I promised myself to stay away from direct comment on Rush Limbaugh. @conor64 has some thoughts worth the time here. I did want to say something about Limbaugh's audience. [thread] https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1362541226084298755

Limbaugh was all about opinion without responsibility. Obviously. He was a radio host. He never had to write a bill or get a road fixed or negotiate with a foreign government or do any of the things that people in government need to do for the government to work.

I think it was this that drew so many people to Limbaugh's show, and made him a role model for so many other people in conservative media and, eventually, people in conservative politics. These were people who liked expressing opinion, and disdained responsibility.

I don't mean they disdained all responsibility -- say, for their own welfare, or that of their families and close friends. But Limbaugh attracted to his show people who resented civic virtue, the idea that they bore some responsibility for society or other people generally.

Is it difficult at all to see the direct line between Limbaugh's audience and Trump's? Particularly after the last of the old Republican Party, the party of internationalism and free markets, had blown up with the George W. Bush administration, the disdain for responsibility...

.....in which Limbaugh's audience had reveled during the 1990s became dominant in the Republican Party. A President who spent much of his tenure watching television and playing golf -- during a pandemic, as Americans died by the thousands every day -- came to be idolized.

Trump's rallies were all about people -- nearly all white, mostly prosperous -- getting together and having a good time. The country might have problems; so might the world. But not their problems. They wanted no demands placed upon them by politics or politicians.

They wanted entertainment, validation, fun. That's what Limbaugh had delivered to his radio audience, and what Trump delivered to the crowds at the campaign rallies he maintained, with stupefying consistency, throughout the four years he was President.

I have seen this discussed in terms of Limbaugh's influence on Trump -- and of the influence both men had on Republican politicians, so many of whom act as if the two political entertainers were personal role models. Perhaps this is looking at the subject in the wrong way.

Maybe what was significant about Limbaugh's career was his audience, its passions and (especially) its vices. If Limbaugh hadn't existed, someone very similar would have taken his place. Generally prosperous Americans, not all that interested in other people's problems and....

....resentful of the very idea they might bear some responsibility for solving them, would have demanded some other voice to keep them entertained, validate their petty grievances and idle prejudices, and reassure them that nothing was their fault.

If Republican politicians shrink from engaging even on immediate crises, maybe this is why. We can say they're not being responsible -- but they got nominated and elected because of this, not in spite of it. They learned to give an audience what it wanted, as Rush Limbaugh did.