Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump’s State of the Union address.
In previous award-winning columns, I’ve written about the profile of the kind of person who really understands what I do for a living and what other people try to do. “It” being what I call a radio guy.
Rush Limbaugh passed away. In the non-radio world that seems to be now dominated by “talk show hosts” it was akin to the death of Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, George Washington, and Babe Ruth.
Limbaugh was lionized, put on the shields of fellow warriors and carried through the streets of Rome. You saw it, I saw it, we all heard it. The truth always throws a curve ball and it deals from the bottom of the deck.
Rush Limbaugh was born in a small town in Missouri. His father was a banker and WWII fighter pilot. His grandfather was U.S. Ambassador to India, and his uncle was a federal judge. Limbaugh was a failure. When he was eight-years-old his father and mother bought a system so that he could be up in his room playing records and they could be downstairs listening on what was called a transistor radio. I think the record player needle, like a junkie shooting heroin, went right in the boy’s arm. His father, as an investor, owned part of a radio station in the town. Limbaugh got his first gig.
Now there are earmarks on how a radio guy operates in life. Let me list them for you. Number one, Rush Limbaugh used three different names on the air: Jeff Christie, Rusty Sharp and, of course, Rush Limbaugh. And in true DJ fashion, number two, Rush was married four times.
He went to rehab, another earmark to present someone as a radio guy, and most insiders believe that those drugs caused his hearing loss. As someone in recovery myself, it’s highly probable. He was fired seven times. A longtime friend of mine, Cliff Powers, worked with Limbaugh in Pittsburgh, when he used the air name of Jeff Christie, and told the stories of Limbaugh being blown out in Pittsburgh, not once wrestling fans, but twice.
He had less than a year of college, another benchmark since now this business is dominated by people who address each other as “Doctor.” And what I always thought was the whammo show-stopper, was for all the money, and what’s behind the curtain, when he finally settles in Sacramento, he replaces Morton Downey Junior.
His brother made most of his business deals. He used callers as records like good disc jockeys do. He did parody tunes as most great DJs. He did voices on air and was, in fact, what used to be dubbed a shock jock. He was brilliant, apparently very shy, and a lot of people around him never could explain whether a lot of what he did was an act or whether he truly believed it. I think its probably somewhere in the middle.
He got it! He understood it. He was a radio guy. He wasn’t leading Christianity although at the end of his life he became religious. I think he definitely loved the country. He loved the legacy. Yet with all the foibles, and all the problems, and all the good that he did, he changed what we do for a living, he changed the AM radio band and made us all better.
His voice will be missed, there is no replacement. Rest in peace, the best radio guy I ever heard, Rush Limbaugh.
— Peter Boyles