Awesome that you’ve been in radio for 30 years. I love talk radio.
I was a Rush girl for a very long time. He broke up with me when he handled the doing Schumer’s bidding behind our backs situation so badly on the air. There were only two ways he should have come on the air the next Monday and handled it, if he was the good person I believed him to be. Say it never happened at all (if it didnt) or do a humble mea culpa and admit that sometimes he was respectful to these slimy weasels and did what they wanted. But he came on the air angry as anything. He was defensive and unpleasant. He didn’t realize how this looked to us. And during the first break, he looked on the internet to see that some listeners were not happy with his angry denials, and he called us haters.
I started to think about other subjects that never showed up in his stack o stuff, not just the amnesty Schumer asked him to go lightly on discussing (which he did to Schumer’s satisfaction). Like before the 2008 election, when we were discovering on FR that Obama didn’t have any documentation to prove his citizenship until he was a US Senator. Rush didn’t mention it. All the social security numbers. Hawaii not swearing his eligibility, changing the text of their document, and Nancy Pelosi signing it instead. Sean Hannity had the cojones to mention on his show that fellow hosts were literally threatened from mentioning such things, and no doubt he got slapped down by his bosses just for saying that, but Hannity clearly gives more of a rip for his audience than that. I feel that Rush always puts Rush first. He wouldn’t make any sacrifice for us or the country. He’s backing Trump big time now for his own interest.
For the record, I owe Rush hugely and bigly for my becoming conservative. I loved and adored him for many years and was so proud each time he chose to use my words (from FR) on his show. I just lost some respect for him this last year.
Thank you! Such a fantastic post! What all us listener dweebs must remember is we cannot conceive — nor would we want to — of the kind of influence and indeed pressure that someone like Rush must deal with in his various inboxes daily. I know from hanging around here during the primaries that he took all kinds of heat from people supporting one candidate or another. I suspect none of the naysayers were a DAILY listener, and that’s the point. I listen to the whole show daily because I work on my computer through my day and Rush and Steve Dahl get me through my drudgery. If I just got in my car and Rush was on and I heard him for the 10 minutes it took to drive to Burger King, I might get a COMPLETELY different impression of what he’s talking about. As I said, he has SO often talked of people —particularly mainstream media pundits — listening to five minutes of his show and going nuts about it when they didn’t bother to hear the context that five minutes are a part of.
I truly have no idea how how you combat that. It is a drawback of radio there may be no solution for.
FReegards!
I had the opportunity to speak directly to Hannity (He was on Fox News then but I don't think the national radio show had started yet.) about Vince Foster and he told me directly that discussing Foster wasn't a career enhancing move.
Rush on the other hand discussed it quite often until he flew a little too close to the flame and backed away. I believe I was the first caller to his show to have a "Foster call." It was the day the first Ruddy article about Foster appeared in the NY Post. I had several more "Foster calls" after that, before I was told by Snerdley not to bring up Vince Foster several times when calling on other topics. Rush was out of the country the week Foster was murdered. I think history might have been a bit different were he not.
Whatever. He reported a "rumor" about Foster, and then within an hour reported that he learned from someone he trusted (Ruddy?) that the rumor wasn't true. Only the first half got picked up by a Left-wing group that called itself FAIR (Fairnes and accuracy in reporting). They took out full page ads in major newspapers blasting Rush. I think Rush felt that his career was threatened and he stopped taking "Foster calls," though one guy did segue into criticizing Rush for not discussing Foster anymore. Rush said that was nonsense and played his Foster parody after dumping the guy. (I forget who he was but I knew him through our common interest in the Foster murder, maybe Hugh T? NOT Hugh S!) I haven't been on hold for a call in a couple of years, but the last time I was, I believe the Foster parody was still in Rush's rotation that is played to on-hold callers during commercial breaks. As the then editor of the WSJ once said to me, "We all know what happened," Rush included.
ML/NJ