Rush Limbaugh May 14

With millions of listeners at his back, Rush Limbaugh gained such power and authority past the mid-1990s that he was made an honorary member of the Republican-held House, where his far right-leaning ideas, laments and bombast helped steer the party toward its fractious future.

The GOP had merely taken back the chamber for the kickoff time in decades and Newt Gingrich, then speaker of the U.S. Business firm of Representatives, was so indebted to the peppery bourgeois radio personality that he and other Republicans called themselves the "Limbaugh Congress." Limbaugh, the speaker said, had given them the backbone to "take back our country."

Though advertisers occasionally fled and even political allies winced when he went on an unfiltered tirade, Limbaugh remained a sure-fire friend of the American right, and listeners faithfully heeded his advice and political gospel over the decades. In ways both big and pocket-size, it was Limbaugh who arose equally an builder of the deep political and cultural divides in America that came into full focus during the Trump era.

In poor wellness for years, Limbaugh died Wednesday of lung cancer, his married woman confirmed on his radio evidence. A longtime cigar smoker, Limbaugh had announced in 2020 that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and he had recently been hospitalized. He was seventy and had his final broadcast February. ii.

Forever the provocateur, Limbaugh set the controls for the Trump calendar by lashing out at environmentalists, feminists, liberals, LGBTQ activists and those who fought for man rights, often pushing conspiracy theories and baseless claims to back up his rants.

Yet, he was admired by millions and remembered fondly by many.

"Rush volition forever be the greatest of all time. Blitz was an extraordinary man. A gentle giant. Bright, quick-witted, genuinely kind. Extremely generous. Passionate. Mettlesome. And the hardest working person I know," his wife, Kathryn Limbaugh, said.

Former President Trump spoke to Fox News about Limbaugh's death, saying, "He was very brave. He could, in theory, have been gone four months agone. Really. He was fighting until the very stop. He was a fighter."

The right-wing talk-radio host began his career in the 1980s every bit a disc jockey. In Sacramento in the mid-'80s, Limbaugh adopted a radio format that weaved political and news commentary and listener calls, all with a conservative camber.

He started at WABC-AM in New York City later that decade, where he congenital a national platform and became an eminent media personality.

Limbaugh first broadcast the nationally syndicated "The Blitz Limbaugh Prove" in 1988 and quickly exploded onto radio stations. At the peak of his influence in the 1990s, he had amassed every bit many as 20 million listeners a week, with about 12 million daily beyond 600 radio stations throughout the land. His radio show — which he hosted from Palm Beach, Fla., afterwards moving in that location in the late 1990s — was as big as the top-rated TV series on cable and networks.

"All information technology takes is the mention of my name and the predictable left-wing groups have a cow," he one time boasted.

His loyal, tuned-in clan affectionately called themselves "dittoheads" — shorthand for a person who enjoyed listening to or agreed with the ideas and opinions of Limbaugh.

A staunch supporter of the former president, Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump's 2020 State of the Union accost, a twenty-four hour period after the radio host announced he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.

Trump chosen him "the greatest fighter and winner that you will always come across" and thanked him for his "decades of tireless devotion to our country."

Others were much less enthusiastic about granting Limbaugh the nation's highest noncombatant honor. Then-presidential hopeful Joe Biden, who'd been a Medal of Liberty recipient, criticized Trump's decision and motives.

He said on CNN that Limbaugh "spent his entire time on the air dividing people, belittling people" and said the president was "driven more by trying to maintain [his] right-wing political credentials than information technology is anything else."

"I mean, if you read some of the things that Blitz has said, about people, their backgrounds, their ethnicity, how he speaks to them ... I don't think he understands the American lawmaking of decency and honor," Biden said. "Merely wait, this is Donald Trump."

Limbaugh was oftentimes embroiled in controversy, making headlines for his provocative opinions and seemingly unfiltered remarks; detractors scrutinized him every bit a divisive figure who habitually distorted facts.

He once called Hillary Clinton "sex activity-cretary of State" and wished that newly elected President Obama would founder.

In 2012, Limbaugh came nether fire for calling an activist law student a "slut" and "prostitute." The furor began when Limbaugh was addressing then-President Obama's proffer that birth control exist provided free of charge. Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University pupil, expressed her support for the idea during a congressional hearing. The radio host targeted her in a multiday tirade.

"We desire y'all to post the [sex] videos online so we can all lookout," he said, describing Fluke as a member of the "feminazis" and accusing her of wanting the regime to subsidize her sex life. Equally a result of his comments, an immediate online backlash ensued. Advertisers revolted and pulled back. Limbaugh apologized for his remarks days later, a rare human action for the radio tycoon.

"I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation," he said at the time.

Rush Limbaugh puffs on a cigar while waiting to tee off from the 5th tee of the Pebble Embankment Golf Links in February 2001.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

When Florida was under threat from Hurricane Irma in 2017, Limbaugh went on air to accuse media outlets of inflating the storm's threat to farther a political calendar and to increase sales of bottled h2o, saying, in part: "So there is a want to accelerate this climatic change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best means to do it. You can reach a lot simply by creating fright and panic."

His remarks spurred swift criticism. Weatherman Al Roker from NBC quickly pushed back on Twitter, telling his followers to ignore Limbaugh's comments. "He is putting people'due south lives at risk," Roker wrote in i tweet. "To have @rushlimbaugh suggest the warnings about #Irma are #faux or nearly profit and to ignore them borders on criminal. #ShameOnRush," he said in another.

Limbaugh said he felt he was misunderstood. Within days and without much explanation, he himself evacuated from his Palm Beach home.

Two years later, Limbaugh went after Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was 16 at the time and had recently been named Time magazine'south person of the yr. The radio host criticized the accolade, suggesting the Democratic Party and "the worldwide left" were using Thunberg as a political pawn to advance climate alter.

"And nobody is permitted to question her, you see, considering she has — what did they call information technology? She is in the autism spectrum, then yous can't disagree, yous can't question, because she'southward non well," he said of Thunberg, who has an Asperger'due south syndrome diagnosis.

When Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Limbaugh joined other conservative commentators in suggesting Trump had had the election stolen from him.

Biden, he told listeners on Dec. 16, "didn't win this thing off-white and square, and we are not going to be docile like we've been in the past, and go away and wait until the next election." He stopped brusk, notwithstanding, of urging listeners to march on Washington on Jan. 6, when Trump supporters and hard-correct activists stormed the U.S. Capitol, leaving five dead and more than 140 injured.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was built-in Jan. 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Mo., to Mildred Carolyn and Jefferson Limbaugh Jr. His father was a lawyer and a U.S. fighter airplane pilot. His grandfather was a prosecutor and guess whose long legal career ended when he died at 104.

Limbaugh played football at Cape Girardeau Cardinal High School, where he graduated in the late 1960s. He got his first radio gig at age sixteen, working at a local station in his hometown.

To delight his parents, he briefly attended Southeast Missouri State Higher, but he dropped out before finishing his first twelvemonth. His mother once reportedly said: "He flunked everything. ... He just didn't seem interested in anything except radio." His father, Limbaugh said, never took his career in radio seriously until he saw his son on ABC's "Nightline."

In his later on years, Limbaugh struggled with health bug.

He suffered from hearing loss in 2001. Past October of that year, he was near totally deaf and underwent cochlear implant surgery that Dec.

Two years later, he revealed his struggles with a different battle: addiction to painkillers. His dependence on OxyContin dated to the mid-1990s and landed him in a rehabilitation facility for about a month.

In February 2020, Limbaugh announced he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.

He told listeners at the time that he knew something was wrong subsequently he began experiencing shortness of breath. He said he considered keeping the news of his health a secret "because I don't like making things nigh me" merely eventually realized that his occasional absences due to handling would raise questions.

"Y'all know me, I'm the mayor of Realville," said Limbaugh at the time. "And so this has happened, and my intention is to come hither every twenty-four hours I can and practise this program as usually and as competently and as expertly as I do every day, because that is the source of my greatest satisfaction professionally, personally."

Limbaugh wrote multiple books. His time-travel novel series about American history for children was an enormous commercial success despite not being critics' favorite. He was even honored as author of the year at the Children'south Choice Book Awards in 2014 for "Rush Revere and the Dauntless Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures With Exceptional Americans."

His first couple of books from the 1990s, "The Way Things Ought to Be" and "See, I Told You Then," were New York Times bestsellers.

Limbaugh, who had no children, is survived past his 4th wife, Kathryn, whom he married in 2010.

Staff author Steve Marble contributed to this story.

hodgedooketherver.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2021-02-17/rush-limbaugh-conservative-radio-host-dies

Share this post