Remembering Rush Limbaugh: Critics Show Flaws He Avoided

The reaction of the Left last week to the death of Rush Limbaugh was a shocking demonstration of the incivility of current American political discourse. Everyone remotely familiar with the American political scene is aware of what a powerhouse and pioneer Rush Limbaugh was. Anyone who knew him knows how personally gracious he was, modest and lacking in bombast and vitriol, even when discussing political figures with whom he differed sharply. He was, uniquely, no more impolite about political opponents privately than he was publicly. He was a man from modest socioeconomic origins in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and both his talk-radio format and his blend of popular songs and other entertainment with current events was ingenious and witty. His success, which gave him as many as 25 million listeners every weekday, was entirely the product of his own imagination applied to his observations of listener habits and market demographics. One would have hoped that since he was such an uplifting story of self-made personal success based on perception and hard work, his political opponents would allow him the dignity of dying in peace.

From the moment his death was announced on his regular program by his widow last week, his opponents descended from all the media like the massed crows of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. He was a hardball partisan of a kind the Left is entirely familiar and comfortable with, since that is a flattering description of most of their chief spokespeople and standard-bearers, though none have been nearly as successful as Rush. This incandescent envy must be a significant part of their malice. The greatest depths were plumbed by former U.S. senator Al Franken (D., Minn.) in the New York Daily News on February 18. This seems to be a new and uncommonly tasteless artifact of the current anti-Trump playbook — to turn obsequies and obituaries into occasions on which the normal expectation and practice of comparatively respectful treatment of the recent dead is exploited in order to smear them with as much muck as possible.

About the Author

Conrad Black

Conrad Black is the author of Donald J. Trump, A President Like No Other.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Rush Limbaugh

The reaction of the Left last week to the death of Rush Limbaugh was a shocking demonstration of the incivility of current American political discourse. Everyone remotely familiar with the American political scene is aware of what a powerhouse and pioneer Rush Limbaugh was. Anyone who knew him knows how personally gracious he was, modest and lacking in bombast and vitriol, even when discussing political figures with whom he differed sharply. He was, uniquely, no more impolite about political opponents privately than he was publicly. He was a man from modest socioeconomic origins in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and both his talk-radio format and his blend of popular songs and other entertainment with current events was ingenious and witty. His success, which gave him as many as 25 million listeners every weekday, was entirely the product of his own imagination applied to his observations of listener habits and market demographics. One would have hoped that since he was such an uplifting story of self-made personal success based on perception and hard work, his political opponents would allow him the dignity of dying in peace.

From the moment his death was announced on his regular program by his widow last week, his opponents descended from all the media like the massed crows of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. He was a hardball partisan of a kind the Left is entirely familiar and comfortable with, since that is a flattering description of most of their chief spokespeople and standard-bearers, though none have been nearly as successful as Rush. This incandescent envy must be a significant part of their malice. The greatest depths were plumbed by former U.S. senator Al Franken (D., Minn.) in the New York Daily News on February 18. This seems to be a new and uncommonly tasteless artifact of the current anti-Trump playbook — to turn obsequies and obituaries into occasions on which the normal expectation and practice of comparatively respectful treatment of the recent dead is exploited in order to smear them with as much muck as possible.