Posted on 02/18/2025 10:05:21 AM PST by Twotone
Four years ago today, just about this time, I was pottering about getting ready to guest-host The Rush Limbaugh Show when the telephone rang. It was Kraig Kitchin, his longtime friend (and head of the network that distributed his show), calling to break the news that Rush had died earlier that morning.
Post-Limbaugh talk radio seems smaller to me than it once did - not just because Rush had a big personality, but because he managed to fit the flotsam and jetsam of the news cycle into the big picture. Whatever topic he'd alight on, he would enlarge, and connect to the great coursing currents of the age. He was also incredibly, naturally funny. I have nothing against any of his successors up and down the dial, but, on the rare occasions I switch on the radio in his time-slot, it's not the same.
Two years ago, the anniversary of Rush's death fell on the day of our weekly Clubland Q&A. It wasn't intended to be a one-hour remembrance of America's anchorman, but, because listeners had so many questions about him and his show, it somehow turned into one. Listening to it later, I thought it was worth a re-broadcast - not just for the questions and answers, but for other aspects, too: a musical selection courtesy of his beloved Kathryn, a brief evocation of my guest-hosting days, and the last words Rush ever spoke on air.
Click above to listen.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
ALSO ART BELL-—just to make you think a little outside the lines.
💯.
We all do.
There are many people in many vocations that will always be one of a kind, considered the best at what they did with nobody coming in a close second. In talk radio it’s RUSH. Some would argue in late night TV it was Johnny Carson.
People that clearly were icons, head and shoulders above all the rest combined. In some vocations you can name two or three.
In golf, I’d argue it was Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
In Presidential politics I’d name Reagan and Trump.
Music - that’s a tough one, I’d go with The Beatles.
You can probably think of many others in various categories...
Thanks for this. I will never forget the first time I listened to him in the 80’s and how what he said made so much more sense than what was sad about him.
Rush created a legacy. We now have some very conservative talk show hosts who were probably inspired by him.
Charlie Kirk is one of those hosts who would be on my Rush legacy list.
***SAID ABOUT HIM***
Rush still available on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rush-limbaugh-timeless-wisdom/id1155318497
and the full shows go back over 10 years from 2021:
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/videos/free-video/
Mark Steyn and Walter E. Williams were my favorite Rush fill-ins.
Mark is right: talk radio is diminished without Rush.
Yeah. Of course there will never be another Rush. But CK is one I'd chose if I had to. Bo Snerdly's podcast every now and then has a Rush kind of feel (but without a lot of the humor). Chris Plante has a dry kind of humor (like he's trying to be part Rush and part Norm MacDonald), but without as much of the information as Rush did.
Prager, Beck, and Levin are probably the best around today, and Prager is off the air for a while due to a serious back injury.
Eric Erickson is a talk radio host because of Rush, as are so many others.
Rush interviewed me for the Limbaugh Letter in 2004, (I think the February or April issue). Best interview I ever did. He didn’t interrupt, listened to my answers, played off them.
You can find the whole thing reprinted in the first paperback edition of A Patriot’s History of the United States, circa 2003 or 2005. We had to remove it from later editions because of the necessity for space in adding material from recent years.
Thanks for the post.
Kathryn came up with the children’s books idea, the Rush Revere series, so they had something to work on together.
She’s a descendent of John Adams’s family.
Talk radio is being dragged down by the radio industry itself into its current near-death status. And there was clearly no one to replace him.
as someone who has easily listened to 50,000 hours of radio in his life, I can state with confidence that the two best hosts, Limbaugh and Dennis Prager, have been taken from us. The latter, likely taken for good.
Whenever I make a tuna-fish sandwich I think of Weemsco Tuna.
Delicious, even the medical waste!
Thank you Rush!
I wonder what happened to Kit Carson.
There’s no other deceased public figure that I think about and miss every day. (Well, there is Jesus, but He is my Savior so that doesn’t count!)
I thought Buck Sexton had that quality. And I was right in some respects--he did take over Rush's show in some markets.
I actually stopped listening to talk radio for almost couple of years now, and now listen to the local comedy FM radio show on my phone, and youtube videos afterwards.
Glenn Beck has gotten really compelling and much better as a host. Charlie Kirk is very good as well. I thought Steve Deace had huge brains and skills, and humility (after admitting he was wrong about Trump) but he gave up radio for I don't know what he does now.
Local philadelphia host Rich Zeoli is a standout, and market competitor Chris Stigall is good too., And of course stalwart Dom Giordano is good.
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