The repeal of the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine in gave Limbaugh his head to broadcast his controversial opinions without having to present opposing views. In July , he launched his own show on a talk station in New York City, and he was off to the races: His star was rising, and people noticed. His stance: conservative. His persona: comic blowhard.
His style: a schizoid spritz, bouncing between earnest lecturer and political vaudevillian. Limbaugh demonstrated his fervent support for the Persian Gulf War by ridiculing anyone who sought peace. His show was moved to stations with larger audiences until Limbaugh was broadcasting on more than stations nationwide. The election of President Bill Clinton in only fueled the possibilities of lacerating satire aimed at Democrats.
Ever since, Limbaugh maintained his position as the king of talk radio while fending off multiple flaps over controversial things he said on the air, about racial and ethnic minorities, feminism and the notion of sexual consent , environmentalism and climate change, his admiration for Trump and his disdain for President Barack Obama ; Limbaugh was an on-air superspreader of the "birtherism" lie that Obama was not born in the USA, and called activist women "feminazis.
Some of the harsh things he said, including blatant bigotry, helped fuel his popularity. When actor Michael J. As the AIDS epidemic raged in the s, he made dying a punchline. He called year-old Chelsea Clinton a dog. Most of the controversies rolled off him, except for Sandra Fluke , a Georgetown University law student who testified in Congress in in support of mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives.
Limbaugh mocked her, suggesting this view made her a "slut" and a "prostitute. The outcry that followed kicked off boycotts by major sponsors of talk radio, even though Limbaugh issued a rare apology for "insulting word choices.
Now he's been forgiven because of what he's done for the industry that outweighs that. In between doing his show and advising Republican presidents and candidates, Limbaugh wrote best-selling books "The Way Things Ought to Be" in , followed in by "See, I Told You So" , including a series of children's books. Chafets, who grew up in Michigan, remembers when he first heard Limbaugh on the radio as he was driving one day near Detroit.
And that shocked people," Chafets said. I actually pulled over to listen to what he was saying. Facebook Twitter Email. Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio titan, dies of lung cancer at age Show Caption. Hide Caption. Rush Limbaugh: Radio host has died after battle with lung cancer. Radio titan Rush Limbaugh died of lung cancer at 70, his wife Kathryn announced. Ethics researcher Keith Leavitt has looked at why people risk their livelihoods and careers by lying at work and found that they usually do so for three reasons: to protect their own reputation, to protect someone they serve or to protect their organization.
Think of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her unwavering commitment to her identity as a visionary tech entrepreneur as she allegedly kept lying to investors and the public about her company.
I write in my book about how these self-identities motivate us to tell all kinds of false stories about — and to — ourselves, even ones that can be deadly. Christiane Northrup, formerly a friend of Oprah and now anti-vaxxer who has doubled down on spreading her anti-science lies. Or freedom-loving radio hosts. It was behavioral scientists William von Hippel and Robert Trivers who first argued that self-deception evolved to help people better spread their lies and have more confidence doing so.
I would venture to say that the reason Limbaugh so successfully spread lies among his listeners was that he so spectacularly believed them. Thank the evolution of the human psyche for that one! So, what can we do about these self-deceivers spreading lie after lie? But I also have a strategy that has to do with why I started writing a book about honesty right after Trump got elected president.
It starts with noticing your own. But it will help you be accountable to you. Judi Ketteler frequently writes about self-awareness.
The brand of blunt, no-gray-area debate that Limbaugh popularized spread, from cable television to congressional town hall meetings, from voracious debates over health care to the rallies of the tea party movement. Such criticism echoed again and again in his lifetime, but Limbaugh seemed only to push further, assembling an ever-growing list of those branded enemies, of the issues the public was purportedly being fooled on, and the lies the mainstream media was supposedly feeding.
Though he often enunciated the Republican platform better and more entertainingly than any party leader, he was an imperfect spokesman. Limbaugh was a portly, cigar-smoking multimillionaire who drew his massive following with his message, not affability. He came with a checkered personal life that repeatedly put him in headlines.
In , Limbaugh admitted an addiction to painkillers and entered rehabilitation. He married his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, in a lavish ceremony. He had no children. Louis Rams. Through it all, though, his message remained crystal clear. Key to his monologue was a constant belittling of mainstream media outlets, even as his power grew greater than many of them.
He offered a version of the news that was easy to digest, in which his side was truthful and right and all others were liars hell-bent on destroying the country. He strung stories together to portray what amounted to elaborate left-wing conspiracies. To Limbaugh, his opponents relied on half-truths, bias and outright lies, the very same combination others would say was his magic formula. Rusty, as the younger Limbaugh was known, was chubby and shy, with little interest in school but, from a young age, a passion for broadcasting.
Louis Cardinals games, offering play by play, and gave running commentary during the evening news. By high school, he was already working in radio. He was known as Rusty Sharpe and then Jeff Christie on the air, mostly spinning Top 40 hits and sprinkling in glimpses of his wit and conservatism.
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