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Is today a good day to lay out my extensive research on how Rush Limbaugh’s cochlear implants were far, far less effective than he led people to believe? (Teaser: “court reporter”)
I googled to find back some of the things I've seen, and here's a new one, in his Daily Beast obituary. This is actually confirmation of what I had only put together. (Guess what another name for "court reporter" is? Real-time captioner. He couldn't hear callers!)
I can't get at his website now - probably too much traffic - but here's where I quoted a transcript elsewhere, where he says that the CI sound quality is not good: "Like violins or strings sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me."
And: "And going in public to a restaurant is, depending on the place, it is impossible. It literally can be impossible to have a conversation except with anybody on the left... I hear everything, but making sense of it…"
What had me first investigating was a friendly profile in I think the NYT Style section, that mentioned in passing that he stopped socializing after he got the CIs. That it was pretty much impossible. I haven't found that one back, yet.
I think this is important to note, not because I think CIs never work, or that they don't have their uses, but because Rush Limbaugh is in many ways the poster boy for how great they are. A famous radio guy! RADIO! When he could only do it because of real-time captioning.
