And he spoke for tens of millions of us.” He defended the traditions of this country. “He refused to accept the ideological changes in this country. “He refused to accept the attacks that came against this country from within,” Levin said on Fox News. “It wasn't just that he transformed the media landscape, but he transformed the Republican Party,” said Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” “He became a power player and someone who could move voters.”Ĭonservative radio host Mark Levin called Limbaugh “a tremendous patriot.” Once a universally accepted compliment, the term “patriot” has become more complicated through its use by some of the rioters at the U.S. Republicans credited Limbaugh for helping them win the House majority in 1994. “This is a business.”īut he soon became more than a business leader. “I'm trying to attract the largest audience I can and hold it for as long as I can so that I can charge advertisers confiscatory advertising rates,” Limbaugh told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” in 1991. Politics seemed second to entertainment in Limbaugh's early years. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched Fox News in 1996. “And I'd even make the argument in many ways: there's no Fox News or even some of these other opinionated cable networks.” It just doesn't exist,” said Sean Hannity, who has 15 million radio listeners beyond his Fox News Channel show.
“There is no talk radio as we know it without Rush Limbaugh. Bumper stickers proclaimed, “Rush is Right.” He reached an estimated 15.5 million people each week and lost in the ratings for three months only once in some three decades, to advice host Laura Schlessinger, Harrison said. Before Limbaugh, only 30 or 40 stations did “talk radio,” and many weren't political, Harrison said. Limbaugh was a sensation among people who liked to tweak liberals, outraging with political incorrectness. Radio hosts talked politics before Limbaugh, men like Jerry Williams in Boston and Barry Farber in New York.īut the idea of conservative talk radio didn't take hold until Limbaugh, after bouncing through DJ jobs in Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Sacramento, went national from a perch at New York's WABC in 1988, said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine. “There are tens of thousands of us all across the conservative movement.” “I am the definition of a ‘Rush baby,’ and it's not just me,” McEnany said on Twitter.
Ex-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany reminisced about riding as a child in her father's pick-up truck as Limbaugh's show played on the radio.
Limbaugh's death led Trump to call in to Fox News Channel for his first television interview since leaving office - and he did it twice.įormer Vice President Mike Pence told Fox he was inspired by Limbaugh to become a talk radio host himself, which launched his political career. He blames Limbaugh for setting a blueprint for white identity politics and the dividing of the nation into uneasy tribes. That assessment was freely offered even though Reifowitz, as the title of his book suggests, isn't a fan. “He was the most important individual media figure of the last four decades,” said Ian Reifowitz, professor of historical studies at the State University of New York and author of “The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump.” Somewhere, Rush could surely appreciate it. To his fans, Limbaugh's death Wednesday of lung cancer at the age of 70 was an occasion for deep mourning. Without Limbaugh, it's hard to imagine a Fox News Channel, or a President Donald Trump, or a media landscape defined by shouters of all stripes that both reflect and influence a state of political gridlock. NEW YORK – You didn't have to like or even listen to Rush Limbaugh to be affected by what he did.Ĭonservative talk radio wasn't a genre before him.
0 kommentar(er)
