12/29/2023 0 Comments Dallas rush limbaugh radioWhen a woman accused Duke University lacrosse players of rape, she was derided as a “ho,” and when a Georgetown University law student spoke in support of expanded contraceptive coverage, she was dismissed as a “slut.” When the topic was reproductive rights, he didn’t simply voice a pro-life stance, he suggested Democratic ideology in biblical times would have led to the abortion of Jesus Christ. To him, 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton was “a dog.” As the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, he made the dying a punchline. When a Washington advocate for the homeless committed suicide, he cracked a string of jokes. Fox, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, appeared in a commercial for a Democrat, Limbaugh mocked him and his tremors. He called them communists, wackos, feminazis, faggots and radicals. Limbaugh took as a badge of honor the title of “most dangerous man in America,” and called himself “America’s anchorman.” But his assessments of those with whom he disagreed were not nearly so kind. I don’t walk around thinking about my power,” he told author Zev Chafets in his 2010 book, “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.” “But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement.” And he did it with such unyielding confidence, his followers heard his words as sacred truth. He drew people in with his wit, his sense of the theatrical and a made-for-broadcast voice offering listeners a blueprint for what he saw as the grand scheme of the opposition. He called himself an entertainer, but with his three-hour weekday radio show broadcast on nearly 600 stations across the U.S., and a massive audience of millions hanging on his every word, Limbaugh’s rants shaped the national political conversation, swaying the opinions of average Republicans and the direction of the party. Unflinchingly conservative, wildly partisan, bombastically self-promoting and larger than life, Limbaugh had for the past quarter-century galvanized listeners with his politically incorrect, sarcasm-laced commentary. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.He was divisive to the very end, but it did little to diminish his importance as the dominant force of talk radio, one of the most influential voices in Republican politics and an architect of the modern right-wing. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content.ĭonald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts’ playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. The concept pioneered by Limbaugh was quickly copied by cable news and digital media. Within a decade, this format would grow from fifty-nine stations to over one thousand, keeping millions of Americans company as they commuted, worked, and shouted back at their radios. Limbaugh’s listeners yearned for a champion to punch back against those maligning their values. Rush Limbaugh, an enormously talented former disc jockey-opinionated, brash, and unapologetically conservative-pioneered a pathbreaking infotainment program that captured the hearts of an audience no media executive knew existed. They little imagined that in the coming years their brainchild would polarize the country and make it nearly impossible to govern. America’s long road to the Trump presidency began on August 1, 1988, when, desperate for content to save AM radio, top media executives stumbled on a new format that would turn the political world upside down.
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