With a following of 15 million and a divisive style of mockery, grievance and denigrating language, he was a force in reshaping American conservatism.

Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio megastar whose slashing, divisive style of mockery and grievance reshaped American conservatism, denigrating Democrats, environmentalists, “feminazis” (his term) and other liberals while presaging the rise of Donald J. Trump, died on Wednesday at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 70.

His wife, Kathryn, announced the death at the start of Mr. Limbaugh’s radio show, a decades-long destination for his flock of more than 15 million listeners. “I know that I am most certainly not the Limbaugh that you tuned in to listen to today,” she said, before adding that he had died that morning from complications of lung cancer.

Mr. Limbaugh revealed a diagnosis of advanced lung cancer last February. A day later, Mr. Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, during the State of the Union address.

Since his emergence in the 1980s as one of the first broadcasters to take charge of a national political call-in show, Mr. Limbaugh transformed the once-sleepy sphere of talk radio into a relentless right-wing attack machine, his voice a regular feature of daily life — from homes to workplaces and the commute in between — for millions of devoted listeners.

He became a singular figure in the American media, fomenting mistrust, grievances and even hatred on the right for Americans who did not share their views, and he pushed baseless claims and toxic rumors long before Twitter and Reddit became havens for such disinformation. In politics, he was not only an ally of Mr. Trump but also a precursor, combining media fame, right-wing scare tactics and over-the-top showmanship to build an enormous fan base and mount attacks on truth and facts.

His conspiracy theories ranged from baldfaced lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace — the president “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen,” he said falsely in 2009 — to claims that Mr. Obama’s 2009 health care bill would empower “death panels” and “euthanize” elderly Americans. In the wake of last year’s election, he amplified Mr. Trump’s groundless claims of voter fraud; on President Biden’s Inauguration Day, during one of his final broadcasts, he insisted to listeners that the new administration had “not legitimately won it.”

In 1995, in the days after the Oklahoma City bombing, President Bill Clinton denounced the “promoters of paranoia” on talk radio — remarks that were widely seen as aimed at Mr. Limbaugh.

“We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other,” Mr. Clinton said.

Mr. Limbaugh’s immense popularity had a profound effect on the country’s media landscape. Dozens of right-wing talkers cropped up on local radio stations emulating his divisive commentary. “There is no talk radio as we know it without Rush Limbaugh; it just doesn’t exist,” Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News and talk-radio star, said in a tribute to Mr. Limbaugh on Wednesday. “I’d even make the argument, in many ways there’s no Fox News or even some of these other opinionated cable networks.”

In the Limbaugh lexicon, advocates for the homeless were “compassion fascists,” women who defended abortion rights were “feminazis,” environmentalists were “tree-hugging wackos.” He called global warming a hoax and cruelly ridiculed Michael J. Fox, imitating the tremors that were a symptom of the actor’s Parkinson’s disease.

When hundreds of thousands of Americans were dying of AIDS, Mr. Limbaugh ran a regular segment called “AIDS updates,” in which he mocked the deaths of gay men by playing Dionne Warwick’s recording of the song “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” He later expressed regret for the segment, but he continued to make homophobic remarks over the years; in 2020, he dismissed the presidential bid of Pete Buttigieg by claiming that Americans would be repelled by a “gay guy kissing his husband onstage.”

In 2012, Mr. Limbaugh lambasted Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student, as a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she had testified at a congressional hearing in support of the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives for women.

“If we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it; we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch,” Mr. Limbaugh said. After he was denounced by President Obama and congressional leaders and companies pulled advertising from his show, Mr. Limbaugh issued a rare mea culpa, relying on one of his more common excuses: that his comments had been meant in good fun.

“My choice of words was not the best,” he said, “and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

Living in Luxury
Mr. Limbaugh presented himself as a tribune of blue-collar America even as his program made him fabulously rich. He collected $85 million a year and lived in a 24,000-square-foot oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach. (He sold his Manhattan apartment, on Fifth Avenue, in 2010.)

Still, despite his enormous following in grass-roots Republican politics, he was often viewed as a sideshow of sorts by establishment conservatives. That ended in 2015 with the meteoric rise of Mr. Trump, a Limbaugh devotee who aped the radio host’s bombastic and demagoguing style on the campaign trail and quickly took command of the crowded Republican field for president.

... and it goes on and on here

You have to notice that while this seems a tribute, the media spin is clearly evident.

"His conspiracy theories ranged from baldfaced lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace — the president “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen,” he said falsely in 2009 "

Same as with Trumps claims of voter fraud. No balancing of one side against the other.

Media wins.

Do we really know if Obama was legal? I voted for him but it had nothing to do with this question.

I didn't care either way ....

It's not bias to call that a baldfaced lie.

Barack Obama proved he was a citizen to the extent that any of us do: he had official documentation which was adequate to prove citizenship to the government (for example, producing a birth certificate as a part of the documentation package for getting a passport). He publicly released it. Then the goal posts moved to talking about long form birth certificates (I personally had no idea that there were different birth certificate formats prior to that). He also released that. And of course nitpicking all of the documents when they were released. Obama bent over backwards to humor a bunch of people propagating a common racist smear (questioning the citizenship of any American who isn't white). 

And all of that aside, it doesn't even make sense as a conspiracy. The Democratic establishment wanted Hillary Clinton to win the primaries and had their thumb on the scale for her (by the time 2016 rolled around, they'd crushed almost all of the competition that might've considered a run and rigged things against Bernie so another Obama upset couldn't happen). To what end are they running some grand conspiracy to back a candidate they didn't even want?

Trump's claims of voter fraud went to courts across the country, failed to produce any evidence, and got tossed. They even got debunked by his own appointees, like noted communist Bill Barr. The media entertained the discussion far longer than they should have, because Trump & getting people wound up is great for ratings and article clicks. It's not a particularly good example of bias, but it is a really good example of the toxic nature of media (with media outlets intentionally stoking outrage among their target audiences).

Anyway, fuck Rush. He was trash. He's a big reason our current media landscape is such trash.

It's not bias to call that a baldfaced lie.

Barack Obama proved he was a citizen to the extent that any of us do: he had official documentation which was adequate to prove citizenship to the government (for example, producing a birth certificate as a part of the documentation package for getting a passport). He publicly released it. Then the goal posts moved to talking about long form birth certificates (I personally had no idea that there were different birth certificate formats prior to that). He also released that. And of course nitpicking all of the documents when they were released. Obama bent over backwards to humor a bunch of people propagating a common racist smear (questioning the citizenship of any American who isn't white). 

I have those two ...
The "wallet/carry sized" and the "real" form, which is a fill sized piece of paper; both are notarized ...

Examples:
Short Form/Card:

Long Form:

Yeah, I only have the long form. My long form actually looks fake, because it's basically a plain white piece of paper with a raised seal - Washington DC doesn't have the intricate designs that states have.

The short form makes a lot of sense because there's really no reason to provide the detailed information in almost any situation that asks for a birth certificate.

The federal government, of course, requires the long form for a lot of things - passport applications require the long form, for example.

Well yeah I have neither. Mine has been lost and I'll have to go through the records in my birth city.

I never cared about the legality aspect of his admin, but the only certificate he submitted was an electronic document and you can see why it raised eyebrows because as an image the layers were never flattened and once submitted anyone could open it in a paint program and see where fields had been cut and pasted. That was the only interesting thing about that situation.

I found it extremely frustrating. There are actual conspiracies and many of them are pretty open - they're only "secret" in that no one reports on them or discusses them.

For instance:

• Regulatory capture. Big companies openly conspire to use regulation to ensure their market share, protect unethical business practices, etc.
• People like the Kochs and companies like Exxon openly fund people to debunk inconvenient science.
• Kuwait employed a public relations firm to arrange congressional testimony and agitate for the first gulf war. Then political appointees like Paul Wolfowitz conspired to edit and/or invent evidence to support the second gulf war.

Stupid conspiracy theories like the Obama birth certificate thing end up poisoning the well. It makes disinformation campaigns a lot easier - just smear inconvenient facts as conspiracy theories.

Propaganda exists all over the world, man ...
If the masses are collectively too weak to not believe, well, so be it ...

... and, for the record, I've ALWAYS thought "Bachelor Jeff" Christie was an obnoxious bag of douche spray

Fair enough. I'll always celebrate when a really great propagandist dies, though. He was really, really good at reaching people. I don't think he's easily replaced.

"Stupid conspiracy theories like the Obama birth certificate thing end up poisoning the well. It makes disinformation campaigns a lot easier - just smear inconvenient facts as conspiracy theories."

Yeah I don't see that so much, disinformation is what the US.Gov is all about.
But yes they are pretty open to anyone paying attention.

To be clear I believe Obama was positioned as part of the bush 9/11 bullshit to derail any attempt at investigating that shit. Obama, the first thing out of his mouth was "There will be no investigation of the bush admin." 

So yeah.

Fair enough. I'll always celebrate when a really great propagandist dies, though. He was really, really good at reaching people. I don't think he's easily replaced.

Touche' with the "Fair Enough" ....

Fair enough. I'll always celebrate when a really great propagandist dies, though. He was really, really good at reaching people. I don't think he's easily replaced.

Touche' with the "Fair Enough" ....

Maybe we should have a couple preachers come on here and tell us how this was foretold.

Why?
The demon is already been exorcized ...