker 1: two years before his show became a national, nationwide success.
Speaker 1: The repeated double standards in his work and his life
Speaker 1: never hurt his pull with his audience. For example, Russia
Speaker 1: Limbaugh repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, which
Speaker 1: he was, but so was Rush. Limbaugh took the route
Speaker 1: that most wealthy young Americans during Vietnam took and found
Speaker 1: a doctor who would diagnose him with a bullshit injuries
Speaker 1: so that he couldn't be called up for service. When
Speaker 1: he was eventually called on this by some journalists who
Speaker 1: were doing their jobs, he responded, I had student deferments
Speaker 1: in college, and upon taking a physical was discovered to
Speaker 1: have a physical by the virtue of what the military says,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know it existed, a physical deferment. And
Speaker 1: then the lottery system came along when they chose your
Speaker 1: lot by birth date, and mine was high I and
Speaker 1: I did not want to go, just as Governor Clinton didn't,
Speaker 1: which on its own is a reasonable statement, except you
Speaker 1: spent years attacking Clinton for being a draft dodger. You
Speaker 1: draft funny and hypocritical. To me, my my favorite draft
Speaker 1: dodge uh explanation of all time is still Dick Cheney.
Speaker 1: I had other priorities. Yeah, that's that's just that's incredible,
Speaker 1: And it's true. Both Cheney and George W. Bush did,
Speaker 1: like rush, like Clinton, everything they could to not actually
Speaker 1: go and fight in Vietnam. One of the things that
Speaker 1: will always be the most infuriating thing in one of
Speaker 1: the most infuriating things to happen in American politics. To
Speaker 1: me is the way in which um John Kerry, who
Speaker 1: is a whatever else you can say about him, fought courageously,
Speaker 1: went to win despite the considerable privilege he was born into,
Speaker 1: did an incredibly dangerous job, was wounded multiple times, and
Speaker 1: risked his life repeatedly for the lives of his men. Right,
Speaker 1: Vietnam was a terrible war we never should have been in.
Speaker 1: It was fundamentally immoral on a national scale, but on
Speaker 1: a human level, John Kerry did the right thing, which
Speaker 1: is not use his privilege to get out of fight
Speaker 1: eating in a war that other people of his class
Speaker 1: got us into. And he was portrayed during that campaign
Speaker 1: as like a liar and a craven coward. What George Bush,
Speaker 1: who did everything he could to not fight in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: was seen as this brave warrior hero. It's it's still
Speaker 1: very frustrating. I don't even like John Kerry, but my god,
Speaker 1: the man did the thing all of you say is
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do as a man. It's it's infuriating,
Speaker 1: it's infuriating. The ditto Heads continued to listen to their
Speaker 1: idol Slam Clinton for being a draft dodger, even while
Speaker 1: they celebrated a man who, by his own admission, had
Speaker 1: done the exact same thing. Rush would eventually rack up
Speaker 1: three to four and I should have stayed here. I'm not.
Speaker 1: It's not bad to be a draft dodger. The Vietnam
Speaker 1: War was again, horribly immoral. It's perfectly it's what. What
Speaker 1: is immoral is dodging the draft and then going on
Speaker 1: to incourage to do nothing but encourage more wars that
Speaker 1: involve American serviceman. Right, that's immoral. It is not a
Speaker 1: moral to dodge the draft and say, hey, this was
Speaker 1: a bad war. We shouldn't get involved in stupid, pointless
Speaker 1: wars that just kill people for the profits of a
Speaker 1: tiny number. Like that's bad. I'm not going to do it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to support it. That's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's doubly a moral when you're well past the age
Speaker 1: where it would affect you where it's you're now, there's
Speaker 1: another there's a later generation of people that will be
Speaker 1: affected by this very uh, you know, hypocritical line of attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the moral inconsistency that's infuriating John Kerry. I actually
Speaker 1: and John Kerry did not support the Vietnam War and
Speaker 1: became after he got out a very very outspoken voice
Speaker 1: against it. Um. But it's the if if Limbaugh had
Speaker 1: served in Vietnam and then gone on to be a
Speaker 1: war hawk, then at least he would be ideologically consistent.
Speaker 1: You know, at least I could say Rush Limbaugh believes
Speaker 1: in something. It's like John McCain. At least he fucking
Speaker 1: believed in something. You know, it was terrible and fundamentally
Speaker 1: toxic as well, But it was not He's not like Limbaugh.
Speaker 1: You know, he is a person who has beliefs. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's that It's not like that line
Speaker 1: from the Big Lebowski right, like, say what you will
Speaker 1: about the tenants of national socialism, Dude. At least it's
Speaker 1: an ethos, you know. Uh So, Rush Limbaugh was not
Speaker 1: a man who I think believed in much much Other
Speaker 1: than the fame and wealth of Rush Limbaugh. He would
Speaker 1: eventually rack up three divorces and four wives. He never
Speaker 1: had any children. Despite this, tens of millions of conservatives
Speaker 1: listened to him, opening on family values and traditional morality
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. Rush called it functional values, and
Speaker 1: one key aspect of his functional value system was rejecting
Speaker 1: illegal drugs. At one point on his TV show at
Speaker 1: the height of the drug war, Rush told his audience,
Speaker 1: if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they
Speaker 1: ought to be accused, and they ought to be convicted,
Speaker 1: and they ought to be sent up the river. He
Speaker 1: repeatedly called addics junkies. Yeah, to go to prison if
Speaker 1: you dog. He repeatedly called addics junkies, and some justed
Speaker 1: that drug dealers deserved death for their crimes. Well. He
Speaker 1: enthusiastically supported the drug war and the use of the
Speaker 1: car Serile state to lock up mostly black men for
Speaker 1: selling drugs. Rush Limbaugh was actively trafficking huge amounts of
Speaker 1: opiate pain killers. Rush used his housekeeper as a hook up,
Speaker 1: handing her cigar boxes filled with cash in exchange for
Speaker 1: thousands of pills of oxy content, hydrocodon and the like.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, she went public and knocked on
Speaker 1: him to the police. When the story broke, he was
Speaker 1: charged for his crimes and Florida Sheriff's deputies opened an
Speaker 1: investigation into a drug trafficking ring. We don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what Rushes if he was just a customer, or if
Speaker 1: he had some other role in it, but he was
Speaker 1: buying huge amounts of pain killers. I'm talking about a
Speaker 1: guy who was spending probably hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: on his addiction. And did it come from did he
Speaker 1: have some injury that got him hooked on it or yeah,
Speaker 1: he got it prescribed to him initially for an injury
Speaker 1: and he got addicted like most people do that. This
Speaker 1: is this is not just with prescription painks. Most people
Speaker 1: who have a problematic addiction to a drug get addicted
Speaker 1: because of something negative that happens in their life, right,
Speaker 1: trauma or an injury, or or an emotional depression whatever.
Speaker 1: That's most people who have a problematic addiction. Um Limbaugh said,
Speaker 1: anyone who does that should go to prison. Then he
Speaker 1: did that, you know, and he oh, yeah, he gets caught. Uh,
Speaker 1: And when he gets caught, it is a big story.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, his housekeeper went public, wore a
Speaker 1: wire recorded him doing a drug dealer deal, knocked on
Speaker 1: him to the police, and when the story broke, he
Speaker 1: was charged for his crimes and Florida Sheriff's deputies open
Speaker 1: an investigation into that drug traffic trafficking ring um. His
Speaker 1: third wife left him, He checked himself into rehab while
Speaker 1: his multimillion dollar team of lawyers went to work defending
Speaker 1: him in court. The legal battle would go on for
Speaker 1: three years, during which time he began doctor shopping to
Speaker 1: maintain his addiction. He was charged again with fraud for
Speaker 1: concealing information to obtain prescriptions from four different doctors who
Speaker 1: prescribed him roughly two thousand pain pills during one six
Speaker 1: month period. The case would eventually wrap up in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, when Limbaugh agreed to a plea deal that
Speaker 1: allowed him to avoid prosecution if he sought treatment and
Speaker 1: avoided other criminal activity. It's very frustrated. Huh, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually didn't. I didn't really, I wasn't really cognizant of
Speaker 1: all the the legal side of this. I just remember
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy of him being, you know, uh, just gobbling
Speaker 1: up shaming and while he's gobbling down these pills. But
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I guess I didn't. I didn't. Uh,
Speaker 1: I didn't bother exploring that side of right, and like
Speaker 1: he doesn't even it's not even a slap on the wrist.
Speaker 1: It's like a little light tap on the wrist. It's
Speaker 1: not even a slap on the wrists. So fucking upsetting.
Speaker 1: And again, the immorality here is that he always advocated
Speaker 1: criminal consequences from people who did exactly what he did,
Speaker 1: and then he didn't go on to suffer them. And
Speaker 1: that's what's It's that, like, there's nothing morally wrong with
Speaker 1: being addicted to pain killers. If it were legal, I
Speaker 1: would absolutely be a pain killer addict. Seems rad Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's the But I'm also consistent about the fact
Speaker 1: that I don't think doing or possession any substant Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the exception of, like, you know, some explosives. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a line to be drawn, and I don't think
Speaker 1: people should have certain but Harold, speaking of Heroin, you
Speaker 1: know who supports our podcast, Sophie, I don't know the
Speaker 1: fine people at the cinaaloa cartel, so very specifically, like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is a cartel supported podcast, And I just want
Speaker 1: to say, let's go to ads before I get us
Speaker 1: in some trouble. Ah, we're back good times. So, while
Speaker 1: Rush was using his wealth power to avoid the legal
Speaker 1: consequences that he enthusiastically supported existing for the crimes he committed,
Speaker 1: he continued to act as the voice of America's conservative conscience.
Speaker 1: Mostly this meant being super racist. At one point on
Speaker 1: his TV show, he played video clips of black men
Speaker 1: and boys standing in front of the TV and and like,
Speaker 1: while he was playing these clips of black men and boys,
Speaker 1: he would stand in front of the TV and make
Speaker 1: guerrilla noises and grunts, the apparent joke being that black
Speaker 1: people were like monkeys, Like that's kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know what else he could be saying, um, pretty sat
Speaker 1: very satire, Like I think he got that from a
Speaker 1: New Yorker cartoon. It would be like if Jonathan Swift
Speaker 1: actually murdered Irish children and then was like, this is
Speaker 1: a satire, Get it. The joke is that their food
Speaker 1: rush repeatedly blamed corruption and violence in African like the
Speaker 1: African nation national governments, as the fault of black people
Speaker 1: being rid of white colonial leaders, as we see in
Speaker 1: this quote from two thousand seven quote. Right, so you
Speaker 1: go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you
Speaker 1: get rid of the white government there, you put sanctions
Speaker 1: on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled
Speaker 1: by communists for a time, had the support of certain
Speaker 1: communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, you do the same thing. Right.
Speaker 1: He's saying that because the black people got rid of
Speaker 1: their colonial oppressors, that's why Africa's in bad shape. Not
Speaker 1: the decades of trauma those governments pushed. Not the fact
Speaker 1: that when those governments gave up colonial control, they put
Speaker 1: people like Idi Amine, who had been a British military
Speaker 1: sergeant in charge of the government and turned out that
Speaker 1: he was a fucking monster. Not because those governments, like
Speaker 1: colonial governments, continue to suck wealth out of these countries
Speaker 1: and support kleptocratic dictatorships that allowed them to suck more
Speaker 1: wealth out, that made the country dysfunctional, and that led
Speaker 1: to consistent, like decades and decades of violence. Not that
Speaker 1: they supported ethnic groups one over the other, like they
Speaker 1: didn't Rwanda, which led to their one to genocide. None
Speaker 1: of that. It's because they got rid of the white people,
Speaker 1: even the white people to actually leave. You know, it's
Speaker 1: super fucked up. I didn't know that he'd actually gone
Speaker 1: to the lengths of trying to smear Nelson Mandela. Yeah, communists, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. I mean Nelson Mandela also was at
Speaker 1: one point some guy somebody who supported like terrorism and stuff,
Speaker 1: which also is totally justified. If your government is the
Speaker 1: apartheid government of South Africa, terrorism is not necessarily the
Speaker 1: wrong thing to do. I would say, it's not off
Speaker 1: the table. It's not off the table. Sometimes terrorists are right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is like you could argue that the founding fathers
Speaker 1: of this nation, who despite their own bigotry and slave
Speaker 1: like the government they're rebelling against, also allowed slavery. They
Speaker 1: were right to do terrorism to get rid of having
Speaker 1: a king, because kings are bad, you know, like terrorism
Speaker 1: is justified sometimes. Um So Rush was repeatedly critical of
Speaker 1: professional sports for the presence of black athletes, as we
Speaker 1: see in this two thousand seven quote. Look, let me
Speaker 1: put it to you. To you this way, the NFL
Speaker 1: all too often looks like a game between the bloods
Speaker 1: and the crips without any weapons there. I said it. Wow.
Speaker 1: The inherent criminality of black people was a belief that
Speaker 1: Rush held deeply, and he expressed it constantly. In nine
Speaker 1: he said, the a c P should have riot rehearsals.
Speaker 1: They should get a liquor store and practice robberies. You're
Speaker 1: saying this after the la riots, you know, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is what the n A. This is not people
Speaker 1: reacting to horrible violence the only way that they can, right.
Speaker 1: This is not a riot being the language of the unheard,
Speaker 1: this is what the CP wants because to criticize athletes,
Speaker 1: I bet he couldn't even do a jog. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. The the yeah, the ticking point of
Speaker 1: like they just these you know, these people, they just
Speaker 1: love to riot. Yeah, they just loved not these people
Speaker 1: are being oppressed and murdered, and finally violence was the
Speaker 1: only thing they could think to do because they were
Speaker 1: given no other options, and they've reached the end of
Speaker 1: their human tether. Like the people I idolized who founded
Speaker 1: this nation, slavery is over. What more do you want?
Speaker 1: I mean? And when I say that, I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say like that. Obviously anyone rioting in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and was a thousand times more justified than George Washington.
Speaker 1: And that said, I still think getting rid of a king,
Speaker 1: all other things being equal, getting rid of a king
Speaker 1: is a violent reason to do violence. Kings are bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Rush repeatedly argued that white people shouldn't be blamed
Speaker 1: for slavery, saying it's preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for
Speaker 1: slavery when they've done more to end it than any
Speaker 1: other race. Any race of people should not have guilty.
Speaker 1: If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery,
Speaker 1: it's Caucasians, bitch. It's amazing how many Caucasians fought to
Speaker 1: keep the thought and died to keep slavery going. Rush
Speaker 1: is this just like at this point when you say
Speaker 1: things like that, right, he is what do you think
Speaker 1: the percentages of uh for in Russia's mind? I actually
Speaker 1: believe this or what is the most out to what
Speaker 1: is the most outrageous thing that I could say? I
Speaker 1: think he comes to believe it because these beliefs, well,
Speaker 1: I think what it is. It starts he's not a
Speaker 1: political person. He doesn't care about politics. He starts with
Speaker 1: a joke because he starts doing this persona because it
Speaker 1: gets him listeners. But he's also a narcissist, and these
Speaker 1: beliefs aren't political stances to him. There are aspects of
Speaker 1: his personality, and his narcissism dictates that he comes to
Speaker 1: believe it because believing it and defending these things is
Speaker 1: the same as defending himself. And again, he's a fucking narcissist.
Speaker 1: I think that's how it works. I like the Trump
Speaker 1: thing where he starts out telling a lie, but then
Speaker 1: he repeats the lie enough times that it becomes true
Speaker 1: to him because he is saying, yes, that's exactly the case.
Speaker 1: So another repeated rush limbab bit was attacking the daughters
Speaker 1: of Democratic presidents for being In nine, he called Jimmy
Speaker 1: Arn's daughter Amy the most unattractive presidential daughter in the
Speaker 1: history of the country. In the early nineteen nineties, he
Speaker 1: declared Chelsea Clinton to be the White House dog, which
Speaker 1: is like just very vile. Um. I don't even think
Speaker 1: it's like the Trump boys and Ivanka made themselves political figures,
Speaker 1: perfectly fine to insult and attack them. You're never gonna
Speaker 1: hear me saying anything bad about like Tiffany or Barren,
Speaker 1: because there their children. You know, like, you don't fucking
Speaker 1: talk about them if they don't make themselves into a
Speaker 1: major part of things. You know, Now, Chelsea Clinton has done,
Speaker 1: hasn't put herself in the public eye, and it's perfectly
Speaker 1: fair to criticize her for the things she does in
Speaker 1: the public eye. But at that time, when he was
Speaker 1: saying that she was literally, but she was a child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what you're what he said about her is a
Speaker 1: kind You can't be a good person and say that
Speaker 1: about a child to an audience. Yeah. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: when your town law student Sandra Fluke went before Congress
Speaker 1: to argue that contraceptive should be covered by the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act, Limboch called her a slut and a prostitute.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard. You can't overstate how vile he was.
Speaker 1: When um the Marty from Back to the Future, um uh.
Speaker 1: Michael J. Fox, Michael J. Fox made some political statements
Speaker 1: that Limbab disagreed with. Limbob mimicked having Parkinson's disease to
Speaker 1: mock him on his Show's a bad person to say
Speaker 1: that to to and imply that Michael J. Fox was
Speaker 1: playing it up for the cameras when he went testified
Speaker 1: before Congress. I remember this. I remember this so well
Speaker 1: because Michael J. Fox deliberately did not take his medication
Speaker 1: and said that and said, I want you to see
Speaker 1: this is what happens and Russia. Limbab accused him of
Speaker 1: like playing it up like it's not that bad, and
Speaker 1: he's he's jiggling all around like I that's like burned
Speaker 1: into my brain forever. It's horrific. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: and and to say that it would be it's like,
Speaker 1: I think what he did was perfectly reasonable. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to take my medicine because you need to know
Speaker 1: what it is like for people who don't have access
Speaker 1: to the medicine. I'm rich. I have access to all
Speaker 1: the medicine I need. Here's what it's like if you don't.
Speaker 1: I want to make this less abstract to you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I had a friend. One of the big things
Speaker 1: in terms of like me changing my political attitude that
Speaker 1: started with like me changing my attitudes on drugs. This
Speaker 1: conservative that like marijuana should be I llegal, that it
Speaker 1: was a moral I had a friend who was much
Speaker 1: older than I met on World of Warcraft, who had
Speaker 1: multiple sclerosis, and we were video chatting and she showed
Speaker 1: me how badly her hands shook before she started smoking. Right,
Speaker 1: she like showed me herself shaking, and then she took
Speaker 1: a hit, which was difficult for her, and I watched
Speaker 1: in real time how it affected her. And I never
Speaker 1: again supported keeping that ship illegal because you can't when
Speaker 1: you see it, right, you can't it's medicine, not that
Speaker 1: most people use it use it medicinally, which doesn't isn't wrong,
Speaker 1: like it's out wrong to use it recreationally, But just
Speaker 1: the idea that what she was doing was a crime
Speaker 1: made it clear to me how ammorl our drug laws
Speaker 1: were um in a way that maybe if I had
Speaker 1: like it would have taken longer otherwise I think, um
Speaker 1: so Yeah. Anyway, Limbaugh did occasionally face consequences for his
Speaker 1: bald faced bigotry. In two thousand three, ESPN hired him
Speaker 1: as an on air commentator. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was fired after like seven weeks because he said Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb didn't deserve any of the praise
Speaker 1: he received. So he said Donovan, Yeah, he said Donovan
Speaker 1: McNabb didn't deserve the praise that he received because, quote,
Speaker 1: I think the media has been very desirous that a
Speaker 1: black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and
Speaker 1: black quarterbacks doing well. I think that there's a little
Speaker 1: hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of
Speaker 1: credit for the performance of his team that he really
Speaker 1: didn't deserve. People just like this guy because he's black,
Speaker 1: not because he's a good quarterback. The media has invested
Speaker 1: in black men being good quarterbacks. You know, I like
Speaker 1: you went into your Shapiro voice for that quote. It's
Speaker 1: what the funk man. You couldn't do what he's doing?
Speaker 1: How dare you like? So this combat drew enough widespread
Speaker 1: condemnation that Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN. But
Speaker 1: obviously this had little to no impact on his bottom line.
Speaker 1: Maybe it annoyed him personally, but it didn't hurt him financially.
Speaker 1: By the early aughts, Rush was worth hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. He had a private jet, He had a
Speaker 1: palatial mansion in Florida. He smoked cigars that cost more
Speaker 1: than some people's cars. This is disgusting, but I think
Speaker 1: any fair accounting of Limbaugh's career has to acknowledge how
Speaker 1: impressive it was too. The early two thousands saw the
Speaker 1: explosion of Fox News. This is the period where it
Speaker 1: became the most watched news network in the country. A
Speaker 1: slew of Limbaugh imitators rose up, men like Bill O'Reilly,
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson, to name a few. While
Speaker 1: these folks were all hugely successful and influential, none of
Speaker 1: them ever eclipsed Rush. This is because, in addition to
Speaker 1: wielding influence, Rush held extrue actual, demonstrable political power. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote the Rolling Stone again here. His sky
Speaker 1: hire ratings and the rabid fandom of his dittoheads, who
Speaker 1: just happened to fit the profile of people who voted
Speaker 1: frequently in Republican primaries, made it inevitable that the GOP
Speaker 1: would come courting. After he he boosted Pat Buchanan's pitchfork
Speaker 1: populist make America First Again challenge to George Bush, the
Speaker 1: President became so hell bent on gaining Limbaugh's favor for
Speaker 1: the general election that he not only invited the host
Speaker 1: to the White House, but toted his bags personally into
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Bedroom. Limbaugh had only praised for Bush from
Speaker 1: that day forward, at least until he lost to Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton in November. That set a pattern. Limbaugh might instinctively
Speaker 1: gravitate to the radicals, but he was ultimately a team player,
Speaker 1: the national precincts captain of the Republican Party, as Mother
Speaker 1: Jones described him two years later, Limbaugh basically co captain
Speaker 1: the Republican Revolution with House Leader Newt Gingridge, when their
Speaker 1: efforts produced a landslide that brought seventy three anti government
Speaker 1: Zealots to Congress. The host was made an honorary House
Speaker 1: freshman and fed it at a GEOP orientation in December,
Speaker 1: where the new members wore Rush was right, buttons and
Speaker 1: listened to his marching orders. This is not the time
Speaker 1: to get moderate, he said, This is not the time
Speaker 1: to start trying to be liked. Ronald Reagan himself declared
Speaker 1: Limbaugh the number one voice for conservatism in our country,
Speaker 1: and Rush was always very clear. And Rush was always
Speaker 1: very clear about where he wanted to see the party head.
Speaker 1: Smaller government, stronger, more powerful corporations. He said all he
Speaker 1: said outright. I consider myself a defender of corporate America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would not be wrong to view Rush Limbaugh as
Speaker 1: something of a cult leader. One of the strongest pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence supporting this conclusion is, in my mind, Limbaugh's
Speaker 1: embrace of the irrational politics. For Rush Limbaugh was never
Speaker 1: about concrete results or observable reality. It was a fight
Speaker 1: between good his side and evil anyone who disagreed with him.
Speaker 1: And since those were the stakes, it didn't matter if
Speaker 1: he lied or spread conspiracy theories because the essence of
Speaker 1: what he was saying, that the Democrats were monsters, was true.
Speaker 1: Nowhere is this clearer than in his hatred of the Clintons.
Speaker 1: It started when George H. W. Bush lost to Bill,
Speaker 1: robbing Rush of a president who would directly, you know,
Speaker 1: take him into the White House right. From an early stage,
Speaker 1: Rush realized that lying about the crimes committed by Bill
Speaker 1: and Hillary was a more productive route than criticizing them
Speaker 1: on policy, and so in nineteen four he announced Vince
Speaker 1: Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: and the body was taken to Fort Marcy Park, rolling
Speaker 1: Stone rights conspiracy theories once the province of fringe right
Speaker 1: wingers started to become the mainstream Republican fair they are
Speaker 1: today during Clinton's two terms, and Limbaugh was the great
Speaker 1: popular riser of the genre. Long before Fox House began
Speaker 1: amplifying the fringe eyear theories about American politics, Limbaugh was
Speaker 1: busy mainstreaming wing nut world, the conspiracy cranks, the on Bircher's,
Speaker 1: the Christian Zionists, the science deniers, the info warriors, their
Speaker 1: wildest fantasies, fears, and paranoias, all came out to play
Speaker 1: in the national prime time on the Rush Limbaugh Show,
Speaker 1: repackaged by the host into a palatable fair for the
Speaker 1: Republican masses. And this isn't this is significant because Russia's
Speaker 1: demonizing of the Clinton's who There's plenty of very value
Speaker 1: valid things to critique them on, but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, pretty normal neoliberal politicians. It's even spread
Speaker 1: on the left, this idea that Hillary Clinton is somehow
Speaker 1: more of a war monger than other liberals, right, is
Speaker 1: somehow like exceptionally bad. When she's not. She's very much
Speaker 1: in line with everyone else in in the party, and
Speaker 1: everyone else who was had has held those positions and
Speaker 1: is not as bad as some of them. Right, She's
Speaker 1: more hated by certain people. Even on the left. You'll
Speaker 1: find people who are who are more directly aggressive towards
Speaker 1: her than they are to fucking Kissinger. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: not that she's not bad. She is. So is Bill.
Speaker 1: They're greedy, Bills a rapist. They they have supported, you know, Initiati,
Speaker 1: the Iraq War, a number of violent actions overseas that
Speaker 1: were disasters, but there they did that as part of
Speaker 1: uh uh as as like within a large group of people. Right,
Speaker 1: there's nothing about them that is exceptionally bad for the
Speaker 1: the the the crew that they run with, but this
Speaker 1: absolute demonizing of them that has a real impact by
Speaker 1: the on the election. That's a big part of what
Speaker 1: we get Trump is something that Rush Limbough pioneers. The
Speaker 1: Clintons are not like my parents hated Trump, hated Trump
Speaker 1: when he was running and voted for him because their
Speaker 1: hatred of Hillary Clinton was it's beyond rational. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's and again a lot of super valid criticisms
Speaker 1: of Hillary Clinton. I don't think she should have ever
Speaker 1: been president. Also hard to say she would have been
Speaker 1: worse than Trump. Um, And if you are saying like
Speaker 1: she would have, for example, been more killed more people
Speaker 1: overseas than Trump, you're not actually paying attention to the
Speaker 1: death toll as a result of American air strikes and
Speaker 1: missile strikes and drone strikes as it changed from the
Speaker 1: Obama administration where Clinton was Secretary of State to the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Because there was a massive escalation and death
Speaker 1: under that. In addition to repealing of the rule about
Speaker 1: any sort of reporting about civilian casualties from US air strikes,
Speaker 1: Trump was worse on this sort of stuff, but you'd
Speaker 1: never know it anyway. I don't want to get into
Speaker 1: a rant on this, but like that, you can't. It's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to analyze the Clintons, their impact, their crimes,
Speaker 1: and their and their um and their their behaviors, their
Speaker 1: policies with any sort of rationality because this they've been
Speaker 1: turned into goblins. Right. It's it's very frustrating, um and
Speaker 1: it makes it it makes it so that if you
Speaker 1: try to say, like, well, actually, this thing you're criticizing
Speaker 1: them on isn't a reasonable thing to or at least
Speaker 1: the way you're criticizing them isn't reasonable, Suddenly you're defending them,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, that's not what I'm It's very
Speaker 1: I hate it. I hate everything. Sorry, it gets that
Speaker 1: that's sort of specific personality demonization gets in the way
Speaker 1: of actually accomplishing, uh, you know, discussions of of policy
Speaker 1: and where and where we are as a country and
Speaker 1: how we do things. Because absolutely they were completely typical
Speaker 1: of the people that occupy the White House on any
Speaker 1: given year, you know what I mean. And and and
Speaker 1: like you know, Hillary, uh, even if she had killed
Speaker 1: as many people overseas as Trump did, probably fewer people
Speaker 1: domestically in terms of policy. Um, if you're talking about that,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna talk again into the pandemic and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, if she had been elected, um and and
Speaker 1: you know anyway, Yeah, I totally agree that it's like
Speaker 1: it's a very weird um uh thing that uh, that's
Speaker 1: that that absolutely sprung out of the Rush Limbaugh uh
Speaker 1: personal personal demonization that that that then gets into you know,
Speaker 1: like this fucking Alex Jones ship where there's a fly. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this turning people from like, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: analyze what this person has actually done, how it's worked,
Speaker 1: when it's been successful, when it's been unsuccessful, when it's
Speaker 1: been moral, when it's been a moral And to know,
Speaker 1: she's just a criminal, she's just a warmonger, and we
Speaker 1: don't have to analyze what she actually did or anything.
Speaker 1: We don't have to. We we just have to condemn her.
Speaker 1: We should. And it's not that she doesn't deserve condemnation
Speaker 1: for a lot of things, but like for one thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I don't want to get
Speaker 1: onto a defending because I don't like Hillary Clinton, but
Speaker 1: she's also has it like it's very frustrating. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very it's all just very frustrating. Um and and he's
Speaker 1: and he creates this culture and it it spreads. Now
Speaker 1: it's not just the Clintons now now it's it's everyone. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't have to analyze people that you disagree with.
Speaker 1: You come up with a three word thing about them,
Speaker 1: and you spread these like like Bill Clinton has committed crimes.
Speaker 1: He's a fucking rapist. You don't have to make up
Speaker 1: that he and his wife are having people murdered. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he's a rapist. That's bad. But of course a
Speaker 1: lot of people calling him a rapist or rapists themselves,
Speaker 1: and they have to make it up that. Now, no,
Speaker 1: he's a murderer. You know. It's it's fucking bullshit. It's
Speaker 1: very frustrating. So Rush also led the charge on demonizing
Speaker 1: and denying global warming and climate change. In his book
Speaker 1: See I Told You So, he declared that quite a
Speaker 1: few scientists are now backtracking on their once dire predictions
Speaker 1: of melting ice caps and worldwide flooding. Cut to Texas
Speaker 1: being submerged in the layer of snow that destroys civil
Speaker 1: society or the entire West Coast burning down last year. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he lampooned Al Gore uh and scientists who warned about
Speaker 1: climate change as quote a few hardline do sayers who
Speaker 1: are sticking to their thermostats. Yeah, yep. His conclusion was,
Speaker 1: you know, and now it's it never affected him and
Speaker 1: he never affected him. Now he's dead. Yeah, as far
Speaker 1: as he knows, he was right about this. He was
Speaker 1: right about this. Limball was unquestionably the single most influential
Speaker 1: American conservative from about nineteen eighty nine to at least
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Now, his star did start to fade
Speaker 1: by the end of George W. Bush's term, and there
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons for this. For one, he'd
Speaker 1: been out at as an opiate addict, gone to rehab
Speaker 1: three times, and through it all had repeatedly defended an
Speaker 1: administration that led the United States into two disastrous and
Speaker 1: expensive failed wars. By the time Barack Obama was elected,
Speaker 1: many of the more libertarian minded right wing we're starting
Speaker 1: to reject the neo conservative ideology that Russia had spent
Speaker 1: eight years hyping up. Now the fact that Barack Obama
Speaker 1: was the man who finally broke. A years of GLP
Speaker 1: power wound up being the salvation of Limbaugh's influence. Yes,
Speaker 1: he'd encouraged the nation to burn through its treasure and influence,
Speaker 1: losing two wars, but now a black man was president,
Speaker 1: the floodgates of right wing racism open wide. In the
Speaker 1: first four years of Obama's term, the number of hate
Speaker 1: groups in the United States rose by seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five percent. This surge in public anti black racist
Speaker 1: I know, it's pretty shocking when you actually look at
Speaker 1: the number. Yeah, the idea, there's there's a black resident.
Speaker 1: We're gonna need more hate groups. Guys. This here's the
Speaker 1: hate groups, the extant hate groups that we're not going
Speaker 1: to get it done. We need more hate groups. There
Speaker 1: is a black president who in his actual policies is
Speaker 1: not wildly different from George H. W. Bush. But like, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: the fact that Barackoba. Yeah, So, this surge in anti
Speaker 1: in public anti black racism was heralded, in cited, and
Speaker 1: led by Rush Limbaugh, the USA's most prominent bigot. There
Speaker 1: already a lot of different clips that I could select
Speaker 1: and make this point, Paul, but none is more appropriate
Speaker 1: than this song. That aired on Russia's program while Obama
Speaker 1: was still on the campaign trail. Now, the context of
Speaker 1: this is that Limbo was talking about the fact that
Speaker 1: um Al Sharpton Barack Obama. Now Sharpton had like a
Speaker 1: public series of arguments, right, I think Sharpton was backing
Speaker 1: Hillary at first. Um So this is this song that
Speaker 1: you're about to hear. The singer is supposed to be
Speaker 1: Al Sharpton singing about Barack Obama. And I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: let Sophie play the clip now imaging indecing times because
Speaker 1: he's not send him County what God him and not
Speaker 1: mecause he's not from see real black man, snoop call
Speaker 1: have talk and talk and walk the walk not coming
Speaker 1: and one imagic All right, I think that's enough of that. Yes,
Speaker 1: pretty bad. I mean I just I guess I just
Speaker 1: wish that non comedy people would stay in their lane.
Speaker 1: You know what that that like the meter was terrible.
Speaker 1: It's bad. It's not it's not funny unless you're bigot,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you're a bigot. So Limbaugh had other
Speaker 1: Obama singers saying at one point, if he weren't black,
Speaker 1: he'd be a tour guide in Hawaii. In two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: he compared Obama to a cartoon monkey he repeatedly called
Speaker 1: Michelle mouchell and while because she's a cow, you know,
Speaker 1: and by the and all the while, he claimed that
Speaker 1: racism had nothing to do with his hatred of Obama.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter to me what his races. He's liberal is
Speaker 1: what matters to me. Yeah, Okay, Barack the magic Negro guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just brought it up time, that's all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I can't talk about it enough, but I'm not.
Speaker 1: It's just convenient that he's black. It's not a problem
Speaker 1: that I have with them, but it's convenient for me
Speaker 1: from my satire. God, I hate this guy. Is he
Speaker 1: even doing satire at this point? Like? Has he has
Speaker 1: he pretended? Has he dropped that pretense? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 1: I can play you songs that like there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of Nazis that will go through and like rewrite Disney
Speaker 1: songs to be about hating the Jews and stuff, or
Speaker 1: about race traders and whatnot, because it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's easy to spread. Right. You You make a
Speaker 1: racist song and people laugh and at first it's a joke,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes less of a joke. It's the
Speaker 1: whole story, right, That's exactly what Limbaugh is doing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not even all that much less racist. Um, he
Speaker 1: just doesn't say the N word. Um. When Canada Obama
Speaker 1: became president, Obama, Rush said, I hope he fails, explaining
Speaker 1: that rooting for liberalism to fail is rooting for America
Speaker 1: to succeed. Limba declared that stopping Obama was quote what
Speaker 1: I was born to do. One of his tactics to
Speaker 1: this end seemed to be stoking fears that because Obama
Speaker 1: was anti white, he was trying to gin up a
Speaker 1: race war. In two thousand nine, Rush declared, in Obama's America,
Speaker 1: the white kids now get beat up with the black
Speaker 1: kids cheering. Clearly he would have preferred it when you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know when white kids were burning down black
Speaker 1: kids schools in his hometown. Those were the days. Those
Speaker 1: were the days, my friend, he thought they'd never had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. Limba was not the only person who stoked
Speaker 1: white resentment in anti black Big a Tree in this period.
Speaker 1: He was not close to the only person, but he
Speaker 1: was the man who had created the blueprint and the
Speaker 1: cultural space that all of those other right wing media
Speaker 1: figures acted in. Ben Shapiro was very open about the
Speaker 1: fact that Limball was his hero and idol. Alex Jones
Speaker 1: altered the way he spoke and altered the acoustic setup
Speaker 1: of his Info Wars studio in order to more closely
Speaker 1: resemble Rush Limbaugh. In two thousand ten, Limbaugh was picked
Speaker 1: to address SPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was
Speaker 1: the main event that year and gave what he called
Speaker 1: his first Address to the Nation. Limbaugh was so central
Speaker 1: to the Republican Party at this point that RNC Chairman
Speaker 1: Michael Steele was asked on CNN if Limball was the
Speaker 1: effective party leader. When Steele claimed that Rush was just
Speaker 1: an entertainer, This piste off Rush Limbaugh, who attacked Michael
Speaker 1: Steele on air and caused such an outpouring of right
Speaker 1: wing rage against the RNC chairman that Michael Steele was
Speaker 1: forced to make a public apology to Rush limb Ball
Speaker 1: kind of proving that he was effectively the leader of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. Yeah. No, it puts me in mind
Speaker 1: of Howard Stern Uh coming into the Philadelphia market and
Speaker 1: Uh forcing John Dobella, the host of the Morning Zoo
Speaker 1: to apologize for being on the radio. Jesus, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that it happened. It was It was ridiculous. So,
Speaker 1: as leader of the Republican Party, Limbaugh spent the Obama
Speaker 1: years repeatedly hammering home the idea that there could not
Speaker 1: be peaceful coexistence between the right and left in the
Speaker 1: United States. Quote from Rush, we live in two universes.
Speaker 1: One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie.
Speaker 1: Everything run dominated, controlled by the left here and around
Speaker 1: the world is a lie. Every other universe where is
Speaker 1: where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and
Speaker 1: we deal with it America, the real America, and there
Speaker 1: can be no coexistence this now. Now we're in the
Speaker 1: age of you know, because Biden said the you know,
Speaker 1: it's looking for unity. Anytime somebody's looking for unity, and uh,
Speaker 1: there is a there's a criticism of a famous monster
Speaker 1: like Rush Limbaugh. The response from the right is always,
Speaker 1: where's the famous unity? Where what I thought you wanted unity?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, do you care about unity? You
Speaker 1: don't give a shit about it. You're already living in
Speaker 1: a world that says if you don't, if you don't
Speaker 1: come to believe the things that I believe. You are
Speaker 1: against America, and you are. You're the real racist, You're
Speaker 1: the real misogynist, you are the real hater of of
Speaker 1: all things that are decent. So it's I don't know
Speaker 1: how we I don't know how we unfunck ourselves from this,
Speaker 1: from this situation. Yeah, it I don't know that we can. UM,
Speaker 1: But the way to do it is not too not
Speaker 1: to yield to these people, right, it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: to just let them get what they want, because what
Speaker 1: they want is the annihilation of the other and and
Speaker 1: honestly the annihilation of themselves, because it's a fucking death
Speaker 1: cult at this point, like they can't be allowed to win.
Speaker 1: And like the people and and that's not to say that, um,
Speaker 1: every aspect of what has what traditional conservative ideology is wrong.
Speaker 1: They have some points. That's why it brings people in
Speaker 1: the idea that like you should always be worry about
Speaker 1: giving the government control of things, You fucking should, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's a space, there is a space for conservatism
Speaker 1: in society. That is not what rush Limbaugh turned it into.
Speaker 1: Which is not to say that it was because fucking
Speaker 1: Reagan was president before Limbaugh came onto the scene, and
Speaker 1: he was terrible and very toxic, not like to toxicity,
Speaker 1: and the Republican Party goes back very far. But also
Speaker 1: it's not for nothing that the Republicans used to be
Speaker 1: the party of Abraham Lincoln. You know, uh, there, it's
Speaker 1: it's not there. There is a way to have a
Speaker 1: conservatism that is influential in society that isn't a fucking
Speaker 1: death cult. And we have to at very least get
Speaker 1: back to that if we're going to continue to be
Speaker 1: a democracy that doesn't spiral inevitably into civil war. You know,
Speaker 1: I have I'm a pretty committed leftist, but I also
Speaker 1: do not seek a society that forces my beliefs on
Speaker 1: other people. But you can't. You can't give these people
Speaker 1: an inch because they'll take everything. That's how they are,
Speaker 1: you know, That's what part what Rush had a big
Speaker 1: impact in making them into. By two thousand fifteen, Rush
Speaker 1: Limball had succeeded in leading a right word push that
Speaker 1: finally prepared the Republican Party to nominate an obvious fascist,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Limbaugh embraced Trump early on right wing radio
Speaker 1: host and never Trump or Joe Walsh, who is another
Speaker 1: actually principled conservative, draws a direct line between Limbaugh and Trump. Quote.
Speaker 1: The average Trump supporter loves Trump because he fights man.
Speaker 1: He fights, not because of any policy or issue or
Speaker 1: political philosophy. That's why they love to Rush. Before him,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about conservatism. I still can't tell you after
Speaker 1: thirty years what the funk he believes in. But he
Speaker 1: knew how to prey on audiences, grievances and resentments, which
Speaker 1: is what conservative talk radio does. Rush was the son
Speaker 1: of a bitch. He'd lie about the dims and punch
Speaker 1: them and make fun of them. That gave him a
Speaker 1: quote like following from the beginning. Trump sort of inherited it,
Speaker 1: and I Joe Walsh again not a grade I agree
Speaker 1: agree with on much, but he's right on the money here.
Speaker 1: He's analyzing it properly. Absolutely. The thing I think the
Speaker 1: thing also about Trump is like, like Rush doesn't really
Speaker 1: have any deeply ill beliefs like that you could you
Speaker 1: couldn't say this guy, even convincing himself, really cares that
Speaker 1: much about anything beyond what's right in front of his
Speaker 1: fucking face that is about him. All he cares about
Speaker 1: is his own aggrandized right. It's it's narcissism. Trump and
Speaker 1: Limbaugh are very similar. Rush bent the knee to Trump,
Speaker 1: declaring him everything but the Second Coming. And we will
Speaker 1: not labor long on Rush during Trump's years, because once
Speaker 1: he had helped shepherd his massive audience into Trump's arms,
Speaker 1: his cultural influence faded. It was watered down by the
Speaker 1: sheer mass of right wing idolaw ideologues who flooded the
Speaker 1: Internet and increasingly urged their followers to embrace a rationality
Speaker 1: conspiracy and fascism. In February of Rush led the charge
Speaker 1: denying the reality of COVID nineteen. He called it the
Speaker 1: common cold and mocked even his old ally Matt Drudge
Speaker 1: for caring about the burgeoning plague. He urged his listeners
Speaker 1: against mask wearing, calling it a symbol of fear. Russia
Speaker 1: had long denied the dangers of smoking, particularly second hand smoke,
Speaker 1: but this was a new level for him. When Trump
Speaker 1: lost reelection to Biden, Limbaugh immediately called the election a
Speaker 1: sham and joined the chorus of voices claiming fraud. By
Speaker 1: this point, though, he was sick, and the playing field
Speaker 1: was so flooded with men who sounded like him, triggered
Speaker 1: the libs like him light like him, that his voice
Speaker 1: hardly rose above the din Rushi had succeeded in building
Speaker 1: a right wing so made in his own image that
Speaker 1: he no longer stood out in it. His last show
Speaker 1: was February second. He died less than two weeks later,
Speaker 1: killed by the lung cancer he denied had anything to
Speaker 1: do with smoking, because that was another thing Rush denight
Speaker 1: his entire career. Joe Walsh, a former Limbaugh lover, UH
Speaker 1: found like when he was much younger, he got into
Speaker 1: talk radio because of Limbaugh, eventually wound up and to
Speaker 1: be fair before Trump rejecting Limball in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways found the whole arc of Russia's career to be
Speaker 1: terribly sad. Quote. I didn't think that at the end
Speaker 1: of his life Brush would sell out to Trump the
Speaker 1: way he has. He had every opportunity this final year
Speaker 1: to come clean and be decent. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: still on this February lying about a stolen election. He'll
Speaker 1: keep up this act till he dies, and it's sad.
Speaker 1: When a writer from Rolling Stone asked if maybe the
Speaker 1: reason he kept backing Trump was that Limbaugh truly believed
Speaker 1: in what said, Walsh countered with a theory of his
Speaker 1: own quote. Maybe knowing him, it's one last, big, extended
Speaker 1: fuck you. Maybe it's Limbaugh saying I'm not going to
Speaker 1: bend to the Dims and anybody else, no matter what,
Speaker 1: never to the end, I'm never gonna do it. And
Speaker 1: at the end of this, I can't help but think
Speaker 1: that there's something terribly meaningful and the fact that Joe
Speaker 1: Walsh rejected Limbaugh in his later years and at his end,
Speaker 1: Walsh gained prominence as a voice of the Rising Tea Party.
Speaker 1: He is very conservative, but his constant principal resistance to
Speaker 1: President Trump proves that he is not a fascist. And
Speaker 1: it turns out what Limbaugh was really selling, what he
Speaker 1: was preparing the American right for all along, was fascism.
Speaker 1: If you want confirmation of this, you need look no
Speaker 1: further than how America's most prominent neo Nazis reacted to
Speaker 1: Limbaugh's death. Chris can't Well was one of the speakers
Speaker 1: and organizers of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Speaker 1: He is a straight up Nazi. He assaulted left wing
Speaker 1: counter protesters at the event, and when this brought legal
Speaker 1: consequence is on him. He filmed himself crying in fear,
Speaker 1: earning the nickname the Crying Nazi. Can't Well gained prominence
Speaker 1: among the all right as a podcaster with shows like
Speaker 1: Outlaw Conservative and Chris can't Well openly sees Rush Limbaugh
Speaker 1: as the man who invented his style of content, who
Speaker 1: made his career possible. He's in jail right now because
Speaker 1: he made a bunch of illegal threats and stuff. But
Speaker 1: he was interviewed for another fascist podcast by guy named
Speaker 1: Jared Howe on like right after Limbaugh's death, and in
Speaker 1: this clip about to play The Crying Nazi, Chris can't
Speaker 1: Well discusses his reaction to learning about Rush Limbaugh's death.
Speaker 1: And when I heard, you know, when I heard Katherine's
Speaker 1: voice like chop up, and I said, oh no, he
Speaker 1: knew you. Yeah, yeah, I knew. And Katherine Limball I
Speaker 1: had actually uh she wrote a letter to Rush. I guess.
Speaker 1: I kept thought hoping that you know, I get out
Speaker 1: of here in time that I can like call into
Speaker 1: the show or drop an email. And I started realized, like,
Speaker 1: all right, he's at philansan of weeks. Uh, if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna contact this guy just proa got to do it
Speaker 1: by mail. And I was actually gonna I forgot to
Speaker 1: do what I was gonna ask you to get me
Speaker 1: see if there was an address that I canna write to.
Speaker 1: And uh, it turns out to a little late vision.
Speaker 1: But you know when I when I heard her voice,
Speaker 1: I choked up and I said, oh no, my Shelly
Speaker 1: Ivy and he knew exactly what was going on to
Speaker 1: tell her and um and so yeah, I heard it
Speaker 1: when it happened, and I was like, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: fucking kids me, man. So that's I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you he's legitimately affected by this. He's mourning Rush Limbaugh,
Speaker 1: this Nazi, and he's not the only Nazi. Morning Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 1: The Daily Showa is one of the most prominent Nazi
Speaker 1: podcasts on the Internet. The words show up is the
Speaker 1: Hebrew term it mean I think it means calamity for
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. So there, it's literally this is the Daily
Speaker 1: Holocaust and it is maybe the most prominent Nazi podcast
Speaker 1: on the Internet now. TDS is its hosts call. It
Speaker 1: has been on the years for years at this point,
Speaker 1: since before Trump was in office, and the hosts of
Speaker 1: The Daily show a consider Limbaugh to be something of
Speaker 1: an idol. Now, these guys are hardcore Nazis, so they
Speaker 1: consider Russia moderate and they do demean him at times
Speaker 1: for that, but they also recognize that he paved the
Speaker 1: way for their financial success and cultural influence. And in
Speaker 1: this next audio clip you can hear several members of
Speaker 1: the Daily Showa can't emphasize that name enough. Learn live
Speaker 1: about Rush Limbaugh's death and the emotional impact it has
Speaker 1: on them is undeniable news cuked on that that's what
Speaker 1: happened today. What sen that's bad news for you, Buddy,
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh is dead. I mean, well, I guess I
Speaker 1: can't see what he's saying about tex I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna dance on his grave. He said a
Speaker 1: lot of really dumb things. But I'm still something kind
Speaker 1: of sad about that. Like I'm very sad about that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be here. If not, I wouldn't be here,
Speaker 1: says host of the Daily Showa. Without Rush Limbaugh, I
Speaker 1: can't think of a more damning thing to say in
Speaker 1: a man's passing, but that he was truly honestly mourned
Speaker 1: by Nazis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the end of the day.
Speaker 1: That's what you can say about Rush. And that is
Speaker 1: the end of our episodes on Rush Limbaugh. You're doing, Paul,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I mean, look, he said some dumb things.
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely going to dance. He sucked and I'm glad
Speaker 1: he's dead. He was a bad person. And I have
Speaker 1: to say on social media when when the story broke
Speaker 1: people were talking about it, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people that wanted to say, you know, you can you
Speaker 1: you know, you can say whatever you want. But Rush
Speaker 1: was hugely successful, more successful and you will ever be
Speaker 1: had more influence. He was a millionaire. Guys take the
Speaker 1: w do you know what I mean? You can't. And
Speaker 1: this is the problem with these guys, with Trump, with
Speaker 1: people like this, is it's not enough for them to win.
Speaker 1: They need people to lick the boots. They need people
Speaker 1: to say you are the greatest. It is never enough
Speaker 1: for them. It is never enough for them to be hated,
Speaker 1: to be feared, to have all the marbles. They need
Speaker 1: you to say I love you too. They need it.
Speaker 1: And that is that is what the only solace I
Speaker 1: can take in a life like this is that in
Speaker 1: the end he didn't get the thing that he wanted,
Speaker 1: which was everybody saying You're the greatest and I love
Speaker 1: you and that. Yeah, it was piss and a bunch
Speaker 1: of Nazis crying. If you if you make if this
Speaker 1: is what you make of your life. This is how
Speaker 1: This is what's going to happen, is that you're gonna
Speaker 1: have people saying rest and piss. You're gonna have people
Speaker 1: saying this and it's and and sorry. You can have
Speaker 1: all the success you want. You're never gonna get that love.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen. And people are actively making plans
Speaker 1: to ship on your grave because you materially harmed their lives, Yes,
Speaker 1: and the lives of people that they loved. You have
Speaker 1: you have made life that much harder for generations of
Speaker 1: people of humans you have Rush Limbaugh had a material,
Speaker 1: significant negative impact on billions of people, many of whom
Speaker 1: are yet unborn. Yeah, rest and piss brush. I wish
Speaker 1: this to cancer had worked faster, you know. Yeah, anyway, Paul,
Speaker 1: you gotta got some plug. Double plug. At the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, Um, I'm gonna be appearing on The
Speaker 1: Daily Show, uh in a couple of weeks. TDS fan,
Speaker 1: By the way, I want to. I want to shout
Speaker 1: out and give face to Daniel Harper of the wonderful
Speaker 1: podcast I Don't Speak German, which is the deepest dives
Speaker 1: you're going to find on Nazi content creators. I guess
Speaker 1: you go Nazi thought leaders in the and I estate's
Speaker 1: very important work. Daniel Harper, I don't speak German. He
Speaker 1: provided those clips to me. Thank you, Daniel. UM, sorry
Speaker 1: back here, No, not at all. UM. You can follow
Speaker 1: me at p F Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram and um,
Speaker 1: I have a few podcasts that you can listen to. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, just all the usual stuff. You can find
Speaker 1: out about me on Paul off Thompkins dot com al
Speaker 1: F Tompkins dot com. Well that's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: us here at Behind the Bastards. UM, so go out
Speaker 1: into the world, tie one half of your brain behind
Speaker 1: your back and then die because that would actually kill you.
Speaker 1: That that would that would immediately lead to your death.
Speaker 1: Exposed brain. There's reason we have skulls people to take
Speaker 1: your brain inside of it. Yeah, anyway, I guess