I'll never forget the first time I heard him, it is like one of those things that gets etched in your mind. The first time I heard Rush on the radio, he was talking about when he had caught a mouse in a plastic trash can, and didn't know the best way to kill it, he spoke of spraying the trash can with PAM cooking spray and shaking the mouse back and forth to kill it. I laughed so hard when I was listening to him, and I have been addicted ever since. Rush Rocks!
I had just given birth to my third son in 1992 when I first heard him. I’m from MA and he played the Ted Kennedy “I’m a Philanderer” parody and I was hooked that day. I’ve listened to him almost every day since then.
I had just moved and had tuned into an ABC radio station in Baltimore while trying to find Paul Harvey. It happened to be an ABC station that did not carry Harvey, but it had this talk show host. In the first few minutes, I thought he was a nut, talking about how he had gone into a McDonald’s and the clerk there had recognized him and refused to serve him, but he would go other places and people would be asking for his autograph and bending over backwards to serve him. But I was taking a shower, and couldn’t change the station, and he said other things that made me realize, “Wow, here is a guy saying many of the things I recognize as true!”
I had no idea he was a conservative... I still considered myself “Dem” at the time. That was right after the Gulf war.
For me it was August 1988, Anchorage Ak. I was listening to KENI. 650-AM, one of the 50 EIB charter stations.
Suddenly, here was someone that spoke in the ways that I thought. I had kept my views to myself just to survive. I grew up in California, and my first serious adult employment was in Seattle, not places where conservative thought is welcome.
Rush gave millions of us validation, something the liberals would never have done. Share a piece of your conservative views and risk ridicule. So, go along to get along.
Most of us that enjoy Rush are not the "In-Your-Face" types. But when Rush is so cleverly able to poke fun at liberals and progressives and reveal their real agenda, they are indeed quite undone.
1988 was a special year for us, and as a side note, the year Todd Palin gave his name to Sarah Heath, for me, another national treasure. And another one that loves to reveal the true emptiness of the liberal agenda.
Funny thing is, I first heard Limbaugh in maybe 1994 or so, but it was on his TV show, not on the radio, the local ABC affiliate pushed him back to 1 am in the morning as he was “controversial”.
He was lampooning the House Dem Leader for yawning during a Clinton Speech to congress.
I lived outside Boston... used to listen to gene Burns and Jerry Williams on ‘RKO. My folks always listened to talk radio and I got hooked. So they had just driven back from Florida and told me they heard a guy on the drive back that was great. A day or so later I walked in the door and Rush is on. He was talking “to” Saddam Hussein and explaining to him about a Cruise Missile. He described how it can fly down a highway, hang a left and take a boulevard, turn right and down a driveway, choose a particular window on a particular floor enter it and explode. I was hooked.
I was working in the accounting department of UnionBay Sportswear just before the ‘92 elections. We all had ‘cubicles’. The girl across from me had her headphones on, and all of a sudden grabbed them off her head and threw them down on her desk, saying: ‘OH! I can’t stand that man!’ I said who? She said Rush Limbaugh! And told me what station he was on so I could get a listen to his ‘hate’ talk. Been hooked ever since! haha!
I probably first heard Rush when he was Rusty Sharpe at KGMO (not KMGO) in 1967. I was a freshman at Southeast Missouri State and the guys in my house listened to KGMO all the time. We used to all gather around the radio to hear “Chicken Man.” Of course, we didn’t know at the time that Rusty Sharpe was El Rushbo.
I do not remember the moment I started listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show, it was sometime during the first Clinton Administration. I do know that it was through his show that I learned about Free Republic.
In the late 80's rush was gaining momentum locally in Sacramento. I was getting interested in talk radio and used to tune into the SF Bay area powerhouse KGO quite a lot.
Somewhere around mid '88 Rush did a one week fill in for the morning show of liberal egotist gasbag Ronn Owens. I liked what I heard and I was taken by the instant push back from some of the callers. The most impactful part of it was the week following Rush when Owens came back on ...it was non stop brutal full frontal assault against Rush and the horrible things he had said on the liberal sanctuary of KGO.