Posting here since I suspect the Hangout would quickly turn into D&D. Regardless of politics limbaugh had a huge impact on media and talk radio in particular.
A guy who exemplifies why the Socratic Oath (in general not just medicine) should be a thing Sorry for his family, but otherwise way more sorry he was such a malign influence on society and that he was materially rewarded for it, encouraging others to do the same.
he was a college drop-out, struggling cheesy radio DJ who found a niche/opportunity and turned it into a billion dollar business. thats really the only nice thing i can say about him.
I care about his life and death about as much as he cared about people. My frozen house just got a bit warmer.
I don't wish death on anyone and their family members. However we cannot allow the tragedy of death to wash away a vile legacy of purposefully dividing America for fortune and fame. Nobody should be allowed to be celebrated for tearing apart their own country by seeding hate into the mainstream, and creating an infrastructure of propaganda that Fox and others have now weaponized to literally try and destroy democracy. So I say with all sincerity.... Thoughts and Prayers.
RIP Rush, the only nice thing I can say about you is your first name was my favorite band of all time and that was cool....otherwise you were a scumbag, and while I don't wish death on anyone cant say I will miss you, but prayers for your family who love you
He was one of the main causes for the divisiveness we see in the country today. He built his career on hate.
I know he suffered badly from physical pain, as did Roger Ailes -- I wouldn't wish that on anybody, and I will always wonder if it contributed to a kind of spiteful streak, or at least a tendency to say negative things. I hope Rush passed relatively pain free and if there's an after-life, I hope he spends some time with other spirits who had different points of view and can come to see them in a more charitable light. This thread is completely appropriate for D&D, and I don't think Rush would ask for anything different. My thoughts and prayers go to the many people negatively impacted, the many families who couldn't talk together anymore or who even split apart. I'll never forget my first direct impact with his work, at a family reunion in the late 1990's. A cousin-in-law, from Oklahoma, was a self-professed ditto-head or whatever, asked me and the Mrs if we listened. I said I had listened to Rush a good bit, (true), and that he was really skilled at running a radio show and building an audience, but I didn't understand his point of view very well. The cousin-in-law, once he found out the Mrs was a biological scientist and from San Francisco, just would not leave her alone for the rest of the reunion. It was all very unpleasant, confrontive politics, asking if she was a femi-nazi and attacking her expertise as a trained scientist, for literally hours. All delivered with a smile, you understand, as if this behavior was normal or acceptable. I kept steering him away and literally taking him by the elbow away from my wife, especially as I wanted her to meet the non-******* parts of my extended family. But he kept going back at her. His wife, my cousin, was embarrassed but clearly knew her place. The hosts kindly asked him to mingle a bit more. We left early, and family reunions just don't happen that much anymore. The cousin (the wife of the ditto-head) fell into a long-term depression in the following years. That cousin and cousin-in-law got the virus real badly recently in Oklahoma and I need to check up on them. I'm sure he was living mask free, as a lot of my extended family now does. It's easy to say, "well that's just one guy, and he was a jerk. Rush didn't make him a jerk." Maybe so, but Rush really attracted him, fed him, and bolstered his idea that he could act that way. I'm reminded too of the recent Kinzinger family letter, a really tragic thing. His family names people like Hannity and Limbaugh -- the family says Kinzinger lost "their respect," meaning that of the talking heads, and so the family was disowning him, all over his attempt to do what he saw as right and as his obligation to our country. So, the impact on families is ultimately how I'll view Limbaugh, and all his work to turn people against the idea of expertise. That has lasting impact.
I hope he choked on his blood on the way out. Fox News is treating it as if Jesus died. You can draw a straight line from Rush to Fox News to Donald Trump being elected. False Information, bigotry, and lies all being peddled to Conservative agenda promotion.
For basically my entire life before Trump, I held the belief that you shouldn't hold political view against a person. But the last 4 years have proven without out a doubt that Limbaugh and his ilk have had a major, major impact on the dangerous mindset that has become so prevalent. Their altered facts and often outright lies to make their base happy has done irreparable damage. At this point many Trump supporters legitimately live in their own echo chamber where inarguable facts aren't real. So yeah, if there is a hell I'm sure he'll burn there.
The front page of their website was hilarious. It was literally ten stories consecutively scrolling down about Limbaugh's "amazing legacy". It's absolutely pathetic.
