Rush Limbaugh: So wrong for so long
Some personal reflections on one of the most destructive personalities in US political history
This isn’t a story I planned on telling today.
Here is a photo of my grandfather, Harry G Nelson. Harry was a biologist: you can see him collecting bugs next to a streambed in the 1990s. As part of his work, he collected and studied insects all around the world. Over half a million specimens by the time he died!
Like 10 million other people around the world, Harry had Parkinson's disease.
I remember what it was like watching him shake with the tremors. It's a terrible disease to watch a loved one waste away with.
The reason I'm sharing this with you is because when I learned conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh died, my first thought was of Harry.
You see, shortly after my grandfather died with Parkinson's, Rush made fun of the tremors that Parkinson's patients suffer with. I will never forget the pain that Rush caused the whole Parkinson's community, and myself as a teenager who had just watched his grandparent die.
If you know anything at all about Limbaugh, it won't surprise you to learn that everything he told his radio listeners about Parkinson's disease while he made fun of the tremors was false.
It's hard to think of a more toxic person. Rush caused so much pain to so many people over the years with his brand of spiteful, sexist, deeply deeply racist politics. When I see people mourn him it tells me a lot about what kind of people they are and what their values are.
When someone dies, you're not supposed to say bad things about them.
That’s generally a decent rule of thumb. But it's certainly not one that Limbaugh followed.
Limbaugh used to gleefully read the names of gay men who had recently died of AIDS at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80s & 90s. He called it the "AIDS Update" and would play happy music underneath the segment while he made fun of them.
Today looking back, it really is hard to understand the depth of cruelty towards patients during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s.
Many of the people dying were gay men and the level of prejudice directed towards them (largely by conservatives) was truly depraved.
Ronald Reagan's spokesman made jokes about gay men dying of AIDS in the White House press briefing room.
Journalist Lester Kinsolving: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." [Press pool laughter.] No, it is. It's a pretty serious thing. One in every three people that get this have died. And I wonder if the president was aware of this.
Reagan's press secretary Larry Speakes: I don't have it. [Press pool laughter.] Do you?
Lester Kinsolving: You don't have it? Well, I'm relieved to hear that, Larry! [Press pool laughter.]
Larry Speakes: Do you?
Back then, conservatives like Limbaugh and the writer William F. Buckley stoked fears and hate towards the people who were dying during that epidemic. Buckley said AIDS was "the special curse of the homosexual" and proposed "Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm."
A 1987 poll showed that 29% of Americans agreed with his tattoo proposal. To make matters even worse, another poll showed 51% of Americans thought people who tested positive for AIDS should be quarantined in internment camps.
It should come as no surprise that near the end of Rush Limbaugh's life, while the world is grappling with another epidemic, that he was terribly wrong once again.
Limbaugh claimed about Covid: "this virus is the common cold." We all know that he was wrong. He was also wrong about climate change, a fact all too evident as millions of Texans are stuck without power due to a freak storm that froze the southwest.
Limbaugh was also wrong about cigarette smoking causing cancer (“There is no conclusive proof that nicotine’s addictive… and the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease” he said).
Of course Limbaugh had smoked. He died Wednesday of lung cancer.
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That’s all from me for now. See you next month!