Rush Limbaugh: one more thing

I’ve spent most of the last 48 hours processing the fact of Rush’s death and it’s only now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and reflect on the meaning of his life. What did I get from Rush Limbaugh’s show over the years and why did I remain a listener and fan for three decades. As I think back over the those thirty years I keep coming back to a time in the early-90’s when I had just moved to Los Angeles to get into the entertainment business.

About a month after I landed in L.A., around July of 1993, I got a job working for a Producer. I’ll always be grateful to this Producer for giving me a shot but the fact is that the job, as most entry-level jobs in entertainment are, was pretty crappy. I was basically this Producer’s errand boy… I guess the term of art is “Go-Fer.” He gave me a pager and I drove out into the mean streets of L.A. in my own car (which was a stick-shift, had only an AM/FM radio, and no A.C.) to run his errands. I dropped checks off at studios and picked up other checks to drive back to the office. I collected art, by which I mean I put it in my car and drove it to the Producer’s house. I helped girlfriends move into apartments (his girlfriends, not mine). And I carried SAG, WGA, and DGA contracts hither and yon. I even had a gun pulled on me once. Periodically I would get a page (for those who remember getting pages) telling me to call in and I would have to park and find the nearest pay phone so that I could call his “first” asssistant and find out what else he needed me to do while I was out. And things went on like that for about fourteen months.

During the year or so that I worked for this Producer I spent almost the entire work day in my car feeling entirely disconnected from the business I was desperate to get into. I had always been a fan of Rush’s but this was the first time I had ever had an opportunity to listen to his entire show every day for a year. Now, remember, I was alone in one of the world’s most expensive cities, trying to find a way into a business that has always been notoriously difficult to break into, doing a shitty and thankless job for not very much money. In a lot of ways I was miserable. And yet here was this guy on the radio telling me that no matter how depressed I might be about my situation, I was living in a land of boundless opportunties. That all around me were the fruits of American Exceptionalism. And that if I worked hard and kept my eye on the ball, that the country would be there for me, that the exceptional nature of the American experiment would always, ALWAYS, reward me for my dedication, perserverance, and faith in what our country had to offer. In a sense, Rush made it OK to operate without a net.

Now, contrast that with Joe Biden’s “dark days are ahead of us” rhetoric.

And Rush was honest about his own struggles, too. He was famously fired “seven or eight times” before finally making it big. Rush struggled in local backwater radio for twenty years before he finally began to see what he called a “trajectory to success.” And yet here he was living a life (fine wine, great steaks, expensive suits, excellent cigars, and golf every day) that I wanted for myself… well, maybe not the golf part. If a guy from a small town with no industry connections and no college degree can do it, I would often think to myself as I drove down Wilshire Blvd, so can I.

I took that message to heart and it kept me going through some rough times in what is a tough tough business.

And now, thirty years later, I compare Rush’s message of optimism and hope to the story of America that kids are taught today… that this country is systemically racist. That only Government can provide you with safety and security. That there is a single finite pie of wealth and some people are taking bigger pieces than they deserve and leaving none for you. That rich people, or white people, or men, or whatever the bugaboo of the day is today, have their thumb on the scale and that no matter how hard you work, you will never get ahead because those people are actively working against you. No wonder kids today seem so angry, depressed and… fragile.

I think I would have been successful no matter what because working hard and staying focused is part of my makeup and my upbringing. But it would have been a lot harder without Rush in the background telling me to keep my eye on the ball, ignore the naysayers, be confident in the things you know and believe, and assuring me that no matter what, America would always have my back.

So thanks for that Rush, I’ll miss hearing that optimisim and pride of country on the radio every day. You’ll be a tough act, if not an impossible one, to replace.