Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Rush Limbaugh speaks before introducing President Donald Trump at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, December 21, 2019, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
This is the first edition of Eric Alterman’s “Altercation,” a newsletter on the media and politics, which the Prospect will publish regularly on Fridays.
“Do you know who Eric Alterman is? The left may treat him as a giant. I know that they do. He’s a kook! He’s a far-left fringe kook. But do you know who he is? Do you?”
—Rush Limbaugh, July 20, 2010
Well, hello. Contra El Rushbo, I’m a historian who, for the past 30 or so years, has written about the media, American liberalism, and presidential lying. Lately, I’ve gotten interested in the history of American Jews, especially their relationship to Israel, and will be publishing a book on that one of these days. It will be my 12th. All are, in one way or another, about history, politics, liberalism, and the media, except for the one about Bruce Springsteen (though that sort of is, too). Music is another obsession of mine, which you will discover if you stick around. Old movies, too. Finally, I teach literature (though as a historian) at Brooklyn College and for 25 years wrote a column called “The Liberal Media” for The Nation. Beginning in 2002 and for a decade or so afterward, I also published a blog called “Altercation,” which originated on MSNBC.com, before it migrated over to Media Matters and The Nation. Now (almost exactly like Updike’s Bech), it’s back, and here every Friday.
So, anyway, Rush Limbaugh provided one final—maybe his only—service to the republic by timing his death perfectly to the first iteration of this newsletter. Rush’s death was a big story. True, almost all of the obituaries that had been prepared in advance soft-pedaled both his egregious character and horrific effects on American society. (The Washington Post’s was notably bad in this respect. For instance, it does not contain the word “race” or “racism.”) The Times was quite a bit better, but only after someone fixed it. (The paper also ran this quite good “political memo.”) But let’s try to be generous. Limbaugh’s obit writers had three main problems. The first is that it’s extremely rare for a major newspaper to publish a critical obituary. In the Times, for instance, you almost have to be a Palestinian, a leftist, and perhaps the most famous intellectual in the world at the time of your death to reach the heights of a genuinely critical retelling of your life story. Second, when writing about Limbaugh, one has the same problem one does with Trump. He was so horrible, in so many ways—and for so damn long—one can be paralyzed by choice. Does one focus on the racism or the sexism or the vulgarity or the dishonesty or the sadism or the hypocrisy or the incitements to violence or the stupidity, and so on? (It would be too much work to provide links for each of the above, but here is just a tiny collection of his greatest hits.) Finally, there is the problem of America itself; another one that Rush shares with Trump. Put simply, it is “What does it say about a country that such a transparently evil, stupid, hypocritical, sadistic, racist, sexist, dishonest—see what I mean—nightmare of a human being can become the most influential person in all of media and stay that way for so long?” Short answer: Nothing good.
Like anyone who’s been writing about media during the past 30 years, I’ve had no choice but to spend a great deal of time contemplating Limbaugh’s role in our national discourse. At his height, he boasted (literally) 650 stations and anywhere from 15 to 20 million listeners, which was, and is, more than all three network evening newscasts combined. What interested me more than Limbaugh himself, however, was the role of the mainstream media in promoting him, covering for him, and oftentimes even celebrating him as he consistently sought to undermine everything journalists like to imagine that they stand for. That’s been the story I’ve been writing ever since I noticed the guy. (For the earliest in-depth consideration of what Limbaugh “meant,” see this fine May 1994 piece by James Fallows in The Atlantic.)
In my 2008 book Why We’re Liberals, I noted the following: “William Bennett, who frequently decries the loss of standards of decency and civility among liberals, calls Limbaugh ‘possibly the greatest living American’ and ‘extremely sophisticated, extremely smart. … He’s very serious intellectually.’” Limbaugh was invited to join the Meet the Press roundtable as an honored and respected expert on politics by NBC’s Tim Russert, and Jake Tapper played a clip of Limbaugh on ABC News, calling him a political “observer,” in a 2007 segment about race relations. When Katie Couric introduced her “free speech” segment during her debut performance in the anchor chair at CBS Evening News, she had Limbaugh on during her first week (and then waited nine full nights before speaking with a liberal). Even ESPN wanted a piece of him for its Sunday NFL show, until it became clear that he could not contain his racist bile long enough to get through even the first few weeks of a season.
Laudatory profiles of Limbaugh were a staple of the MSM, in Time (which was probably first), Newsweek, and this stomach-turning profile in The New York Times Magazine by the author of an embarrassingly hagiographic account of Limbaugh’s life. And these were not one-offs. Before he admitted to being the right-wing hack he had always been by jumping to Fox, Howard Kurtz acted as a one-man public relations outfit for Rush in his media “reporting” for The Washington Post. There’s a larger point here, as it happens, that goes beyond just the embrace of this “big fat idiot”: A great deal of attention is paid to the power of the far-right media, but nowhere near enough to its gravitational effect on the mainstream. The networks and MSM publications lusted after Rush’s listeners, and many proved willing to prostrate themselves before him, if necessary, to try to reach them. If that meant helping to feed them the same sort of bullshit Rush was serving up, well—as with Trump—business was business.
Two other Rush-related points: First, everyone likes to talk about how the transformation of the Republican Party began with Gingrich and reached Trump-like heights of neofascistic lunacy with an enormous assist from Rush (among others, like Murdoch, Ailes, and their ilk). But hey, who was it that invited Rush to sit in the presidential box for his 1991 State of the Union address, right next to the missus? That’s right, everybody’s favorite old-fashioned “moderate” Republican, George H.W. Bush.
Second, let's give the guy credit for one thing and one thing only: He’s the only talk radio pundit—or pretty much the only pundit of any kind—to try to bring the thinking of my favorite extremely difficult-to-read philosopher, the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, to the masses.
OK, one last thing: Bibi is also sad.
A few odds and ends: TCM, which, aside from the Mets channel, is the only reason I still have cable (and is more than worth it for just that reason) is showing a double feature of two Barry Levinson masterpieces this weekend: Diner, which is one of my favorite movies of the past 40 years, and Avalon, which is one of the best depictions of American Jewish life ever put to so-called celluloid. Both are on early on Sunday morning, so you may have to tape them. (Weirdly, WNET, the NYC public TV station, is broadcasting Avalon at the same time.) The films follow “Noir Alley,” which is hosted by one of my heroes, Eddie Muller. And Eddie is showing a restored version of the formerly heavily censored movie Native Son, from 1951, based on the Richard Wright novel, Saturday night at midnight and again at 10:00 Sunday morning.
Also, there will be a lovely “Willie Nelson and Family” show from 2019 this weekend on PBS from Austin City Limits—that is, if you have electricity.
Finally, that sonofabitch Limbaugh, who suffered from drug addiction himself, once called Jerry Garcia “just another dead doper.” Below is Jerry with the late, great Clarence Clemons, playing “They Love Each Other.”
And finally, finally, for those of us mourning the loss of Chick Corea, Ryan Reed of the Times was good enough to collect these 12 performances.
See you next week.
Clarification: This post originally implied that Jake Tapper had invited Rush Limbaugh on ABC News to discuss race relations. It has now been changed to reflect that Tapper aired an audio clip of Limbaugh in an ABC News segment.
