“It’s hard,” Hemmer said, “to overstate his importance.” They’re not really news networks in prime time they present political talk. The economic lessons taught by Limbaugh are clear each night on Fox, CNN and MSNBC, routinely the three most-watched cable networks. “They cared more about loyalty to him than any kind of underlying set of principles.” “Many of these listeners didn’t care if Rush Limbaugh crossed the line (of propriety),” she said. Trump’s appeal mystified many in politics at first, but “if you had been listening to Rush Limbaugh for 20 years, he sounded very familiar,” Hemmer said.Īs Limbaugh’s political strength became evident, many Republican politicians felt they couldn’t cross him, or run the risk of alienating his millions of listeners, Hemmer said. Limbaugh didn’t embrace Trump right away, but soon fell in line. On, Limbaugh’s obituary’s headline was “Greatest of All Time.” The headline on HuffPost’s obituary on Wednesday said Limbaugh “saturated America’s airwaves with cruel bigotries, lies and conspiracy theories.” The Root called him a “spouter of racist, hate-filled garbage.” He mocked the death of AIDS victims and played the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro” when Barack Obama was elected president. He invented the term “feminazi,” called Chelsea Clinton a “dog” when she was 12 years old and had to apologize for calling a young woman a “slut” for arguing that birth control be covered by health insurance. Some of Limbaugh’s language was downright ugly. To SUNY’s Reifowitz, Limbaugh led the way in getting people “scared about the browning of the country.” And he spoke for tens of millions of us.” He defended the traditions of this country. “He refused to accept the ideological changes in this country. “He refused to accept the attacks that came against this country from within,” Levin said on Fox News. “It wasn’t just that he transformed the media landscape, but he transformed the Republican Party,” said Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” “He became a power player and someone who could move voters.”Ĭonservative radio host Mark Levin called Limbaugh “a tremendous patriot.” Once a universally accepted compliment, the term “patriot” has become more complicated through its use by some of the rioters at the U.S. Bumper stickers proclaimed, “Rush is Right.” He reached an estimated 15.5 million people each week and lost in the ratings for three months only once in some three decades, to advice host Laura Schlessinger, Harrison said. Before Limbaugh, only 30 or 40 stations did “talk radio,” and many weren’t political, Harrison said. Limbaugh was a sensation among people who liked to tweak liberals, outraging with political incorrectness. Radio hosts talked politics before Limbaugh, men like Jerry Williams in Boston and Barry Farber in New York.īut the idea of conservative talk radio didn’t take hold until Limbaugh, after bouncing through DJ jobs in Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Sacramento, went national from a perch at New York’s WABC in 1988, said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine. “There are tens of thousands of us all across the conservative movement.” “I am the definition of a ‘Rush baby,’ and it’s not just me,” McEnany said on Twitter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |