El Rushbo: Overcomer
Posted: August 01, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
By Melanie Morgan
Editor's note: Aug. 1 represents the 20th anniversary of the debut of Rush Limbaugh's national radio show. WND has asked some of his colleagues and some of America's most popular pundits to tell us what they think of the role he has played in American politics and media. Read all of this week's tributes.
I started noticing that Rush Limbaugh's timing was off a bit during the summer of 2001 while I sat at a red light in downtown San Francisco, cussin' up a storm over the potholes the liberal Democrats in local government wouldn't fill, even though they found time to establish the city as a nuclear free zone. I turned up the dial in order to lower my blood pressure with my daily Rush fix.
As I began creeping down the Embarcadero, dodging the sinkholes and listening to the show, I heard a squeak coming from my radio. The talk titan was squeaking. As a trained broadcast professional, pitch and tonality are things I notice. Puzzled, I picked up my cell phone and called a few friends in the radio industry, asking if something was wrong with Limbaugh. There were rumors floating around that didn't sound good. In fact, they were downright frightening for those of us who admire the man who changed the face and fortune of AM radio with a conservative talk format.
Oct. 8, 2001, Limbaugh himself confirmed what a few radio insiders were hearing – Rush was suffering from autoimmune inner-ear disease and was now almost completely deaf. The hearing in his right ear was completely gone, with only a bit of sound in his left ear.
Oct. 10, 2003. The tabloids splashed the news that Rush was addicted to painkillers, and then the world learned that he was going to rehab to deal with the addiction that began because of chronic pain to his back that even surgery could not alleviate.
Shortly afterwards, Rush and his wife Marta separated and later divorced.
That's a whole lot of bad stuff happening in a relatively short time, and Rush must have felt besieged. Of course, the left-wing feeding frenzy began like a cheetah chasing a zebra across the Serengeti.
Today is Rush Limbaugh's 20th anniversary as a radio talk show host, debuting on the EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) radio network, and WorldNetDaily asked me to write a column honoring Rush. So it might seem fairly odd that I began this piece talking about the personal and professional setbacks El Rushbo has experienced in the past few years. But there is a purpose, a higher purpose. Hang with me for a minute.
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