Saturday, February 20, 2021

Rush Limbaugh: A Life Deceitfully and Fraudulently Lived 

He must never stand as a model for others to follow.


February 19, 2021 by Warren Blumenfeld



Ding Dong, the Rush is dead. Which old Rush? The Limbaugh Rush. Ding Dong the Rush Limbaugh is dead!

No, I refuse to feign sadness for the patriarchal white supremacist nativist homophobic misogynistic ableist adultist that was Rush Limbaugh who died at the age of 70 miserable self-serving bigoted years on planet Earth 2.


It is only fitting that his passing occurred within one month of the forced evacuation from the Oval Office of the worst President of the United States, Donald Trump, into exile and infamy.

With these intlerant sideKKKicks of division and deception leaving virtually simultaneously we can hope signals the nearing of an end of a tragic chapter in the U.S.-American book of history, but I do not count on this.

During this Trumpian-inspired right-wing cultural moment within the context of declarations of “fake news,” “conspiracy theories,” “witch hunts,” and verifiable distortions and lies, reaction was launched to anything and everything reported that goes against their agendas and “values”.

Within this environment, the backlash to derail, by demeaning and impugning the integrity and motivation of new youth advocates for gun safety was predictable in its speed and veracity.

People in the extreme crevices of the political right through many centrists accuse these young people of serving as pawns or coconspirators of the political left’s anti-gun agenda, that they are mere puppets who have been coached what to say and how to say it.

On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh verbally attacked student activists who had undergone a terrifying mass gun massacre at their school, Margorie Stoneman Douglas high school:

Everything they’re doing is right out of the Democrat Party’s various playbooks. It has the same enemies: the N.R.A. and guns.

During the height of the AIDS pandemic in 1990, Limbaugh instituted a short-lived recurring vitriolic on-air radio segment he called his “AIDS Update” in which he mocked gay and bisexual men who were dying. He did this under musical selections of such songs as “Back in the Saddle Again,” “Kiss Him Goodbye,” “I know I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” and “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.”


In 1989, his suggestion to cure the AIDS pandemic was “do not ask another man to bend over and make love at the exit point. That’s what you don’t do.”

Limbaugh called out gay then U.S. Representative and chair of U.S. House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, as “the banking Queen.” And he said that Democrats will “bend over, grab the ankles, and say ‘Have your way with me.’” He also quipped that “When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it’s an invitation.”

Trump awarded this ultra-conservative radio indoctrinaire, who feigned surprise as the fear and hate mongering “leader” at the podium of his State of the Union Address on February 5, 2020 as he announced to all assembled that Limbaugh was the newest recipient of the prestigious Medal of Freedom – the highest prize awarded to a civilian — as First Lady Melania pinned it around Limbaugh’s stiff neck.

Limbaugh was a verifiable racist as one of the chief architects of the “birther” movement challenging Barack Obama’s citizenship status and referring to his mixed racial heritage as “halfrican-American” and as “Barack the Magic Negro.”


The radio neo-nationalist arrogantly asked: “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”

And he said about the NFL:

The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.

And he elaborated:

I think it’s time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association,” he demanded. “Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call ’em gangs.

Back in the 1970s, Limbaugh told a Black caller:

Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.

On his show in 2013, he excused slavery imposed on black people by white people when he said,

If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians. The white race has probably had fewer slaves and for a briefer period of time than any other in the history of the world.

In his mocking “translation” of Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2011, Limbaugh chanted:

Ching cha. Ching chang cho chow. Cha Chow. Ching Cho. Chi ba ba ba. Kwo kwa kwa kee. Cha ga ga. Ching chee chay. Ching zha bo ba. Chang cha. Chang cho chi che. Cha dee. Ooooh chee bada ba. Jee jee cho ba.’ Nobody was translating, but that’s the closest I can get.

His legacy of misogyny rivals that of Donald Trump. Limbaugh coined the term “feminazis” to slander members of the women’s movement, and he called prominent women “sluts” and “prostitutes,” like Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke after she called for universal contraception coverage.

He wrote in an article titled “Undeniable Truths” that, “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”

He mocked and referred to Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, as a phony and a fraud.

One of his final lies and bigoted pronouncement he voiced on air a day following the 2021 inauguration was that Joe Biden did not win the election.

In my Jewish tradition, when a beloved family or community member dies, we wish that “their memory be a blessing.”

In Rush Hudson Limbaugh III’s case, I hope his memory remains as a warning of a life deceitfully and fraudulently lived and one that must never stand as a model for others to follow.

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