Hey, did you hear Rush Limbaugh died?
Not that you need another post about this. You can already choose between endless right-wing hagiographies and a host of far-less fawning fare-thee-wells, but this kind of tectonic shift in the conservative radio-sphere doesn’t happen every day, so I’ll toss in my two cents.
When I first heard the news, I was torn between immediately posting a breaking news story on his untimely passing and checking my navel for lint. Lint won by the greatest landslide in the history of our country. Even greater than the Biden landslide Rush refused to acknowledge. So I’m not going to dance on his grave. (If I did, it would be a jaunty polka, complete with lederhosen. But it’s moot. Because I’m not an animal.)
That said, I’d be remiss not to remind people how he treated others on their deathbeds (i.e., shamefully, like nearly everything else he did).
Rush Limbaugh had a segment called "AIDS update" set to music where he mocked dying gay people so I don't really want hear about 'speaking ill of the dead' today
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) February 17, 2021
For the nontweeterers:
“Rush Limbaugh had a segment called “AIDS update” set to music where he mocked dying gay people so I don’t really want hear about ‘speaking ill of the dead’ today”
This claim is so shocking and unbelievable, Snopes researched it almost immediately—and yup, it’s legit:
This is true. While we have not uncovered any audio of these segments, we did find a few contemporaneous news articles and comments from Limbaugh confirming the contents of these controversial segments.
Iowa’s Cedar Gazette reported in 1990 that Limbaugh’s “AIDS Update,” a recurring segment in which he made jokes about a disease that had killed more than 100,000 people in the United States the previous decade, started by playing songs such as “Back in the Saddle Again,” “Kiss Him Goodbye,” “I Know I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” and “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.”
To be fair, Limbaugh later said he regretted the segment. But that doesn’t mean he stanched the near-constant stream of homophobia disgorging from his very busy lie-hole.
While Limbaugh would come to regret the segment, that didn’t stop him from airing other homophobic content. Limbaugh, for instance, had another segment that used former Congressman Barney Frank, a prominent gay politician, as fodder. That segment featured the song “My Boy Lollipop” as slurping sounds played in the background. Limbaugh also spread the unfounded claim that gay men practiced “gerbilling” (you can read more about the unfounded urban legend here) and once said, according to James Retter’s book “The Anatomy of a Scandal,” that gay men “deserved their fate.”
“Deserved their fate?” I’m not sure anyone really “deserves” to die before their time, but there are lots of things you can do to hasten your end, and habitually smoking cigars while downplaying the dangers of tobacco to your millions of faithful and impressionable listeners is one of these.
So, yeah, I was just gonna let him rest in peace, but I figured y’all needed a gentle reminder of just who this guy was.
Good luck getting into heaven, Rush … but …
Unfortunately for Rush, the question you're required to answer to get into heaven these days is, "Who won the 2020 presidential election?"
— Aldous J Pennyfarthing #GoodbyeAsshat (@AJPennyfarthing) February 17, 2021
Think hard on your answer, Rush. God knows all. And She’s not gonna like it if you try to storm the pearly gates armed with riot shields, Tasers, and feckless lies.
RIP, sir. It’s been real.
