I’ve probably read a half dozen Rush Limbaugh remembrances in the last 24 hours, and was moved by most of them. And yet ... I’ve got to admit I didn’t much like his radio program, but not because I didn’t like Rush.
I understood he used the listener questions and comments as springboards for his impromptu editorializing and opinion pieces. I don’t know if others had this reaction, I didn’t enjoy his listeners. Plus I found the many ads tiresome.
It always felt like I was “putting up with” the callers and ads in order to hear what he had to say. His sermonettes I enjoyed, but I’d keep turning off the callers and ended up not hearing much of the program.
With radio, you can’t mute the audio and yet sort of keep track of what’s going on. With TV you can tune back in when the commercial or other uninteresting part is over. I do this a lot.
Candidly, I have the same problem with all of talk radio, and don’t spend a lot of time listening to it. I’d tune in to Rush while driving, listen until he took a caller, and switch to another station. Often I never switched back.
That isn’t on him, it’s on me. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and many of his callers were just that. Rush was no fool, he was brilliant. His callers? Not so much. I guess it didn’t bother him.
I always wished there was a way to hear Rush without the callers and ads. Given his ratings, I was an outlier, in the minority.
