BY JOHN K. WILSON We are all living in the political and media worlds that Rush Limbaugh created. Limbaugh, who died this morning, transformed America in enormous ways, most of them negative. I harshly criticized Limbaugh in my book about him, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason, which was published…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I interviewed Ian Reifowitz via email about his new book which is being published today, The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Ig Publishing). Reifowitz is Professor of Historical Studies at SUNY-Empire State College and also the author of Obama’s America: A…
At Wright State, we have “Garcetti language” in our contract, protecting criticism of the administration as an aspect of academic freedom. We don’t abuse this right, but if our administration endorsed the sort of policy just approved by the Kansas Board of Regents for the public universities across that state, we would lambaste them on…
In one of his most dubious arguments by analogy, Rush Limbaugh has compared the end of the filibuster on cabinet appointees and judicial nominees to the possibility that rape could be legally condoned. Here is a transcript of his comments on his radio show: “”Forget the Senate for a minute. Let’s say, let’s take 10…
Over the last few weeks, the authors of several posts on this blog have sought to address recent outrageous assertions made by Rush Limbaugh. A little more than a year ago, I wrote the following post for Oxymoronic Nation, a personal, progressive blog that I started on Google. I was trying to place Limbaugh’s offensive…
Yesterday on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh read a Wall Street Journal article summarizing the National Association of Scholars (NAS) study about Bowdoin, and quoted the finding that Bowdoin doesn’t require history majors to take an American history class. Limbaugh declared: So a history major at Bowdoin College is taught about the intrinsic discrimination against…
Rush Limbaugh’s insults against Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke have sparked a national controversy. Today (Wednesday), I’ll be discussing Limbaugh (and my book about him) on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show (6-7pm ET) and Thursday on the public radio show To the Point (2pm ET). But Limbaugh’s attacks on Fluke are also a reminder of the…
Rush Limbaugh normally hates class warfare. So it was a bit unusual today when he came out and denounced millionaires. Of course, Limbaugh only hates one particular kind of millionaire: college presidents. Limbaugh declared, the bottom line here is 36 college presidents make a million dollars a year or more. Where is Occupy Wall Street?…