Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that I continually failed to introduce like a professional, which is particularly shameful this week because our guest is a very professional voice artist, Mr Paul F. Tom Good. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Paul Um. You are the voice of a lot of characters that that that a lot of people enjoy. Uh. I think most famously to me at least, UH is Mr Peanut butter Um to the voice of a lot of characters that people hate. That's true. That's true because if you're really achieving as an artist, a lot of people are going to hate anything that you do. That's the you're doing it right exactly. And today we're talking about a truly historical success of a creative mind. A man hated py tens of millions of people and who should be hated by billions, a man who has done, I would say, in calculable harm to the future of human life and all life on this planet. Mr rush Limbaugh. Yeah, Paul, what do you have any kind of history with Rush Limbaugh, like in terms of your upbringing and stuff. I don't know much about how you grew up. Yeah, do you know what I forgot. Uh that I forgot. First of all, I forgot how long he's been around. And I remember watching him in his earliest days on TV UM and watching that show like as a goof the way, I would watch, you know, the Morton Downey Junior Show or a little Wally George or whatever, and just like, who is this clown? And he's like doing this this sort of you know what seemed like a character you know at the time, because he I think he fancied himself an entertainer and had a show that had little skits in it and stuff like that, and I I thought he was just ridiculous, and so uh, I watched him ironically and um, and then things just got worse. Like I I sort of got tired of it. I remember getting tired of it and like, Okay, this is just like the same thing over and over again, and it's not, um, it's not pushing that uh that button in my ironic pleasure center anymore. So I just stopped watching. But he, um, despite despite my my jumping ship and you to do what he was doing. He lost the Paul left Topkins demographic, but he kept the my parents and everyone that raised me demographics. So what was your upbringing particularly political? Would you say not, you know what, not super political. I was raised, Uh. My family was a um uh lower middle class, uh, big Catholic family, UM in Philadelphia, in in a sort of suburb called mount Airy, and we were both of my My family was like lifelong Democrats, you know, Philadelphia Democrats. And so that was kind of it, Like we were just sort of um you know, uh like a conservative liberal family. Uh and um, yeah, I I we we didn't talk a lot about politics in the house growing up. Um, and that was kind of it. But I knew that we were. We were liberal Democrats, you know, who were weirdly enough, guided by guided by I'm not even gonna say faith. I think we were guided by my parents, um sort of morals where they were greatest generation Depression babies. Um. And uh they voted straight Democrat um. But they were not like even though we were Catholic, it was like we were not single issue voters, you know. Um, but they but my family was my parents were brought up with the same sort of um prejudices that people of their generation were brought up with, you know. But but yeah, politics did not figure in it. What it was like when I got when I got uh, you know, a little older and out of the house and everything, that's when I started, um, you know, investigating my own politics. And it was like a long a journey. You know. That is very exciting to me. Um, just because you're you're you, you came from kind of more of a you know, a liberally background, and your introduction to Russia Limbaugh was kind of watching it as a character, right. Yeah. Yeah, I grew up very conservative. Um My parents were also lower middle class, verging on poor. And when I was like kind of little, a lot of economic anxiety, but extremely conservative. I would say like our family religion was conservatism, and so Russia Limbaugh was caught. Whenever I was driving with my mom or my dad, Rush was on. We would, we would, we listened to him. My parents talked about him. So my upbringing with him was that this guy is like the profit of of what's what's right, you know, both in the political sense and in a moral sense. Um. So I'm very excited about this, and I'm excited that you know who Morton Downey Jr. Is because we're gonna be talking about him a bit too. So yeah, Um, Rush Limbaugh is it's hard to oversell this guy's influence on our current state of Like, I think it would be fair to say we're kind of like verging on civil conflict right now between the right and left in the United States. Yeah, for sure. Um so yeah, And I think Rush Limbaugh has a huge might be the man most responsible for that. I totally agree that his influence cannot be Uh is it overestimated, like cannotated? It's like I the day he died, I tweeted, I tweeted, Uh, if I had to say something positive, I guess if I had to say something positive, I'm glad Rush Limbaugh lived long enough to get cancer and die. Um. And then that got that got picked up by uh fox news dot com. They did a round up of you know, uh liberals celebrated Rush Limbaugh's death, which really was just like, Hey, if you want to harass some people, here's here's pseudo rass. And I had people, I had people in my mentions on Twitter like saying things like, uh, you better pray you never meet me, like like people implying violence because I said I'm glad Rush Limbaugh is dead. I had somebody call my call my house and say Rush Limbaugh contributed far more good to society than you ever will find for Rush Limbaugh. This guy, but I mean, this guy had a show. He had a show. He wasn't a legislator. He wasn't he wasn't like some some sort of freedom fighter. This guy just had a show where he said mean things, where where he repeatedly celebrated the deaths of his enemies and made half a billion dollars doing it. Okay, let's let's get into Russia's life. So the first thing I learned about him when I started digging him into him, that might be the thing I learned about him that surprised me the most. Russia is not short for anything. Russia is a full a full first name, and in fact, Rush Limbaugh is the third Rush Limbaugh in his family line. They are very proud of that name. His grandpa, Rush Senior was born and raised in Bollinger County, Missouri, so he and I are both Missouri babies. He grew up into a world that was changing rapidly. Rush Senior saw an electric light for the first time when he was twelve. He took his first railroad trip in nineteen o four. He always thought that was one of those things. It was like, I choose that. That is the most shocking thing about him. He rushed Limba is not only his full name, it is the only name his family seems to give their firstborn sons. If he broke uh So Russia Rush Senior became a lawyer. He opened an office in Cape are do Um, Missouri, and he basically never left the town again. He retired in nineteen ninety four at the age of a hundred and two, which I mentioned because it suggests that all those cigars rush us are Rush Limbaugh smoked saved us about thirty two years more of his show. I'm sorry, did you say he retired auto in nineteen ninety four? Yeah? And then how long did he live after that? I think he died. I think he died immediately from what YE like. He's one of those guys who worked until he died. Basically, some people are like that. You know, his grandson was like that. Uh So Rush Senior was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives when he was forty. His main political issue was fighting FDR and the New Deal, which shouldn't be surprising to anybody, right, This is deeply deeply embedded in the Rush limball line. In nineteen thirty six, Rush Limbas Sr. Was a Republican delicate at the Republican National Convention, where he helped nominate Alf Landon for the noble job of losing to Franklin del Roosevelt in an election. You don't nobody, nobody was better at campaigning than FDR. It was never a successful thing to run against that. I know, somebody had to be his Washington generals, Yeah, Outland and the Washington generals of Republican politics. Uh So, my main source for the early life and family history of Rush Limbaugh is a fairly comprehensive, if I would say, kind of fawning biography of Limbaugh by Zev chaffits uh and Zev it's a weird first named ze apostrophe e v. Chaff It's uh. He notes that over the course of decades of lawyering, Rush Senior quote quietly but inevitably became well to do um, which is an interesting way of phrasing it. Just like there was no stopping and he just got it. Was kind of a way of making it seem like he just he didn't really want to become rich. He just became rich. You know, that is the most suspicious sounding phrase. Inevitably, quietly and inevitably got rich. Sinister, God, it is very sinister. Um. So Rush Junior, who is our Rush Limball's father, was born at some point Quick Google obviously he had been born. Quick Googling didn't return a date. He's the only Rush Limball without a Wikipedia page, which I guess kind of a kind of a shot to him. Um. I could have probably found it out if I'd really dug into it. But it doesn't really matter that much for our purposes. Yeah, he did what he had to do. He gave us Rush. He gave us our rush. Y O U R Rush. So Rush Junior is only important for the impact that he had on our rush. He was a World War two combat pilot, which is undeniably rad. You gotta give him that, um, and his biography notes that he maintained a military crew cut for his entire life. He was heavy set and top data out at about three hundred pounds, which earned him the nickname Big Rush, Big Rush, one of those names. And you you cannot combat like your Big Rush, sorry, Big Rush us. You can ask politely, it's not gonna happen. Why are you in a big rush? Uh? So Big Rush became an attorney because I'm always rushing around. I'm always rushing around. So Big Rush became an attorney like his dad and his brother, who eventually went on to become a federal judge. Big Rush was a powerful orator and often gave speeches in the town of Cape Girardo, doing during holidays. His very conservative politics influenced these speeches, and his most famous one was a tearful hagiographic speech about our nations saintly founding fathers. Again, you can see he clearly had kind of the same gift of gab that our Rush has. And I you have to admit, if you know anything about our Rush Limbaugh, he was an undeniably talented broadcaster. He was very good at what he did. That's why he had the impact that absolutely Yeah, now, our Rush Limbaugh A Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the third to give his full name, was born in Cape Girardo, Mississippi, on January or Missouri sorry, January twelfth, nineteen fifty one. By all accounts, he had a financially comfortable upbringing with a brother and the parents who loved him. Baby Rush spent his childhood and bubing a steady diet of his dad's rants about scummy liberals and evil, conniving communists. One of our Russia's childhood friends recalls of Big Rush of his dad quote, We'd go over to his house sometimes just to watch him watch the six o'clock news. He'd sit in front of the television, drinking black cherry pop, eating popcorn, and just railing at the anchorman and the reporters. He'd yell at Dan Rather, they're all typical liberals, and Rather's the worst one of the bunch. And we'd try to keep him going. You know, Mr Rush, what do you think about this? Mr? Rush? What do you think about that? Sometimes he'd say Kender, that was this friend's name. You're gonna be the first Dutchman on the moon. I don't know exactly what he meant by that, but he was trying to be friendly. I liked him, but he was a harsh taskmaster with his sons. An odd comment. So Rush has a has a brother or Russia and a brother. He has a brother, David Um who was his younger brother. No, no, no, I think it's the oldest, the oldest son as the Rush gets the Rush name. They didn't do a George for David becomes like a lawyer, doesn't really leave Cape Gerardo and is like, um, you know, he's he's he unlike his brother has a family, has like a wife that he's you know, stays with and all that stuff. Did he quietly but inevitably become wealthy. I think yeah, I think he was bored wealthy. He and his brother were both born rich as hell. Um so and and our Russia's brother David provided an even more telling glimpse of kind of what their childhood was like under Big Rush. My dad stood out. Sometimes he provoked people who didn't agree with him to violence. Once, for example, he was in a bar slamming FDR and a couple of guys jumped him and beat him up. I never did ask him the details of that one, but it was a couple of guys, not a fair fight. I know that much. I have to assume he deserved to get the ship kicked out of I'm gonna guess he was saying something like, the people who got screwed over in the Great Depression deserve to starve to death. We shouldn't be helping that that's gonna be my guest. And he got the ship kicked out of him by some w p A guys something like that. If your name is if your name is Big Rush and two guys go after you, I think that's a fair fight. That's a fair fight. You're big, you know. Yeah, he's a little Rush, he's three hundred pounds. They're probably each about a buck fifty. You know, their fight exactly, they're fight by mass being poor. Yeah, that's so. Our Rush was born into the Eisenhower Years, which will probably always be remembered as like the high point of both capitalism and the United States. This period of peak American exceptionalism imprinted itself deeply on Russia's growing brain. His father was made a special ambassador to India's legal system, Their family got their first television. Um, yeah, yeah, he was. I think it means you know, India's was newly independent in the Eisenhower years, right, they had just the UK had just left, they had just partitioned with Pakistan. They're developing their own independent legal system, and they're a democracy that was heavily based at least initially on the US. So the president like kicked guys who were established lawyers like Big Rush and also established Republicans to be a kind of help set up the Indian legal system. Um, that's kind of what happened. So yeah, his his father's a big man in Republican politics. Rush grows up seeing in the period where America is undeniably like like literally is half of the global economy. Right, that's a very significant thing for him. Um. So the family in the fifties gets their first TV, but radio is still the dominant method of entertainment in those days, and Russia's childhood and earlier adolescence coincided with the birth of rock and roll and the absolute peak of cultural relevance for DJs. Um My dad grew up at a pretty similar period of time. He's like seven or eight years younger than Rush. Um, and he he grew up the only thing my dad ever wanted to be was a DJ, and he wasn't a radio DJ for like twenty thirty years. You know, that was like the coolest thing that you could do, right. You didn't have Spotify, you didn't have the Internet. People learned about new music from DJs who were kind of like pick what they were going to play on the radio. It was the like the absolute rattus thing you could be, and that's what Rush like. He he idolizes these big DJs of the time, and that's all he wants to be. For Basically, his entire young life is a DJ. Now, when Rush was three Brown versus the Board of Education was ruled on by the Supreme Court, which led to the integration of U S schools now Zeve Chaffittz doesn't write anything specific in the biography about how Rush Senior talked about race to his son. I have not We don't get any of that information. And I'm not necessarily blaming Chappits for that because I think the Rush family is very pr savvy. They don't talk about it. You know. I don't know who he would have gotten that info from, um, but our Rush would have definitely picked up on the great deal of conflict in Cape Gerardo over racial matters. Uh. Missouri is an odd state and that it is both Midwestern and Southern. During the Civil War, it was split between Yankee and Confederate sympathizers, and the town that Rush grew up in had monuments to the dead of both sides. There was tremendous resistance to the idea of integration of schools in Missouri and in Cape Gerardo, and Zeve Chappitts, to his credit, writes about this quote. In nineteen fifty two, Kate built its white students a new school, Central High. Blacks continued to attend Cobb High School, but the supreme court and basketball changed that. Cape Gerardou took its high school basketball very seriously and sometimes contended for the state title. The nineteen fifty three team was expected to be a powerhouse, but word got around that the kids from Cobb were even better. An informal game was arranged between Central and Cob High, says historian Frank Nichol cob one. Shortly thereafter, Cob mysteriously burned down. Black students went to school and churches and private homes that year. But a more permanent solution was, yeah, they that's the kind of town. He grows up and the black kids win at basketball and they burned their school down. Wow. Yeah, Cape Gerardo is a very racist town. Um and kind of more to the point, like, we don't know exactly what what Russia's dad would have said about any of this. We don't know that he would have supported the burning down of the black school. We don't know that he wouldn't though, that's right. Um, and you know, the the conservatives were definitely more on the don't integrate side of things, right. Uh. Now, a compromise, a compromise was eventually reached in Cape Girardo, and the compromise was that black kids would be allowed to attend Central High but they would be put in special classes that were taught by former teachers of Cobb, the school that had been burned down. Um. This was kind of integrating by not integrating. So there were black and white kids in the same school, but not in the same classes. And this is the way things were in Cape Girardo when Russia Limballs started school. Um. So yeah, that's you can infer from that what you will based on some of the things Rush Limbaugh says and does later in life. I think we're missing some important information about what his dad thought about black people. Um. I don't remember, if ever being concerned as to the investigation of that fire. I don't think he would burn high school. He might have done it like that is rampant an irresponsible speculation on my part, but also uh, the only reason I think he wouldn't have is that he wouldn't have been able to run away from it. In mind, from what I can tell, um, he didn't do well in that fight, is all I'm saying. So Russia had an upbringing that would have been fairly standard for a rich kid of his era. He played basketball, he did shores, He had plenty of friends. He was not an overly active kid. He did not like sports. He hated his one year in the cub Scouts. Russia the ball hates the outdoors his entire life. Um, he did not like school, but he was popular, largely because his family was rich and had a huge basement with a pool table and a bunch of other luxuries. The kids rush hung out with during this time give us some of our best hints about the darker elements of his childhood. One of them told Zeve Chaffits quote, Russia's dad didn't suffer fools lightly. He was always very disapproving of Russia his ambitions to have a career in radio. Russia's mom was a kind, gentle person, but his dad could be pretty rough. He was not above calling down Russian David in front of their friends, and when he did it, there was a string of expletives attached. I saw that happen many times. So kind of abusive, not I don't think, by the standards of the time, and I haven't heard any of that he was like leading his kids or anything, but kind of mentally abusive. Again, probably more or less in line with what most most men of his social class would have been like to their kids. You know, I don't think this was abnormal. I mean, how many how many of these guys were born out of the the the sort of ritual humiliation by their fathers in front of an audience. Yeah, I think most of them. You know. It's it's such a it's such a common thing that I'm I guess I'm just glad my dad was a guy who didn't say anything. Ever, Yeah, it's better than humiliating you in front of your friends when you say something he disagrees with. So every one of Russia's early friends that I've seen interviewed is very consistent about the fact that he was not political. From an early age. He rarely, if ever talked politics, and he did not express strong beliefs. One of his friends even remembers him as a particularly good debater in school because quote. He could argue either side of a proposition without missing a beat. When he did express political opinions, they were generally conservative. One friend noted that the only time he saw child Rush express a strong political sentiment was after the nineteen sixty presidential election when Rush was nine. Quote Rush wrote wrote on a drywall, Kennedy one darn Nixon lost. Shucks. So grows up conservative because his dad is conservative. But it's clearly politics is not a big part of his life from an early age. He's not like been Shapiro right, where from the get go he's being sort of um like focused into becoming a political commentator. That does not happen with Rush Limbaugh. He's more from the darn shucks school of the darn shucks school political commentary. Yeah. So Rush got his first gig at age thirteen, working at a downtown barber shop. He later told his biographer that he liked the gig because it gave him a chance to talk to adults, who he preferred to his peers because I didn't think kids were interesting. When it came to girls, Rush was as awkward as you'd expect. He was bad at sports, heavy set, and not at all smooth. In his biography The Rush Limball Story, biographer Paul Colford recalls one particularly embarrassing incident during a game of spin the bottle when Rush was a teenager. He spun the bottle and it stopped at and it stopped pointing at the prettiest girl at the party, which is how she's described in this anecdote quote. She looked at him and gasped, couldn't do it, not with him, that is, And everyone in the room witnessed this humiliation. It was a wound he would nurse forever. Uh, that's nice, thank you Bogher for that. And it's one of those things, you know, I think there's I'm sure this has an impact on the kind of man he becomes, But also I think most of us have a moment like that where we have a crush on some person of the opposite or the same sex and they're not into us, and it's horribly embarrassing. It's a pretty and most of us don't grow up to destroy civil society in the environment. Right, Yeah, we've all been there, and Rush was there too. Obviously this is a part of whatever toxic stew gets cooked up at him. Um, But I don't know how Like it's one of those things I think you can kind of lean too much on. Oh, this is why he was always forever humiliated by this thing, and that's why he became the man. He was like, well, we all have that in our past, and we all don't do this ship. It's very much like the the original origin story of Lex Luthor that uh yeah, Superman blew out his hair. Superman Superman was responsible for him going prematurely bald, and he became a supervillain because of this. Yeah, and you know there are a lot of other bald men in that world who don't become Superman. Yeah. Uh so, Big Rush wanted his son to become a lawyer or to do something else with a similar sort of gravitas. Right, The Limbaughs were big men in Cape Girardo. They were kind of like the the the primary, like the most prominent men in the entire town. Um, and he Big Rush wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and do something respectable. Didn't have to be a lawyer, going too politics, do something important, right, do something that he can brag about to the other rich guys. Now, the fact that young Rush only ever wanted to be on the radio, infuriated his father. For his part, Rush seems to suspect that his love of radio was born in part from his hatred of school. Quote. My mother would be fixing me breakfast and I'd be listening to the guy on the radio. He'd be having fun, and I was preparing to go to prison. I mean joined the club Rush. Yeah, we all hate school. It's tradish everybody. It never occurred to me to related to the guy on the radio, like, how come he gets to have fun, this grown adult, and I have to go to school? Yeah, I mean there's a lot of kids. Let's I'll take my adopted hometown Portland for example, a lot of kids there who hate school. They don't destroy the entire planet. They just break Starbucks windows on the weekends. And that's much healthier. Rush. You can just buck up a Starbucks if you're if you're nursing some rage at the educational industrial complex or whatever. So despite his irritation, Big Rush clearly did love his son, and when little Rush was sixteen, his dad used some of his local clout to get his son a part time job at the local radio station. Rush started doing what you today call internship, you know, fetching coffee, cleaning up, handling odd tasks here and there, and eventually he was allowed to actually introduce and play records on air. The summer before his senior year of high school, Big Rush paid for his son to attend a six week radio engineering course in Dallas. This was a big moment for Rush. He was away from home for the first time, living in a boarding house. He started smoking cigarettes, thank god, and he got a license that allowed him to actually and he got a license that allowed him to actually run the radio without adult supervision. Once he had this, station management let him hang out alone all weekend and weekdays after school, playing records and for the first time, presenting himself to an audience on air. So he gets started. And this is one of those things his dad. Clearly there are some abusive elements of their relationship. His dad is not supportive of Russia's radio career, but also is like his dad is, doesn't think it's a good idea, but also enables him right like, not just gets him a job, but pays for him to get educated. So we get this is not a guy. I'm sure you know he had his frustra strations with his father. This is not a guy who grows up with a dad who just doesn't get him and refuses to support him. This is a very supportive upbringing this kid has, even though his father's not yeah exactly. Um yeah. So Rush you know, becomes kind of famous within his you know, the team set at his town because he's the guy with a radio show and in high school and he was not at all political at this point. His most well known bit involved reading the daily beauty tips that the Associated Press sent out back then, UM, which he like, and he would like kind of mock the beauty tips because he thought it was silly that the AP was sending out daily beauty tips. Which is fair, it is that has a silly thing for the AP to do. Um now. Russia's professional idol at this point was a guy named Larry lue Jack lu Jack as Chicago DJ, who was famous for his sense of humor and comedic stylings. Rush Leader called him the only person I ever copied. Lue Jack was known for audibly shuffling papers during his monologues and different bits, a tactic Limbaugh copied and used repeatedly through his decades on air. UM and as a kind of like it significant bit. No, no, no, it wasn't a bit, but it was like a thing he would do to emphasize that, like I've got evidence or I've got information here. You know. It was a thing Rush, and it was a big Rush Limbaugh thing. You know. It's it's how you convince people who maybe aren't that credible that you you have good information. Right, he's been handed, He's been handed that has information on it, so it's true. But but lu Jack was not a political guy, right, he was just he was not, and he fucking hated Rush Limbaugh because when Rush got famous in the early nineties, Rush was like, yeah, Larry lu Jack is the only man I ever copied. And they asked lu Jack about it, in his response is basically, fuck that guy good Man. Yeah. Yeah, you can't. You can't pick who finds you influentially, you know. Yeah. Um So back in those days, again, being a radio DJ was pretty much the coolest thing you could do, and Russia's side job made him very popular at high school. He even signed autographs on a few occasions. The work was intoxicating, and Rush seemed to know at once that this was what he wanted to dedicate his life to doing. Obviously, his ambitions did not make his father happy, and during Russia's last year of childhood, his dad would constantly yell at him for wanting to waste his life on the radio. No amount of paternal ill will was enough to pull Rush Limbaugh away from his dream, though he was miserable at home and his father. After with his father, after graduating, he enrolled in a local college just to please the old man, but he couldn't actually bring himself to go to school very often. Sometimes his mother would drive him to college just to make sure that he went. Rush came of age during one of the most exciting and tumultuous periods in US history. I mean, he's he's literally becoming an adult in like nineteen sixty eight. I think, um, like some ship went down that year. You know, there's a lot of teenagers doing some exciting things. Um. Now, given how Rush turned out, you might have expect him to have been active and involved in the politics of his time. But he was not. And to hear him tell it now, or to hear him tell it when he related this to his biographer, the civil rights movement in the Vietnam years basically all passed him by. He never attended political rallies. He only dimly remembers hearing of Bobby Kennedy's death. When Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated, his radio station asked him to help send out news or ports for the local NBC affiliate because there were uprisings all around the country, and Rush did this, but he didn't actually engage with the news. He was not actually interested in what was happening. He was just interested in kind of the business of how news was disseminated. Quote this is what he said later. I remember talking to them about the broadcast business NBC. I was seventeen, playing records on the radio, not commenting on news. I don't recall feeling any concern. So that is how again a lot of privilege. There are massive race based uprisings and the number of US cities, hundreds of thousands of National Guard troops are called up as after the civil rights leader is is assassinated, the country is on the brink of open conflict in Russia, limbol, I don't give a funk, like I just want to play a record, So you know, Wow, he's just a rich white kid, you know, in the middle of Mazara. He doesn't give a shit. It's so wild to think about someone being alive at that time and not having a strong feeling either way about anything. Yeah, he's not doesn't even have strong hard right sympathies. He just doesn't give a about it. That is like a kind of privilege that I can't even begin to fathom. Yeah, and it is important that, like he's not just taking the right wing side of things. Were like, well have Martin Luther King? He was a comedy. He just doesn't care, Like none of this even makes it into his mind. Like the idea that you would say, Martin King, who is that again? That which guy Bobby who got killed? Kind of what demly aware that assassinated? Yeah, it's it's quite a thing. Uh So I'm going to quote now from a right up in the New York Times that ably summarizes Rush Limbaugh's early twenties. Quote. Love of radio eventually one out over formal education, and he dropped out of a local college after a year, appalling his parents. Then began a long, checkered odyssey typical of radio. Limbaugh held and lost jobs in several cities working under different names and broadcast styles. He was Rusty Sharp and Jeff Christie. He was a DJ, a newsreader, a talk host. In each place he developed components of what would later emerge as the Limball style. In Pittsburgh, he was a prankster, convincing listeners that he could see them through a new experimental picture phone. So he's kind of like a drivetime morning DJ, like, yeah, we're gonna I don't know, I can't do the DJ voice, but like playing like sound bits and doing doing gags. Like he's very like not even really a shock jock yet because he's not like combat that has that's like starting to evolve in this period of UM. I did find some audio from Run of Russia's very first broadcast in nineteen seventy four, while he was still in Pittsburgh, and I think it's interesting because in it you can hear Rush in mid transition from that drive time DJ voice to the voice of the Rush Limball who would help breed a modern American fascist movement. So here he is on w x z's Solid Rock and Gold show. So without further ado, here is Rush Limbaugh in nineteen seventy four Billy Cook's rights and gypsies. See the exciting the Dolphin rated p G and now showing at the Ark Moore Drive in Bellevue. Bethel said him a camp Horn drive in Carnegie said, and send him a world. They have the Dolphin offs showing in the Hampton plasack hen Hills region and run the leader Sea of the Dolphin now at these the Wiggly South Hills South Park Drive in the South Hills Drive in and Subset Drive. And I certainly hope you people are writing all of this down. Don't miss a Day of the Dolphin. It is now showing so very silly as all radio from the nineteen seventies sounds today, right, his most radio today sounds. But also like there's you would never have guessed based on his early performances that he was going to become what he became. Right, No, I mean, look, he has undeniably great voice, very good at parting information like the actual factual information in this movie is for short playing here at this time, Day of the Dolphin. Yeah, I can't wait to see it. Yeah, it's the exciting movie. Day of the Elphen. But that he's just straight reading things that you cannot misinterpret in any way, um, if if only he's stuck to that. But uh, yeah, I I it's so, I guess I. I I don't want to get ahead of us, get ahead of ourselves. But the idea that this guy would not be content doing just this, UM is like what when does it the idea that it turns like I don't know, I don't know. I'm sorry, we'll we'll get to that. But I think it's fair to say this is what he loved and he would have been perfectly happy if he could have made a good we're getting to kind of like a Hitler at art school story where like, yeah, maybe if he'd gotten to keep being a drivetime radio DJA, things would have been better, you know, I had. I had a conversation with a friend of mine, um who who also does podcasts and radio and for neither of us it is our thing, our first thing, but we shared, ah. We we had a conversation where we we shared our love of being good at reading copy, like when you have to do ads, there is something that's weirdly satisfying about like, oh, I sound like a guy on the radio, like doing a good job at reading this and making it sound natural and whatever and it's like there's like there's isn't that enough is enough that there's there's it is a good feeling when you nail an ad read. Yeah, it's I mean, I think I think everyone who does a who who who does a job? That like, I think it pretty much everyone who has worked. There's a joy in professional competence of any time you know you're working. You know, if you're like if you're if you're running like the cash cashier the grocery store, right when you get really good at bagging, like it's this, oh, the the the kind of ecstasy of competence, right where you can kind of lose yourself in a task, you know, and be, like him as good at this thing as I can be, even if you don't like the job. There's a satisfaction in that. And I think Rush was happy in this area doing He wasn't rich, he wasn't influential, but he was doing a thing he loved well and he was happy in this in the in this period in the early seventies, um so his early material in Pittsburgh. It is interesting to me because it's exactly the opposite of what you'd expect from him. One of his reoccurring bits was the Friar Shuck Radio Ministry of the air, where he relentlessly mocked the radio preachers that he saw coming into the station on Sundays. He thought these guys were grifters and he hated them. The center of this bit was that no matter your problem, God would solve it if you'd send the radio preacher a hundred dollars um. That's interesting to me, and this is like a real like running theme in his early careers. He made fun of preachers all the time, of the exact kind of religious grifters that later helped make him a wealthy man. It's very interesting to me. Um. Yeah, there's also He also would read letters from fans h and at one point he read a letter that he said was from a young woman who wanted to be a DJ and was worried that her gender would hold her back. Here's what he told her on the air. This is interesting to me too. You just have to master two techniques, and I'm going to explain them right now. Number one, the use of microphone. To use it, simply turn the microphone to the on position and talk into it. The second, which is the biggie, is queuing up the record, get the record you want to play, take it out of the appropriate shuck, slap it onto the turntable, take the arm in the needle, placed it on the outside editor of the record. Then turn the record until you hit here the beginning of the record. Back it up a quarter of a turn, and when you get through talking, the record will start. After you have mastered those two techniques, girls change your sex, And you can interpret that a couple of ways. That about the man splaining about how to turn on a microphone and then he goes, oh, wait, you can't do it. Well that that. I think there's two ways to interpret this. One of them is what you've said, Sovie, that he was just being incredibly sexist. One of them is that he might he might have been acknowledging anyone could do this job, but you won't be able to as a woman because of sexism in the industry. And I'm really not sure which one he was going for. Their Yeah, could be both. There is a kind of lording it over, like you know, this is a dumb job, but you're still not allowed to do it. You're still not allowed to do it, ladies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's probably probably accurate. It's probably a bit of you know what, all ladies are allowed to do products? Is it at Sophie? Is it participate in capitalism as consumers? Yes, it is participating. Well, ladies, stick it to Rush Limbaugh by engaging positively with the system. He spent his life propping all right, ship. You know I didn't like the phrase to stick it to Rush Limbab very much. Neither did I, Sophie. There's some mats ah, we're back. We're back from those ads. And Paul, I can see the glow on your face that only comes upon a man's face the first time that he gets to help advertise the fine products and surfaces brought to us by the people at Raytheon. Are you feeling good Paul about now? Now you are inextricably tied to wonderful products like the RN I and X knife missile. I Yeah. As a boy growing up in Philadelphia, I dreamed of advertising from missiles. That's that's what everyone wants to do, right since Caveman painted on walls. They dreamed of Raytheon. And now we are in the privileged position of getting to sell their products. And I couldn't be happier. Here's what sucks. Ray Theon is such a cool name, so good. Yeah, I mean this in this ongoing bit I do. I often like the RNA and X missile. I think it is made by Lockheed Raytheon's chips. I believe in it, to be fair. It's just the name Ray Theon. It's such a good, shady defense industry. Like it's the name of a company that ends the world right, like you're talking about like like a you know, they're going to make a sky net that kills us all at some point. Their name is just too on point to not be Yeah. Um so back to back to Limbaugh. Rush was popular in Pittsburgh, and his busses appreciated everything but his long windedness. They repeatedly sent him memos that stated it shut up and play the records, and for a while he was content to mostly just do that. But in nineteen seventy four, the economy took a nose dive and Rush was fired. He had to move back home with his family, where he lived for seven miserable months. His dad repeatedly badgered him to move on and start a real career, but Rush was committed to radio and eventually he landed a new gig in Kansas City, where he started taking listener phone calls for the first time. This was the dawn of the era of insult comedy, a sort of mean spirited comedy based on pranks and you know, primarily executed by shock jocks. Guy's Body by Howard Stern really who entertained via ostentatious cruelty hungry and I don't know if I don't know, if you'll if you'll know or not? Like talk talk radio, how much of a thing is it at this point of people calling into radio stations to have conversations with broadcasters. It's starting at this point, right, This is really kind of the birth of talk radio, and and rushes on the ground floor of that. Right, does it does it start with sports or does it start with with issues? I think it starts with issues. It starts with their Before what we know is talk radio, you had had people who would take calls and talk about politics, both on TV and on the radio. And one of the things that Rush changes to skip ahead a little bit is that those guys had mostly been interchangeable, right, They were just sort of fielding calls and engaging with with callers Rush and that kind of turns into with these shock jocks more of kind of a comedy based entertainment. You have these pranks, you have insults, you have all this stuff. So it kind of it it evolves out of a thing that had been going on for much longer. Um. It's an extension of the idea of the The original idea of the DJ was maybe a personality, but his main thrust was I'm giving you this music that you crave, and that's why you like me is because I'm gonna maybe get I'm gonna maybe get tracks before other people get them, and you're gonna hear You're gonna hear this stuff first. But there's still a thing of it's not about my personality necessarily. It's mainly about I am the i I'm I'm, I'm, I'm the Santa clause of music. I'm giving you these things and that's why you like me. Yes, and I have access to them first and all this stuff. So Rush kind of as this, you know, he kind of sees the writing on the wall white. He loses his gig as a traditional DJ because that is starting to become less profitable, right, and there's you know, in general, the economies taking a shitter. Um so he he he realizes that kind of the way things are going is more based around personalities and and comedy and entertaining people, and he starts to pivot to that. Um so this is uh. There's a well, an interesting quote that Rush himself wrote in one of his many interminable books about how he felt about kind of pivoting to insult comedy. Quote. I found out something about myself, something that was quite disturbing. I found out I was really really good at insulting people. For example, the topic one day was when you die, how do you want to go? I want to go the cheapest and most natural way I can. One nice lady caller from Independence, Missouri said. My response was easy, have your husband throw you in a trash bag and then in the Missouri River with the rest of the garbage. When I went home after it, after a day of this, I didn't like myself. Is that being I don't know if that's being good at insulting people. Yeah, that's not really so, that's just that's just ready to insult people. Yeah, it is, though. One of the things people will state and I can't categorically say this, but it seems accurate based on my recollections of the show. Is even when people would disagree with Rush on the air, he wasn't an asshole to them, Like he was not cruel to to his callers to their faces. Right, he would say cruel things about liberals, but when people would call in, he would not like call them monsters. He would not like he he seems who have genuinely not liked insulting people to their faces or at least over like directly insulting people over over the phone or whatever. Um. While he was disturbed by this, he was not disturbed by racism, mainly racism against black people. Yeah, yeah, here's where we're going. Um. At one point during his call in show, he claimed he had a black collar, and he came claimed to not be able to understand the man's accent. Limbaugh hung up on this black man after saying, take that bone out of your nose and call me back, Which is I mean? He says it was, Well, we'll get to that. At another point, he asked his audience, have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? UM? Now, during a nineteen interview, after he had kind of risen to political prominence, Newsweek asked Limbaugh if he thought these statements had been racist. He replied, you may interpret it as that, but I know, honest to God, that's not how I intended it at all. Gee, don't get me on in this one. I am the least racist host you'll ever find. Now, if we're going to try to analyze Rush from the length of his career, I think we can say two things. He's probably being honest when he said that he felt bad about insulting colors because he did not continue to do that. He is probably being dishonest when he says that he's not racist, because he continued to say incredibly fucking racist things about black people consistently throughout his entire career. Yeah. I mean, the the the number one indication that someone is racist when they say that the least racist I has that ever been said by him by a non racist person. Usually with somebody, it's always got to be. It's always gotta be. Not only am I not racist, I am the least racist person you're ever gonna meet. It's like you don't maybe don't go that far. Because it's so easily disproved, also followed by the I don't see color people, I don't see color. I would say I think most of the people I think I don't see color. People tend to be performative Obama voters, the I am the least racist person in the world. People tend to have strong opinions on why they should be able to say the N word, like that would be the split between the right and the left version. Yeah yeah, and both of you are fucking racist, so shut up. Yes, yes, she's she's found out about our opinions on Lichtenstein, which I refused to apologize for. In the fucking Swedes, my god, the sweet yeah you do have is shoes with the Swedes. I have huge issue particularly blue sweet. Um, what did uga chackamin? Why did you say that at the start of that song? Okay? Sorry? Rush was Rush was still, at this point in his career, completely a political His roommate and close friend at the time later told an interviewer he was scary smart about everything, but I can't recall us take talking much about current events. He was funny, though. I was an audience of one uh Limbaugh's years in Kansas City were not super successful, and he seems to have recalled them somewhat sourly. As The New York Times summarized, Limbaugh likes to say, everything I did in Kansas City, I failed at He got fired from the station and quit radio forever to become an executive with the Kansas City Royals baseball team. Five years later, he quit the Royals convinced his career there was stymied, and went back to radio, this time as a news commentator. Again, he got fired for being too controversial. Also in Kansas City, he married twice, both marriages eventually ending in divorce. What are the do we know what the sources of the what the what the type of controversies? Yes, we're about to get into that. Okay, yeah, we're about to get into come on. So it was in Kansas City where Rush Limbaugh, conservative commentator, made his first public appearance after getting pushed out of the Royals. No one really liked him there. He had one friend who was on the team and that's why he to keep the job. And when that guy got traded, they pushed him out because they all hated him. Um So, after getting pushed out of the Royals. He got a gig at k m b Z, a local station. He started satirizing what he considered to be a left wing caricature of a right wing political commentator. Right the initial right wing rush. Limbaugh was satire um, and he was being purposefully controversial and unreasonably extreme in order to make a comedic point. This was a joke. Initially this did not go over well with his middle of the road Mormon station manager, but it made Limball popular with his audience. See, Limbaugh had caught onto the fact that radio was in the middle of a revolution. This was the era where the first big shock jocks, men like Don Imus and Howard Stern, began their a sense to start them. I found a wonderful write up about this era on long Reads which argues that the first radio shock jock was a talk radio star named Joel Pine in the nineteen fifties, and I'm gonna quote from this now. We might do an episode on Pine at some point. His unconventional style, dressed up to dress down pinko's and women's libbers and riff on rather than read reports, was neither news nor entertainment. It seemed to be best described well The New York Times and Time both did Anyway as an electronic peep show. The personality free press of the time considered Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in America and Johnny Carson the funniest, but Pine, with a syndicated show on more than two radio outlets, was the most machiavellian when it comes to manipulating media Icons of Talk author Donna Holper told Smithsonian Magazine he was the father of them all. Pine briefly descended from his soapbox in the mid sixties for a week's vacation after bringing a gun to his show during the Watts Riots, suggesting the world wasn't quite ready for his kind of conservative appeal. So Pine is doing the Rush limbob bit in the fifties and early sixties, but America is not ready for that yet. Right, he can get even fifties Americans like this guy's racist into like and a fucking lunatic. Yeah. So, now, just so I understand Rush's this satire that he was doing. Yeah, the idea was here is what uh left wing people think right wing people are like? And yeah, the point he is trying to make is they see us as they see the left wing sees the right wing as uh, extreme and hateful and um, you know, racist and closed minded, Like, is that is that the point I was trying to make. I think so, because he he he even says like it was a satire right Like, That's how it's portrayed in his biography that he was kind of his personality was satiric in nature. Um and and that's kind of the only way I can interpret it is that he was trying to satirize what like kind of the loony right winger, you know, but through the through the lens of here's how the left sees them. I that's that was never said direct Yeah, it sounds like it's a it's a protective phrase of like, I was not satirizing these guys directly. I was not satirizing right wing people. I was satirizing how left wing people see right wing. Yes, that is how I have interpreted what I've read. Yeah, okay, yeah that does sound like a base covering kind of thing. Yeah, it a bit. I I do think he started not believing everything he said. It started as a joke and him intentionally to provoke controversy, because controversy brings in listeners and gets gets attention, gets word of mouth. That's why he was doing it. And the story of Rush Limbaugh is these these kind of purposefully absurdly extreme satire becomes what he really believes and is you know, so he's he's an a political guy who's like this is what this is, what this is what politics sounds like to me. I guess, yeah, I think so, and I yeah that that's how I interpreted. Well, we'll go we'll go over that more so. Obviously, Pine kind of the fur right wing radio shock jock had peaked too early and kind of I guess to steal a phrase from the Nazis shown his power level to early during the Watts Riots, and he got kicked off the air. Rush, though, started getting political at exactly the perfect time. This was the early nineteen eighties. Howard Stern came onto the scene in eight four. Don Imus had risen to prominence in the nineteen seventies. I Miss was another guy my dad listened to a lot growing up. Um, I Miss in the morning was like a big part of getting ready for school. Don Imus is going to be in the fucking TV and you were like, this guy's having so much fun and I have to go to prison. I have to go to prison. This guy's having fun. He's talking about nappy headed hose, which was like the phrase that he I forget what it was in reference to, but like that's what got him in trouble. Um. It was a women's basketball too. It was a women's basketball team because don Imus was also very rasist um. So yeah, the world was still not quite ready for the rush Limball. We knew uh during while he was like starting to be political at k m b Z, but a diet version of what he would become was now acceptable. And one man who recognized the potential of limbosh Stick was Norm Woodruff, a consultant to the station who became the acting program director at Sacramento's k f b K network. Kf b K needed a new right wing talk radio host after firing their previous one, a guy you mentioned at the start of this episode named Morton Downey Jr. Morton was extremely popular and he was very extreme in his antics. This had allowed his local station in Sacramento to repeatedly draw national attention because he would say purposefully controversial things. This did backfire on Morton Eventually, when he told a racist on air joke about a Chinaman, which was a thinly veiled attack on a local city councilman named Tom Chen, Downey Jr. Was fired and went into the world of television, where he would somehow say simultaneously blaze a trail for both Tucker Carlson and Jerry Springer. We will do an episode on him someday because he's a very um but his for today he matters because his firing number one, his success proved that being a purposefully controversial right wing bigot was really profitable for radio station, and because when he got fired, Sacramento had a hole in the station's roster that they needed to fill with another racist right wing shiphead, just one who was not quite as racist as Morton Downey Jr. Rush limboss stepped up and said, not being quite as racist as that guy is my middle name for now, for now, Eventually I will be much worse. So Rush Limbaugh moved to Sacramento. When he started at the station, his new boss Would Ruff told him, we want controversy, but don't make it up. If you actually think something, if you actually believe it, you can tell people why. We'll back you up. But if you're going to say stuff just to make people mad, if all you want to do is rabble rouse, if all you want to do is a find and get noticed, that's not what we interested in, and we won't back you up. He was clearly lying. I think this was asked covering by the station, right, Yeah, but they would never would never ever push back on his bigotry. But you know who does push back on bigotry. Paul adds the products and services that support this podcast. So we're back. Uh. And at this point, Rush Limbaugh has launched himself as a a right wing shock jock, and he is an instant hit zeve Chaffit's rights quote. The station let him go on the air solo, unencumbered by sidekicks or guests, and encouraged his highly personal right wing monologues. For the first time in his career, he was marketed heavily and aggressively. There were billboards around town showing a finger hitting a button captioned how would you like to punch Rush Limbaugh? Rush was so pleased by these that he sent Brian a snapshot. Morton Downey Jr. Had been a big star in Sacramento with a five share of the market five percent of people listening to the radio in a given fifteen minutes segment. Limbaugh tripled that he was sharp edged but good humored. The new morning host espouses many of the same beliefs of his predecessor, Morton Downey Jr. Reported the Sacramento b but he skates a little further from the edge of the hole in the ice. Rush was rewarded for his success with a six figure salary, an estimable income in the mid nineteen eighties, even by his father's standards. More important, for the first time in his life, he really mattered. He was invited to deliver speeches just like Big Rush. He was an occasional commentator on television and wrote newspaper collumps. Politicians and celebrities sought him out. He and Michelle, his wife at the time, bought a new house and furnished it with products he had he endorsed on air. So he's a hit. You know, this is the start of and it's really just almost straight up from there for the rest of his career. He finds his niche and he runs with it again. He's he's a very intelligent, talented man. Anybody else will find the big ru part really funny. It is very funny. It's very funny. It's still funny now. I have long argued that Sacramento is the very mouth of Hell itself, and the fact that Russia Limbaugh first saw success as a right wing firebrand there serves to support my hypothesis. Again, his conscious decision as an entertainer was to be a satirical version of a right wing polemicist, deliberately exaggerating the things he did believe for comedic effect. The audience thought he was funny, but I don't think they got the joke. And there is some evidence for this, when an Ohio evangelist a lot of evidence. Yeah, so I think the earliest evidence for this, I should say, is when an Ohio evangelist very publicly claimed that the theme song from Mr. Ed held a Satanic message when played backwards. You know, we're kind of talking about the Satanic Panic period during this Rush found this ridiculous, and again, he had a long history of mocking the evangelical religious right, so when he heard this, he told his listeners that a Slim Whitman recording also contained a backwards message of from satan Zeve Chaffitz writes that to his delight, many Limbaugh listeners took Limbaugh at his word and flooded the station with phone calls promising to destroy their Slim Whitman albums to keep the Devil out of the house. Rush considered this a hilarious plank, prank. He did not apologize or as far as I know, correct the record. So we see in this he's joking, right, he is not. Again, his whole history is mocking these people. He does not believe this, but he doesn't correct people because it gets he realizes, Oh, they're engaged, they're destroying stuff. That means I have power, right. I think he even found it kind of. It might have been something that kind of addicted him to this, This idea that like I can make even if I'm deliberately being absurd and lying, I can make people take action based on those absurdities. That's got to be addictive, and I think it is for him, is absolutely undeniable, and especially like if you spend time on Twitter, and if you've ever been like I have on occasion, deliberately stupid on Twitter and gotten sincere replies to something that is so obviously a joke, So obviously a joke. It absolutely is fun. There's nowhere around that. There's nowhere around that seeing people take you at your word when you say something that's so patently absurd is it's joyful. It does give you a real jolt, And there's a This is a bit of a different case, but I think there's some similarity. So last summer, you know, I was covering a lot of the protests in Portland, Oregon, including doing a lot of live streaming, and very early on, the police put a fence up around the police station and there would be marches where like a couple of thousand people would march to the fence and somebody would like touch the fence and the police would tear gas like six square blocks of traffic. And I started calling it the sacred Fence, and the joke, like the comment that I was making is that the police are endangering the lives of thousands of citizens to protect a a fence because it's sacred to them, right. That went viral within the city and there were dozens of protests at the sacred Fence, as everyone called it, including numerous attempts to tear it down and I know that the way that I framed it had a significant impact on a lot of people, um, Getting hurt, damaging, defense, getting arrested. Uh. And it it was both kind of intoxicating and it also scared the hell out of me. It was one of the reasons why I pulled back to some extent on some aspects of my coverage because I got really worried about the kind of impact that you can have on people by doing that sort of thing. I didn't want to be It was very concerning to me. But it was also I'd be lying if I said there wasn't an element of it that I wanted to do more stuff like that. And I didn't, but I wanted to, you know. But and that's that that is the key, the key difference of uh, you know you seeing something that, um, catch just catch, just fire in a forgive the phrasing, but catch fire in a in a charge situation. Um. And how easily people can glom onto something when everything is so churned up. UM, And then realizing like, oh, words have power, I have to be careful rather than words have power. Here we go, here we go, Let's use it to sell gold. Uh. So Russia's domestic life while he's enduring all this professional success. His domestic life life with his I think she was his second I think she was his third wife. Actually, um, I don't know. He had a couple. He had a lot of wives. I think actually, no, this was his second wife. His domestic wife life with his second life at this period was less than joyful. He was famous and popular, constantly fitted for dinners and invited to big events. And his wife, Michelle was much less successful. Um. She quit her job to be as assistant, but she hated the work. It's a nightmare that they were not a good it. Michelle loved the outdoors. Rush Limbaugh despise them. Um. Two of his colleagues tell a story from around this time of how they convinced him to go rafting once that I think is telling about Russia Limball's personality. So this is one of Russia's friends talking about at the time they took Rush Limbaugh on a on a rafting trip in whatever river it is that goes through Sacramento. Quote, it's a very very mild ride. Bob gave Russian oar and told him to abide. You're gonna really love this if you have to know before I start the story, you have to know we're on a Yeah, Bob gave Russian oar and told him to absorb the blow of the canyon wall to give us a little spring back into the current. Rush Panicked stuck the oar out his arms stiff as a board, and upon impact he fell overboard. We got rushed back in the raft and the next day he spent the entire three hours of his show talking about his horrendous whitewater grapple with the Grim Reaper. What a fucking baby. I've had people fucking shoot at me, and I've people showed me with artillery. I've never spent three hours talking about it, le fucking baby. Uh So, Sacramento is where Limbos started picking up what would become a voluminous list of mostly self inflicted nicknames. He was l Rushbo, the all knowing, all caring, all sense of sensing Maha Rushie. He was also a harmless little fuzzball and the epitome of morality and virtue. He started claiming that his show was hosted by the E I B or Excellence in Broadcasting Network, which did not exist. This joke mainly served as a vehicle for Rush to express his grandiosity, he declared himself on the cutting edge edge of societal evolution, swore that he was serving humanity, and had himself introduced as having talent on loan from God. His opinions were quote dot meanted to be almost always right nineties seven point nine percent of the time by the Sullivan Group, which also did not exist. And again he's joking. And also at a certain point he starts meaning all of this very literally, right, Like that's kind of how narcissists were. So it may surprise people to know that Russia to hear that Russi Lumba's career was launched into the stratosphere in Sacramento, because California is, to most people outside of California at least, a bastion of liberal politics. Now, if you actually live and spend time in the state, you know, like, for example, if you've ever been to fucking uh, I don't know, what is that uh, Orange County right where if you've been up near Reading there's a ship. Look like, there are more right wing Californians than there are right wingers than there are in like a number of US states. Right Like, California has a ton of right wingers, and it has a long powerful conservative political tradition. California gave us Ronald Reagan. It gave us Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in one of the most surreal turns and political history, is now among the only rational voices on the right in the United States. Um so, yeah, California has a powerful right wing and yes they are, especially in the last twenty something years, overwhelmed by the much more numerous liberals and leftists. But in this fact is one of the hints to Russia Limballs rise. You see, Sacramento is located kind of north of the center of California, not far from some of the most productive farmland in the country. It is also not far from north central California places like Reading, which are right wing strongholds. The conservatives who live in these areas tend to be very extreme in their beliefs, and that's partly a response to the liberal and left wing like government that they live under. They see and this is not they are not entirely or even largely wrong in seeing this. They see themselves oppressed by many of the rules liberals in the cities put in terms of things like gas taxes, right you're living in if you're a farmer, you know in central or northern California. A gas tax that is reasonable for people in l A, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento is a a hardship on you, and you're not contributing to the kind of pollution in the cities that the gas taxes are meant to fight. You know, the strict gun laws and stuff. There's a lot of things reasons these people have to be angry, and Rush Limbaugh became their voice. Um so these these this kind of infuriated very radical right wing who hates the liberals and left that governed California have a voice in Rush Limbaugh. He obliges their sensibilities with a ceaseless stream of attacks on liberal California. And that's what makes him huge is because there's millions of right wingers in California and Rush limbab becomes like, yeah, he's their voice. You know, um you could you might even be able to argue that nowhere but California could have produced Rush Limbaugh as he became uh yeah, so I'm gonna quote from the book Rush Limbaugh an army of one here he mocked the multicultural style of California by proposing to keep uglow Americans off the streets. Militant feminists became feminazis. The green movement was full of environmental wackos. The American left became comie Pinko. Liberals and the residents of Rio Linda, California, were synonymous with stupidity. A ringing Debtalate Detalate. Detalate introduced news updates on what he regarded as the absurdities of liberal activism. Liberals, of course, hated him, which he found inspiring. When they attacked him as a dim wit, he responded by claiming that he was so much smarter than his critics that he could vanquish them with half my brain tied behind my back. Just to make it fair. Before long, Rush was too big to stay in Sacramento, which is again the very mouth of Hell itself. He was introduced to Ed McLaughlin, the former head of ABC Radio who had started his own big radio company based out of New York City. McLaughlin had listened to Russia's show and decided it had the potential to go national. He offered Russia partnership, and after some haggling, Russia agreed, He moved to New York and made the E. I B Network a reality. Rush was thirty seven years old at this point, in twenty one years into a career of doing almost nothing but broadcasting on the radio. Again, the voice of the so called populoust American right. Never did anything but radio, really um In nineteen eight he launched a new version of The Rush Limbaugh Show, this time for an audience across the nation. It's sort of hard to find his stuff from the late nineteen eighties, but I found this guest appearance he did not long after in nineteen on another colleague show for the same network. It gives you an idea of where his radio personality was by this point, and of how he presented himself right, of how he kind of introduced himself anytime he was coming on the air. So that's that's we're gonna play this now. This is kind of the birth of the Rush Limbaugh. We all know, uh, we all know now one of radios and great broadcasters, and he's with us today in this studio. We invited Rush thrill. It's my time. You know. I smoked a little dope to get ready for this in here and I'm ready to go, man to time. One brain behind you, half my brain tied behind my back. Just to make it fair, well, I'll tell you one thing. I use my talents on loan from God. Man. I heard you get a little loan from ABC Catas when you renegotiating a new contract. No, I loaned Limb some money and I brought you a gift Los Angeles Times. Great, they were saying, well, I wowed him there, didn't as nice? Have a big article on how you flopped in the New York Times six minutes before nine. It's like you started out with just as like a small group of stations on your start with fifty six and our three and thirty seven, with the weekly audience about six and a half million, an average quarter r of a million. Seven must listen to radio talk show in America. Universe. That's that's Rush Limbaugh at kind of when he goes viral to them. What do you think about that? About that how he presents himself on here, What does that say to you? It's so um, it's so the the fully formed version of him that that I first experienced, and like he's really going for it, like he's really he's really uh, like he's so aggressive in it and and like saying I'm gonna come Like clearly the the intention is I'm gonna come on your show and I'm gonna take it over, and I'm gonna I'm gonna be the the the the I'm gonna be the alpha here. I'm gonna dominate you, um with this. The the l A the present presentation of The l A Times is because why that guy got fired from the l A Times. No. I think he'd been in Los Angeles and they savaged him in a review. Okay, so it's it's um, you know, it's that Frankly, it's like it's all the ship that I hate. Yeah, it's it's so, it's it's aggressive, it's mean, it's um, you know, it's he's also correcting him on one of his you know, uh eight catch phrases. You know you have to get a ride. I say it like this every time. This is the way it goes. Um, you know, it's just, uh, it's a drag. It's it's it's a drag. It's also I think there's a thing that he's doing here. When we talk about all these phrases, half my brain tied behind my back. Uh, you know the god, all these different phrases that were that he continuously used for decades. I I don't want to. I don't know. I hope this doesn't seem a little pompous, but I kind of make a comparison between that and like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Right, this like the way that anytime you've got home or introducing it's always like you know, the there's certain phrases. Anytime Achilles comes up, he uses the same kind of phrases, same couple of phrases to introduce him. These descriptive phrases, um to introduce a character that are repeated constantly throughout the because it's a because it was a spoken story, right, Like that's where you're supposed to deliver it. That works. It gets in people's heads. They associate those phrases with those characters. Russia is kind of doing. This is an old tactic, but it works. Um. It's the same thing Trump does with his impulse and insults Crooked Hillary, right, sleepy Joe. Um. These are effective tactics, and that's what Russia is doing to to inculcate his followers, primarily with this idea that he is a genius, right, and it again he's joking, but he's also not because this ship buries itself in your brain. Um, he's he's he knows what he's doing. It's he's a very savvy person. Yeah, it's like when you when you people like that that that understand the importance of branding over having an actual thing to say. Like it honestly, the the what you what the content is secondary to the presentation of here's who I am. I'm going to tell you through repetition, this is my whole thing. It's like they're they're you know, comics. That to me, it always makes me think of comedians that um majored in marketing in college. And then it's like, okay, but are they actually that funny or did they just are they able to really sell themselves so well that that the content is secondary to the image. You have two kinds of people who really are able to build a following. People who are able to build a following because folks genuinely just enjoy that the work that they're bringing into the world, they like their personality, they like what they're doing. And then you have folks who are able to build a following primarily because they do cult leadership. Right, Yeah, that's the that's what the marketing comedians, right, that's what this is cult leadership. This is how you do it. Um. We do a little bit of that here. Um. But we're all guilty a little We're all guilty a little bit. And I'll be guiltier when I get I don't know, a couple of hundred people killed by the FDA in my mountain top compounds, which I you know is always the goal. Paul, You're very welcome if you would like to have an armed standoff with thes How you know you're successful. That's how you know you're successful when a three letter agency burns you down. By anyway, I don't need to Waco this time, UM want to that's a good one. Yeah, Well I took an almost an hour to Wanny for Robert to mention Waco, good job. I'm getting you know, I I realized I was wacoing a lot, trying to cut back. You know, here is first wake up. But we'll we'll talk off air, Paul about synergizing our cults in the near future. Anyway, So Rush did not tone himself down at all after he went mainstream. In fact, he grew more extreme, and he seems to have quickly forgotten that he was ever practicing satire. At the very height of the AIDS crisis, rush launched a new segment on his show, the AIDS Update. And I find it interesting how different sources report on this. When Limbaugh died, it was obviously a big story, the fact that he'd done this AIDS update. Uh. And it was in fact, limbaugh AIDS Update was like the second or third most googled term alongside his name the day he died. Snopes and Newsweek both published prominent fact checks on this story. But Zeep Chaffitz's biography of Limbaugh came out well before Rusha's death, and before the AIDS up dates were really talked about all that much outside of, you know, the community they most impacted, uh and not. I think it's interesting how Zev wrote about it, not knowing that this was one going, one day, going to become a significant story. So this is how Zev wrote about the AIDS Update. After an ACT UP demonstration at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City that disrupted a mass, Limbaugh chastised militant homosexuals for their disrespectful behavior, and shortly thereafter began broadcasting irreverend and tasteless AIDS update segments produced introduced by Dion Warwick's I'll Never Love This Way Again in his traveling stage show The Excellence and Broadcasting Tour. He did a bit when he put a condemn over the microphone to illustrate safe speech. So that's how the AIDS update was kind of framed by Zev before it was a big story. Now here's how Snop's characterized it in their fact check after Limbaugh died. And I think and before that, like already that doesn't sound good that. No, I don't think zev is trying to whitewash it. I think that he just doesn't see it story even just plainly stated that it's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible, and it sounds worse when Snopes goes into more detail on this quote. At the height of the HIV AIDS crisis, The Rush Limbaugh Show featured an AIDS update in which Limbaugh joked about an epidemic that had claimed more than a hundred thousand lives between nineteen one and nineteen ninety. Specifically, Limbaugh targeted gay men who had died. In addition to joking about their deaths, Limbaugh reportedly played songs during the segment, including kiss Him Goodbye, I'll Never Love This Way Again, and Looking for Love and All the Wrong Places. Snopes dot Com uncovered an interview when The Cedar Gazette from nineteen ninety in which Limbaugh said the segment was politically oriented and based upon my reaction to what I considered to be extremism in the political mainstream by a group of people. Per The Cedar Gazette, Limbaugh said his target is not AIDS victims, but militant homosexuals who blamed church and government officials for the epidemic. The AIDS update is meant to offend them, Limbaugh said, damn right. According to a nineteen nine Los Angeles Times article, it was a popular segment, but it also created outrage among AIDS activists, something not helped by Limbaugh repeat reportedly saying gays deserved their fate. Mocking the horrific deaths of gay people isn't something that will get a conservative radio host fired today, So obviously this was never more than a mild bump in Limbo's career. Back in nineteen ninety and it says a lot about where the right would go that a segment dedicated to mocking joyfully the deaths of people he disagreed with was popular, right that would become the mainstream for Republicans. Now, in nineteen ninety, it was still a thing he had to apologize for. Uh. And that year is the year he became officially famous. Nineteen ninety. He had his first live TV appearance on June two, when c SPAN did a special on talk radio. Um and yeah, so this is like he he does kind of have to sort of say that he regretted uh doing this, that he felt like he was kind of attacking people who um um like he he was like, I didn't mean to be mocking people who had died. I was trying to attack these militant activists and so I stopped. Yeah, who are so far are still alive? Yeah? Um? Anyway, that so he does a TV appearance on c SPAN in nineteen nine on June second, which is kind of his first big TV appearance. Um. And then The New York Times is a big profile on him. Uh. From that quote, with its characteristic attention to production values, the network simply set up a camera inside a spare w a b C seventy seven studio in New York and let the self proclaimed most dangerous man in America roll cut to a shlub in a cheap white dress, shirt, black tie and hastily barber shopped helmet of hair, already wiping sweat and grumbling about the TV lights planted behind his desk, and Mike interrupting the station's young newscaster, Kathleen Mahoney. She's trying to do her five minute top of the Hour update oddly for nineteen ninety while wearing a mask because, as she explains, the host had warned her, it could be dangerous to let his listeners identify her on TV as a liberal feminist. He was only joking. Limbaugh insists, you said wear a bag over my head. Maloney says. Limbaugh keeps threatening to yank her mask off, complimenting her beauty and interjecting impatiently, the news just holds up everything here. I'm trying to make the news worthwhile. There's a lot in there. Jesus, that's his that's a New York Times important a Span appearance. Yeah, he's like both saying you should cover your face because my listeners will harass you for being a liberal feminist and also take off that mask let everyone see your pretty face. Like he's simultaneously both threatening her and um and sexually harassing her. It's it's good. It seems there's something about that that seems so modern. What mean? Yes, I feel that he's because he brought, he created the right, you know, so you can see it, you know, in nineteen that's what he's doing. Yeah, now, nineteen nineties, As I said, also when The Gray Lady published their first full feature dedicated to l. Rush Bow. The article is fascinating and valuable since it seems like few copies of his early nineteen two episodes exist, So this New York Times right. It provides with several fascinating insights into how Russia's show evolved during this period, and more to the point, into where American conservatism was about to follow in his wake. At one point, a critic calls in, This is again the New York Times writing about his show from an episode we don't have anymore. So at one point in the show, a critic calls in and tells Rush quote, I believe you are doing a great disservice by using the program to convince people that if poor people are not successful, it is their fault. You were just a paid advocate of the rich and you despise the poor. Now that's very accurate. The author of the New York Times article notes that, perhaps due to his guilt over his crueler shock jock days, Rush is very polite to his liberal callers, and this is what The New York Times writes as Russia's answer. You misunderstand my point. There is nothing wrong with being rich. It's not evil. Most rich people earned it by virtue of hard work. This has always been the country that people come to because there has always been a chance for opportunity. And if you start punishing the people who bust their tail to be prosperous, then you're going to unmotivate people to try that. I am not a paid defender of the rich. I'm a proud promoter of the American way of life. Yeah, what are the I guess that's a thing. You can just say that most rich people earned their money, Like, yeah, it's it's a it's objectively untrue. But yes, you can say that untrue. But I guess if you if you are born to wealth, but then you also get a job that makes you even wealth. Yeah, that's like work. I mean, look at Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, still Gates, all guys who were born to wealth, they were born crazy rich. They weren't born with fuck you money, but they were born into wealth and then they were able to get fuck you money because of the he And there's a lot written about that. You know, Bill Gates having access to a computer in an era when basically no one did. Uh Bezos being able to secure a huge loan from his parents in order to help start his first business. Uh. Elon Musk also getting a loan from his dad to start a business. You know, it's the way it always works for these people. And they they spend that as self made you know, um, yeah, because in their mind it's true. Because in their mind it's true, and they do work hard. And if you work hard, you can convince yourself that you've earned it, as opposed to like, I worked hard, but it only like I can say I worked hard, I can also say I am only financially successful because I got lucky. And I know other people who worked as hard as I did, who have not been nearly as financially successful. And it's not because of a lack of talent. It's because I got a break that they didn't, you know. That's and leaving leaving that, leaving that part out is how you were able to convince other people that that that the majority of people who are the majority of people are a wealthy through hard work. Yeah, it's nonsense. So that New York Times piece reveals that by nineteen ninety, Rush was already popular enough to draw massive in person crowds, and this was unheard of for a talk radio personality. Today we're well acquainted with right wing thought leaders who can draw thousands upon thousands of fanatically loyal followers to in person gatherings. But was really the first. From the Times quote, there are towns where he hasn't heard, unheard and unheard of, and then there are places like Tampa, where the announcement of a Rush Limbaugh stage show sold out the seat Ruth Eckert Hall in four days. The occupants of those seats are out of them and cheering when Limbaugh appears in a three piece tuxedo. They're like the crowd for a country western concert, says Dan Woollet. The halls director of operations. After sizing up the crowd in the lobby surprisingly youthful and more beer than wine drinkers. You're gonna have fun tonight, Limbaugh tells them. And at the same time, you're gonna learn some things. Pacing constantly, he does some jokes that poke fun at the Japanese and the liberal media. One of his jokes is that Judgment Day comes and the Washington Post article banner reads world ends tomorrow. Women minorities hardest hit. It's like that's the you know, you see what he's going for their Yeah, I see what he's going for. Yeah. Later in his live show, Russi engaged in a popular bit wherein he brings a piece of ship to a modern art gallery, and the joke is that, like, modern artists so dumb that if you like poop and take right, it's very obvious. This is it. You can find Ben Shapiro making the same basic joke decades later. And the gift of it is that just of it is that, you know, liberals are so dumb, they'll stare at ship if you tell them it's art. The Times introduces this bit and then moves on to something that I found chillingly relevant quote. Art criticism is a Limboss staple. He believes there is a culture war going on between those upholding decent values conservatives and the commie lib hordes trying to devalue human life and worst undermine private enterprise. Limbos sermon on art brings out the evenings only heckling a female cry of censorship. Oh no, Limbo protests he never spoke that word, but seconds later he allows that censorship isn't really so bad. It has been used throughout this nation's history as a means of maintaining standards. Means maintaining standards. Yeah, what the funk is he talking about? What he's talking about is spreading the needle that the right is now the sit like right, the main I went I was in fucking I took a concealed handgun course in Texas because I'm getting my out of state permits so I can be armed in more parts of the United States because of all that is like going to cooking school in Paris. Yeah. Well, and and the thing started with like a thirty minute lecture from the instructor on cancel culture, Like this is the big thing within the right. I know, I know, I know this is the big thing within the right now and it it Limbaugh is starting both like saying like, well, the liberals want to like censor us when I want to cut out all ideas they disagree with, and then he he moves on to saying, but also, it's okay to censor people sometimes, right, because this is what the right believes. It's cancel culture if you, if people don't like it and if they suffer financial consequences for being racist. But it's not cancel culture if they go out of their way to censor left wing and liberal voices, which they do through things like school books. Right, objectively true, well documented. This is how the right works. Um, I don't know when listening is going to disagree, but it's frustrating, but it is. It is absurd, the idea of of you know, like, it's it's cancel culture if you, if you compare being conservative to being a jew in late nineteen thirties Berlin to like it should be illegal to give the finger to the flag. It's amazing, And that, Paul is the end of part one of what is going to be like three hours of talking about rush Limballow deserves, but how to do it. I mean, he deserves this much time, not in a good way, but in a we need to understand what this man has done to us all. Absolutely. And it's also if you're if you're willing to go to bat for Rush Limbaugh because you think it's mean that somebody is glad that he's dead. Um, let's lay it all out and here's here's why some people might might not be so sad. Yeah, evidence both that he deserves to have his death cheered and also that he loved laughing at people's deaths. Ye, you're in a way, you are, you are. It's what he would have wanted. But you know what I want right now, Paul, I want you to plug your plug doubles. Well, let's see. Uh. You can find me um on social media at p F Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram. I have a bunch of podcasts going on at any Human Time, UM Freedom Uh, which I co host with Lauren Laftas and Scott Ackerman, and Stay of Homekins, which I co host with my wife. We started a podcast during the pandemic and unfortunately we are still doing it. Um uh and I do UH. I do shows. The first live streaming improv shows the first Monday of every month with my friend Lauren Laptus um and um that all those tickets can be found at Paul left thompkins dot com slash Live. Well, speaking of cancel culture, this episode is now over and thus canceled because of the lips. It's done by Bye m h.