Rush Limbaugh’s Legacy of Weaponizing Radio Commentary

Few media stars were as crucial in making disinformation, false rumors and fringe ideas the right’s new reality. And toward the end of the Trump presidency, Mr. Limbaugh’s willingness to indulge the paranoia among Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters was especially powerful in misleading people to believe that bad news about their president — like his loss in November or his mismanagement of the coronavirus response — was simply made up by his enemies or the result of a nefarious plot. (In the case of the virus, Mr. Limbaugh called it nothing more than a “common cold.”)

In turn, Mr. Limbaugh rarely apologized for his comments and often attacked those who called him out, arguing that they were taking him too seriously or twisting his words out of context. Often, Mr. Limbaugh denied he had said what his critics claimed.

Mr. Trump’s widespread appeal with voters initially confused many people in politics. But anyone who was a regular listener of Mr. Limbaugh’s three-hour weekday radio program, which reached roughly 15 million listeners each week, would have been less surprised.

“To conservatives, it all sounded familiar,” said Nicole Hemmer, a media scholar at Columbia University and the author of a book on Mr. Limbaugh and other conservative media figures, “Messengers of the Right.”

“The insults, the nicknames, the really outrageous statements — they had been enjoying that as a form of political entertainment for a quarter-century before Donald Trump,” Dr. Hemmer added.

Mr. Limbaugh attacked Black athletes like the quarterback Donovan McNabb, whose success he attributed to a news media that was “very desirous that a Black quarterback do well.” He described a preteen Chelsea Clinton as the “White House dog.” He denigrated Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay man to be a serious contender for president, as “a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband onstage.”

Both Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Trump made fun of people with disabilities. Mr. Limbaugh once shook his body during a broadcast to mimic the actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Trump, in a strikingly similar display, once flapped his arms in a cruel imitation of a New York Times reporter who has limited use of his upper body.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/us/politics/limbaugh-death.html