Yesterday morning was gloomy and gray. We were on our second day without power. Texas isn’t set up for long, deep winter weather. The snow that came down Sunday night is still on the ground here and there; we have never seen that in our part of Texas. The rare snow typically melts off within a couple of hours.
We were better off than many; our power didn’t go out until
late Monday night (shortly after I posted my Monday blog). But it stayed out all
of Tuesday, for 22 hours. Then we got a few hours, until around 2:30 AM
Wednesday, and it was out again.
We have a gas fireplace, which we seldom use in Houston, but
it was giving us a bit of heat. For a while it was 12 degrees outside (real
feel of -4, according to phone app) and 59 degrees inside. That’s pretty cold,
but some houses were in the 40s inside. Having that extra day of power also
seemed to help us preserve our pipes. So we had water—when there was enough
water pressure.
Anyway, although Tuesday was cold but sunny, Wednesday was
dreary gray and rainy. And I was tired of being cold everywhere but standing
right next to the fireplace.
Power finally came on for us around 1:30 PM Wednesday, so we had been without for a total
of around 31 hours. And we had no flooding from busted pipes. We felt protected
during this ordeal, truly.
But I was in that cold, miserable, I’ve-had-enough state when I heard the news that Rush Limbaugh had passed away. I guess we knew it was coming, but it seemed like, of course it would happen on such a miserable day.
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| Rush Limbaugh image found here |
There have been some very nice tributes. I’ll link to some
below. But I want to just add my memories.
I started listening to Rush in 1989. It must have been very
shortly after he began a national broadcast. I think he was still in
Sacramento. I’ve always been a radio listener, but not usually music (which fills my life elsewhere). I like
hearing words and learning things. But talk radio, before Rush, was things like
health programming, or info about places to visit in the town you’re living in,
or maybe a discussion of a book here or there.
When Rush started talking about politics—and saying what I
also thought but never heard anyone say on a public broadcast show—that was new.
I listened daily. For years. Typically with kids not around,
except in summer, or in the car going to or from some appointment. But they remember
it as though Rush Limbaugh was on in the background of our lives 24/7.
I got what he was doing. I found it funny. He could take
divisive topics and say the truth using humor. There were parody songs. There
was demonstrating the absurd with the absurd.
He would often say, “With half my brain tied behind my back,”
which goaded the opposition, who thought their views should be accepted without
question, because they assumed they were smarter than the rest of us—lack of common
sense notwithstanding.
And there was “accurate 99.98% of the time.” It was a
made-up statistic, but at least as accurate as many stats out there. It got the
opposition to listen, just to see if they could find an error—or something they
could call an error.
Female callers often got, “one of my favorite names,”
whatever her name might be. It was sweet.
Those of us who were tired of the opposition’s negative
labels of us, and anything we valued, appreciated someone bold enough to call
them “feminazis.” He dared to say things—all without profanity—that we just
hadn’t been allowed to hear any voice say. One was “Feminism was established so
as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.” I believe feminism degrades women and pressures them to be bad men, while pressuring men
not to be men. But his statement adds that layer of humor that his followers
appreciate and his opponents find appalling.
He handled that “golden EIB [Excellence in Broadcasting]
microphone” so very well. He became, essentially, his own distributor, syndicated
on hundreds of AM radio stations. You could say he actually saved AM radio from
disappearing. And you could also say he started talk radio, and any other forum
for public conservative conversation. Sean Hannity and Mark Levin would not
have had a voice without Rush as their forerunner. Glenn Beck got a start
filling in for Rush. Anyone else, even on YouTube or other more obscure forums
comes out of Rush Limbaugh’s pioneering radio show.
He was hated by the opposition. They couldn’t silence him,
and that was unacceptable. Yesterday, they showed their disrespect in ways that
I won’t bother to acknowledge here, other than to note that he was not the one
saying and doing vile things, like they claimed to rage against.
Back in 2016, during the presidential primary season, I was
very much behind Ted Cruz, because I am a constitutional conservative. Donald
Trump didn’t seem to care that much about the Constitution—or even understand
it. He talked a “populist” message that didn’t resonate with me. And he sounded
authoritarian. I was wrong about him, it turned out. But there were also the
brutal personal attacks on his Republican opponents. Rush seemed to be OK with
that. He didn’t just describe what was going on in the campaign; he seemed to
approve of it.
So I stopped listening. And then the time of day didn’t work
out, and I found myself turning to other sources more regularly.
But this past year, and especially since the election, I
started tuning in now and again. I started to see I’d missed a good four years
of listening.
Rush appeared bombastic on radio. Overly self-assured. But I
got it; it was his schtick. All reports of him in person were that he was
gentle, kind, curious, and mainly pleasant to be around. I could see that in
the interactions with callers and the occasional guest he talked with.
What I found, a couple of years into the Trump presidency, was that he was also bombastic in public, and overly self-assured. But reports of him in person were otherwise—decent and kind and curious. And I watched him in moments of ceremony—the most touching of which was probably awarding the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh at the State of the Union last year, shortly after we learned of Rush’s cancer diagnosis.
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| Rush Limbaugh receives the Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union speech, 2020. The post where I found this also said, "It was in an 'impromptu' two-hour interview with Rush that Donald Trump first laid out the case for Making American Great Again." From Trent Lynn Clark, found here. |
I think Rush understood Trump because they were similar. I
wish I had understood that five years ago.
Rush Limbaugh was a lover of the Constitution, and of the historical founding of this country. And he had a way of telling the story of the goodness that reached people. People got converted to the ideals of freedom and
prosperity through his broadcasts. Young people grew up as “Rush babies” and
stayed conservative—meaning conserving the Constitution. They learned common
sense, and how to think through an idea without getting too much emotion in the
way. And doing it with good humor instead of rancor.
I wish we had his voice in these next few years. I hope his
legacy—those of us he taught—will be able to combine to do some portion of what
he gave us these past several decades.
Here are some nice tributes:
· “Mark Levin gets choked up remembering Rush
Limbaugh's legacy” Mark Levin with Martha Raddatz on Fox News, Feb. 17, 2021.
· “Rush’s Monument: Let Us All Speak, and Fearlessly.” by Andrew Klavan for City Journal, Feb. 17, 2021.
· Glenn Beck: “How Rush Limbaugh Was Responsible for My Radio Career”
· Glenn Beck Facebook post, photos of subbing at the EIB microphone around 1999
· Hillsdale College Facebook post, “From the desk of Larry Arnn”
· Senator Ted Cruz post on Facebook
· “Ben Shapiro Reflects on the Life and Legacy of Rush Limbaugh” posted by Matt Walsh on Facebook.
· “Read The Most Touching Tributes To Broadcast Legend Rush Limbaugh” by Tristan Justice for The Federalist, Feb. 17, 2021.
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