Agitprop frontman: Rush Limbaugh with Former First Lady Melania Trump. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty

Back in 1990, Rush Limbaugh, the titanically successful right-wing media personality who died this week, attributed the rapid success of his nationally syndicated radio show to “the perception by real people that the primary disseminators of information in this country are, shall we say, slanted to the Left”.
It would be difficult to realistically dispute that contention, then or now. Though the “information disseminators” who populated the precincts of mainstream thought 30 years ago were perhaps less overtly activist-minded in their orientation than they are today, the basic proposition still holds.
Limbaugh’s fantastically successful show (reportedly 20 million daily listeners at its peak) mostly consisted of his uninterrupted extemporaneous riffs on the news of the day — with an impishly comedic tinge. His main source material was lightly-organised newspaper clippings and faxes. He seldom did interviews and took relatively few phone callers. In theory, he wasn’t doing anything particularly revolutionary — but simply by synthesising American politics through a vastly different lens from anything else which had been on offer for a mass commercial audience, he became one of the most important US political and media figures of all time.
Ronald Reagan wrote a reverential note to Limbaugh in late 1992 that illustrates why nearly the whole of the American Right is in extreme mourning upon Limbaugh’s death from lung cancer. Though Reagan’s mental acuity was in stark decline at that point, he got it together sufficiently to credit Limbaugh for having “become the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country” — supplanting Reagan’s own vice president, George HW Bush, who had just lost re-election to Bill Clinton. Earlier that year, Limbaugh had stayed in the coveted Lincoln Bedroom of the White House at the invitation of Bush — who even carried Limbaugh’s overnight bag for him, as he would later gleefully recall on-air.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of the self-identified conservatives I met growing up in the 2000s — the kind who would go out of their way to inform you that they were proud no-nonsense conservatives — attributed their political identity specifically to Limbaugh. Usually, the origin story was because he was the only midday in-car entertainment option for a motorist who wanted something other than music or sports. But it later developed into a full-scale, self-directed, ideological adventure, with Rush always there to serve as a trusted guide. A sprawling industry of liberal commentators likewise fashioned their own political identities in direct opposition to Limbaugh, alongside the legions of imitators he also spawned.
There will always be a market for media offerings which pride themselves on being unbound by the cloying primacy of liberal cultural hegemonic values. Especially as those values become ever-more monolithic in corporate America, enforced through the imperious dictates of Human Resources regimes. The excesses of oblivious dingbat celebrities and “woke” activists will provide endless fodder, if that’s what you are into.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe