Talk radio icon Rush Hudson Limbaugh III passed away from complications of lung cancer this morning. He was 70. He was diagnosed with lung cancer 13 months ago, in January of 2020, and given about four months to live, but he outlived his prognosis by a factor of three.
Limbaugh created the form of talk radio that we are familiar with today, and then dominated that form for a third of a century. His top-rated, three-hour midday radio show, airing at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, was carried on 600 radio stations across the country. Typically, 25 million people were listening at any given time.
Contrasting himself with liberal-dominated television and print news, Rush liked to say, “I am equal time.” The fact that other media outlets were of the Left meant that, prior to Rush’s national show, there was an unmet demand for the conservative analysis and commentary he provided on a daily basis. But Limbaugh’s success was not merely due to his recognition of, and seizing upon, a void in the media market. Rush’s skill and mastery of his craft were legendary; his was the top-rated show because he was the best at what he did.
Numerous radio hosts have profited from the industry Limbaugh created, including Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, Ben Shapiro, Dana Loesch, and many others.
Had Rush been born in Britain or a Commonwealth country, he would have been knighted and been Sir Rush Limbaugh, but having been born in America where titles of nobility are outlawed, he had to make due with the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded him by President Trump at last year’s state of the union address.
I find myself referring to him not as “Mr. Limbaugh” or “Limbaugh,” but as Rush, because, even though I never met him, I’ve been listening to him on the radio intermittently for almost 30 years, and he seems like a family member.
Millions of us have a “first time I heard Rush” story; mine is from 1992. I had just started practicing law in northeast Texas in a town not unlike Rush’s home town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The attorney I was working for was conservative, and one day as we were making a two-hour drive from Dallas, where we were litigating a case, back to our town near the Red River, he turned on the radio and tuned in to Rush’s show. “Who is that?” I asked. He looked surprised: “You don’t know about Rush Limbaugh? You’ve got to listen to this guy every chance you get!” And the frequent drives back and forth to Dallas afforded me ample opportunities to be introduced to Rush Limbaugh.
Rush was born into a conservative, Christian family of lawyers. His grandfather and father (who were also named Rush Limbaugh) were lawyers, and his father had also been a fighter pilot in Burma during World War II. Rush’s brother, David Limbaugh, is also a lawyer, as were an uncle and a cousin, Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. and Jr., who were both federal judges in the Eastern District of Missouri.
David Limbaugh has become a renown Christian apologist, writing books such as “Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel”, “The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament,” and “Jesus Is Risen: Paul and the Early Church.” Although Rush did not often talk about religion on his radio show, his fame transferred to his brother, and his brother’s books have been a blessing to millions.
But Rush was not fated to be a lawyer. He hated school, flunking out of Southeast Missouri State University after a couple of semesters. The only thing he was ever interested in, starting as young teenager, was radio.
The equanimity with which Rush was able to meet the devastating cancer diagnosis is a result of his private but intensely held Christian faith. “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” he said. “It is of immense value, strength, confidence. That’s why I’m able to remain fully committed to the idea that what is supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to.”
The cancer diagnosis is not the first time Limbaugh faced adversity in the form of a health challenge. In 2001, Limbaugh announced he had lost his hearing from the rare condition called autoimmune inner ear disease. Being all but completely deaf posed extraordinary problems for Rush as he continued to run a national radio show in which he had to listen to, and respond to, his producer and to callers. He received cochlear ear implants, an experimental surgery at the time, but his hearing was never the same afterward, although he got better and more proficient at meeting the technical challenges. By the time of his hearing loss 20 years ago, he was already wealthy enough to retire comfortably from radio, but he was not the type to retire from the job he loved so much. His career was never going to end any other way than how it ended.
In his final show before the Christmas holidays, he gave what amounted to his farewell address. There was no bitterness about having his life cut short by cancer, only gratitude for the success he had enjoyed, for his wife, for the people who had supported charities he promoted. He stated he could now understand Lou Gehrig’s statement, upon being forced to retire from baseball because of the terminal illness that now bears his name, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Rush said that he felt the same way.
Rush was ever the optimist, upbeat about setbacks in politics as well as in his personal life. In one monologue, worth ending with, that Rush delivered on July 9, 2018, he was bullish on Christianity in America:
Now, folks, here is another thing, another story that I’ll bet you didn’t see and you may not have heard about. Some of you may have. It dates back to January. It’s a Harvard research study. The version of this I have is in The Federalist, January 22, 2018. How many of you believe that the left is successfully conducting a War on Christianity and that the number of people in this country who say they’re Christian and practice Christianity is declining? Probably a lot of you are raising your hands right now.
“Oh, yeah, Rush! I see it every day. People are abandoning religion, leaving religion, leaving morality. Christianity is up a creek, ’cause it’s the only religion you can make fun of.” If you think that, you’d be wrong, at least according to this. “New Harvard Research…” Again, back in January, so we’re about seven months ago. “New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger — Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in ‘widespread decline’ so much so that conservative believers should suffer ‘growing anxiety’?”
Nope.
“Absolutely not. ‘Meanwhile, a widespread decline in churchgoing and religious affiliation had contributed to a growing anxiety among conservative believers.’ Statements like this are uttered with such confidence and frequency that most Americans accept them as uncontested truisms. … Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in ‘widespread decline’ so much so that conservative believers should suffer ‘growing anxiety’?”
According to this Harvard research: “Absolutely not. New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the ‘secularization thesis,’ which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.
“Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the [Harvard and Indiana University Bloomington] researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy ‘persistent and exceptional intensity’ in America. These researchers hold our nation ‘remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.’ What Accounts for the Difference in Perceptions? How can their findings appear so contrary to what we have been hearing from so many seemingly informed voices?
“It comes down primarily to what kind of faith one is talking about. Not the belief system itself, per se, but the intensity and seriousness with which people hold and practice that faith. Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected.
“In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found. The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained … constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today.” It isn’t fading away. Now, to how many of you is this a shocking surprise? How many of you believe otherwise? I don’t know, but I would venture to say a lot of you do, simply ’cause this is what you hear. I mean, it’s everywhere.
“Of course, the forces of anti-religion — which is the American left — are famous for pushing this. They want you to lose faith. They want you to be laughed at if you’re religious. They promote you feeling degraded and marginalized, because your faith is a competitor to theirs, and yours is much stronger and much more real, and they’re threatened by it. Plus, your faith helps to define morality and virtue and holdings on to certain traditions and institutions that have defined this country and its greatness — all of which they are trying to tear down.
“They’re failing to do it. Even though the media helps perpetuate the myth that Christianity is fading away, falling by the wayside . . . it isn’t happening. You probably didn’t see this. Probably give a wide berth because mainstream media wouldn’t touch it. It flies in direct contravention of their narrative each day, that America is changing and transforming. But this is why they continue to laugh at you and make fun of Christians and Christianity and religious devotion, and it’s always going to happen.
“They’re not gonna let up on it because you are competitors.”
“How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” 2 Sam. 1:27
“And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write,‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth:’ Yea, saith the Spirit,‘that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.’” Rev. 14:13