If we’re talking high-profile, big name cultural figures — and not child molesters, serial killers and your occasional Wall Street banker — Rush Limbaugh would make the top five Most Contemptible People of This Generation.
So tt was of course fitting that Donald Trump, in tight competion with Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and maybe Dick Fuld (ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers) for Numero Uno, would pause his “State of My Mind” speech Tuesday night to award Limbaugh the (instantly much-diminished) Presidential Medal of Freedom … to the sycophantic roars of Trump (and Limbaugh’s) assembled Republican hostages.
I’m fond of boring people with the conservative lineage that gave us Donald Trump. She was a huge asset, but no, it didn’t begin with a raving twit like Sarah Palin being elevated to the public stage. And it wasn’t George W., Charlie McCarthy to Dick Cheney’s Edgar Bergen. It wasn’t even FoxNews … not there at the beginning, anyway. It was Limbaugh.
It was Limbaugh, unleashed by Ronnie Reagan’s sign-off on a last ditch attempt to codify The Fairness Doctrine into law who kicked open the sluice gates from the manure pond of rancid personal attack, gross distortion of facts and reality, incivility and … and! … the billions to be made by agitating the self-pitying greivances of America’s white males. (The Fairness Doctrine stood for 40 years as a way to give people and agencies attacked on public airwaves an opportunity to respond.)
Limbaugh’s act metastasized practically overnight and within three years was the most dominant show in the country, fattening not just his bank account but that of thousands of otherwise beknighted radio managers and salesmen all across the country. These were people who all of a sudden found themselves in the business of charging top rates from a nearly inexhaustible list of clients eager to “be where the men are.”
There was no secret to Limbaugh’s “secret sauce”. It was a constant mocking antipathy of minorities, feminists, the established news media, environmentalists, unions and on and on, but mostly liberals. Bill Clinton, few people’s idea today of a hair on fire “lib”, was a godsend to Limbaugh. He couldn’t find enough foul and invariably false things — i.e. brazen lies — to accuse him of. (The stamp Limbaugh alone put on “Crooked Hillary” did as much to sully her in the average voter’s mind than any other single perason else … so say I.)
On a personal level, Limbaugh, currently on wife #4, was also a trailblazer for a candidate with essentially no moral bona fides to get up and bellow that contrary to what your lying eyes were telling you he was imbued with the light and spirit of the one true God! And not only bellow it, but … be believed … by the huge audience of white Americans desperate to hold on their presumption of status without, you know, doing too much readin’ and thinkin’ to find out for themselves what was really … truly … true.
More sinister in the pantheon of Nefarious Schemes is that what Limbaugh introduced as a winning populist concept is precisely — and I do mean precisely — what Vladimir Putin, then rising through the wholly corrupt post-Soviet bureaucracy — seized on as his primary tactic for diminishing western democracies, the United States in particular.
The tactic was, given that Putin had no money for big flashy weapons systems … bullshit.
To be clear, a constant torrent of bullshit and lies and threats so thick and dense and ceaseless the average person soon gave up even trying to figure out what was true. Whatever “truth” was reported by someone once thought credible was countered three times over with, to paraphrase Kellyanne Conway, an “alternative truth.” It’s what put Putin in power in Russia and what keeps him there today. (It sure isn’t the economy or life expectancy.)
Hell, Trump advisor Steve Bannon came right out and said it two years ago.
“The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Trump is merely the poisoned flower of all that toxic fertilizer. With Limbaugh as the stem and America’s vast, complacent/lazy/anxious sub-set of race and gender-phobic men is the root system. All and all, it’s about as ignoble, graceless and, as I say, contemptible as it gets.
But it sells. As they say in the ad trade, “You can move product with that message.”
As nauseating as it was to see Melania T. wrap Limbaugh with a medal previously given to the likes of Mother Teresa, Stephen Hawking, Jackie Robinson, Buckminster Fuller, Georgia O’Keefe, T.S. Eliot and Elie Weisel, we’ve reached the point where nothing actually surprises us anymore. Disgust, yes. Surprise, no. There is simply no corruption or vulgarity the ethos of Limbaugh-FoxNews-Trump (and all their sycophants and wannabes) won’t visit on our most respected traditions.
Which leads me to wonder. Given the bona fides of his career and the naked prejudice and disinformation he’s pumped into the American system for over 30 years, what will the mainstream obit writers say when Limbaugh, now with “advanced” lung cancer, finally departs this earth?
Brian, you’re the best truth-teller in town, and along with Paul Krugman, you’re a writer I always read.
You’re right, Limbaugh does get credit for the early smear on Hillary Clinton – as we rewrite history, I’m looking forward to the moniker of “Reagan the Racist.”
YES — the LIES started back then, with Reagan/Bush/Limbaugh and what soon morphed into Bush/Cheney/Rove. I consider Karl Rove to be the guy that made lying fashionable… And once the Reds lost control — (horrors! McCain chose Palin!) — it was just a shift of the chin for Repugnicans to embrace bold-faced lying and the era of McConnell and Trump after the carefully crafted lies of the previous era.
The Medal of Freedom — Free now of even the truth!
Keep publishing, Man. You’re doing good work.
Thanks, Larry. Every time I witness one of these Orwellian contortions — awarding a medal of freedom to a guy who’s built an empire on abusing Constitutional freedoms — I’m reminded again of Rick Wilson’s now immortal book title, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.” Never mind the careers of countless Republican officials, but now … the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I mean, who wants to follow Rush Limbaugh up on that stage?
Let us ask the two billionaire Dem wanna-be-nominees why they don’t take the $$ they’ve already spent on t.v. ads for their egos and collaborate to either BUY Fox News, or if that’s not possible (there’s usually a price on anything, but the fascists probably wouldn’t part with their organ of mass mind manipulation), then take those hundreds of millions and establish a viable antidote network.
Yes, it would require subsidies for quite a while. It’s my understanding that Fox didn’t make a profit for years. It didn’t deter Ailes and Murdoch–making propaganda was their priority. Radio as a communications medium has been brilliantly exploited by the fascists almost from the start. Father Coughlin, in the 1930’s and ’40’s, spewed his demagoguery to a loyal and far-flung listening audience. When the US finally was formallty at war with Nazi Germany, FDR was adept enough with the levers of power to lean on the Catholic hierarchy in order to get Coughlin off the air.
In the 1960’s, a Protestant ranter, Rev. Carl McIntyre, broadcast daily diatribes that were carried on hundreds of stations, coast-to-coast. And there never was a shortage of local and regional radio reactionaries, down through the decades, like the popular Tom Barnard on KQRS,
When Reagan revoked the Fairness Doctrine, the floodgates were opened. The biggest political mistake Bill Clinton made in his life was to not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. I have to think that he was simply out of touch with the world outside of Washington. It was radio demagogues, all aping Limbaugh, who drove the 1994 mid-term elections, when Gingrich and his gang managed to capture control of the House.
Let’s remember the brave and determined resistance waged by Al Franken.
Indeed, if you want to diminish somewhat that sense of a rankling, vile aftertaste from the very thought of Limbaugh’s canonization, get a copy of “Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, and ” and re-read the “Operation Chickenhawk” chapter.
I too wonder how much impact the combined resorces of Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg could have on liberal/anti-Trump messaging. Obviously the ads would have to have a completely different focus, but total saturation on conservative bubble networks would be a fascinating test of media power.
I agree with Oliver’s assessment of how correct Franken was with “Big Fat Idiot,” and certainly also I agree that Bloomberg and Steyer could spend their money in better ways — but creating an alternative to Fox wouldn’t do a thing. We already have a lot “truth” in other sources… The fact is, the unwavering 42% of the US population has made their commitment to The Lie. Creating an alternative media source would not affect a single one of them — Repugnicans could choose NOW to listen NPR or anybody else if they were interested in anything beyond maintaining their own stunted and self-oriented consciousness. An “alternative Fox” would go the way of Air America, and expecting republicans to honestly become “fair” or “balanced” is a foolish notion. They are committed to the Lie.
Liberals simply don’t have the genetic need for a centralized thought leader. Besides being cut off from the highest power stations in major markets, Air America failed to understand that liberals/Democrats/”everyone else” is simply too diverse to be herded together like the Limbaughs of the world do.