Rush Limbaugh is Still Dead
Well, he's finally gone. It took him long enough. I was banking on his shuffling off this mortal coil before Duce 2.0 could shamefully award him the Medal of Freedom (btw, can that be posthumously rescinded? Definitely worth looking into for you research geeks). Had he not been rich, and had his fellow Vichyite Republicans succeeded in abolishing ACA, it's highly doubtful that Rush Limbaugh could have held on so long. But n-o-o-o. The Lord Haw Haw of Hate had to get in a boatload more of his odious brand of vitriol. He deserved the Medal Freedom like George Armstrong Custer would the Gandhi Peace Award.
A man of good upbringing and liberal education, I've always adhered to the social politesse of not speaking poorly of the recently departed. Increasingly in this age of fractured moral leadership and breakdown in norms, however, I find myself making exceptions. As Clarence Darrow said, "I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction." And I'm inclined to borrow and paraphrase Chevy Chase's 1970s Saturday Night Live weekly knee-slapper, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."
As readers can see in this blog (see links below), I have a lifelong fascination with otherwise smart, educated people who willingly, gleefully hurl themselves into moral squalor, a lifetime devoted to twisted sophistry buttressed by unabashed lies, and fired up with unbridled hatred for their fellow men and women. I cited in one of my posts the cases of Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, among others - all highly educated and articulate, once serious journalists. But at some point in their career journeys, they made a faustian pact: their souls for fame and riches.
No. I place Limbaugh and Hannity in the category of intellectually-limited, uneducated mediocrities - more circus performers than pundits - oafs who found that combining the entertainment of a rodeo clown with the morals of the Happy Hooker proved to be the irresistible alchemy to launch them from well-earned backwater obscurity to croesus-paid notoriety. Hannity and Limbaugh were both college dropouts. Limbaugh's mother said of her son, "He flunked everything... he just didn't seem interested in anything except radio." They share more in common with the notorious dim-witted WWII Axis propagandists William "Lord Haw Haw" Joyce, Mildred "Axis Sally" Gillars and Iva "Tokyo Rose" Toguri. The key thing they share with their fancy-schooled Fox-News brethren and sisters is journalistic turpetude.
And blowhard "traditional values" shills like the quadri-married Limbaugh, sexual-harasser Bill O'Reilly and thrice-wed serial-cheating Newt Gingrich are less conservative spokesmen than opportunistic hypocrites.
Limbaugh's legacy includes such original rhetorical gems as "feminazis, "tree-hugging wackos," "co-ed sluts" and "dittoheads." And he continued gushing sulfurous falsehoods right to the bitter end. Shortly before the 1/6 assault on the Capitol, Limbaugh thundered to his millions of drooling dotard listeners, "Biden didn’t win this thing fair and square, and we are not going to be docile like we’ve been in the past, and go away and wait till the next election. Seventy-four-plus million Americans are not going to shut up, and you tell them that their views don’t matter? You do not know what you’re creating. You do not know the enemy you are manufacturing."
This is how you express yourself just before meeting your Maker?
Well, I have good news to share -
Bloviatorlissimo Rush Limbaugh is still dead.
See also:
Why Have So Many Really Smart Journalists Sold Their Souls to Trump?
Why Do So Many Really Smart People Work for a Dumbass Like Trump?