Sorry but I really never listened to the fill ins. They are loosing me. I really wish Rush knowing how deadly his cancer was, would have groomed an air apparent. I would really like to hear James (Mr. Snerdly) Golden fill in or even take over. He knew Rush the longest. Such a waste of Rush’s legacy.
I have gone through a number of scenarios on how this could have been avoided. Yes Rush loved to enjoy life, some aspects of which put him in a higher risk category. But even with that since he belonged to a certain age bracket, all he needed to do was go for annual cancer screenings. That's it. It's why cancer screenings exist - to catch cancer in its earliest stages. And they are especially useful for lung cancers which are easier to spot in their early stages. A low powered CT scan would have detected suspicious lesions. Knowing that he was a long term smoker doc would have recommended a biopsy. Biopsy would have shown precancerous cells, or cancer in its very early stages (stage I). Lesions would have been surgically removed with the doc's strong advice to quit smoking at that point. And that would have been the end of it. After that he would have continued to follow up with the doc once every 6 months to a year. What happened did not have to be. So many what-if's. But Rush had an aversion of going to the doctor. He hated it.
He groomed them already and they have the #2 and #3 most listened to radio shows today. Mark Levin was saying the other day he was in Rush’s studio and Rush was telling him you’re studying me aren’t you, FLee? One day Rush threw Mark Levin behind the microphone and made him do it and the rest is history. Nobody is going to replace Rush. But the Legacy lives on in Mark Levin and Hannity.
There is no one who could ever duplicate what Rush did so it wouldn’t have mattered if he groomed a successor or not. He helped launch the radio careers of conservative talkers all over the country, and it’s from listening to some of their shows that I know Rush’s spirit lives on.
I like Steyn, and I always liked Walter E. Williams when he filled in. Mostly, the rest of the fill-ins are standard talk-radio fare. They’re fine, but they’re nowhere near Rush. They’re not bad, though.