He introduced himself as "
the most dangerous man in America".
Before Fox News and long before Donald Trump, radio host Rush Limbaugh was for three decades the spokesperson for a popular and conservative right, mixing mockery and provocation in a detonating combination, which repelled his opponents and delighted his supporters.
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His death at the age of 70 from lung cancer was announced by his wife on Wednesday.
Limbaugh was for over thirty years one of the most influential and controversial figures in American political life.
Blending popular common sense and proudly brandished anti-progressivism with jokes of varying tastes, endowed with an insatiable appetite for scandal, controversy and overbidding, Limbaugh created a genre that has since been widely emulated, especially by Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or Tucker Carlson.
Born into a well-to-do family in Missouri, Rush Limbaugh did not pursue higher education, and throughout his life remained deeply suspicious and resentful of intellectuals and elites.
He started playing radio at the age of 16.
After working for several stations, he had his first success in Sacramento, California.
In 1987, the repeal of a rule that required the media to maintain a balance of opinions propelled him among America's most influential and listened to hosts, one of the most controversial too.
27 million listeners per week
For more than thirty-two years, three hours a day, five days a week, his daily program, the
Rush Limbaugh Show, punctuated
American political life.
Alone on the air, without guests, he engages in a long monologue in which he comments on the topicality of his baritone voice.
Alternately imprecator, sarcastic, mocking, parodying, humming, but also mean, vituperating, insulting, hyperpartisan, he attacks with joyful malice political correctness and liberal circles.
His lively and inventive mind, his independence of mind, and his ability to formulate complex ideas in a simple and straightforward manner have earned him the adulation of his audiences.
Aired on more than 600 radio stations across the United States, its show averages 27 million listeners per week.
Having become a multimillionaire, successful author, Limbaugh also became in his own words
"the intellectual engine of the conservative movement".
Over the years, he helped shape the new face of the Republican Party, more popular, but also more aggressive and sarcastic.
His audience reveled in his inflammatory opinions and his taste for breaking new taboos.
He arouses the indignation of the left by attacking ethnic minorities, feminism which he describes as
feminine Nazism,
and ecology which he denounces as a new religion.
Fearing no overbidding, he suggests that the left's positions on abortion would have led to the abortion of Jesus Christ, and calls on the air a
“bitch”
a law student who campaigned for the reimbursement of contraception , which he later apologized for, admitting that his
"choice of terms could have been happier."
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Among his many provocations, he declares that feminism was created
"to make it easier for unattractive women to access positions of power"
, that singer Kurt Cobain is
"worthless human debris"
, that the tortures inflicted by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq isn't much different from hazing at college.
Limbaugh also takes delight in the heroes of democratic self-righteousness, like Barack Obama,
"who helps shameful whites feel good,"
or star presenter Oprah Winfrey.
But his attacks are also often pernicious or cruel.
He is spreading the rumor that Obama is not an American citizen, and therefore an illegitimate president.
A forerunner of Donald Trump, he gets into the habit of dressing his opponents with ridiculous nicknames, lashes out against the
"liberal elites"
and the mainstream media, accused of lying to the American people, and pushes the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in public discourse.
"Violent racist"
In the 2016 presidential primaries, Limbaugh recognized in Trump a candidate capable of catalyzing popular resentment into a powerful political message, and winning the election.
The two men become allies, then friends.
In 2020, at the end of his term, Trump awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, sparking the fury of Democrats.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had called Limbaugh a
"violent racist."
Joe Biden had referred to him as
"the conservative media figure who has contributed as much as Trump himself to dividing our nation."
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His latest positions were in line with those that delighted his listeners.
He had supported Trump's thesis of electoral fraud plotted by Democrats, and supported the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
"We are supposed to be horrified by this riot,"
Limbaugh commented the next day.
“A lot of conservatives, on social media say any form of violence is unacceptable under any circumstance… I'm glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the Tea Party guys, the men from Lexington and Concord didn't felt that way, ”
he said, referring to the beginnings of the American Revolution of 1776.
To pay tribute to his friend, who also lived in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump came out of his silence to give an interview to Fox News.
He also hailed in a statement
"the great Rush Limbaugh
",
"a patriot, a defender of freedom ... a friend to myself and to millions of Americans, a guide capable of seeing the truth and painting pictures. alive on the air ”.
