Rush Limbaugh had a profound effect on our culture
National Post, 19 February 2021
His career was of great consequence for the current political and cultural moment.
Rush Limbaugh died this past week after an astonishing 30-plus years as the most popular talk radio host in the United States. He invented a new medium — political talk radio — and dominated it as both an entertainer and a political advocate. His career was of great consequence for the current political and cultural moment.
As an entertainer, there are few who could match his success. Three hours a day, five days a week, over three decades, his was always the No. 1 radio show. By way of comparison, David Letterman had a massively successful 33-year run in late night television, but not as the number 1 show. He had an hour a night, with an audience of about 3-4 million people. Limbaugh was on three hours a day, with an audience of some 20-25 million listeners.
I don’t listen to the radio very much, and when I do, it is usually to get local weather and traffic information. And yet, I knew about Limbaugh because of his impact, which extended far beyond his listening audience.
Limbaugh offered his listeners a combination of informed commentary on the news, hard-edged opinions, a cultivated sense of grievance, compelling storytelling and rollicking laughs — he enjoyed himself immensely, while having a great deal of fun. It was a powerful formula and as the traditional news business began a 30-year decline, Limbaugh stayed on top and kept his audience.
He saved what was considered a dying medium, AM radio, and some 600 stations carried his show, many of them building their entire programming and identity around it. There are thousands of radio jobs that may not survive a post-Limbaugh radio landscape.
Limbaugh did it from the right, but all across the political spectrum there are dozens of Limbaugh imitators on radio and cable television — hosts who offer monologues on the political scene, nurturing a sense of grievance and stoking outrage. Those who most vigorously denounce Limbaugh are more like him than they would care to admit.
It is not a style that appeals to me, but its appeal is broad and deep, and persuasive to vast numbers of people.
Limbaugh went all-in for U.S. President Donald Trump, another entertainer with a 30-year run through American celebrity culture. And those commentators who thought Trump was the devil incarnate and Limbaugh was his nefarious acolyte employed the same Limbaugh toolkit to go after the former president: ostentatious grievance, manufactured outrage and degrading — if witty — insults.
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