Reflections on Rush Limbaugh's lung cancer announcement

A look at the evolution of his sincerity level, and what he's chosen to be sincere about - and what he's chosen to discard

I don’t listen to him anymore, so I found out about it via social media. I suppose the biggest-picture take is that it’s one of those reminders of human mortality in general.

I probably said most of what I felt the need to say in a post entitled “The (As It Turns Out Very Limited) Usefulness of Talk Radio in Advancing Conservatism” at my blog, Late in the Day, a few days ago:

The whole phenomenon of conservative talk radio was like manna from heaven when, in its present form, it took off in the late 1980s. (It has a longer history, but figures like Joe Pyne and Bob Grant never had anything like the impact of the figures that have peopled the last 30-plus years.) Even in the era of Reagan and Bush 41, the pressure, which has only intensified in the ensuing years, to keep the peace with one's left-leaning fellow citizens made conservatives feel like aliens in their own land.

The thrill of hearing Rush Limbaugh for the first time was palpable. He was coming right out and saying things that one could only otherwise avail oneself of in the pages of National Review, The American Spectator and Commentaryin the privacy of one's own home.

In retrospect, one can see that his style was the prototype for today's own-the-libs approach to right-of-center opining. He relied heavily on segments he called "updates," which were devoted to aspects of the national landscape such as feminism, environmental activism, and peace activism. He had theme music for each one explicitly designed to get a rise out of any progressive who might encounter it. (Case in point, leading into the Feminist Update with Sandy Posey's "Born A Woman.")

It fired conservatives' imaginations because it was unprecedented. It was the first major pushback against the onslaught of "social change" that had been laying siege to our civilizational underpinnings for the previous 20-plus years. And Limbaugh could pull it off effectively, given that his background was the radio industry. He's spent years spinning pop records as Jeff Christy. He was an experienced showman.

But in retrospect it can be seen that it was to a large degree about giving space to conservatives to self-congratulate. "Hell, yeah, that's my brand." Since he was the first and he was so good at the schtick, he quickly gained entree into highbrow circles. He addressed Heritage Foundation events and was interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr.

It must also be conceded that he was a loudmouth. While his interest in, and success at, carefully thinking out his positions and rooting them in actual principle was impressive compared to most who have followed in his wake, he reveled in delivering his message in the style of an overheated yay-hoo. It was not easy to see for the enthralled conservative at the time, given that there wasn't anyone or anything to compare him to.

The success he's enjoyed in the intervening decades, as manifested in the ever-more-hoity-toity circles he's run in, hanging with NFL team owners and golfing with - well, to hew to the point at hand, Donald Trump -  has undoubtedly had an effect on him. Still, until relatively recently, he made a point of distinguishing between conservatism's immutable principles and the rising and falling fortunes of the Republican Party. He wanted it to be clear that he was no figure's or party's water-carrier.

Something changed in 2016. The stakes involved were no doubt a factor. Still, his giddiness at Trump's entry into the fray when there were still several appealing candidates couldn't be hidden. He tried his best to couch his remarks in an objective-analysis framework - an eyebrow-raising move, given that he was most definitely in the opining business - but there was no denying that when he would bellow about how Trump was going to swagger onto the debate stage and upend the board-game table, how Trump had no patience for the rules of the game, it was because he thought it was great. Since then, any remaining trace of his I'm-just-providing-objective-analysis-here posture is gone. He's one of the biggest shills for the Very Stable Genius barking and blustering today.

The arc of his life story reveals an admirable eking out of his own destiny. The spawn of a lineage of lawyers in the town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he dismayed his family by plunging into a radio career after one year of college. His was the typical path of moving from station to station. When things went badly at one point, he took a hiatus and assumed a marketing position with the Kansas City Chiefs. After a couple of years of that, he told himself he’d give radio one more crack, and if success still eluded him, he’d fine some other field entirely. He was immensely relieved when the management at the Sacramento station where he made the switch from playing records to talk told him to just be himself. In just a few years, he was on WABC in New York and going nationwide.

For all his on-air bombast, he’s actually humble in person. Many years ago, I was tending bar at a catered event and he asked for a Diet Coke. I was so slammed, I had to explain to him that all I had left to pour anything into was champagne glasses. He was quite gracious about it.

Which has to make one wonder where the line of demarcation between being himself and his schtick fell. Maybe the bluster was the conduct of the Rush he’d always wanted to be.

He had a creative view of establishing a format. The above-mentioned updates were an entirely new way of disseminating content. And he was funny. Unlike the president with which he’s recently cast his lot, his nicknames really had some flair about them.

He was generous, devoting airtime and personal appearances to a number of charitable causes.

I’m not going to let my disappointment in the turn he’s made in the last five years be my final assessment of the entire trajectory of his life and work. A lot of people I’d long admired have left me disillusioned in the age of the Very Stable Genius.

Along with being a solid three-pillar conservative since my mid-1980s conversion experience, I’ve been a huge fan of radio since the dawn of the 1960s. I’ve done some radio fairly consistently myself since the mid-1970s. I venerate the legends of my youth: Dick Biondi, Larry Lujack, Cousin Brucie. From a radio standpoint, he belongs in that pantheon.

He is, to employ a hopefully not too hackneyed phrase, an American original.