I won’t say rest in peace because I don’t think he will. He was a malevolent force in American culture for over 30 years and is one of those most responsible for turning the Republican Party into a neo-fascist cult. His fans even called themselves Dittoheads which says everything.
I have written reams of stuff about LImbaugh on this blog over the years. Here’s one from 2006 that I think accurately reflects what he did to us:
Is the culture growing more coarse? Check. Cruel? check. Nihilisitic? check.Racist? check. Xenophobic? check. Consumption worshipping? check. Sexist? check. Rage filled? check. Hmmmm. I wonder why?
LIMBAUGH: Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?”
This is a very revealing portrait of what’s happening in America and it explains some things about why the right is so successful. And it’s the opposite of what everybody says it is. It isn’t because they’ve become more moral and religious. It’s because they’ve fostered and exploited extremism, nihilism and cruelty. After all, if it was the libertine culture of “Brokeback Mountain” or “unwed motherhood” or (gasp) abortion that was creating this shift, you’d think we would have benefitted, not them. For all their crowing about traditional values, it’s the right that has embraced decadence, sadism, vice and corruption.
Yes, it’s a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that’s — well, it’s true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.
I have little doubt that most of the people who listen to Rush also believe that they are good practicing Christian conservatives. And many Christian conservatives probably don’t listen to him. But they listen to Pat Robertson:
You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war
And this:
How about group marriage? Or marriage between daddies and little girls? Or marriage between a man and his donkey? Anything allegedly linked to civil rights will be doable, and the legal underpinnings for marriage will have been destroyed.” Now, that’s more or less a prophecy. Not a divine prophecy, but a prediction.
Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It’s not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That’s a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it’s not the nice upright Christian morality everybody’s pretending it is.
If the culture is careening into a crude, dog-eat-dog corrupt “Pottersville” it’s because the greedheads and the juvenile authoritarian thugs, whether in talk radio or K Street, have taken it over. And it is hard for liberals to counter this because our bedrock values include tolerance, free expression and personal autonomy and that enables this decadent turn in many ways. But let’s make no mistake, it is only on the right that purveyors of brutal, sadistic, depraved political discourse are welcomed into the houses, offices and beds of the nation’s political leadership.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is, but I know that this is where the real political problem for Democrats lies. So, perhaps we can stop bullshitting ourselves that we can solve this problem by speaking in rightwing approved religious language and pulling our punches on abortion. That is not the real reason the right is winning and we won’t win that way either. Religion is cover for these people. Rush Limbaugh is the guiding spirit of the Republican Party.
LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture…You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.
When Limbaugh came under fire for those vulgar comments, the leading lights of the Republican party quickly came to his defense.
Rush’s angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the “facts.” We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her. For millions of us, David Brock is firing blanks against a bulletproof target. — Kate O’Beirne Washington Editor for National Review.
Figure out how to deal with that and we might be able to make some headway.
We didn’t figure it out.
The good news is that the hate radio he popularized is dying. The bad news is that it’s been replaced with digital and online propaganda. And, of course, they still have cable news. His spirit will live on. Unfortunately.