Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio pioneer, dead at 70

Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping to shape the modern Republican Party, died on Wednesday morning at age 70 after a battle with lung cancer, announced his family.

Limbaugh’s wife, Kathryn, made the announcement on her radio show. “Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, especially when that loved one is bigger than life itself,” she said. “Rush will forever be the greatest ever.”

The radio icon learned he had stage IV lung cancer in January 2020 and received President Trump’s Presidential Medal of Freedom in the State of the Union speech a few days later. First Lady Melania Trump then presented America’s greatest civilian tribute to Limbaugh in an emotional moment in the wake of his devastating cancer diagnosis.

“Rush Limbaugh: Thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country,” said President Trump during the speech.

Limbaugh is considered one of the most influential media figures in American history and has played an important role in conservative politics since the start of “The Rush Limbaugh Show” in 1988. Behind his golden EIB microphone (Excellence in Broadcasting), Limbaugh spent more than three decades as arguably the most loved and polarizing person in the American media.

The program that began 33 years ago on national distribution with only 56 radio stations has become the most listened to radio program in the United States, airing on more than 600 stations, according to the program’s website. More than 27 million people tuned in weekly and Limbaugh affectionately referred to his passionate fan base as “Dittoheads”, as they say “idem” when they agree with the iconic radio host.

In his last radio broadcast in 2020, Limbaugh thanked his listeners and supporters, revealing at the time that he had survived his prognosis.

“I was not expected to be alive today,” he said. “I was not expected to arrive until October, November and December. And yet, here I am, and today, I had some problems, but I am feeling great today.”

Limbaugh helped to increase Trump’s influence before the 2016 election by simply taking him seriously as a candidate, when other established conservatives did not want the former reality show star anywhere near the Republican Party. Many of Limbaugh’s listeners eventually became supporters of Trump and the radio legend continued to defend Trump during his presidency, despite occasional disagreements.

In the heat of the 2020 presidential election, Limbaugh hosted Trump in October for what was an unprecedented two-hour “radio rally”, during which the president was virtually given control of the coveted golden microphone to answer questions from the host and your listeners.

Limbaugh, born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on January 12, 1951, began his radio career in 1967 as a “helper” when he was just 16 years old. He finally graduated from disk jockey and worked at a small station about 100 miles south of St. Louis while attending high school.

“I was totally consumed,” Limbaugh told the New York Times in 1990, noting that his idol was a Chicago radio host named Larry Lujack. In 1971, Limbaugh was a morning radio announcer in Pittsburgh, where he was strangely instructed to cover a certain amount of “agricultural news” because the area was surrounded by many agricultural communities. In 2007, he explained to listeners how the young radio host managed to keep listeners, despite the bizarre demand.

“The last thing my program audience cares about is agricultural news. If agricultural news came up, bam! They hit the button and went somewhere else. So we had to find out, ‘Okay, how do we do this and protect the license? ‘So I turned the news from the farm every day into something funny with farm sound effects and roosters crowing and so on, and I made fun of the feed prices in the yard or whatever, so we could say : ‘We’re making news from the barn,’ news from agriculture. There were all kinds of things like that, “Limbaugh told listeners.

The snack offered a glimpse of Limbaugh’s early days, proving that he was a master at keeping the audience engaged from an early age. Limbaugh said he realized that the United States was the “biggest country of all time” when he traveled to Europe and Asia between the ages of 20 and 30, an experience that helped shape his political views.

“I am aware that the United States is young compared to the countries in Europe and Asia that have existed for hundreds of years. They are a thousand-year-old civilizations, ”he told listeners in 2013.“ So I’m going to Europe and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is this room so old-fashioned and it doesn’t work? What the hell is that? ? ” So I started to ask myself, ‘How is it that we, who are only about 200 years old, are light years ahead of people who have lived a thousand years?’ So, I started to think like that. It was a matter of genuine curiosity for me, and not from the point of boasting. “

Limbaugh continued the journey down the memory path: “I was literally interested in how it happened and then I started to think about all the other things that we lead the world in: manufacturing, technology, innovation, invention, creation and everything led back to freedom and freedom and the pursuit of happiness and dreams coming true and working hard for what you want and being able to do what you love, not just having to dream about it. “

PHOTOS: RUSH LIMBAUGH THROUGH THE YEARS

From that point on, Limbaugh believed that “American exceptionalism” should not be viewed with disdain, and his conservative views have become more prominent.

“We defend the concepts that are in our Declaration of Independence: Right to life, freedom, search for happiness. We defended that and we were the beacon for that, and even today that is why the oppressed of the world still try to come to this country “, he said.

Limbaugh also credited National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. for teaching him to articulate conservative views.

“He alone is responsible for my learning to shape and frame my beliefs and express them verbally in a concise and understandable way,” said Limbaugh once.

In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission revoked the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that had been in place since 1949 and required both sides of controversial political issues to be given equal time on radio programs. The FCC’s decision paved the way for Limbaugh to convey his conservative views without fear of being punished by the government, quickly leading to the now prominent radio format in which he pioneered.

After concerts on local radio stations in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Sacramento, Limbaugh landed at the WABC in New York shortly after the Doctrine of Justice was repealed. It was there that he changed the radio forever, when “The Rush Limbaugh Show” became a cultural phenomenon, both for the message and the way it was broadcast.

“Unlike most radio announcers, who affect a casual, intimate style, Limbaugh sounds like he’s on a podium. He’s intoxicated by words, especially those flowing from his own lips. His vocabulary is extensive; his diction tends to for the grandly formal, albeit exaggerated to the point of self-parody. Their nervous energy drains through hands that never stop moving. They shake papers, hit the table, punch the console. Whap! Whap! Whump! is often heard in the air, a rhythmic accompaniment to Limbaugh’s voice, “wrote author Lewis Grossberger in the New York Times Magazine in 1990.

At one point, after an initial struggle to succeed in the radio business, Limbaugh temporarily left the industry and worked for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. Lucky for conservatives and “idiots”, he finally got back on the radio.

“Thank you for everything you are doing to promote republican and conservative principles. Now that I have retired from active politics, I don’t care that you have become the number one voice for conservatism in our country,” wrote President Ronald Reagan right time in a letter to Limbaught that was published by the National Review in 2003.

“I know that liberals call you ‘America’s most dangerous man’, but don’t worry, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear how things should be,” Reagan continued .

Limbaugh ended up being consecrated in the Radio Hall of Fame and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He was a five-time winner of the National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Award for “Excellence in Syndicated and Networked Broadcasting”, New York Times bestselling author and named one of Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People in 2008 and one of 100 most influential people in TIME in the world in 2009.

While Limbaugh was making his radio career, a speech he gave at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2009 is widely considered to be one of the most important moments of his career – an explanation of “who are the conservatives” that led the crowd to break out with shouts of “USA! USA!”

“We love people. When we look at the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, like this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see – what we see is potential. We don’t look across the country and we see the average American, the person who makes this country work. We don’t view that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best you want if certain things are removed from your path, such as burdensome taxes, regulations and too much government, “Limbaugh told the crowd.

“We want each American to be the best one to choose. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, ”he continued. “We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an indisputable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, freedom, freedom and the search for happiness.”

In 2001, Limbaugh was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of the inner ear that dramatically affected his hearing.

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In 2003, Limbaugh was admitted to a treatment center after becoming dependent on pain relievers prescribed after back surgery. Also in 2003, Limbaugh resigned from a brief role as ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” after making controversial comments about then Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who the broadcasting legend said was overrated by media members who wanted to see a quarterback black prosper.

Limbaugh leaves his wife.

Charles Creitz, Yael Halon and David Rutz of Fox News contributed to this report.