El Rushbo - RIP and Good Riddance!
A WikiTorial
I was
visiting in Palm Desert maybe 30 years ago when I heard El Rushbo on the local
radio station. I heard hatred; I listened to bigotry and lies for an more than
an hour from this new guy on the radio.
After the
show, I called into the station to talk with the manager to express my concerns
about this new guy. He took my call and after listening to me asked me to just
give him a chance. He acknowledged that Limbaugh was ‘different’ but asked for
patience. The manager was right. El Rushbo was different and in the process
became a cash cow as stations across the nation raked in the dough - buoyed by product
sponsors eager to sell their widgets to the growing army of Ditto Heads across
America.
At first, I
thought it was a comedy routine because some of what he said and his delivery
was kind of funny and professionally delivered. But the humor was just a small
part of the hour. Although I could imagine that there were some listeners who agreed
with him wholeheartedly and soon, millions would become his Ditto Head
followers for the next 30 years.
El Rushbo (that’s what he
often called himself) spewed his shocking diatribes and appalling parodies of misogyny,
gay bashing and in a recent Corona virus rant, El Rushbo said that cannibalism (citing the
Donner party) is just a way of adapting and that Americans had better adapt to
the coronavirus.
El Rushbo, at his
death, was purported to have a net worth of $600 million. It seems as if being
a consummate showman and belittling people, causing racial disharmony, playing
songs about ‘Barak the Magic Negro’ and vilifying those with HIV is a real-money
making machine in America. Making a better country was for weak fools.
In those early
days, I never would have guessed that there were so many Americans who agreed
with El Rushbo. It turns out that they were always in our midst, just too timid
to announce their hatred and bigotry out loud. El Rushbo made it okay and when
trump came along; it was not only okay but patriotic to be a Confederate Flag-waving
white supremacist, low information citizen.
El Rushbo led the
way for dozens of other talking heads in this country who spoke in divisive, inaccurate,
mean, vile terms about their fellow Americans. And trump gave the thumbs up to
74 million Americans who agreed with El Rushbo and with trump and voted to
close out Democracy in the recent election.
El Rushbo and
trump may be gone or out of office for now. But El Rushbo’s legion of radio and
TV hosts and 74 million trump voters and trump himself are all still alive and
well and plotting to reach deep into the beating democratic heart of America
and yank it out.
WikiLeekZ is NOT the NEWZ,
But May Be Someday