I listened to Limbaugh the first time when I was a traffic counter in college and the batteries were dying on the Walkman I borrowed without permission from my roommate and I couldn’t listen to my @billybragg cassette anymore. AM was what I had left. (Cont’d)
#It was 1989. I had never heard anything like what he was saying. I remember him trashing Martin Sheen for volunteering for the homeless population of New York. I remember him saying. “I *AM* equal time.”
My memory may not be perfect about that, but I absolutely remember that morning. It was October. 7am or 6. I was very cold. I needed some company, any company. I took it. I knew it was trash, but I took his company and learned from it.
Later I got a different job. At a video store. For lunch sometimes I would walk across the street to the dying mall to get chicken(?) from the dying food court. I stopped in the dying bookstore once.
It was the first time I ever saw a @starwars extended universe book. It was 1990(?). I thought “who will ever care about Star Wars ever again?!” And....
I also saw a copy of Rush Limbaugh’s first book. I’m checking now so I know it was 1992: “The Way Things Ought To Be”. I remember laughing out loud at the sheer fucking, gloating audacity of it. I didn’t buy that book but I looked thru it....
I recall he either dedicated or acknowledged it to Judith Regan, his editor and the conservative enabler who ended up having an affair with Bernie Kerik. Cont’d
I never liked him.
But I was fascinated by the world he showed me. And the world he created. The world of eternal grievance and self congratulation. The happy hating. He was, and I mean this as true compliment, a master broadcaster. And he was, and I mean this as despisement....
The aspirational model for a million charlatans and half- and quasi-talents who would seek to imitate him, all the way to the fucking presidency. His world view unleashed a scourge. That scourge is nothing I can support, and only want to kick grave dirt upon. But...
Having lost a parent to lung cancer, I do not wish to offer solace, exactly but hope that he can reflect upon both his talents and his harms, and offer my small thanks for alerting me to the world of rabid angry thought I did not know existed....
I hope but do not expect him to reflect on the pain he has caused others. I not wish him well, but I do not wish him pain. That’s all I can say about Rush Limbaugh, who kept me company on a cold morning. We are all cold and alone sometimes. Let’s comfort each other better.
