Rush, My Dad, and Me.

Jesus. Do we always have to talk about politics?

It began one day when I was in high school. I heard a voice coming through my dad’s radio that was saying things I wasn’t used to it saying. It wasn’t quite news, it wasn’t quite comedy, but it seemed like it was tailored to my dad’s conservative politics.

It was Rush Limbaugh, radio host out of Kansas City, now syndicated nationally through his Excellence in Broadcasting (EIB) Network. He was saying things that I knew weren’t being said by others. I learned about the Dittoheads (people who just agreed with everything he ever said) and “feminazis” and the Harmless Little Fuzzball (his fuzzy description of himself which belied the fact that one day, he would be the most dangerous man in media).

My dad lapped it up. He was a public-school teacher, a mild-mannered fellow, lots of good qualities (that I’ll get into soon enough). And while I can’t say Rush made him a conservative, it emboldened him in a way that must have given him comfort. Listening to the three hours a day of Rush, must have been enormously comforting for someone living among the liberal establishment of the deep blue state of Massachusetts.

(Though it’s not as deep blue as you might think: after all, they/we elected 2 Republican governors and the state went red three times in the last 40 years. Don’t fact check me. I’ll look it up.) For mild mannered people like my dad, there was an apparent rage not far below the surface. And while I can’t say he was ever as unhinged as the people we see on Twitter and in the news now, he certainly didn’t mind following a man who regularly disparaged The Liberals for…well, existing.

But for me, I think back to some of the things that my father might have supported in the days before Rush entered our lives. He had a minor crusade involving the treatment of prisoners in jails which I now find incongruous with the rest of the package of Republican Values. He had a strange fascination with the Anti-Abortion movement, especially with wacko right wing Operation Rescue, and it is to my ever-dying relief that he never followed through with joining those whack jobs in protesting abortion clinics. He was a deeply religious person who along with many like-minded friends, formed a sort of quasi extracurricular Church amongst themselves. Every Friday or Saturday Night in the early to mid-80’s, there was the Prayer Meeting.

Sidebar: it was during these prayer meetings when I snuck off and knocked on the door of my friend, the dear sweet old lady who lived with the leader of the meetings. Aunt Peg. I was about 7 years old and too young to stay home by myself. But when I knocked on that door, she always let me in. We watched TV away from the group. My favorite show was the Dukes of Hazzard. I don’t know how long we did that. All I remember was that I was always welcome and it was safe and I looked forward to seeing her every week and I really feel like shit for never coming back to see her after I grew old enough to stay home by myself.

Point being, a lot of these things were already there, already in place. At the same time, my dad loved animals and old comedy and Green Acres and laughed at fart jokes and who once took solace in the Urkel character on Family Matters. This same man who had all these harmless characteristics also devoted hours a day listening to a man that spewed ill-informed but confidently delivered crap that supported the superiority of the white middle class male, taped on his little timing device on the stereo and played on long car rides on trips in my childhood. Rush was so confident, so authoritative, so...convincing…the way a lot of Narcissists are. I didn’t realize how awful this man was until much later, when I had time away from home to finally learn how to think for myself.

And my father picked that up…constant barrage of “liberal this” and “liberal that.” “Clinton is a crook” and…it really didn’t matter if it related to the situation or not. I might have learned at some point to deflect these conversations, but that probably was a skill that didn’t get honed until I was much older.

I’d love to say I would have had a better relationship with my dad without all the Rush…but somehow, I don’t think that would have ever been the case.

It all rubbed off on me for a while, much like his love for classical music and appreciation for the Marx Brothers…I absorbed the contrarian appeal of the Limbaugh effect, even as I began a lifelong foray into punk rock…I have to admit, growing up in Western Mass, in the depressed shell of the once-great General Electric’s factory, it always felt a long way from the liberal enclaves of Boston or even Northampton. In my first presidential election, my father’s hatred of Bill Clinton rubbed off on me as I cast my very first ballot for his opponent, Bob Dole. Then a few years later, sometime after the excesses of the Clinton Impeachment trial, I began to slide back in the other direction. I believe seeing how far one party was willing to go to bring down a member of the other party was a huge factor in why I turned away from the GOP. I went third party in 2000 (never again) and then by 2004 I was voting Democrat and have done so ever since.

Meanwhile…

My dad went on doing what he did in elections. I can only assume he was still listening to Limbaugh and voting for the GOP.

Then…sometime during the Obama years, something happened….my mother got sick. He spent more of his time taking care of her as she suffered a series of mini strokes that ultimately took her down in November of 2012. But during that time, my love and respect for my father grew. He was setting an example for what it means to take those marriage vows seriously. After 46 years of marriage, this was the “sickness” part of “in sickness and health.”

And coincidentally, he stopped talking politics, and stopped listening to Limbaugh. Because even while he still revered this man who spoke to him daily for so many years, it just wasn’t doing anything for him at the time. “No one else is listening so why should I bother?” It would seem that the relative calm and competence of Barack Obama’s two terms coupled with the stark reality that he would lose the woman he loved and be alone for the first time in almost half a century would trump any desire to hear the words of an angry man over the radio.

I have to admit, this was my favorite era of my adult relationship with my father. Even as he took a world of shit from other relatives, he stood firm and took care of my mother until the very end….

I don’t know who my dad voted for in 2016 or 2020. I mean, I do know. But as long as I don’t know for absolute certainty he didn’t vote for That Awful Man, I can fool myself into thinking that his decency wasn’t compromised. But the reality is I know he would never vote for Biden and I’m even more sure that he would never have voted for Hillary, who was one of Limbaugh’s most frequent targets from the early days of the Clinton administration. Honestly, her biggest liabilities were her length of public visibility (apparently not a problem with Biden) and the continued dominance of the patriarchy.

Part of me just wishes that there had been a line that he refused to cross. That Trump would be the bridge too far; that this awful man who got where he got by putting people down, trashing women and the disabled and immigrants and anyone not maintaining the white supremacy narrative in the US would not get my father’s vote. That my God fearing but harmless little man that everyone seems to love would finally and at long last turn his back on the party of Rush and Trump. Honestly, all my high school friends, everyone around town, they all love Mr. C and for that matter, they all loved my mother as well. They were an odd little couple who were embraced for their oddness.

But alas…that was not to be…

For my mother’s part, she went a long time just being as “live and let live” sort of person, with a big, misdirected heart. And over time, with my father’s Limbaugh listening and Ditto head turn to the hard right, she went along with him. Because my father would preach. I mean, preach at her, us, anyone. Not talking with, but talking at. I hated that. How can you be polite and civil to someone you love who thinks that “anyone who votes for a Democrat is an idiot?” And she went along for the ride, becoming a card-carrying Republican, replete with bad words about Hillary, harsh words about Feminists and abortion and the most memorable moment coming during the Anita Hill testimony and subsequent Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Confirmation: “The Bitches didn’t get him!”

I know where that came from. It wasn’t her. It was my father, who channeled it from Rush.

Rush Limbaugh was dying, but that didn’t stop him from spouting off misinformation or being an evil prick. (no, it’s not called Covid-19 because there were 18 Covids before this; no, advocating a secession or even feeding that beast at all is not a good idea—you have listeners! You have a responsibility!)

Now Rush Limbaugh has finally died. On the one hand, I am glad, because he was such a prick. But then again, I know it must make my father sad, which oddly is still bothersome to me.

*

We talk a few times a year. It’s not a close family, but that is more of a product of our personalities than anything political. We’re not a “Trump divided us” kind of family. It’s just how it is, how it’s always been. Father’s Day, his birthday, my birthday, Christmas…we talk on the phone. Pre-Covid, I saw him once or twice a year. But my stoicism, my introversion, my love of the library and reading, my love of old comedy and the Marx Brothers: that’s all from him.

Please…turn off the TV sometimes. Turn off the news: no one needs to watch it 24-7. Find things that unite rather than divide. Sports are good. Movies are good. Trump is gone. Rush Limbaugh is dead. Maybe now I can talk to my dad again.