Quarter-Life Attributes Success To Rush Limbaugh

PR Web ^ | April 4, 2003

[wigginsjo]

Chesapeake, VA – Each year thousands of twenty-five year-olds across America endure the emptiness and depression associated with the "quarter-life crisis" – a severe form of psychological trauma akin to the more well-known "mid-life crisis" and usually triggered by the failure to become a dot com millionaire or famous TV personality by the age of twenty-five. But successful author and nanotechnology advocate Britt Gillette has managed to avoid the depression and self-pity typical of his age bracket, and he attributes the bulk of his success to radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

When Gillette graduated from college three years ago, he entered a job market plagued by the first symptoms of the Clinton recession. Few jobs were available for inexperienced college graduates. Prospects were dim, but Gillette was not deterred. Because his resume boasted additional educational experience – a ten-year, ongoing education at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, otherwise known to non-attendees as The Rush Limbaugh Show. From the age of twelve, Gillette avidly listened to the conservative radio host, while concepts like "hard-work", "rugged individualism", and "entrepreneurism" were ingrained into his subconscious mind by means of Limbaugh’s logical pronouncements. So when a poor job market presented itself, the young college grad was well-prepared. "Rush always said, ‘the beauty of America is that if you can’t find a job, then you can create one.’ I believed it then, and I believe it now," he says.

Armed with that logic, Gillette decided to create his own job. But doing what? The quarter-life author reflects on those days, "I was self-motivated. I loved to write, and I loved The Rush Limbaugh Show. So I decided to blend my passions into a career." The result was a self-published book titled "Bob Cobb’s Dittohead Bartender’s Guide". Gillette created the product under a pen name and targeted it toward the customers he knew best – other listeners of The Rush Limbaugh Show, dittoheads like himself. The Dittohead Bartender’s Guide took hilarious moments from the show’s history and elements of its unique vocabulary, the "Limbaugh Lexicon", and blended them into a catalogue of satirical adult beverage recipes. In fact, the term "adult beverage" derives itself from the show, adult beverages being Rush’s classy way of referring to "alcoholic beverages" without offending parents with small children who may be listening to the show.

Within a month of the book's publication, Rush plugged the book on his nationally syndicated radio program, and added it to the "Limbaugh Library" of selected readings on his popular website. Gillette was thrilled when Rush Limbaugh mentioned his book. "It was a dream come true, knowing Rush enjoyed reading it. For a baseball fan, it would be the equivalent of Mickey Mantle calling you out of the stands for a game of catch," he says. The endorsement didn’t make him wealthy, but having Rush tout his book bolstered Gillette’s confidence, and he quickly embarked on a full-time career as a writer, fulfilling a life-long dream.

With his Dittohead Bartender’s Guide selling just well enough to pay the bills, Gillette dropped the pen name and began work on his first novel, a techno-thriller based on the war on terror. Released in February, "Conquest of Paradise: An End-Times Nano-Thriller" has experienced modest success and is helping to bring the field of molecular nanotechnology greater recognition by the general public. In it, Gillette includes Limbaugh in his acknowledgements, a place normally reserved for close friends and family.

In addition to "Conquest of Paradise", Gillette writes for newspapers, magazines, and websites, hoping to further educate the public on the potential benefits and dangers of molecular nanotechnology’s development - a task he compares to teaching people about the atomic bomb prior to 1945. Gillette states, "just as December 7th catapulted the world into the Nuclear Age, September 11th will plunge it into the Nanotechnic Age. A modern day Manhattan Project is underway and the general public is largely unaware of its existence." The key to this Manhattan Project is a device known as an "assembler", and Gillette believes it will be the key to decisively winning the war on terror. "Once we have an assembler, the threat from chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons will all but vanish," he says. But as history illustrates, the development of every new technology spawns new dangers. Such is the subject of "Conquest of Paradise", a novel Gillette hopes will alert people to those potential dangers.

Everyday Gillette wakes up, he gets to do what he loves most, and he says that is the essence of living the American Dream. So does he have any dreams as of yet unfulfilled? "I'd like to re-release the Dittohead Bartender's Guide with a major publishing house," he says. The book remains self-published, and he owns all the rights. Ideally, he believes a deal could be brokered with Rush Limbaugh to split the profits 50/50, giving Rush Limbaugh an incentive to push the book - an entrepreneurial concept he learned by listening to Rush's program. As Gillette likes to say, "A rising tide lifts all boats, and there’s room for everyone to benefit."

So at an age when most of America’s youth are experiencing the pain and hardship of the "quarter-life crisis", Britt Gillette is living out his dreams. And he's quick to credit Limbaugh’s optimism and positive principles for much of his success. "Parents would do well to turn their kids onto The Rush Limbaugh Show," he says. "Listening to that show had more of an impact on my success than grade school, high school, and college combined. In America, people can achieve their dreams. My life is living proof."