I Thought He Was Dead, But Rush Limbaugh Is Still on the Radio

I wasn’t wishing the guy dead. That’s bad karma. We’ve all lost friends and family members to cancer. But I thought a pleasant side effect of Rush Limbaugh’s demise would be not having to hear him on the radio. I was wrong.

Rush was on the air today. He was on the air yesterday. He’s been on every day since he died, like a wireless Weekend at Bernie’s. iHeartMedia is airing the “Best of Rush” with rotating guest hosts, and they plan to continue with this programming until his audience is “prepared to say goodbye,” which will most likely be never.

Apparently dead guys on the radio is a thing now. You can hear Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM, “Somewhere in Time,” discussing remote viewing with Major Ed Dames and alien abductions with Whitley Strieber. Casey Kasem’s doing his Top 40 Countdown on the weekends. I think I’ve even heard “good day” Paul Harvey recently, but maybe I dreamed that.

Yesterday, Rush was talking about his kitty, Allie, “the most affectionate little thing,” saying he’s the only one who feeds her. When it comes to feedings, Rush is eminently qualified, gourmand that he was. Andy Cuomo would be proud. Rush would have eaten the whole sausage — and then fifty more, washing them down with a fine cigar and glass of port.

Modern life is soaked in nostalgia. And the right kind of nostalgia is extremely lucrative. Rush was a proven money maker, the highest paid radio personality after Howard Stern. It’s doubtful any other figure can fill his shoes — or his pants.

A man of mediocre talents, with a face — and body for radio, Rush had a charmed life. After a failed career as a DJ he sold tickets for the Kansas City Royals. When he got a shot at talk radio he tapped into an anger and angst with white men and parlayed that into a multimillion-dollar radio empire that lasted over three decades. But he was full of beans right to the end. Al Franken said it best with his 1996 book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. 

So many times I wanted to reach through the radio and rip his cancerous lungs right out of his chest and stomp on them, like when he said the coronavirus was “the common cold,” or Biden didn’t win the election “legitimately.”

Now that he’s gone he’s being lauded as a brilliant political thinker, which is laughable to me. Rush was a great entertainer. I’ll give him that. But a shrewd commentator and insightful political analyst he wasn’t. He was more like a guy on a bar stool with a basket of wings and bottle of Budweiser, boneheadedly bloviating about politics and culture. That would be harmless enough, or even funny. But when you’re on 600 radio stations with 15 millions listeners, many believing what you’re saying, it’s downright dangerous.

Rush was a loudmouth, a bully, and a jackass. The Suge Knight of right-wing radio, Limbaugh turned politics into the East Coast/West Coast Rap War and inspired a crop of more malevolent characters like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage, who, along with Limbaugh, spewed hyperpartisan bile and got half the country to hate the other half.

For that Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, putting him in the company of Mother Teresa, Yogi Berra, and Stevie Wonder. And Limbaugh returned the favor by promoting Trump’s “rigged election” narrative. But when the end comes, all the accolades and adulation mean nothing. I’m just a broke writer typing this on a 2008 Sony Vaio. I don’t have a medal. All I have are two drink chips to my favorite dive bar, Wild Will’s. But I bet Limbaugh would trade places with me now.

You never know when your time is up. I could get hit by a bus tonight. If I do, and I run into Rush in the afterlife, we’re going to have a vigorous ideological debate, which I think I can win. Then I’m going to kick him in the cubes for good measure — and for all the damage he’s done.