![]() ![]() How many do all you genius "Republican reformers" bring to the table? I've recounted previously the first time I was asked to guest-host, back in 2006, when I happened to be down in Australia and the Prime Minister, John Howard, asked me to some or other event a day or two hence. As I said on air many years ago: Really? For almost a third of a century, Rush's audience was over half the total Republican vote. Throughout his entire time on air, there were genius GOP consultants who, in reaction to any electoral setbacks, would insist that what the GOP needed to do was come up with a way to ditch Limbaugh. In the scheme of things, I am not sure how many of those stations will be able to keep that going without him. And within a couple of years hundreds of stations were building the entire schedule around the midday guy. Rush figured that everyone needs a local guy at that time, with traffic and weather updates, and that the opportunity to build a national show lay in the hitherto somnolent slot of noon-to-three Eastern/nine-to-twelve Pacific. One man doing what he wanted to do saved an entire medium - AM radio - and turned all its old rules upside down: Traditionally, morning drive is your big audience, and everything tapers off from there. Day Hundred-and-Twenty Four.", and when Newt's Republicans won the 1994 mid-terms he started with James Brown singing "I Feel Good". When Clinton was elected, Rush opened his shows, for years, with "America Held Hostage, Day Thirty-Nine. First, he perfected the style, and then he applied it to the content. It was a unique combination - absolute piercing philosophical clarity, and a grand rollicking presentational style honed through all the lean years of minor-market disc-jockeying. Because they had never heard anybody say it like that before. My friends were what you might call slightly skeptical lefties, so they disagreed with what Rush said on the issues but they were rapt by the way he said it. And then suddenly it found some guy, and there he was talking about "the arts-and-croissants crowd" moving into your town, and reading out press releases from NOW (the National Association of Women), whom he called the NAGS (National Association of Gals), and playing Andy Williams' version of "Born Free" punctuated by gunfire to accompany any environmental story.Īnd, in my car, conversation ceased. And then that died, and there was nothing, and I forgot to switch it off so it was automatically scanning up and around the dial as we chit-chatted in the car. I was driving some visitors from London through the North Maine Woods toward New Brunswick in that dead zone where the only thing that comes in is the soft-and-easy station on 94.9 FM from the top of Mount Washington. It was not long after he started the show and not long after I bought my pad in New Hampshire. I know precisely when I first heard Rush. When Brokeback Mountain was in the news, the show ran trailers for Return to Saddle-Sore Canyon: "It's John McCain and Lindsey Graham as you've always wanted to see them!" Which, in my case at least, is true. In the early years of the war on terror, he introduced an Afghan version of himself "with talent on loan from Allah" and sold Club Gitmo merchandise for those seeking a tropical retreat from jihad. The comedy is what his many enemies and half his own side missed: Rush took politics seriously but not solemnly. And throughout all those decades Rush and his show stayed exactly the same: a forensic breakdown of the day's news, punctuated by musical parodies, satirical sketches, and Rush's own optimism and good humor, even through this last terrible year. Commercial broadcasting began in the United States in 1920: The Rush Limbaugh Show came along two-thirds of a century later, became the Number One program very quickly, and has stayed at the top all the way to today - for a third of the entire history of the medium. Rush did something unprecedented in the history of TV and radio. ![]() Usually, in this line of work, if you're lucky, you get a moment - a year or two when you're the in-thing - and you hope to hold enough of that moment as it slowly fades away to keep you going till retirement. It's a hard thing to do - compressing a glorious third-of-a-century into three hours - but Snerdley, Kraig, Mike, Allie and everyone else I've worked with there for so many years will do their best. Instead, as you can hear, his beloved Kathryn will be introducing a special program put together by the EIB team to celebrate a great man's life and legacy. I was scheduled to guest-host today's show. Rush died this morning, after a year-long struggle with lung cancer. ![]() It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Rush Limbaugh, a giant of American broadcasting, a uniquely talented performer, and a hugely generous man to whom I owe almost everything. ![]()
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