I used to tune into Rush every few years for as long as I could stand it, which was usually less than about 2 minutes at any one given time. I wanted to make sure that I was not missing the point that so many others of different political persuasion than my own found so attractive. It turns out that I was not missing the point, and even those periodic few minutes were a waste of my time.
Political commentary is not art, which can be subjective. Objective reality and right and wrong govern political discourse…you know… all that stuff about “group decision making, or forms of power relationships or distribution of scarce or coveted assets and resources.
So as a preface, please note that I have never agreed with the concept that one should not speak ill of the dead; especially if the dead deserve to have ill said about them. Of course, that begs the question of what kind of ill qualifies the “not so dear departed “ for unpleasant post-mortem comments? Certainly, Rush’s lack of cleverness, wit, humor or insight would not be enough to speak of him with contempt. But he had so much more NOT going for him to deserve a remorseless legacy. That he exalted the pursuit of wealth and power, usually at the expense of those less fortunate than him made him a classic bully. His attempts to dress up hir poisonous white supremacy racism with various forms of deflection and right wing hateful humor was a perversion of any reasonable definition of comedy, which could only be enjoyed by those who shared his bigoted views against liberals, Democrats, minorities, feminists, environmentalists, “libtards and, of course, anyone with a darker shade of skin color than “orange rouge”, although truth be known, the pallid pale tones underneath were probably. the basic starting point on his scale for bigotry.
So for those many people for whom the only joy that Rush brought them was his dying; for those same people for whom Rush was nothing more than a wind bag of poison that created a politics of anger and obstruction, a man who could be labeled the king of “talk radio hate and bigotry”, a man who created more harm than good, I say: “Rush was an influential public figure”. “You have not only the right, but you have the obligation to comment any way that you want to make your opinion known.
Dead or alive, don’t hold back.”
Rush didn’t.
