Rise of the British shock jock
Right-wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh softened up America for the Trump era. Could the UK’s own new breed of polarising presenters do the same here? May 2, 2021
Could we trace a direct line from Rush Limbaugh, America’s most popular talk radio host until his death in February, to Donald Trump, the world’s least qualified leader since Kaiser Wilhelm II and America’s most destructive president?
We could start this circuitous but plausible journey in 1988, when Limbaugh’s flagship talk show for WABC in New York made its debut, and end in 2020 with Trump’s final State of the Union address, in which he awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the day after the right-wing shock jock revealed that he had lung cancer. Along the way there have been many imitators, including Mike Pence who before being Trump’s vice president hosted a radio show that he dubbed “Rush Limbaugh on decaf” for WRC
Radio talk show host and conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Rush Limbaugh included an “AIDS Updates” segment on his radio show in the 1990s, just one of the many ways he trafficked in cruelty against LGBT+ people.
On Wednesday (17 February), Rush Limbaugh’s wife Kathryn announced that the 70-year-old had passed away from complications of lung cancer.
As news of his death shuddered online, many reflected on what the man behind the microphone meant to them.
To former US president Donald Trump, he was a “legend” with “tremendous insight”. But to LGBT+ people, the host of
The Rush Limbaugh Show was a man who, to the sounds of horns, bells and disco tunes, mocked the deaths of AIDS victims.