Limbaugh didn't "enhance" freedom in this country; he used and abused it to enrich himself while advocating for the far-right and white supremacists

 

When I relocated for a couple of years to Sacramento after college, Rush Limbaugh was quite the local celebrity, having honed his “craft” in the city for four years before going national in New York City the year before. Back then he was described as an “entertainer” and a “political vaudevillian.” The latter was an accurate description, since Limbaugh’s satirizing politics of the day was often worth a chuckle or two, as were the occasional song parodies; I remember the parody of Dion’s “The Wanderer”—which poked fun at Ted Kennedy and his supposed womanizing—as being a riot. But over the years the satirizing and parodying of politics—which although aimed at “liberals” could still be taken as a dose of healthy “ribbing”—disappeared, and turned nasty, and often blatantly racist.

The Reagan administration ended the “Fairness Doctrine,” a rule that required public media, such as the radio, to air alternative viewpoints to ones that had been aired previously. This meant that if a “conservative” commentator had his or her viewpoint heard, then the station that aired it must provide a “liberal” commentator equal time. We have seen the result of the abandonment of this rule in that right-wing talk shows on the radio have proliferated to the point where it is almost impossible to find “left-wing” talk radio, even in cities like Seattle. It could be argued that right-wing talk was more “popular” and generated more ad revenue, but it was also just as likely that conservative owners of communications companies preferred to have only the viewpoints they favored aired. In this environment, Limbaugh thrived.

It has been a long time since I actually heard a Limbaugh radio show, and have only been exposed to it by the occasional clip that was “newsworthy” because of its outrageous content. Yesterday left-wing YouTube commentator Jesse Dollemore unleashed his righteous fury at Limbaugh’s expense, and since I didn’t care to “mine” any Limbaugh “nuggets,” I want to speak to some that Dollemore dug up himself.

First there was Limbaugh "philosophizing" on the use of the term “nigga.” Whenever a white person discusses whether or not he is allowed to use such words, it is always with the “other” word that they might prefer to use in mind. It becomes a political and social issue because they want to create an issue. It really depends on how you say the word and if it is meant in the spirit of “camaraderie.” When racially insensitive people use it, it is clearly meant to be derogatory; Limbaugh was frequently tone-deaf in this regard.

A little history lesson for you. If any race of man should not have guilt about slavery, it is 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. No other race has fought a war for the purpose of ending slavery which we did with nearly 600,000 people killed in a civil war. It’s preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for slavery when they’ve done more to end it than any other race.

The message here is that you shouldn’t get your history lessons from Limbaugh. Slavery lasted as long as “Caucasians” practiced it. Ancient civilizations all employed slave labor—including “Caucasians” like the Greeks and Romans. One may recall the Spartacus slave uprising (there was a four-year, mostly fictional Starz series about it), which was brutally suppressed to continue slavery in the Roman Empire for another 500 years. What followed during the 1,000 years of the Middle Ages was feudal serfdom, which continued slavery in a fashion, with serfs having no rights to leave the land assigned to them unless they received permission from the lord of the manor, who they were required to serve both in supplying food and as soldiers. Serfdom in Russia was de facto slavery, and continued into the mid-19^th century.

Although slavery was not “obvious” in Great Britain, in fact it was not officially abolished until 1833, when the government “bought” all existing slaves from their owners.  Thus at the time of the original colonization, British settlers were just importing an already existing practice. The Civil War was never actually intended to end slavery, but to maintain the Union; Abraham Lincoln himself stated that if he could end the war without abolishing slavery, he would do it. Ending slavery did not become a war aim until 1863, when it was used as a threat to force the Confederacy into immediate re-unification, and failing that, as eventual national policy.

The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. What kind of “class” is that?

Limbaugh always seemed to have issues with blacks, particularly in the “cultural” sense as seen above. Limbaugh saw the promotion of black quarterbacks as “affirmative action” that elevated black players who were not “smart enough” to play the position. More of Limbaugh’s “fascination” with race:

Yes I smoke a little negro dialect there. I can do that when I, uh, I want to.

You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama’s America the white kids get beat up with black kids cheering. “Yeah, right on, right on.”

It is these wackos from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to other anti-American, Afro-centric, black liberation theologists working with ACORN, and Barack Obama smack dab in the middle of it. They have been training young black kids to hate, hate, hate this country, and they trained their parents before that to hate, hate, hate this country.

Obama is the first president in history to want his nation to fail.

Of course blacks were not the only target of Limbaugh’s nonsensical racism, and he had some frankly white nationalist, nativist and xenophobic views that are simply beyond the pale:

Let me add my (immigration proposal) to the mix. If you immigrate to this country, you have to speak the native language, you have to be a professional or an investor. No unskilled workers allowed (racist code, of course, for keeping Hispanics out). There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, no foreigners will have the right to vote or hold political office. You cannot be a burden to tax payers, you are not entitled to welfare or food stamps or other goodies. You can come here if you invest the amount equivalent to 40,000 times the minimum wage. But if you want to buy land it’ll be restricted. No waterfront for instance, and you have to relinquish individual rights to the property.

You have no right to bad mouth the president or his policies; you’re a foreigner, so shut your mouth or get out.

He even blamed Native Americans for being “responsible” for the "genocidal" death of millions of “real” Americans by “forcing” tobacco smoking on them:

How many Native Americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war? How many people have died since the white man arrived here, thanks to the Indian-invented custom of smoking tobacco?

No one should particularly mourn Limbaugh’s passing. He helped shape far-right, white supremacist dialogue in this country. Trump gave him the so-called “Medal of Freedom”; the truth is that Limbaugh didn’t enhance “freedom” in this country, he used and abused it to enrich himself while creating a “clear and present danger” to this country, the kind that fueled the January 6 insurrection.