RIP Rush by Nate Davis

Political Crossfire RIP Rush

Reflections of a Ditto Head

By Nate Davis

Isit here pecking away on my computer as fast as possible. Rush Limbaugh has just passed away, and the newspaper is being sent to print in twenty minutes. As a lifelong listener of Rush – the king of media, certainly conservative media – how can we not write about his passing? So, we must, at least, try to get something in.

But the truth is, as I write, a thought dawns on me.

In a year when we tragically lost so many wonderful members of our community and the frum community, at large, is it even right to memorialize Rush? We don’t have time to process this question and to think it through fully. My initial thought, though, is that Rush was certainly a conservative icon and led the charge on many of the political and wider societal cultural beliefs of many in our community, so an obituary is warranted.

Love him or hate him, Rush was the best at what he did.

He was confident: “Rush Limbaugh here, beating liberals with both my hands tied behind my back.”

He was funny: “Liberals now say that that we shouldn’t put milk in coffee because it’s offensive to cows. What? What? Cows were put here by G-d [pronounced Guuuuuuuuud] for us to eat!”

He was bombastic: “Rush Limbaugh here, proven to be right 99.6 percent of the time.”

He was honest: “Folks, don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back after this obsceeeeene profit timeout.”

He was fun: “Having more fun than a human should be allowed to have.”

Those who didn’t understand Rush thought that he was the most arrogant person to step foot on the planet. However, his listeners know that it was mostly an act. And the truth is, Rush was into being the best at everything he did, so if he was going to be arrogant, he was going to be the best at that, too.

My favorite Rush moment came when he ventured to Washington in 2009 to speak at the CPAC Convention. Rush – believe it or not – always considered himself an outsider and stayed away from Washington. But, on this rare occasion, he went there to deliver the keynote address.

All of the networks covered the speech in real-time, something that is not usually done for these convention speeches. (At the time, Rush was having a public spat with the new darling president, Barack Obama, so the media wanted everyone to see for themselves what a boor Rush is.)

Rush started his address by acknowledging that the whole America was watching and said that before beginning his speech he would tell a joke.

He proceeded to tell the following joke:

A man dies and goes to heaven. The angel greets him and says, “You lived a noble life. You can decide which room in heaven you want.”

The man replies, “Well, I want to be in the same room as Rush Limbaugh.”

The angel informs the man that it is not possible because Rush is still alive. He offers to show the man around so that he could see his options. They proceed to go from room to room, and suddenly they see a room that has the golden EIB microphone, a neon Rush Limbaugh sign, and other Rush paraphernalia.

Incredulously, the man looks at the angel and says, “What’s this? I thought Rush isn’t here yet.”

The angel responds, “No, no, no. You don’t understand, this is [the supervising angel’s] room; he thinks he’s Rush Limbaugh!”

Half of America probably spat at their TVs after saying a few choice curse words upon hearing Rush’s joke; the other half rip-roared with laughter and cheered him on… Give ‘em more, Rush! Hit ‘em again!

If I had a school, I would require every teacher to listen to Rush – not for the content but for the delivery. His tones and inflections were perfect every time. And I don’t know of anyone who was better at “explainin’ things” than Rush.

Someone told me that recently a chashuve rosh yeshiva was at a sheva brachos. This rosh yeshiva is also a very dynamic speaker. A young man was giving a speech and acknowledged this rosh yeshiva by saying, “I always listen to your shiurim when I drive.” The young man then quipped, “I wonder what the Rosh Yeshiva listens to when he drives.”

Without missing a beat, the rosh yeshiva replied, “I listen to Rush!”

Radio is intensely personal. There’s are no visual aids, lures, or distractions. When the broadcaster speaks on the radio, he or she is speaking directly to you in your car...driving down a highway, sitting in traffic during the rain, waiting for a meeting…. It’s you and him – on good days and bad days. The most successful broadcasters use that intimate medium to build a connection to you; a bond that keeps you coming back.

Nobody did that better than Rush.

To millions of Americans, 12:06 p.m. meant tuning into Rush. Although I didn’t get to listen to Rush every day and there were many extended periods of time that I didn’t listen at all, like an old friend, though, I would always eventually reconnect. When I was “tuned in” to politics, whenever I would be on the phone with my wife at 12:06 p.m., I would half-jokingly tell her that I had to go. She knew exactly what I was talking about. But the truth is, come on, it was important – in the first two minutes of the show, I was able to put everything into perspective based on Rush’s vibe.

Rush used to joke that major news always broke as he was about to go on the air, so that he wouldn’t have enough time to do “show prep” on it.

“Don’t worry, folks,” he would say. “They try to get me, but they can’t. We will get this figured out in no time.”

Perhaps his last joke was dying at 12 p.m…as his show was about to go on the air.

Over the past ten-plus years, politics was intense; I had to know what Rush thought. I loved it when there was a bombshell story that was trying to destroy Trump or whoever the Republican of the moment was, and I would wait for the introductory bumper music to stop and for Rush to burst onto the air with his analysis. It was usually at that moment that he would start off his show talking about some innocuous, non-political observation about something like his new TV remote. That didn’t come from a lack of political awareness; it was the

opposite – it was his way of telling his more than thirty-million daily listeners that the media is tying themselves in knots over a story that is really a non-story.

He was usually right. Well, at least 99.6 percent of the time.

Although when Rush Limbaugh’s program started in 1988 it was so popular that restaurants would advertise that during lunchtimes they had “Rush Rooms” available, where patrons could eat lunch and not worry about missing the program, it seems like Rush’s real popularity lay deep in the bowels of yeshiva dormitories.

For 32 years, Rush has provided kosher entertainment to yeshiva bachurim who needed to relax and blow off steam but were too advanced and pure for the silly pop culture outlets of the moment. Rush was a lamdan. And, yes, a yeshiva bachur could appreciate a guy who never went to college and yet figured out how to make $50 million a year by schmoozing on the radio for three hours a day. Many hated Rush’s politics.

Well, in a 50/50 country that has deep political divisions, that is only natural. Usually that hate prevented them from appreciating anything about Rush. Unfortunately, the disease of political animus prevents people from appreciating anything about someone with a different opinion than complishments of someone else (that they probably don’t know anything about) because that person has different views than they do. And someone on Twitter probably told them that Rush was a racist, good-for-nothing pig…because he had different political views than that person on Twitter.

Was he feisty and hard-hitting on

He was confident: “Rush Limbaugh here, beating liberals with both my hands tied behind my back.”

theirs and, oftentimes, prevents them from even seeing the very humanity of the person whom they politically disagree with. In fact, there are probably some people reading this very obituary who are highly offended that I (someone they probably don’t know anything about) am celebrating the life and acthose who chose to buzz around the fire of politics? You bet he was –that was his role; that’s what he did. He was not a DJ on a smooth jazz station. But as far as being a racist, misogynist, bigot – you name the pejorative – he simply wore that label along with everybody else who has different politics than the radicals.

The elites in the media hated him because he made more money than any of them, talked clearer than them, and was smarter than them, even though he – proudly – never went to college. He also reached a much wider audience “across the fruited plane” than any of them could ever dream of, an audience of truck drivers and doctors, lawyers and bricklayers, marines and immigrants.

Anyone who actually listened to Rush knows that his audience was far from monolithic. It was a broad sampling of every type of American. “Ditto heads,” as Rush’s millions of fans called themselves, are an open-minded group – as long as you love America, you are in! I was always a proud ditto head. 12:06 p.m. will never be the same now that “America’s Anchorman” has gone off to his castle in the sky.

Move over administering angel, cue up the bumper music, and pass the EIB golden microphone to Rush.