It’s 1988. I’m 12 years old and living in one of the most conservative cities in the south. I lived there, but I wasn’t from there. I was an “other”. I talked funny. My family was “untraditional”. By that I mean, my mom ran a business and my dad worked second shift, so HE made dinner. Can you imagine?
Toss in my weird hairstyle choices, blemished teenage skin (despite Leslie B’s attempts to shame me into better skin care during recess, 7th grade) and general ignorance regarding cotillons and debutante balls and… I did not fit in.
All of that was normal. Not fitting in is a teenage rite of passage. If we’re lucky, we find a grown up or two that will correct the cruelty of children and we learn to treat each other with dignity once the puberty passes. That is, until the grown ups around you start acting like children. Enter The Rush Limbaugh show. This was my sneak peek into the hypocrisy of conservatism. The same parents that protested Howard Stern, didn’t bat an eye at Rush Limbaugh. Instead, they turned it on when they picked up the carpool from school.
I was 16 in 1992 and “feminazi” became the go to slur for any young woman daring to speak up. It didn’t matter the topic. Sometimes, you didn’t even have to open your mouth. Wearing pants? Fucking feminazi. Think you have rights to your own body? FEMINAZI. I don’t know what life was like outside of the deep south in the 90’s, but trust me when I say Rush Limbaugh was the original cultivator of hate culture.
As gay men died by the thousands, Rush Limbaugh laughed. Two decades later when a woman dared to speak up about sexual health, Rush labeled her a slut and relentlessly regurgitated misogyny at an accomplished college student. If you weren’t a straight, white male, you were the problem with America. Rush made that perfectly clear.
Today, I see the polarized landscape of social media covered with tweets and comments about “the left” and our “lack of compassion” because we can’t muster a tear for poor old Rush. An old white guy that smoked, died of lung cancer, and I’m supposed to be sad? I believe Rush would say, he had it coming. Suck it up, buttercup.
It’s 2021. On behalf of my younger self, and all the “others” he attacked, please know we don’t care what you think is the “appropriate” response to an abusers death. The fact that you condoned, if not financially supported an abusive ego maniac already tells us that your judgement is not to be trusted.
Rush was the beginning of decline in the American media ecosystem, taking Howard Stern’s playbook and spinning it from strippers to senators. He wasn’t even that creative, he literally ripped off Stern and added more racism.
Fuck that old man. Fuck your hilarious attempts to shame victims who refuse to be gaslit by your manipulation. Fuck your sad bid to rationalize your affinity for his racism by saying “he was an entertainer, not a journalist”, as if racism is somehow alright as long as it’s just for the chuckles. Without Rush Limbaugh, there would have been no second term for Dubya and likely no Alex Jones. A world without Rush might’ve included taking a deadly disease or even a female presidential candidate, seriously. Hell, maybe we’d even have an AIDS vaccine by now, if Rush didn’t make laughing at dead queers so fun, amirite?
So no. We will not muster compassion for an ugly meat sack that relentlessly spewed nicotine laced spittle at millions of people, slowly but surely robbing them of their humanity in the eyes of his listeners. You think Russia is bad for America?
Rush was much worse. The only sad thing about Rush Limbaugh dying, is that it took this long. Here’s hoping history remembers him for the traitorous windbag he was.
Thank you for writing this. I cracked up at the school yard piece at the beginning.. I know EXACTLY what you were talking about.