I was in Sacramento when Rush first got his start:
A good way for liberal media folks in Sacramento to get their chops from their liberal colleagues was to be seen slighting Rush and generally mistreating him.
He got nasty back to them, like a big, bad Conservative, right?
NOPE:
Rush was totally classy with it, and he’d just laugh it off. He wouldn’t let it get to him at all.
Remember the young “MacFly” dad from Back to the Future, getting slammed into lockers, and having to endure Atomic Welgies and Melvins From Hell..?
That was Rush in Sacramento, basically.
They hated him for being fat, white, Conservative, and later also for being super duper successful —that cranked things up about 100 notches from the (very many) others.
In fact, one lib listener got so mad at what he heard Rush saying that he almost broke down the radio station door, and he was waving a butcher knife around...!
But Rush put up with it —put up with ALL of it.
He was so poor he couldn’t even live in AVERAGE parts of Sacramento, and that is why he lived in Rio Linda, which is a hell-hole, but cheap.
When he tried to drive up to Tahoe in his cheap, beater boat of a car it overheated a couple times (steep windy highway 50). And that was like when he drove to Pennsyvania in the snow, having to pull over repeatedly to pour anti-freeze on his windsheild:
Because he didnt’ have the money to repair his windshield wipers.
Another time a local big-whig exec in Granite Bay (which is where Sacramento people move when they make much more money) invited poor, fat Rush over for a dinner. Rush was so excited —lot of influential people would be there.
Ya know what happened after Rush arrived? The rich, influential host pushed every item off the conversational platter and used the next three hours to continually INSULT Rush and marvel about how stupid his show was, and now it would never work.
Rush got super mad and ruined the evening, right?
Nope:
Rush just remained really nice and classy, and giggled it off, and weathered it —all of it.
But he went on to bigger things and forgot it all, right?
Nope:
Rush REMEMBERED ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WERE GOOD TO HIM, and took care of them for it, later.
And he didn’t let out a peep about the names of the people were bad to him.
THAT is Rush Limbaugh, a very classy army of one, the Johnny Carson of radio, who single-handedly saved and re-invented AM radio.
He deserves ALL of his success.
First memories of hearing Rush .. I was fishing for crappies with my brother on a small Miniesoda lake he lived on.. That’s late 80ish. Who’DA thunk 25 years later he’d still be slamming ‘em out of the park.
Congrats!!
BTTT
Thank you for that!
Great story. Encouraging!
Rush didn't live in Rio Linda, he lived in West Sac. The Rio Linda thing was an observation he frequently made that the really dense callers all seemed to be from Rio Linda.
I too remember “mega thumbs-up ditttos”. Once in a while I would
see Rush having lunch at the Buggy Whip on Fulton Av. Eventually,
he purchased a tract home in the North Natomas area from
Mark IV Dev. When I heard he was taking his show national I knew
he would own the airways and soon. Uncanny how you could think
some “blasphemous” conservative thought and in less than he is
giving a radio voice to those same opinions.
Amen to what you’ve said.
I’ve had the good fortune to be able to have a radio next to me through three different jobs since 1998. That’s when I first came across his program.
He’s a good, decent American man, and an American Success Story.
Something we can all aspire to.