Rushbo has met his Maker

And She is pissed

Most nights when I tune into CNN, Wolf Blitzer talks about two or three people dead from COVID. He says their names, then a few brief facts about them (this man loved the White Sox, this woman raised eight children) and then he says, “May they rest in peace, and may their memory be a blessing,” that last part a traditional Jewish blessing.

Which brings us to Rush Limbaugh, 70, the Presidential Medal of Freedom winner who died Wednesday of lung cancer. In his nearly half-century on air as a conservative radio bloviator, Limbaugh perfected his own unique brand of toxicity and hatred.

Limbaugh was a birther. And a racist. And a woman-hater. Over the course of his career, Limbaugh, a Missouri native whose bronze statue is in that state’s Hall of Famous Missourians along with Sacajawea, Walt Disney and Harry Truman, has left quite a few steamers for us to ponder, including (but not limited to):

• "When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's an invitation." 

• "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" 

• "Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud."

• “Even when I think I'm wrong, I'm right. I am all-knowing.”

• “I come from a long ago era where men could be men and stereotypical humor didn't offend anybody.”

• “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”

In a 2015 conversation with a caller about the dangers of smoking, he said:

That is a myth. That has been disproven at the World Health Organization and the report was suppressed. There is no fatality whatsoever. There's no even major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke. It may irritate you, and you may not like it, but it will not make you sick, and it will not kill you...Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it's true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots ... I would like a medal for smoking cigars, is what I'm saying.

So let’s consider Wednesday Limbaugh’s cosmic award ceremony. Glory!

Before there was a Donald Trump, there was Rushbo, methodically pushing the conversation ever toward the bubbling swill that is today’s GOP. He did, as this Rolling Stone article said, his very best to ruin America.

It is bad manners to speak ill of the dead. So let’s leave it at this: Rush Limbaugh is dead and gone, and it is up to us to figure out how to air out the foul stench of his words. May his memory be a revolution.