Behind the Bastards - CZm Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Robert is joined again by Paul F. Tompkins to continue to discuss Rush Limbaugh.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and you know, we're still coming down from our end of the year celebration. I'm headed off to CES where we'll be doing reporting for It Could Happen Here and Better Offline. We're going to be coming back for the new year soon. The Oprah episodes will be in the can. Very excited to introduce you all to that. But for this week, we're going to be going back to a rerun.

So please enjoy the story of Rush Limbaugh. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense. Still doesn't make sense.

She found out she was pregnant in jail. The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want a shortcut to the best version of you? Here it is. Feed the good wolf. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of The One You Feed.

Every week I talk to brilliant minds and brave souls about the art of small, powerful choices. Our listeners say it all. This is a lifeline. Transformational. The best antidote to a bad mood I've ever heard. Join the pack and start feeding your best self. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover, that can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up, well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How to Money podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of If you're racked up, well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How to Money Podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch your pesky credit card debt once and for all, make real progress on other crucial financial goals that you've got, and just feel more in control of your money in general. You know it.

For money advice without the judgment and jargon, Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Nikki Glaser. So I hosted the Golden Globes at Hollywood's biggest party. Honestly, you've probably seen all the headlines this week, but like any good party, there's a lot of wild stuff that goes down behind the scenes that you don't know about. And since I hosted the Golden Globes, I'm letting my podcast listeners, my besties, in on all the behind the scenes that you don't know about. And since I hosted the Golden Globes, I'm letting my podcast listeners, my besties,

in on all the behind the scenes tea. Stuff that didn't make it to the live TV taping, what went down in rehearsals, who said what at the after party? You're going to hear it all. Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're gonna go on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference. Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025. I'll be joined by David Roth at Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr. with guest appearances from behind the bastards Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare

Davis and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts from. Broadcasting from his studio in I don't know some fucking place with one liver tied behind his back to make it fair for all of the narcotics in his system. Robert Evans. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

I hate it. You don't like me. You don't like my pseudo rush intro, Sophie? Not on board? Not a fan of that introduction. This is behind the bastards. This is behind the bastards. A podcast that will never be as big as the Rush Limbaugh show

because Sophie won't let me use cultic mind control techniques on our audience. That is inaccurate, feel free. Okay, well, we're back. The man you just heard is Paul F. Tompkins our guest for this Exploration of the life and times of Rush Limbaugh. Hi everyone. Hey Paul. How are you feeling? How are you? How are you doing an hour and a half into talking about El Rush bow? Feeling great feeling great feeling I feel energized that he is dead.

Yeah, I too feel happy that he's dead. Yeah, it's fun. It hasn't worn off yet. It never will. It'll always be good that he's dead. There's a few people who are like that, where it's like every now and then I just am like, think back to the fact that Reinhard Heydrich is dead.

That's like good for him, you know Good for him So once upon a time Paul the United States used to have a thing called the fairness doctrine Now in short the fairness doctrine required anyone with a broadcast license to present controversial Issues in a balanced way providing roughly equivalent time to present both sides of an issue. Now, this was obviously a flawed rule. Some issues, for example, like climate change, don't have two sides, right? There may be different sides about like,

what the right response is, but there's not two sides to the reality of climate change. And while the, you know, the fairness doctrine, so the fairness doctrine, not a perfect, not a silver bullet sort of thingamajig, but while it was in place, right-wing media in the form that we have today did not and could not exist.

Now, since the dawn of the fake news era, which we're in now, a lot of folks have talked about the time of guys like Walter Cronkite, right? When you had newsmen who basically every American trusted, who could shift massive national issues just based on their considered opinion, right? Cronkite calls Vietnam a quagmire,

suddenly national opinion on its switches. And a big part of why these guys were trusted is they were required to lend equal weight to both sides. They couldn't just be partisan shills. Now this generally meant that they would give kind of the conservative opinion and the liberal opinion as opposed to the far left or the far right. But it did mean that you, you, you didn't have something as

unbalanced as Fox news, right? Right. It's like the voter guide you get. Yeah, exactly. It gives you the measure and says, some people say this, some people say this. Yeah. And as flawed as the fairness doctrine was, it was part of why most Americans lived in a semi unified media ecosystem back in up prior to 1987. Now, obviously this did

not last in 1987. The FCC is the result of a court case. The FCC rejected the fairness doctrine. Conservatives cheered this on because fair media was seen by arch conservatives, guys like Roger Stone, as a big reason why Americans had broadly supported the impeachment of Richard Nixon at the end of the Watergate investigation. Watergate is one of these situations where when the investigation starts, the vast majority of conservatives are against it, right? Don't think Nixon did anything wrong. The evidence comes out in opinion shifts, and it becomes very popular

to get Nixon out of office. This is the last time that happens, right? This is the last time that like people's minds get changed by the facts on a political issue in America. And it's the last time this happens because the right goes after the fairness doctrine. After about a decade or so of fighting, they're able to get it killed.

And the end of the fairness doctrine was the necessary precursor to the creation Fairness Doctrine, after about a decade or so of fighting, they're able to get it killed. And the end of the Fairness Doctrine was the necessary precursor to the creation of a wholly separate walled garden of right-wing content, which was seen by dudes like Roger Ailes as a necessary step to protecting right-wing voters from ever learning about other opinions, which would, they believed, protect the next criminal right-wing president from impeachment. Now, after Limbaugh's death, the New York Times let Ben Shapiro, noted novelist, write a column about his professional idol.

Benny Schaps called the fairness doctrine, quote, a standard that, in practice, allowed for the domination of broadcast media by liberals with sporadic commentary by conservatives. That's my Benny Schaap's voice. I'm concerned at how good that was of an imitation. It's really quite good. It's really good. So Rush Limbaugh was aware from the beginning that his whole career hinged on the fairness doctrines death with his, and like he starts being a national voice in 1989, two years

after the end of the fairness doctrine. That's not a coincidence. Now with his unparalleled national platform and his status as a chief thought leader of the American right, Limbaugh went about turning the Fairness Doctrine into his main boogeyman. I found a Vanity Fair article from 2009

that lays this out quite well. Quote, the single most important issue in Russia's radio career is now among the hot button issues in conservative politics. The fairness doctrine, a formalized, fair and balanced rule for covering the controversial issues on the nation's airwaves, which the Reagan FCC killed in 1987. The most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which put substantial blame on talk radio for a generation of conservative dominance in Washington, wants to revive the doctrine,

which would pretty handily destroy conservative talk. According to the official CPAC polling of its members, restoring the fairness doctrine is the third most significant Democratic Congress policy initiative opposed by the right wing, raking only behind expanding government and public healthcare.

So yeah, there is with Russia's orchestration a rabidness to the cause. Opposing the fairness doctrine is up there with opposing abortion. And he's, you know, he's a, it's really him that's responsible for making this such a popular issue. It starts off as a thing that kind of high up extreme right wingers, guys who had been Nixon's right hand men push because they want to protect the next guy like Nixon.

And it gets popular though, because of Rush Limbaugh, because he sells it to the American conservative mainstream. It's funny, sorry, but the last time that there were real consequences for the highest office. Where after that, Clinton's impeachment, Trump's impeachment, whatever, it doesn't mean anything. It really is just like an asterisk in history, essentially, of saying like, just so you know, some people thought this was bad and, uh, they, and they said so officially, but there's no real consequence for any of this.

So really what they're doing is saying, we cannot, Nixon should not have had a consequence. We got to make sure that there's never a consequence ever again. And unfortunately that meant for everybody for like, for, I don't know what if, if, because if it didn't happen, if it didn't happen after Bush, which there was not even an impeachment for Bush, like for the Iraq war that we all know now was bogus. If there was never going to be a consequence for that, then it worked.

And from now on, when is it ever going to happen again? If it didn't happen then, when is it ever going to happen again? Yeah, I don't think it can because this propaganda ecosystem churns out people who would fight to the death rather than have somebody who on paper is supposed to agree with them face consequences for blatantly criminal activity, right? And then it also, it conditions whether you believe, whether you believe in, whether you're on Russia's side or not, whether you're on that side of things or not,

it conditions everybody to feel like it's okay that there's no consequences because what are you gonna do? It's just the way things are. You can draw a fucking line between kind of the things that Rush starts, because it has an impact on liberals and the left too. You've got this, it's because obviously

with the fairness doctrine, nobody ever heard anything from the far left, right? The far left in fact was criminally prosecuted a lot of times for their opinions in this period. But the positive thing about the fairness doctrine is that it was a large part of why there was a broadly agreed upon understanding of the basic reality in the United States, right?

That we don't have anymore. And when you lose that, I kind of think when you lose that, the only like things inevitably escalate to deadly violence, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's bad, right? Not that again, under the fairness doctrine, Americans were led into Vietnam,

were led into Grenada, were led into Panama, were led into all these horrible, horrible things. Obviously, it did not mean that Americans had an accurate understanding of the world, but when they had an inaccurate understanding of the world, it was still broadly similar, right? And that is better than where we are now, I guess. I think it is at least less toxic.

I guess you could argue the United States had more power The government had more power to pursue violent activity overseas and stuff. I don't know. I know it's it's a complicated issue But whatever whatever you can say about rush limbaugh. He was not a dumb man He was a huge bigot though and that 1990 New York Times write-up makes it clear that among other things He was quick to realize that rampant misogyny was an incredible marketing tactic. This was, as we discussed in our last episode, always cloaked in a thick haze of irony. Quote, this is Rush. We know that women in groups, same office, same dormitories, same barracks, eventually have synchronized menstrual cycles. We also know that there's this thing called PMS and we know it turns

a woman into a hellion. We know that PMS has been used as a defense against a charge of murder. Here's my proposal. We have 52 battalions. We can prepare the nation so that we'll have on any given week of the year a combat-ready battalion of Amazons to go into battle. Imagine that you're Manuel Antonio Noriega. You are in the Papal Nuncio in Panama City.

You feel safe. All of a sudden, you hear this blood-curdling scream outside. I am outraged! And there is Sergeant Major Molly Yard leading a battalion of Amazons with PMS over the hill. That would be enough to scare the pants off of anybody. Ew. Disgusting. Not a fan. Rush.

Rush Limbaugh, everybody. Young Rush. I mean, it's like, it's just not even that funny. No! It's not. it's just not even that funny. No, it's not. That's what it's not. That's one of the things that sucks about Rush Limbaugh is that he, for somebody who did a lot of bits and, you know, was supposedly doing satire, he just wasn't that funny.

He wasn't. It's just that he was saying the bigoted, terrible things that a lot of bad people wanted to say. Yeah. And the fact that it was so horrible and the fact that it scratched their id made them laugh and made them think he was a genius because somebody was finally telling them it was okay to be as shitty as they kind of wanted to be from the beginning.

Because you put the tiniest effort into constructing these bits. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's what it's the same thing with all of these. You've got this kind of strain of comedians who thinks that it's important that they be allowed to say the N word. Not a single one of them has ever told a good joke involving the N word, right?

Exactly. Exactly. It's not funny. You're just going for shock value, right? That's all you're trying to do. And that can be, there's not that no good humor comes from shock value, but again, I haven't heard a single good joke from a white comedian involving the N word.

Not that it would be appropriate then, but I haven't heard one, you know? So from the beginning, the villains of the Rush Limbaugh expanded universe were, as the New York Times explained, quote, black activists, gay activists, abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmental activists, gay activists, abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists, artists with erotic tendencies. And above all the now game gang. That's the national organization of women. Right. His hatred. Yeah. Rush said that his hatred for these people caused him an uncontrollable urge to tweak. Quote, the simple fact of the matter,

Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphin savers and tree lovers, is that we are human beings and we are the most powerful, smartest species and we can damn well do whatever we want. And you can draw a line from this kind of, the way he's phrasing things here, it's stupid to care about the environment and animals because we're more powerful than them,

to the shit that Identity Europa and Patriot Front, these like explicitly fascist organizations exist now, we'll put up these signs like these posters of the United States that say, not stolen, conquered, right? Where it's like, fuck the indigenous people, we beat them and so we deserve all this, right? That's just an extension of what Russia's saying, you know?

And he, the fact that he made that mainstream is why they have a chance of making that mainstream. You know? Yeah. And the idea that it's so, that he phrased it as this matter of personal choice, rather than like just common sense, practical thinking. You know, like, do you really want to, do you really want to put your trash

in two separate trash cans? You know, and it's like, well, it's not so much that it's a hassle, it's that we're going to make earth unlivable for ourselves. Not that we're like, you know, fuck you, the dodo. You should have, you should have had claws or something. It's that we're fucking ourselves. Like that's why, why has that been, why is that so hard to understand? It's so hard to comply with and so hard to, uh, uh, uh, uh, keep as part of the

narrative when w because the, the logical extension is what do you care? You'll be dead by the time, by the time this shit, because the logical extension is, what do you care? You'll be dead. Yeah. By the time, by the time this shit, by the time this shit affects people in, in a meaningful way to, to you, a meaningful way, you'll be dead. So what do you care? And these are people that are allegedly all about the family. And it's like, well, I mean, do you plan on having grandchildren, great grandchildren,

great great grandchildren? Like, do you care about what? I don't know. I don't, I'm not being funny now and I'm just being, just being whiny, but What you're getting at, Paul, and what the core of this is, is that Rush doesn't believe in positive things. I don't mean positive in a good sense. I mean, he doesn't believe in things that should be done.

He believes in tweaking people. That is what he turns American conservatism into. He turns it from, we're conservatives, these are the things we believe about how the government and how society should be run, and to conservatism is owning the libs. That's where we are now, and that's what this is. Is it's, my politics are. And that's what this is, is it's,

my politics are a sort of rhetorical violence against the people I disagree with. Because improving the world, changing or making positive alterations to the world is difficult and complicated and involves a lot of debate and trial and error. That's hard. All I want to do is own the libs.

That's what Rush Limbaugh created, brought into the world and turned into the entire, that's the only thing that's left in conservatism, right? You've got these odd, you've got a couple of dudes left on the right who actually believe in something like Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? Not that what they believe in is great

or that I believe in it too, but they both have a, clearly have a principles that aren't just owning the libs, but they're on the fringe now because owning the libs is all the right has. And it's just, it's not, it's not, it's not standing for something. It's, it's, I, it's like not, what I, my politics are, I don't want somebody telling me what to do. I believe in a vague idea of a John Wayne movie and, you know, things were better in this bygone era before these people started to suggest that maybe we could improve things and that's where it ends. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's very frustrating, Paul, because that the core of that idea that like, I want to be left alone. That's more or less my politics. That's what led me to anarchism is like, don't fucking tell me what to do. And I don't want to tell you what to do. Right. And that is

what as a kid, I was taught conservatism was, but it's not what conservatism has ever been. And I think a big part of why, why the Republican establishment embraces rush is that by the early nineties in particular, by the mid nineties, definitely it has become clear that nothing that the right does works for the actual people that, that vote them into office. Triple down economics does not function. You know, it doesn't, it's well's well documented, objectively does not work the way they say it does. Yeah.

The invite, they're fighting against environmental regulations, damages the world and makes it uninhabitable. Fighting against corporate regulations gets a lot of their voters killed by dangerous working conditions and stuff. All of the wars they get us into are disasters and expensive and do not achieve the foreign policy or even the basic national security goals they set. Conservatism as Americans do it at least does not work.

And when you know that, you can't go back to the drawing table. You can't admit failure. You can't acknowledge the mistake. What you can do is own the libs, you know? And that's why, that's all it is now, is owning the libs. Yeah. It's good.

It's a good, healthy, healthy society, Paul. It's only gonna get better too. It's only gonna get better. So, Rush's justification for the outrageous caricature of a right-winger that he played on his show had always been that these liberals and leftists advocating for black lives and women's liberation and basic environmental safeguards were absurd.

And as Rush put it, I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. That's his own words on this. Now, this turned out to be an objectively good business because none of his listeners seem to find Rush himself absurd. The character he played became the man he was, and the once apolitical wannabe DJ turned into a mouthpiece for the very worst of our society's impulses. One thing that made the Rush Limbaugh show groundbreaking

was that, for the first time in an explicitly political talk show, the focus was not on guests or actual reporting or anything but the personality Limbaugh had created. Rush was his own guest, and this was a deliberate choice he made and a very intelligent one to make the show more profitable. If the focus of your show is on the news and on what guests have to say, you can kind of slot any person with a decent voice in to replace the host, right? That limits how much money you're going to make and it limits kind of the length of your career. Rush himself explained in an interview, I wanted to be the reason people listened.

That's how you pad your pocket. That's how you establish yourself. And that's very smart. He did in fact establish himself. In 1992, Rush's radio success finally got the TV people listening. They decided to try him out as on-screen talent He teamed up with Roger Ailes the man who would later invent Fox News and together

They produced one of the most outrageous and vile news programs ever made it would sadly also turn out to be one of the most influential And now Paul it is time for you and I to take a journey into this particular piece of far-right history so It is time for you and I to take a journey into this particular piece of far right history. So this episode from 1992 of the Rush Limbaugh show opens with a title card, which features an image of a microphone with the name Rush and Blazend on it. And the words, warning, the views expressed on this program are not necessarily the views of the staff, advertisers or your local station, but they ought to be. Oh, forgot about this. Yeah, I know it's good shit, man. It's good shit. Advertisers or your local station, but they ought to be Yeah, I know it's good shit man, it's good shit

The episode itself has a weirdly quiet intro No music just rush with a pointer standing in what looks like an office with wall-to-wall bookshelves and TVs interspersed within the books on The bookshelves he introduces himself and he starts talking about a recent conversation He had with President George H.W. Bush on his radio program. So there continues to be more controversy surrounding my performance with the president yesterday when he came by my radio program. The press is telling you things that aren't true, but we have the tapes and we have the truth. Me and we'll show you and tell you both tonight.

So that's telling that's that's that's extremely important what he does here. And we have the truth me and we'll show you and tell you both tonight. So That's telling that's that's that's extremely important what he does here You have to remember Fox News was not a thing yet at this time fake news was not a buzzword Limbaugh is groundbreaking in that he was not only critiquing mainstream news as being fake and lying But he's also telling his listeners. I am the truth and lying, but he's also telling his listeners, I am the truth. This paragraph from a write-up by Rolling Stone gets to the core of why I find what he's doing here so terrifying. Quote, he wasn't selling political ideas, and he never has. He was selling political attitude, the swaggering certitude, the mocking dismissiveness, the

freedom to offend, the right to assert your privilege without guilt or embarrassment. And partly because he was modeling that liberation with such wicked glee, Limbaugh was making himself indispensable. Within six weeks of tuning in regularly, he would tell new listeners they'd be on the cutting edge of social evolution. Best of all, he promised, I will do all your reading and I will tell you what to think of it. I will do all your reading and I will tell you what to think of it. I will do all your reading and I will tell you what to think of it. Yeah. Wow. I know, right? That's so abusive. It's so, and it's so bald. It's like, it's right out there. It's like, he's not, there's no, it's not like, um, uh, uh, sort of obfuscating language.

He is saying very clearly what the deal is. This is fucking unbelievable. And this is the logical extent of this. I'm so smart. I got to tie half my brain behind my back just to make it fair. I'm this big genius. I'm so smart.

You don't need to read or think. I'll do it for you. And then you too will be smart. And this is a huge thing. He spends a lot of effort in reinforcing his intelligence. After this section of the show, he goes on to introduce the other topics of that episode, which include Feminazi, Gloria Steinem, and a review of the movie, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Then we cut into, yeah. Then we cut to the actual intro, which is terrible 1990s talk show music played over a series of mocked up news articles with titles like EIB linked to higher IQ, Limbaugh gets patent, Limbaugh says no to presidential bid, Limbaugh checks brain on donor's card, Limbaugh to carry a torch at the mental Olympics

Again he puts a lot of effort into it's absurd right but yeah, it clearly works it worked on my parents You know, yeah, it worked on all of the people who raised me to some extent. They're all convinced. He's fun. Yeah, he's fun Like but he but he also says things that I like to hear but he's fun. He's just fun. he's fun. Like, but he also says things that I like to hear. But he's fun. He's just fun. But he's fun. I think also you cannot underestimate the, um, the effect of the pointer. If you have, if you're on television and you have a, you're, you're walking over to a television with a pointer and you're pointing at something, it looks very official.

Totally. Totally. Absolutely. That's why I have a point. Well, I have a gun, but it works the same way. So Robert, why are all your weapons in front of you? Well, I'm always surrounded by weapons. What's going to happen during this discussion? You don't have anything on you right now, Paul.

I got my machete right here. Yeah, you're not strapped, Paul. Hold on a second. Fucking here. Here's my knife. There we go. That's a nice knife, Paul. That's a lovely knife.

That's lovely. Jesus, it's got a wolf. Oh, I like the nice little hunchback there that makes it good for kind of close in work. Yeah. All right Now we're all armed we can properly get back to the show I didn't realize this was a this was a knife on the table show. I apologize This is I this is I mean there are like three knives on the table A significant number of that's a beauty on the table. All right, I'm a new listener. I apologize

so number of knives on the table. All right, I'm a new listener. I apologize. So the show proper starts after this point, after these fake news articles kind of go through. And Russia's first subject on this episode is the then new TV series, Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown was obviously the titular character of the show. She was a recovering alcoholic investigative journalist and a prime time news anchor and a single mother. Murphy Brown was a very feminist in progressive series for its day. Limbaugh opens his episode by expressing anger at the show's success and then in what I would consider a fairly abusive manner, he tells his audience why they shouldn't watch it. Clip.

Oh, the people on my radio show didn't. You probably watched it too, but you didn't have watch it. Clip. I told you this show was a little heavy handed. I said that they're focusing on the wrong thing in this show and they really did. And I've heard a lot of people say a lot of things about this show, but I'll tell you the most important thing is that they got very defensive about what a family is. They trot out all these various examples of what a family is and that's not what the vice president or any of the family values people.

That's profoundly abusive, I think. This, you shouldn't have watched this show because I told you not to, and I told you not to because it's not good for you to imbibe this. And I think it's important to break down exactly what he's doing here. First off, he is trying to physically separate his audience from mainstream American society.

Murphy Brown was a hugely popular show in its day. He is literally telling them, you don't need to watch this thing. Other people are watching because I am telling you not to. And he justifies this by saying that Murphy Brown is an assault on family values, which he goes on to call functional values because families like the ones portrayed on Murphy Brown were in Limbaugh's eyes, non-functional. This is significant because Murphy Brown was a single mother.

She was one of the first single mothers portrayed on American TV as not just existing, but as being a successful person and a competent parent. So naturally Rush was furiously not into it. I can't let, we can't let people watch this because it will give them the wrong idea Not just about single mothers. I also think it's worth noting that on the show itself the idea of her being a single mother was a Plot point that was a story arc that they discussed a lot on the show

It was not a it was not a blithe decision by the character. They really talked about, because it was a show that did a lot of satire, talked about issues, the discussion of whether or not she was going to have the baby and what it meant to be a single working mother was discussed at great length on the show. Yeah. And that's why he wants, that's why it is important to him to keep his audience away from it. Now, that was not the only kind of groundbreaking thing about Murphy Brown. The show was incredibly significant in its portrayal of gay people. In several episodes, most notably in 1992 and 1994, homosexuals were shown

as not just normal functional members of society, but as existing and significant numbers throughout American society. There's an episode where like one of the characters buys a bar and it becomes through kind of like comedic hijinks or whatever becomes a gay bar and he's like slowly realizes what it is. But the point the episode was making is that gay people are all around us. They're part of our community. They are a significant, meaningful part of our society. This was rare in mainstream television for the time, and it made Rush Limbaugh furious.

We have another clip here of that. Just adults teaching kids. Doesn't matter what the composition is of the family, and nobody has been critical of that. Just adults teaching kids, doesn't matter what the composition is of the family. And nobody has been critical that when Quayle said that they glorified single mothers, what he was trying to point out, my friends was and

I think this show proved it last night. This is another thing, this show's got an agenda and they say all day long they don't have an agenda. But last night show proved it. It's okay that they have an agenda,

just say so. Like this show, we are perfectly upfront and honest about what I am and what I believe on this show. And we'll let that float out in the marketplace and let you accept it as it is. There's no attempt here to fool you. There's no attempt here to deny what I am. But that's what they're all about.

Now, this is also really significant. So what Rush is doing here is he's framing his objection to Murphy Brown as reasonable and not based in hate. He's saying, I'm not against single mothers, or I'm not against gay people or whatever. I am against the fact that the show conceals its political agenda. And I can see why people like most of my family

would have found this reasonable But what's happening here is very sinister because Murphy Brown was not trying to be left-wing It was trying to make a point that single parents and that gay people are regular human beings who contribute to Society it was trying to point out that single parents are valid and functional people. These should not be political points. And recognizing the humanity of huge chunks of the population should not count as an agenda. But it was critical for Rush Limbaugh to turn it into one. Because if you can take the basic humanity of marginalized people and make it a political talking point, then you make it into something people can oppose on principle and thus frame their bigotry as not hate,

but simply a political stance that they have every right to. Rush was not the first person to talk about the gay agenda or to oppose single motherhood, not even close. But before him, the most prominent voices attacking these groups of people were on the religious right, which had first arisen as an organized political force in the late seventies. They were obviously influential, but they were also obviously religious extremists and a lot of non-religious conservatives and libertarian types did not want to identify with fundamentalists.

Rush who had a documented history of mocking religious conservatives provided the more libertarian right with a secular justification for bigotry against gay people and single mothers and women in general. And that's one of his great innovations, unfortunately. Yeah. He pioneered this idea that if you are saying this is okay, this thing is okay, what you are doing is saying, that's somehow, that's an attack on me and what I believe.

Yeah, exactly. So the idea of Dan Quell saying it glorifies single mothers, no one, that show, no one was ever saying we should do this instead. Right. We should be doing this instead of what you think is right. This is what we should be doing rather than just saying, isn't this okay? These people exist.

Isn't that all right? These people exist. It's all right. And they shouldn't be hated or punished or ostracized for being this, for being what they are. He's not even talking about a slippery slope. He's just saying that if you are saying this is okay, that means you are saying the way we live is not okay. And that's just not there at all. It's just not there at all. But if he's able to make it be that way to his listeners, that he can,

number one, make sure they will always oppose these things that he just finds gross. And number two, it further separates them from mainstream society. This is the beginning of the splintering of the mainstream American right from the United States, from most of the people in this country. And it was the beginning of making sure that there, there was no, you cannot reconcile the right with, with the modern world, with the rest of civilization, because you doing a different thing than them is an attack on them. Like we're being attacked because you're different. And so we get to fight you. That's Russia's great innovation. And also that the way you think is the real America and not what these people think. Exactly. That's haunting. But you know what isn't haunting, Robert? The products and services that support this podcast?

Hopefully. Hopefully, hopefully, unless it's Raytheon, which is very haunted products, but that's a story for another day. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11 year old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beth Lee is guilty.

This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head. Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere.

It's sickening. A few steps and we eat. That many times you have blood splatter, where's the change of clothes? She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent human being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet and that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Inside you two wolves are locked in battle. One thrives on fear and anger and doubt.

The other, courage, wisdom and love. Every decision, every moment feeds one of them. Which wolf are you feeding? I'm Eric Zimmer, host of The One You Feed. I've been there, homeless, addicted, and lost. I know the power of small choices to turn your life around. On this podcast, I sit down with thinkers, leaders, and survivors to uncover what it takes to feed the good wolf. This podcast saved me. It's like having a guide for the hardest parts of life. The wolves are hungry. What will you feed them? Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Nikki Glaser. I'm not here to roast you. I'm here to overshare everything that went down at the Golden Globes last Sunday. Everyone is already talking about what happened on air at the Golden Globes, but you are going to hear about what happened off air from the horse's mouth. Yes, I'm the horse. Me, Nikki Glaser. Join me on my podcast, the Nikki Glaser Podcast, where I will be telling you all the details.

I can finally relax with my besties, my listeners, and dish what happened backstage. What went down, the things people are already talking about, the things that people should be talking about, I've got it all. From what it took to prep for the Golden Globes to the behind the scenes of the Golden Globes, what went down in the rehearsals, who said what at the after party, who I saw at the after party,

who was dancing with who. I'm gonna spill it all. Secrets will be revealed. You do not wanna miss this episode. Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going on the road

to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference. Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or the biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025, interrogating their narratives alongside a remarkable cast

of industry talent and award-winning journalists. We'll have daily episodes, on-the-ground interviews, and special panels covering everything from the BS of AI to the ways in which race and gender play into how people are treated in the tech industry and at these conferences. I'll be joined by David Roth of Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr. with appearances from Behind the Bastards Robert Evans,

It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts from and check out betteroffline.com. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's going to be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Oh, and I am Matt.

And we're the hosts of How to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt or you've got a sky-high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early. Well, how to money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to money comes out three times a

week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for money advice without the judgment and jargon. Listen to how to money on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So Paul, I would love to go with this through this entire episode with you. In fact, I would love to do a reoccurring series where we just go through point by point every episode of Rush Limbaugh's TV show and talk about it. I think it would be amazing. It is wild to see those clips again. Yeah. Yeah. I, oh boy, oh boy. What's the, what's the opposite of Proustian? Yeah.

Um, I, it would be very, I think fun and also intellectually valuable, but we just, we have so much ground to cover. We, that this has to be the end of that episode of the show. Yeah. We can't do a rewatch of the, we can't do a rewatch podcast with the Rush Limbaugh show. Yeah. At least not, not today. Um, I think we've gotten the point across

and characterized what he's doing on the show and why it was significant. Now the Rush Limbaugh TV show was what you'd call a modest success. The 30 minutes syndicated series ran from 1992 to 1996, which is not a long run, but isn't a super short run either. It was not a huge hit, but it was successful. That said, its actual impact on history was much greater than its four seasons might suggest. As I said earlier, Roger Ailes was

the executive producer of Limbaugh's TV debut. Limbaugh and Ailes had met in 1990, and Rushwood later say that their meeting was, quote, like finding a soulmate. And I'm gonna quote here from a write-up that I found on Quartz. The persona Ailes helped Limbaugh create on that show, something between a commentator, political strategist, news anchor, and entertainer, is exactly the kind of act you can see today on Fox News. It is not hard to draw a straight line from Limbaugh's

TV show to talking heads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Like today's Fox News personalities, Limbaugh fancied himself as a man of the people who railed against the leadest liberal politicians and voters. But as he did that, he was flying his private jet around the country to wine and dine with powerful figures. The myth he created of himself with the help of Ailes is the same myth that we see pushed again and again on Fox News by its biggest names. In retrospect, Ailes may have been using Limbaugh's TV act as a test run for Fox News to see if

the brand of conservative opinion that was working on the radio could be translated to and expanded on TV. In 1996, the same year the Limbaugh show ended, Ailes co-founded Fox News at the behest of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Much of what ensued—the liberal bashinghing, fear mongering, alternative reality in which Fox's personalities lived was reminiscent of Ailes's weird little Limbaugh talk show experiment. So this is really a test case for what becomes Fox News, you know?

And the year Limbaugh show ends 1996 is the year Fox News launches. What's strange to me is, well, I guess because the show was over, I guess the show, you know, the viewership went down. I w I wonder why he didn't just stick Limbaugh on Fox News in those, in those early days. He, he, he wanted to actually. Okay. Yeah.

So, uh, like, like Ailes actually tried to get rushed to join the network, I think in 2006, um, but Limbaugh kind of preferred radio. I don't think he actually liked being on TV very much. Not, not, not to the extent that he enjoyed, you know, doing his radio show. Um, so I think that was mainly the reason, but also by the time Fox news really got going, Ailes had a half dozen rush Limbaugh's, you know? Right, yeah. Which we'll talk about a bit later. So throughout the mid and into the late 1990s, the Rush Limbaugh show was a bona fide cultural phenomenon.

Rush created the first fully monetized right wing cult of personality within like the American media at least. As you heard in the clips we played, Rush discouraged his listeners from thinking for themselves. He was the genius, and if you just agreed with him and thought the way he thought, then you were by definition also smart. As a result, from the very early point, he gave his fans the nickname, Ditto Heads. The New York Times explains the etymology of this term as it evolved on his show. Ditto, a time-saving greeting used by callers to avoid tedious repetition of the obvious. For example, you're wonderful, Rush,

and I agree with everything you've said. Ditto head then means a Limbaugh fan. So you're like, literally he's saying, my fans are people who say and believe all of the exact same things that I do. Which is profoundly unhelpful. They're absolutely going to praise me. And so in order to save some time,

let's just condense all the fawning praise that you will no doubt give me into one word. So we know that what you're saying is, Rush, I love you, you are everything to me, and I need you to know that before we get into whatever fucking issue we're gonna get into. Yeah, you are the only thing that matters to me.

Or at least your beliefs are, because I am so empty as a person as a result of how capitalism has hollowed me out and hollowed my class out, that I have nothing but the hatred of liberals that you embody. Until that first guy came along that had to implement mega dittos. Yes. Yeah. And then there's mega dittos and I, I can't even get too much into some of the

terms used on the rush limbaugh show, because it makes me want to punch things until my hands are broken and I already had that happen last year because of one of his fans anyway, the core of the rush Limbaugh show was not, as he would always claim, advancing conservative ideology, but was instead attacking liberals and the left, who he referred to as commie libs or pink commie libs. And I don't know, again, at this fucking gun class I was at last weekend, the instructor was like, the far left wants to take your guns away. And obviously I couldn't be like, actually actually the far left is pretty heavily strapped.

It's liberals who are, but like that's part of this idea that Joe Biden is somehow a leftist, right? That he's a communist, that you hear an out, and you hear all over the right now that was Limbaugh saying, anyone who is not a conservative is a far left. So it doesn't matter that actually the Democratic Party

is a profoundly conservative political party. And today's Democrats are basically the same as Republicans were when I was growing up in the 90s. There's also never any follow up on these these the fear mongering claims whenever there's an election. Like what happened to the Obama sleeper cells? Like he never are they still in play? Is he still waiting to give them the word? Like we, they never go back and say, Oh, it turns out that didn't happen. It's this. I mean, that's kind of the thing about Republican talking points. Like the other thing they kept panic, like, like terrified during the Obama years. He's going to take

your guns. He's going to take your guns. He's going to take your guns. Barack Obama did not one single thing to restrict gun ownership in the United States. No. Um, whereas actually Trump actually did ban certain fire, the bump stock, like Trump put through more restrictions on gun rights than, not that I'm saying it is wrong. Bump stocks are dumb, but Trump objectively restricted gun ownership more than Obama, but you never know it to listen to the right wing media. It's preposterous. You think that by now people would know,

no one's going to take your guns. No one's going to take your fucking guns. There's too many of them. It's not that, you know, we'll talk anyway. It's separate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's yeah. As I said earlier,

the core of Rush Limbaugh's actual ideology was owning the libs His his conservatism was built entirely around attacking the other and over his years on air Rush built up an audience of millions And eventually tens of millions who began to see political victory as being not about achievements that improve life but about tearing down and harming the enemy This is why you get to a point where now mainstream Republicans are selling mugs with like that are like the tears of my enemies are in the, yeah. You know, I'm going to quote from the Rolling Stone here, quote, any Republican candidate is better than any democratic candidate Limbaugh told

his audience early on, which might sound kind of innocuous on the surface, except that for Limbaugh, the superiority of our side and the inferiority of them was increasingly over the years a deadly serious matter. It became tribal warfare." Which, you know, is kind of where we are now. 100%. On January 23rd, 1995, Time Magazine featured Rush Limbaugh on its cover. We see him wearing a suit and smoking a cigar. Smoke curls up out of his mouth behind the bold words, is Rush Limbaugh good for America? Now, it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention

that he was not, but for the most part, the liberal media that Rush attacked and demonized embraced him as kind of like the loyal opposition, as an erudite foil to debate with, to argue against, but nonetheless, someone who deserved respect and honor due to his success. Like, you can see this in the episode of Family Guy that Rush was on, right?

Where it's like, he has these fun bickering arguments with the token liberal on the show, but in the end, they really both like each other, you know? As opposed to what Rush actually represented, which is the politics of violent elimination of the opponent. And that's what's most amazing to me, is no matter what he said about the mainstream media,

about the liberal media, whatever, they fedded him. They praised him. They made him like, he was never treated as a pariah. Barbara Walters said in an interview, people just can't get enough of him. The Los Angeles, yeah. The Los Angeles Times described him as a self-styled commander in chief fighting his private culture war against the many liberal do-gooder notions that interfere

with his right to eat and wear and spend whatever he damn well wants and say whatever he damn well pleases. C-Span highlighted him in a fawning interview that helped turn him into a household name. Within a year of that interview, he was carried by 530 stations and listened to by an estimated 25 million Americans. He started writing books with titles like The Way Things Ought to Be, each of which dutifully went on to become a New York Times bestseller.

For a man who built his career attacking the liberal media, Rush never received anything but encouragement and financial support from his so-called enemies. The fundamental hypocrisies that undergirded his career were seldom called out. Rush Limbaugh had not even registered to vote until he was 35 years old, two years before his show became a nationwide success. The repeated double standards in his work and his life never hurt his pull with his audience.

For example, Rush Limbaugh repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, which he was, but so was Rush. Limbaugh took the route that most wealthy young Americans during Vietnam took and found a doctor who would diagnose him with a bullshit injury so that he couldn't be called up for service. When he was eventually called on this by some journalists who were doing their jobs, he responded, I had student deferments in college and upon taking a physical was discovered to have a physical by the virtue of what the military says.

I didn't even know it existed. A physical deferment. And then the lottery system came along when they chose your lot by birthdate and mine was high. I, and I did not want to go just as governor Clinton didn't, which on its own is a reasonable statement except you spent years attacking Clinton for being a draft dodger. Yeah.

Oh, that's so funny and hypocritical. Yeah. To me, my favorite draft dodge explanation of all time is still Dick Cheney. I had other priorities. Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's incredible. And it's true.

Both Cheney and George W. Bush did like Rush, like Clinton, everything they could to not actually go and fight in Vietnam. One of the things that will always be the most infuriating thing in, one of the most infuriating things to happen in American politics to me is the way in which John Kerry, who is a, whatever else you can say about him, fought courageously, went to, went to,

despite the considerable privilege he was born into, did an incredibly dangerous job, was wounded multiple times, and risked his life repeatedly for the lives of his men. Right? Vietnam was a terrible war. We never should have been in it. It was fundamentally immoral on a national scale,

but on a human level, John Kerry did the right thing, which is not use his privilege to get out of fighting in a war that other people of his class got us into. And he was portrayed during that campaign as like a liar and a craven coward. Well, George Bush, who did everything he could to not fight in Vietnam was seen as this brave warrior hero. It's, I, It's still very frustrating. I don't even like John Kerry, but my God, the man did the thing.

All of you say is what you're supposed to do as a man. Yes. It's infuriating. Yeah. It's infuriating. The ditto heads continued to listen to their idol slam Clinton for being a draft dodger, even while they celebrated a man who by his own admission had done the exact same thing.

Rush would eventually rack up three to four, and I should have stayed here. It's not bad to be a draft Dodger. The Vietnam War was again, horribly immoral. It's perfectly, what is immoral is dodging the draft and then going on to do nothing but encourage more wars that involve American servicemen, right? That's immoral.

It is not immoral to dodge the draft and say, hey, this was a bad war. We shouldn't get involved in stupid pointless wars that just kill people for the profits of a tiny number. Like that's bad. I'm not gonna do it and I'm not gonna support it. That's fine. Yeah.

It's doubly immoral when you're well past the age where it would affect you. Where it's, you're now, there's another, there's a later generation of people that will be affected by this very, you know, hypocritical line of attack. Yeah, it's the moral inconsistency that's infuriating. John Kerry, I actually, and John Kerry did not support

the Vietnam War and became after he got out a very, very outspoken voice against it But it's the if Limbaugh had served in Vietnam and then gone on to be a war hawk Then at least he would be ideologically consistent, you know, yeah, at least I could say Rush Limbaugh believes in something It's like John McCain least he fucking believed in something, you know, it was terrible and fundamentally toxic as well But it was not he's not like Limbaugh, you know? He is a person who has beliefs. I don't know, it's not like that line from

the Big Lebowski, right? Like say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, at least it's an ethos, you know? Like. So, Rush Limbaugh was not a man who I think believed in mush much other than the fame and wealth of Rush Limbaugh. He would eventually rack up three divorces and four wives.

He never had any children. Despite this, tens of millions of conservatives listened to him opine on family values and traditional morality on a daily basis. Rush called it functional values. And one key aspect of his functional value system was rejecting illegal drugs. At one point on his TV show, At the Height of the Drug War, Rush told his audience, if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up the river. He

repeatedly called addicts junkies. Sent up the river. Yeah. You should go to prison if you do illegal drugs. Classy. Rush. He repeatedly called addicts junkies and suggested that drug dealers deserved death for their crimes. While he enthusiastically supported the drug war and the use of the carceral state to lock up

mostly black men for selling drugs, Rush Limbaugh was actively trafficking huge amounts of opiate painkillers. Rush used his housekeeper as a hookup, handing her cigar boxes filled with cash in exchange for thousands of pills of Oxycontin, hydrocodone and the like. In 2003, she went public and knocked on him to the police.

When the story broke, he was charged for his crimes and Florida Sheriff's deputies opened an investigation into a drug trafficking ring. We don't know exactly what Rush is, if he was just a customer or if he had some other role in it, but he was buying huge amounts of painkillers. We're talking about a guy who was spending

probably hundreds of thousands of dollars on his addiction. And did it come from, did he have some injury that got him hooked on it or? Yeah, he got it prescribed to him initially for an injury and he got addicted like most people do. Yeah. But this is not just with prescription painkillers, most people who have a problematic addiction to a drug

get addicted because of something negative that happens in their life, right? Trauma or an injury or an emotional depression, whatever. That's most people who have a problematic addiction. Limbaugh said anyone who does that should go to prison. Then he did that, you know? But he gets caught, no? And he, oh yeah, he gets caught.

And when he gets caught, it is a big story. In 2003, his housekeeper went public, wore a wire, recorded him doing a drug dealer, deal, narc'd on him to the police. And when the story broke, he was charged for his crimes. And Florida sheriff's deputies opened an investigation into that drug trafficking ring. His third wife left him.

He checked himself into rehab while his multimillion dollar team of lawyers went to work defending him in court. The legal battle would go on for three years, during which time he began doctor shopping to maintain his addiction. He was charged again with fraud for concealing information to obtain prescriptions from four different doctors who prescribed him roughly 2,000 pain pills

during one six-month period. The case would eventually wrap up in 2006 when Limbaugh agreed to a plea deal that allowed him to avoid prosecution if he sought treatment and avoided other criminal activity. Oh, for fuck's sake. That's such bullshit. It's very frustrating. Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh.

Yup. I actually didn't, I didn't really, I wasn't really cognizant of all the legal side of this. I just remember the hypocrisy of him being, you know, just gobbling up. Yeah, shaming and while he's gobbling down these pills, but I had no idea. I guess I didn't, I didn't bother exploring that side of it. Right. And like, he doesn't even, it's not even a slap on the wrist. It's like a little light tap on the wrist. It's not even a slap on the wrist. It's so fucking upsetting. And again, the immorality here is that he always advocated criminal consequences for people who

did exactly what he did. And then he didn't go on to suffer them and that's what's it's not that like there's nothing morally wrong with being addicted to painkillers if it were legal I would absolutely be a painkiller addict seems rad it's it's the but I'm also consistent about the fact that I don't think doing or possession any subsets should be a exact Yeah, yeah with the exception of like, you know some explosives There's a line to be drawn I don't think people should have Speaking of heroin, you know who supports our podcast Sophie I don't know the fine people at the Sinaloa Cartel so

I don't know the fine people at the Sinaloa cartel so Yes, this is a cartel supported podcast I just want to say Let's go to ads before I get us in some trouble To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty.

This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head. Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. A few steps and that many times you have blood splatter, where's the change? Close. She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent in the being at all. Which is just horrific.

Nobody has gotten justice yet. And that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Inside you, two wolves are locked in battle. One thrives on fear and anger and doubt.

The other, courage, wisdom, and love. Every decision, every moment feeds one of them. Which wolf are you feeding? I'm Eric Zimmer, host of The One You Feed. I've been there, homeless, addicted, and lost. I know the power of small choices to turn your life around. On this podcast, I sit down with thinkers, leaders, and survivors to uncover what it takes to feed the good wolf.

This podcast saved me. It's like having a guide for the hardest parts of life. The wolves are hungry. What will you feed them? Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the horse's mouth, yes, I'm the horse, me, Nikki Glaser. Join me on my podcast, The Nikki Glaser Podcast, where I will be telling you all the details. I can finally relax with my besties, my listeners,

and dish what happened backstage. What went down, the things people are already talking about, the things that people should be talking about, I've got it all. From what it took to prep for the Golden Globes, to the behind the scenes of the Golden Globes, what went down in the rehearsals, who said what at the after party, who I saw at the after party, who I saw at the after party, who was dancing with who.

I'm gonna spill it all, secrets will be revealed. You do not wanna miss this episode. Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada to cover the

Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference. Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or the biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025, interrogating their narratives alongside a remarkable cast of industry talent and award-winning journalists. We'll have daily episodes, on-the-ground interviews, and special panels covering everything from the BS of AI to the ways in which race and gender play into how people are treated

in the tech industry and at these conferences. I'll be joined by David Roth of Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr. with appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts from. And check out betteroffline.com. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year.

It's gonna be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Ooh, and I am Matt. And we're the hosts of How to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt, or you've got

a sky-high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending, or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early. Well, How to Money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to Money comes out three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for money advice without the judgment and jargon. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts We're back good times So while rush was using his wealth and power to avoid the legal consequences that he

Enthusiastically supported existing for the crimes he committed he continued to act as the voice of America's conservative conscience for the crimes he committed, he continued to act as the voice of America's conservative conscience. Mostly, this meant being super racist. At one point on his TV show, he played video clips of black men and boys standing in front of the TV and while he was playing these clips of black men and boys, he would stand in front of the TV and make gorilla noises and grunts. The apparent joke being that black people were like monkeys. That's kind of, I don't know what else he could be saying. It's pretty bad. Pretty satirical.

Very satire, right? Pretty satirical. Like I think he got that from a New Yorker cartoon. It would be like if Jonathan Swift actually murdered Irish children and ate them and then was like, this is a satire. Get it? Yeah, get it?

The joke is that they're food. Ah. Rush repeatedly blamed corruption and violence in African, like African nation, national governments as the fault of black people getting rid of white colonial leaders. As we see in this quote from 2007. Quote, right, so you go into Darfur

and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there, you put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, you do the same thing, right? He's saying that because the black people got rid of their colonial oppressors, that's why Africa's in bad shape. Not the decades of trauma those governments pushed, not the fact that when those governments gave up colonial control, they put people like Idi Amin, who had been a British military sergeant in charge of the government and turned out that he was a fucking monster. Not because those governments, like colonial governments, continued to suck wealth out of these countries

and support kleptocratic dictatorships that allowed them to suck more wealth out that made the country dysfunctional and that led to consistent, like decades and decades of violence. Not that they supported ethnic groups one over the other, like they did in Rwanda, which led to the Rwanda genocide. None of that, it's cause they got rid of the white people. Even though the white people didn't actually leave.

It's super fucked up. I didn't know that he'd actually gone to the lengths of trying to smear Nelson Mandela. Yeah. Communist. Jesus Christ. It's good stuff. I mean, Nelson Mandela also was at one point somebody who supported terrorism and stuff, which also is totally justified. If your government is the apartheid government of South Africa, terrorism's not necessarily the wrong thing to do.

I would say it's not off the table. For sure. It's not off the table. Yeah. Sometimes terrorists are right. Yeah. That it's like, you could argue that the founding fathers of this nation, who despite their own bigotry and slave, like the government they were rebelling against also allowed slavery,

they were right to do terrorism to get rid of having a king because kings are bad. You know? Like, terrorism is justified sometimes. Um, so rush was repeatedly critical of professional sports for the presence of black athletes, as we see in this 2007 quote, look, let me put it to you, to you this way, the NFL all too often looks like a game between the bloods and the Crips without any weapons there. I said it.

and looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it. Wow. The inherent criminality of black people was a belief that Rush held deeply, and he expressed it constantly. In 1993, he said, the NAACP should have riot rehearsals.

They should get a liquor store and practice robberies. He was saying this after the LA riots, you know? This is like, this is what the NA, this is not people reacting to horrible violence the only way that they can, right? This is not a riot being the language of the unheard. This is what the NAACP wants because they're all criminals. Who has rushed to criticize athletes?

I bet he couldn't even do like a jog. Yeah, it's pretty great. The other point of like, they just, these, you know, these people, they just love to riot. Yeah, they just love to riot. Not these people are being oppressed and murdered and finally violence was the only thing they could think to do because they were given no other options and they reached the end of their human tether.

Like the people I idolize who founded this nation. Yeah, look, slavery is over. What more do you want? I mean, and when I say that, I don't mean to say like, obviously anyone rioting in Los Angeles in 1993 was a thousand times more justified than George Washington and the like. That said, I still think getting rid of a king,

all other things being equal, getting rid of a king is a valid reason to do violence. Kings are bad. Yeah. So Rush repeatedly argued that white people shouldn't be blamed for slavery saying it's preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for slavery when they've done more to end it than any other race. Any race of people should not have guilt. If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery,

it's Caucasians. Rush, bitch, come on. It's amazing. How many Caucasians fought to keepians fought and died to keep slavery going, Rush? Is this just like, at this point, when you say things like that, right, what do you think the percentage is in Rush's mind? I actually believe this or what is the most outrageous thing that I could say? I think he comes to believe it because these beliefs become a reflection. Yeah, I think he believes his own bullshit.

Well, I think what it is, it starts, he's not a political person. He doesn't care about politics. He starts with a joke, he starts doing this persona because it gets him listeners. But he's also a narcissist. And these beliefs aren't political stances to him. They're aspects of his personality. And his narcissism dictates that he comes to believe it, because believing it and defending these things is the same as defending himself.

And again, he's a fucking narcissist. I think that's how it works. I like the Trump thing where he starts out telling a lie, but then he repeats the lie enough times that it becomes true to him because he is saying it. Yes, that's exactly the case. So another repeated Rush Limbaugh bit was attacking the daughters of democratic presidents for being ugly. In 1988, he called Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, the most unattractive

presidential daughter in the history of the country in the early 1990s. He declared Chelsea Clinton to be the White House dog. Which is like, just very vile. I don't even think it's like, the Trump boys in Ivanka made themselves political figures, perfectly fine to insult and attack them. You're never going to hear me saying anything bad about like Tiffany or Barron, because they're children, you know? Right. Yeah. Don't fucking talk about them if they don't make themselves into a major part of things, you know? Now, Chelsea Clinton's

done, has it put herself in the public eye, and it's perfectly fair to criticize her for the things she does in the public eye. But at that time, when he was saying that shit, she was literally a kid. She was a child. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what he said about her is a kind... You can't be a good person and say that about a child to an audience of millions. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. In 2012, when Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke went before Congress to argue that contraceptives

should be covered by the Affordable Care Act, Limbaugh called her a slut and a prostitute. It's hard, you can't overstate how vile he was when Marty from Back to the Future, Paul- Oh, Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox made some political statements that Limbaugh disagreed with. Limbaugh mimicked having Parkinson's disease to mock him on his show. Like, he's such a bad person. To say that, to imply that Michael J. Fox was playing it up for the cameras when he went and testified before Congress. I remember this so well because Michael J. Fox deliberately did not take his medication

and said that, and said, I want you to see this is what happens. And Rush Limbaugh accused him of like playing it up. Like it's not that bad. And he's, he's jiggling all around. Like I that's like burned into my brain forever. It's horrific. I mean, it's like, and to say that it would be like, I think what he did was perfectly reasonable. I'm not going to take my medicine because you need to know what it is like for people who don't have access to the medicine. I'm rich. I have access to all the medicine I need. Here's what it's like if you don't. I want to make this less abstract to you.

Yeah. I had a friend, one of the big things in terms of like me changing my political attitudes. It started with like me changing my attitudes on drugs. This conservative that like marijuana should be illegal, that it was immoral. I had a friend who's much older than I met on world of warcraft who had multiple sclerosis and we were video chatting and she showed me how badly her hands shook before she started smoking. Right? She like showed me herself shaking and then she took a hit, which was difficult for her. And I watched in real time how it affected her. And I never again supported keeping that shit illegal.

Cause you can't when you see it, right? You can't, it's medicine. Not that most people who use it, use it medicinally, which doesn't, isn't wrong. Like it's not wrong to use it recreationally, but just the idea that what she was doing was a crime made it clear to me how immoral our drug laws were. In a way that maybe if I had,

like it would have taken longer otherwise, I think. Completely. So yeah, anyway, Limbaugh did occasionally face consequences for his bald faced bigotry. In 2003, ESPN hired him as an on air commentator. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, and he was fired after like seven weeks because he said Philadelphia Eagles quarterback,

Donovan McNabb didn't deserve any of the praise he received. So he said, Donovan, yeah, he said, Donovan McNabb didn't deserve the praise that he received because quote, I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think that there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve. People just like this guy because he's black, not because he's a good quarterback. The media is invested in black men being good quarterbacks. You know?

I like that you went into your Shapiro voice for that quote. It's like, what the fuck, man? You couldn't do what he's doing? How dare you? So this combat drew enough widespread condemnation that Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN. But obviously this had little to no impact on his bottom line.

Maybe it annoyed him personally, but it didn't hurt him financially. By the early aughts, Rush was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He had a private jet. He had a palatial mansion in Florida. He smoked cigars that cost more than some people's cars. This is disgusting, but I think any fair accounting of Limbaugh's career has to acknowledge how

impressive it was, too. The early 2000s saw the explosion of Fox News. This is the period where it became the most watched news network in the country. A slew of Limbaugh imitators rose up, men like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson, to name a few. While these folks were all hugely successful and influential, none of them ever eclipsed Rush. This is because, in addition to wielding influence, Rush held actual demonstrable political power. And I'm going to quote the Rolling Stone again here. His sky-high ratings and the rabid fandom of his ditto heads, who just happened to fit

the profile of people who voted frequently in Republican primaries, made it inevitable that the GOP would come courting. In 1992, after he'd boosted Pat Buchanan's pitchfork populist, Make America First Again challenge to George Bush, the president became so hell bent on gaining Limbaugh's favor for the general election that he not only invited the host to the White House, but toted his bags personally into the Lincoln bedroom. Limbaugh had only praised for Bush from that day forward, at least until he lost to Bill Clinton in November.

That set a pattern. Limbaugh might instinctively gravitate to the radicals, but he was ultimately a team player, the national precinct captain of the Republican Party, as Mother Jones described him. Two years later, Limbaugh basically co-captained the Republican Revolution with House Leader Newt Gingrich when their efforts produced a landslide that brought 73 anti-government zealots to Congress. The host was made an honorary House freshman and fed it at a GOP orientation in December, where the new members wore Rush Was Right buttons and

listened to his marching orders. This is not the time to get moderate, he said. This is not the time to start trying to be liked. Ronald Reagan himself declared Limbaugh the number one voice for conservatism in our country. And Rush was always very clear. You suck. And Rush was always very clear about where he wanted to see the party head. Smaller government, stronger, more powerful corporations. He said outright,

I consider myself a defender of corporate America. It would not be wrong to view Rush Limbaugh as something of a cult leader. One of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion is in my mind, Limbaugh's embrace of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion, is in my mind Limbaugh's embrace of the irrational. Politics for Rush Limbaugh was never about concrete results or observable reality. It was a fight between good, his side, and evil, anyone who disagreed with him. And since those were the stakes, it didn't matter if he lied or spread conspiracy theories because the essence of what he was saying, that the Democrats were monsters, was true.

Nowhere is this clearer than in his hatred of the Clintons. It started when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill, robbing Rush of a president who would directly take him into the White House. From an early stage, Rush realized that lying about the crimes committed by Bill and Hillary was a more productive route than criticizing them on policy. And so in 1994, he announced, Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton and the body was taken to Fort Marcy Park. Rolling Stone writes, conspiracy theories once the province of fringe right-wingers

started to become the mainstream Republican fair they are today during Clinton's two terms. And Limbaugh was the great popularizer of the genre. Long before Fox hosts began amplifying the fringier theories about American politics, Limbaugh was busy mainstreaming wingnut world. The conspiracy cranks, the John Burchers, the Christian Zionists, the science deniers, the info warriors, their wildest fantasies, fears, and paranoias all came out to play in the national primetime on the Rush Limbaugh show, repackaged by the host into a palatable fair

for the Republican masses. And this is significant because Russia's demonizing of the Clintons, who there's plenty of very valid things to critique them on, but at the end of the day, pretty normal neoliberal politicians. It's even spread on the left this idea that Hillary Clinton is somehow more of a warmonger than other

liberals, right? Is somehow like exceptionally bad when she's not, she's very much in line with everyone else in, in the party and everyone else who has had, has held those positions. And it's not as bad as some of them, right? She's more hated by certain people. Even on the left, you'll find people who are more directly aggressive towards her than they are to fucking Kissinger.

And it's not that she's not bad, she is, so is Bill. They're greedy, Bill's a rapist, they have supported, you know, in addition to the Iraq war, a number of violent actions overseas that were disasters. But they did that as part of, like within a large group of people, right? There's nothing about them that is exceptionally bad for the crew that they run with, but this absolute demonizing of them that has a real impact on the 2016 election, that's a big part of why we get Trump, is something that Rush Limbaugh pioneers.

The Clintons are not like, my parents hated Trump when he was running and voted for him because their hatred of Hillary Clinton was, it's beyond rational. It's, and again, lot of super valid criticisms of Hillary Clinton. I don't think she should have ever been president. Also, hard to say she would have been worse than Trump.

And if you are saying, like she would have, for example, been more, killed more people overseas than Trump, you're not actually paying attention to the death toll as a result of American airstrikes and missile strikes and drone strikes as it changed from the Obama administration where Clinton was secretary of state to the Trump administration Because there was a massive escalation and death under that in addition to were appealing of the rule about any sort of reporting about

Civilian casualties from US airstrikes Trump was worse on this sort of stuff, but you'd never know it anyway I don't want to get into a rant on this but like that you can't it's almost impossible to analyze the Clintons their their impact, their crimes and their, and their, um, and their, their behaviors, their policies with any sort of rationality because this, they've been turned into goblins, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's very frustrating.

Yeah. Um, and it makes it, it makes it so that if you try to say like, well, actually this thing, you're criticizing them on isn't a reasonable thing to, or at least the way you're criticizing them isn't reasonable. Suddenly you're defending them and it's like, no, that's not what I'm, it's very, I hate it. I hate everything. Sorry. It gets that, that sort of specific personality demonization gets in the way of actually

accomplishing, uh, uh, uh, you know, discussions of, of policy and where, and where we are as a country and how we do things, because absolutely they were completely typical of the people that up occupy the white house on any given year. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, and to the end, like, you know, Hillary, uh, even if she had, uh, killed as many people overseas as Trump did, probably fewer people domestically,

uh, in terms of policy. Um, if you're talking about the, if you're going to talk, get into the, the pandemic and stuff like that, if she had been elected, um, and, and you know, the pandemic and stuff like that, if she had been elected. Um, and, and, you know, anyway, yeah, I totally agree that it's like, it's a very weird, um, uh, thing that, uh, uh, that's that, that absolutely sprung out of the, the rush Limbaugh, uh, uh, personal demon, personal demonization that then gets into, you know, like the fucking Alex Jones shit where,

see, she's a demon, there's a fly on her. Yeah, exactly. It's this turning people from like, okay, let's analyze what this person's actually done, how it's worked, when it's been successful, when it's been unsuccessful, when it's been moral, when it's been immoral, and to know she's just a criminal, she's just a warmonger's been immoral and to, no, she's just a criminal. She's just a warmonger.

And we don't have to analyze what she actually did or anything. We don't have to, we just have to condemn her. And it's not that she doesn't deserve condemnation for a lot of things, but like, for one thing, I don't know. I don't wanna fucking get onto a defending, cause I don't like Hillary Clinton. Exactly, yeah.

But she's also has it like, it's very frustrating. Yeah. It's very it's all just very frustrating. And he's and he creates this culture and it spreads now. It's not just the Clintons now. Now it's it's everyone. Right. You don't have to analyze people that you disagree with. You come up with a three word thing about them and you spread these like like Bill Clinton has committed crimes. He's a fucking rapist.

You don't have to make up that he and his wife are having people murdered. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like he's a rapist, that's bad. But of course a lot of people calling him a rapist

are rapists themselves. So they have to make it up that now, no, he's a murderer. You know, it's fucking bullshit. It's very frustrating. So Rush also led the charge on demonizing and denying global warming and climate change in his book. See, I told you so. He declared that quite a few scientists are now backtracking on their once dire predictions of melting ice caps and worldwide flooding cut to Texas being

submerged in a layer of snow that destroys civil society. Or the entire West Coast burning down last year. Anyway, uh, he lampooned Al Gore, uh, and scientists who warned about climate change as quote, a few hardline doomsayers who are sticking to their thermostats. Yeah. Yup. Uh, his conclusion was what, you know, now it's, it never affected him and he's dead. It never affected him.

Now he's dead. Yeah. And he, yeah. It didn't affect me, so it's not real. As far as he knows, he was right about this. He was right about this. Limbaugh was unquestionably the single most influential American conservative from about 1989 to

at least 2008. Now his star did start to fade by the end of George W. Bush's term, and there are a couple of reasons for this. For one, he'd been outed as an opiate addict, gone to rehab three times, and through it all had repeatedly defended an administration that led the United States into two disastrous and expensive failed wars. By the time Barack Obama was elected, many of the more libertarian minded right wing were starting to reject the neoconservative ideology

that Russia had spent eight years hyping up. Now, the fact that Barack Obama was the man who finally broke eight years of GOP power, wound up being the salvation of Limbaugh's influence. Yes, he'd encouraged the nation to burn through its treasure and influence, losing two wars, but now a black man was president. The floodgates of right-wing racism open wide.

In the first four years of Obama's term, the number of hate groups in the United States rose by 755%. This surge in public anti-black racists, I know it's pretty shocking when you actually look at the number, right? 755%. Yeah. The idea that like, oh wait, there's a black president, we're gonna need more hate groups, guys.

This is, the hate groups, the extant hate groups, we're not gonna get it done. We need more hate groups. There is a black president who in his actual policies is not wildly different from George H.W. Bush. But like, yeah. The fact that Barack Obama, yeah. So this surge in anti, in public anti-black racism was heralded, incited, and led by Rush Limbaugh, the USA's most prominent bigot. There are a lot of different clips that I could select to make this point,

Paul, but none is more appropriate than this song that aired on Russia's program while Obama was still on the campaign trail. Now, the context of this is that Limbaugh was talking about the fact that Al Sharpton, Barack Obama and Al Sharpton had like a public series of arguments, right? I think Sharpton was backing Hillary at first. So this is this song that you're about to hear. The singer is supposed to be Al Sharpton singing about Barack Obama. And I'm just going to let Sophie play the clip now. Barack the magic Negro lives in DC. The LA Times they called him that cause he's not authentic like me. Yeah the guy from the LA paper said he make guilty whites feel good.

They'll vote for him and not for walk, not come in late and won. O'Borak the Magic Negro lives in DC. The LA Times they call him that cause he's black and not authentically. I think that's enough of that. Yes. Pretty bad. I mean, I guess I just wish that non-comedy people would stay in their lane. Yeah, stay in their lane, bro.

Like the meter was terrible. It's bad. It's not funny unless you're a bigot, you know, yeah. Yeah, exactly unless you're a bigot so Limbaugh had other Obama zingers saying at one point if he weren't black, he'd be a tour guide in Hawaii in 2008 he compared Obama to a cartoon monkey He repeatedly called Michelle mooch shell and why that cuz she's a cow You know and by and all the while he claimed that racism had nothing to do with his hatred of Obama.

Doesn't matter to me what his race is. He's liberal is what matters to me. Yeah, okay. Barack the magic Negro guy. Yeah. I just, I just bring it up a ton. That's all. Yeah.

But I just, I can't talk about it enough, but I'm not a bigot. It's just convenient that he's black. It's not a problem that I have with him, but it's convenient for me, for my satire. God, I hate this guy. So is he even doing satire at this point? Like has he, has he pretend, has he dropped that pretense?

Yeah, I mean, I can play you songs that like, there's a bunch of Nazis that we'll go through and like rewrite Disney songs to be about hating the Jews and stuff or about race traders and whatnot, because it's the kind of thing that's easy to spread, right? You make a racist song and people laugh and at first it's a joke and then it becomes less of a joke. It's the whole story, right? That's exactly what Limbaugh is doing, you know? It's not even all that much less racist. He just doesn't say the N word.

When candidate Obama became president Obama, Rush said, I hope he fails, explaining that rooting for liberalism to fail is rooting for America to succeed. Limbaugh declared that stopping Obama was quote, what I was born to do. One of his tactics to this end seemed to be stoking fears that because Obama was anti-white, he was trying to gin up a race war. In 2009, Rush declared, in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering. Clearly, he would have preferred it when, you know, I don't know, when white kids were

burning down black kids' schools in his hometown. Those were the days. Those were the days, my friend. I thought they'd never end. Yeah, it's great. Limbaugh was not the only person who stoked white resentment and anti-black bigotry in this period. He was not close to the only person,

but he was the man who had created the blueprint and the cultural space that all of those other right-wing media figures acted in. Ben Shapiro is very open about the fact that Limbaugh was his hero and idol. Alex Jones altered the way he spoke and altered the acoustic setup of his Infowars studio in order to more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh. In 2010, Limbaugh was picked to address CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was the main event that year and gave what he called his first address

to the nation. Limbaugh was so central to the Republican party at this point that RNC Chairman Michael Steele was asked on CNN if Limbaugh was the effective party leader. When Steele claimed that Rush was just an entertainer, this pissed off Rush Limbaugh, who attacked Michael Steele on air and caused such an outpouring of right-wing rage against the RNC chairman that Michael Steele was forced to make a public apology to Rush Limbaugh. Kind of proving that he was effectively the leader of the Republican Party. Yeah. You know, it puts me in mind of Howard Stern coming into the Philadelphia market and forcing John DiBella, the host of the Morning Zoo, to apologize for being on the

radio. Jesus, I didn't know that had happened. It was ridiculous. So as leader of the Republican Party, Limbaugh spent the Obama years repeatedly hammering home the idea that there could not be peaceful coexistence between the right and left in the United States. Quote from Rush, We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. Every other universe is where we are. And that's where reality reigns supreme.

And we deal with it. Again, America, yeah, the real America in there can be no coexistence. Yeah, this now, now we're in the age of, you know, because Biden said, you know, looking for unity anytime somebody is looking for unity. And there is a there's a criticism of a famous monster like Rush Limbaugh. The response from the right is always, oh, where's the famous unity? Where? Well, I thought you wanted unity. And it's like, well, do you care about unity? You don't give a shit about it. You're already living in a world that says, if you don't, if you don't come to believe the things that I believe, you are against America, and you are the real racist, you're the real misogynist, you are the real hater of all things that are decent.

So I don't know how we unfuck ourselves from this situation. Right. Yeah. I don't know how we unfuck ourselves from this from this situation, right? Yeah It I don't know that we can but the the way to do it is not to Not to yield to these people. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's not to just let them Get what they want because what they want is the annihilation of the other. And honestly, the annihilation of themselves, because it's a fucking death cult at this point, like they can't be allowed to win. And like the people and that's not to say that. Every aspect of what has what a traditional conservative ideology is wrong.

They have some points. That's why it brings people in. The idea that like, you should always be wary about giving the government control of things. You fucking should, you know? Like, there's a space, there is a space for conservatism in society that is not what Rush Limbaugh turned it into, which is not to say that it was, because fucking Reagan was president

before Limbaugh came onto the scene and he was terrible and very toxic. Not like toxicity in the Republican Party goes back very far. But also it's not for nothing that the Republicans used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln. You know, there it's not there. There is a way to have a conservatism that is influential in society that isn't a fucking death cult. And we have to, at very least, get back to that if we're going to continue to be a democracy

that doesn't spiral inevitably into civil war. You know, I have, I'm a pretty committed leftist, but I also do not seek a society that forces my beliefs on other people, but you can't, you can't give these people an inch because they'll take everything. That's how they are. You know, that's what part, what rush had a big impact in making them into by 2015 rush Limbaugh had succeeded in leading a rightward push that finally prepared the Republican party to nominate an obvious fascist, Donald Trump.

Limbaugh embraced Trump early on. Right-wing radio host and never-Trump-er Joe Walsh, who is another actually principled conservative, draws a direct line between Limbaugh and Trump. Quote, the average Trump supporter loves Trump because he fights, man, he fights. Not because of any policy or issue or political philosophy. That's why they loved Rush before him It wasn't about conservatism I still can't tell you after 30 years what the fuck he believes in but he knew how to prey on audiences grievances and resentments Which is what conservative talk radio does rush was the son of a bitch He'd lie about the dims and punch them and make fun of them that gave him a cult-like following from the beginning Trump sort of inherited it.

And Joe Walsh, again, not a grad I agree with on much, but he's right on the money here. He's analyzing it properly. Absolutely. I think the thing also about Trump is like Rush, doesn't really have any deeply held beliefs, right? No. Like that you couldn't say this guy, even convincing himself, really cares that much about anything beyond

what's right in front of his fucking face that is about him. And all he cares about is his own aggrandizement. Yeah. It's narcissism. Trump and Limbaugh are very similar people. Absolutely, yeah. Rush bent the knee to Trump,

declaring him everything but the second coming. And we will not labor long on Rush during Trump's years because once he had helped shepherd his massive audience into Trump's arms, his cultural influence faded. It was watered down by the sheer mass of right-wing ideologues who flooded the internet and increasingly urged their followers to embrace irrationality, conspiracy, and fascism. In February of 2020, Rush led the charge denying the reality of COVID-19. He called it the common cold and mocked even his old ally Matt Drudge for caring about the burgeoning plague.

He urged his listeners against mask wearing, calling it a symbol of fear. Rush had long denied the dangers of smoking, particularly secondhand smoke, but this was a new level for him. When Trump lost re- reelection to Biden, Limbaugh immediately called the election a sham and joined the chorus of voices claiming fraud. By this point though, he was sick and the playing field was so flooded

with men who sounded like him, triggered the libs like him, lied like him, that his voice hardly rose above the din. Rush had succeeded in building a right wing so made in his own image that he no longer stood out in it. His last show was February 2nd. He died less than two weeks later, killed by the lung cancer. He denied had anything to do with smoking because that was another thing rush tonight, his entire career. Joe Walsh, a former Limbaugh lover, uh, found

like when he was much younger, he got into talk radio because of Limbaugh, eventually wound up, and to be fair, before Trump rejecting Limbaugh in a lot of ways, found the whole arc of Rush's career to be terribly sad. Quote, I didn't think that at the end of his life, Rush would sell out to Trump the way he has. He had every opportunity this final year to come clean and be decent. I mean, he was still on this February, lying about a stolen election. He'll keep up this act till he dies. And it's sad.

When a writer from Rolling Stone asked if maybe the reason he kept backing Trump was that Limbaugh truly believed in what Trump said, Walsh countered with a theory of his own. Quote, maybe, knowing him, it's one last big extended fuck you. Maybe it's Limbaugh saying, I'm not gonna bend to the dims and anybody else, no matter what, never. To the end, I'm never gonna do it. And at the end of this, I can't help but think that there's something

terribly meaningful in the fact that Joe Walsh rejected Limbaugh in his later years and at his end. Walsh gained prominence as a voice of the rising Tea Party. He is very conservative, but his constant principled resistance to President Trump proves that he is not a fascist. And it turns out what Limbaugh was really selling, what he was preparing the American right for all along, was fascism. If you want confirmation of this, you need look no further than how America's most prominent neo-Nazis reacted to Limbaugh's death. Chris Cantwell was one of the speakers and organizers

of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He is a straight up Nazi. He assaulted left-wing counter protesters at the event. And when this brought legal consequences on him, he filmed himself crying in fear, earning the nickname, the crying Nazi. Cantwell gained prominence among the alt-right as a podcaster with shows like

Outlaw Conservative. And Chris Cantwell openly sees Rush Limbaugh as the man who invented his style of content, who made his career possible. He's in jail right now because he made a bunch of illegal threats and stuff, but he was interviewed for another fascist podcast by a guy named Jared Howe on like right after Limbaugh's death. And in this clip I'm about to play, the crying Nazi Chris Cantwell discusses his reaction to learning about Rush Limbaugh's death. When I heard, you know, when I heard Katherine's voice, I choked up and I said, oh no. You knew.

Yeah. I knew. And what is it? Katherine Limbaugh. Yeah, I knew. And the greatest week, I had actually, she wrote a letter to Russia, because I kept on hoping that I'd get out of here in time, that I could call into the show or drop an email, and I started to realize, like, all right, he's been doing those for two weeks. If I'm going to contact this guy, I'm probably going to have to do it by mail. I forgot to do it. I was going to ask you to get me, see if there was an address that I could write to. And it turns out it's a little late for this. Yeah.

But, um, you know, when I, when I heard her voice, I choked up and I said, Oh, no, if I tell you, you're making me do exactly what I'm supposed to tell her, I'm like, because you're gonna be dead. And, um, and so, yeah, I heard it when it happened. and I was like, you're gonna be fucking kidding me man. So that's, I mean, you know, you, you, you, he's legitimately affected by this. He's mourning Rush Limbaugh, this Nazi, and he's not the only Nazi mourning Rush Limbaugh. The Daily Shoah is one of the most prominent Nazi podcasts on the internet. The word Shoah is the Hebrew term, I think it means calamity

for the Holocaust. So it's literally, this is the daily Holocaust and it is maybe the most prominent Nazi podcast on the internet. Now TDS, as its hosts call it, has been on the years for years at this point, since before Trump was in office. And the hosts of the daily Shoah consider Limbaugh to be something of an idol. Now these guys are hardcore Nazis, so they consider Russia moderate and they do demean him at times for that, but they also recognize that he paved the way for their financial success and cultural influence. And in this next audio clip, you can hear several members of the Daily Showa, can't

emphasize that name enough, learn live about Rush Limbaugh's death and the emotional impact it has on them is undeniable. News cut on that. What happened? Yes, what happened today? What? Sven, got this bad news for you buddy. Rush Limbaugh is dead.

Oh man. Are you serious? Wow. I mean. Well, I guess I can't see what he's saying about Texas. I'm not gonna dance on his grave. He said a lot of really dumb things, but I'm still kind of sad about that. Like, I'm very sad about that. I wouldn't be here if not.

I wouldn't be here, says host of the Daily Shoah without Rush Limbaugh. I can't think of a more damning thing to say in a man's passing, but that he was truly, honestly mourned by Nazis. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, the end of the day, that's what you can say about Rush. And that is the end of our episodes on Rush Limbaugh.

Wow. You're doing Paul. I'm good. I mean, look, he said some dumb things and I am going to dance on his grave. I am absolutely going to dance on his grave. He sucked and I'm glad he's dead. He was a bad person.

And I have to say on social media, when the story broke, people were talking about it. There were a lot of people that wanted to say, you can say whatever you want, but Rush was hugely successful, more successful than you will ever be. He had more influence. He was a millionaire. Guys, take the W. Do you know what I mean? You can't, and this is the problem with these guys, with Trump, with people like this is,

it's not enough for them to win. They need people to lick the boots. They need people to say, you are the greatest. It is never enough for them. It is never enough for them to be hated, to be feared, to have all the marbles. They need you to say, I love you too. Yes. They need it. And that is, that is what the only solace I can take in a life like this is that in the end, he didn't get the thing that he wanted, which was everybody saying, you're the greatest and I love you. No, that was rest in piss.

Yeah. It was rest in piss and a bunch of Nazis crying. Yeah. If you make, if this is what you make of your life, this is how, this is what's going to happen is that you're going to have people saying is how, this is what's going to happen, is that you're gonna have people saying, rest in piss. You're gonna have people saying this. And it's, and sorry, you can have all the success you want.

You're never gonna get that love. It's not gonna happen. And- People are actively making plans to shit on your grave. Yeah. Because you materially harmed their lives. Yes. And the lives of people- Piece of trash.

And the lives of people that they loved. You have, you have made life that much harder for generations of people that will come after you. Billions of humans. Yeah. You have, Rush Limbaugh had a material significant negative impact on billions of people, many of whom are yet unborn. Yeah. Like rest in piss Rush. Rest in piss brush. I wish the lung cancer had worked faster. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Paul, you got to got some pluggables to plug at the end of this short episode. Yeah. Um, I'm going to be appearing on the daily show in a couple of weeks. TDS fan. By the way, I want to, I want to shout out and give thanks to Daniel Harper of the wonderful podcast.

I don't speak German, which is the deepest dives you're going to find on Nazi content creators. I guess you go Nazi thought leaders in the United States. Very important work. Daniel Harper. I don't speak German. He provided those clips to me. Thank you, Daniel.

Sorry. Back to your. No, not at all. clips to me thank you daniel yeah i'm sorry back here no no no um... are you can follow me at uh... p f tomkins on uh... to an instagram and uh... i have uh... few podcasts that you can listen to uh... you know just all the usual stuff you can find out about me on paul thompson's dot com and then paul f thompson's dot com

well that's going to do it for us here at Behind the Bastards. So go out into the world, tie one half of your brain behind your back and then die because that would actually kill you. That would immediately lead to your death. An exposed brain. There's a reason we have skulls, people. Keep your brain inside of it. Yeah.

Anyway. Bye guys. Podcast. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11 year old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense. Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail.

The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want a shortcut to the best version of you? Here it is. Feed the Good Wolf. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of The One You Feed.

Every week, I talk to brilliant minds and brave souls about the art of small, powerful choices. Our listeners say it all. This is a lifeline. Transformational. The best antidote to a bad mood I've ever heard. Join the pack and start feeding your best self. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover, that can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up, well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How To Money Podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch your pesky credit card debt once and for all, make real progress on other crucial financial

goals that you've got and just feel more in control of your money in general. You know it. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, listen to How To Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Nikki Glaser. So I hosted the Golden Globes at Hollywood's biggest party. Honestly, you've probably seen all the headlines this week, but like any good party, there's a lot of wild stuff that goes down behind the scenes that you don't know about. And since I hosted the Golden Globes, I'm letting my podcast listeners, my besties, in on all the behind the scenes tea. Stuff that didn't make it to the live TV taping, what went down in rehearsals, who said what at the after party? You're going to hear it

all. Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going to go on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference. Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025. I'll be joined by David Roth at Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr.

with guest appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts from.