Rushing To Judgment

I BEGAN LISTENING to Rush Limbaugh in 1994, curious about the new radio sensation with the funny name. I had been told that Limbaugh was hammering the new president, Bill Clinton, mercilessly, on a daily basis, and I, a Clinton fan, wanted to hear for myself. I was not disappointed. Limbaugh began attacking Clinton within minutes after his inauguration speech, and he never relented. Clinton's crime was a failure to embrace conservatism, the most heinous crime of all among the far right. Limbaugh's theme, so clearly etched in my unpleasant memory, was "America held hostage". Rush counted the days, smearing Clinton with this meme up until the great Republican electoral victory of 1994, for which Limbaugh and his radio ilk were partly responsible, when he announced that America was no longer held hostage, had been liberated. So vicious did the attacks become that the president, while flying into St. Louis one day, lowered himself to whining about the unfairness of it all, as if he as president had no weapons with which to retaliate. I was determined to give Limbaugh a fair chance, just as I was determined, years later, to give the same to Trump. Problem was, Limbaugh never gave Clinton, nor any other Democrat, the same courtesy. Especially Obama. Within moments of Obama's ascension to the presidency Rush rushed to judgment, calling the new president "a fraud". It didn't take me long to figure out that Limbaugh was a hateful, dishonest, vicious, and covertly racist smear merchant, appealing mainly to people of the same type. Limbaugh won't live long; people with advanced lung cancer never do, and the decline, I hear, is painful. I do not wish ill of him, although many of his detractors do, pointing out Limbaugh's consistent lack of compassion for others. Trump's awarding the nations's highest civilian honor to a man who earned his living by talking, telling lies, and denigrating good people is a travesty on par with everything else in the president's life and behavior. During the entire Obama presidency, Trump, clearly a racist, accused Obama of having been born in Kenya, and Limbaugh did not disagree. Eventually Trump walked back the lie, without an trace of an apology, typical of his low character.Fortunately, both Trump and Limbaugh will soon leave the scene, and it is to be hoped that their kind will vanish forever, never to be seen or heard again, unlikely as that is. The fact that both Trump and Limbaugh ever gained any measure of success and influence in American society tells much about the low moral standards and low integrity of America's conservative movement, and what it tells is tragic.