“One of the early reasons radio interested me was that I thought it would make me popular,” he once wrote.īut he didn’t gain the following he craved and gave up on radio for several years, beginning in 1979, becoming promotions director for baseball’s Kansas City Royals. Limbaugh dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University for a string of DJ gigs in which he was known as Rusty Sharpe and then Jeff Christie on the air, spinning Top 40 hits and sprinkling glimpses of his wit and conservatism. ![]() By high school, he had snagged a radio job. Louis Cardinals baseball games, offering play-by-play, and gave running commentary during the evening news. He would turn down the television during St. Rusty, as the younger Limbaugh was known, was chubby and shy, with little interest in school but a passion for broadcasting. His mother was the former Mildred Armstrong, and his father, Rush Limbaugh Jr., was a lawyer. “The kind of antagonism and vituperativeness that characterized him instantly became acceptable everywhere.” “What he did was to bring a paranoia and really mean, nasty rhetoric and hyperpartisanship into the mainstream,” said Martin Kaplan, a University of Southern California professor who is an expert on the intersection of politics and entertainment and a frequent critic of Limbaugh. His brand of blunt, no-gray-area debate spread to cable TV, town hall meetings, political rallies and Congress itself, emerging during the battles over health care and the ascent of the tea party movement. Limbaugh influenced the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and countless other conservative commentators who pushed the boundaries of what passes as acceptable public discourse. On Wednesday, Trump lauded Limbaugh on Fox News as “a legend” who “was fighting till the very end.” Trump, like a long line of conservative politicians before him, heaped praise on Limbaugh, and during last year’s State of the Union speech, awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. “It’s ghoulish, it’s evil, it’s vile, and they’re dancing on his grave.He was frequently accused of bigotry and blatant racism but could often enunciate the Republican platform better and more entertainingly than any party leader, becoming a GOP kingmaker. “They’re celebrating today, I mean it’s really sick,” said Mancow. News of Limbaugh’s death sparked diverse reactions, with hashtags such as #GoodRiddance trending on Twitter following the polarizing figure’s passing. “Middle America, voices from there seem to be able to resonate with America. “We’re stubborn, we’re straight-talking, and that’s what Rush was,” said Mancow. ![]() ![]() “He was the mouthpiece, he was the voice.”īoth from Kansas City, Missouri, Mancow referred to Limbaugh as a “Missouri Mule.” “Rush, for the most part, brought conservative thoughts and ideas, as we know them now, to the world,” said Mancow. Limbaugh invented conservative talk radio, according to Mancow. "A lot of these stations are going to be gone. “As Rush goes, it really is the end of an era,” said Mancow to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. Limbaugh’s friend and colleague Erich “Mancow” Muller joined The National Desk to talk about the legacy Rush Limbaugh left behind him. WASHINGTON (SBG) - Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio icon, died Wednesday after a battle with cancer.
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