August 1, 2020. Assuming that is the right date, it will be a sad day for “Rush Babies” and a day of rejoicing for Democratic liberals across America.
The reason why this will be a day of celebration is, after 32 years on the air with a reported 13 million listeners, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh (aka "The Mayor of Realville", "El Rushbo") will end his weekly radio show.
“I have, in the past six months, really been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to keep doing this or move on to something else,” the 65-year-old Limbaugh told his listeners on August 2, the day after celebrating the show’s 28th year in broadcasting on the EIB network. “I don’t feel old. I don’t feel worn out. None of that. So, I decided to keep doing it because there’s nothing I love more, and there’s nothing that could replace it—even being on TV occasionally, which would not be a replacement or anything of the sort. So four more years is what it is.”
When Limbaugh aired his TV show that ran from 1993-1994, another friend of mine and former newspaper editor, Glenn Fawcett, and I would die laughing at how everyone in the audience of his show were all impeccably dressed in suits and ties and women were dressed in their Sunday church best during the 93' spring semester in college. Today, if I were to pull up any of those shows on youtube.com, to see the camera pan in on the audience I just might see no minorities present, much the way liberals griped about that recent picture House Speaker Paul Ryan posed with a group of white interns thus continuing the notion that conservative Republicans really are a bunch of rich white racists who don’t hire minority interns in Congress.
As I tuned into Limbaugh’s show over the years it was dawning on me that some of the things he's said actually makes sense. Just don’t take that to mean I am a die-hard fan who thinks everything he says is the word of God. Sure, I admit I have defended him over the past two decades with what he has said but it was with good reason.
When Limbaugh, for example in 2003, said that the only reason for Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb’s success on the "Sunday NFL Countdown" in September 2003, was because he was African American, I saw nothing racist in that comment. Maybe I am just color blind. As someone, however, who hates football and most all sports, I would have watched "Sunday NFL Countdown" every week that year just to hear what Limbaugh had to say about the sport had he not been let go by ESPN executives within days of making that McNabb comment. I would have done the same had he been chosen to co-anchor "Monday Night Football." Not to watch the games, mind you. But so, I can hear what he had to say about the plays being called.
What I will be mourning is how the end of Limbaugh’s radio show signifies yet another nail in that coffin called "Free Speech" as political correctness continues to reign across the country because liberals hate it when others “tell it like it is”, or maybe they don’t mind when conservatives are bashed so long as no one bashes them.
©8/10/16
The reason why this will be a day of celebration is, after 32 years on the air with a reported 13 million listeners, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh (aka "The Mayor of Realville", "El Rushbo") will end his weekly radio show.
“I have, in the past six months, really been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to keep doing this or move on to something else,” the 65-year-old Limbaugh told his listeners on August 2, the day after celebrating the show’s 28th year in broadcasting on the EIB network. “I don’t feel old. I don’t feel worn out. None of that. So, I decided to keep doing it because there’s nothing I love more, and there’s nothing that could replace it—even being on TV occasionally, which would not be a replacement or anything of the sort. So four more years is what it is.”
Before his radio show premiered in August 1988, I don’t recall there being such words as “drive-by” media and “info babe” as Limbaugh has called the press and any female news anchor wearing six or seven -inch-heels and over-the-knee skirts on CNN and Fox News. The word “liberal” didn’t sound like a cuss word as it does today, and there didn’t seem to be the “US versus Them” war that we see out of control in the halls of congress.I laughed and despised the way, Tom Kelley, a friend of mine from high school, idolized “The Doctor of Democracy” back in 1993 as he bought two copies of Limbaugh’s book, "The Way Things Ought to Be." I enjoyed mocking him as he browsed the tie section at a department store one time because he was shopping for a “Rush Limbaugh” tie. Sitting next to those ties, however, were some clip-on ties so I told Tom he’d be much better off buying a couple clip-ons as Cheers’ (1982-1993) mailman Cliff Clavin swears by them.
When Limbaugh aired his TV show that ran from 1993-1994, another friend of mine and former newspaper editor, Glenn Fawcett, and I would die laughing at how everyone in the audience of his show were all impeccably dressed in suits and ties and women were dressed in their Sunday church best during the 93' spring semester in college. Today, if I were to pull up any of those shows on youtube.com, to see the camera pan in on the audience I just might see no minorities present, much the way liberals griped about that recent picture House Speaker Paul Ryan posed with a group of white interns thus continuing the notion that conservative Republicans really are a bunch of rich white racists who don’t hire minority interns in Congress.
As the years went by, however, my political affiliations changed. Perhaps it was the fact being raised by my grandparents on my dad's side who were staunch Republicans that maybe their conservatism got the better of me.Maybe it was the fact, like George Clooney’s Democratic manager Ryan Gosling played in the "Ides of March" (2011) who realized there was no such thing as honesty, integrity and morality in presidential politicians, I stopped believing in everything the Democratic Party claimed to represent when it came to them fighting for minorities and low-income wage earners. In short, they are just as bad as the Republican Party and judging by who we got to vote for in this November's presidential election, far worse.
As I tuned into Limbaugh’s show over the years it was dawning on me that some of the things he's said actually makes sense. Just don’t take that to mean I am a die-hard fan who thinks everything he says is the word of God. Sure, I admit I have defended him over the past two decades with what he has said but it was with good reason.
When Limbaugh, for example in 2003, said that the only reason for Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb’s success on the "Sunday NFL Countdown" in September 2003, was because he was African American, I saw nothing racist in that comment. Maybe I am just color blind. As someone, however, who hates football and most all sports, I would have watched "Sunday NFL Countdown" every week that year just to hear what Limbaugh had to say about the sport had he not been let go by ESPN executives within days of making that McNabb comment. I would have done the same had he been chosen to co-anchor "Monday Night Football." Not to watch the games, mind you. But so, I can hear what he had to say about the plays being called.
Therein lies the difference between my listening to Rush and how others listen to him today. I listen to him because he is entertaining from those promotional radio phrases (“The man, a mission, a way of life”, “He didn’t start it, but he’ll be happy to finish it”) to those often times humorous song parodies from conservative political satirist Paul Shanklin that bash President Obama and liberalism that are often aired on the show.When the "Limbaugh School for Advanced Conservative Studies" closes its doors four years from now, I won’t be mourning the end of hearing "America’s truth detector" four or five days a week. All good things come to an end.
What I will be mourning is how the end of Limbaugh’s radio show signifies yet another nail in that coffin called "Free Speech" as political correctness continues to reign across the country because liberals hate it when others “tell it like it is”, or maybe they don’t mind when conservatives are bashed so long as no one bashes them.
©8/10/16
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