Obituaries of Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday on the age of 70 of lung most cancers, have—very like the Time cowl—danced round this truth in the identical “have the cake and eat it too” style. Limbaugh’s politics have been sanded down in these tellings, which label him as merely “controversial” or “polarizing.” The New York Occasions described him as “relentlessly provocative,” a very weaselly approach of describing his method to speak radio. The Wall Road Journal wrote that he “rode a wave of nationwide polarization.” Almost each obituary notes that he was “influential.”
These are the sorts of issues you can say about so many individuals in politics: generic appellations that would go away somebody unfamiliar with Limbaugh’s oeuvre confused as to why this instantaneous bellowing of eulogy is even essential to memorialize a person who merely possessed these strange qualities. What earns Limbaugh this particular peal of immortalization is the qualities that these obituary writers know full effectively however have assiduously buffed into nothingness of their drafts: that Limbaugh’s politics have been cast in a crucible of hatred and cruelty; that his racism and extraordinary misogyny are the one standout contributions he made to the world.
Limbaugh was undoubtedly influential. However he didn’t trip a “wave of nationwide polarization,” he was the supply of its tidal pull, directing it with a bullhorn for many years. […]
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
Don’t stop with Saudis — Biden must cut off weapons to UAE, too, by William Hartung. The administration’s new coverage ought to embody a overview of all U.S. gross sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the nations which are primarily liable for the humanitarian disaster in Yemen.
Keisha Lance Bottoms Has Had a YEAR, by Tessa Stewart. How the mayor of Atlanta and rising star within the Democratic Occasion has led her metropolis via tumultuous occasions
Privatization Would Doom Biden’s Infrastructure Plan, by Jeremy Mohler. To fulfill his objectives on fairness, jobs and local weather, President Biden ought to push an enormous, publicly-funded infrastructure plan.
TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES
“The historical past of males’s opposition to girls’s emancipation is extra attention-grabbing maybe than the story of that emancipation itself.” ~~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Personal (1929)
On this date at Day by day Kos in 2005—Controversial Negroponte Nominated to Be First Director of Nationwide Intelligence:
The present U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, has been nominated to turn into the first Director of National Intelligence […]
Negroponte started his diplomatic profession in 1960 and served in South Vietnam earlier than turning into an aide to Henry Kissinger throughout negotiations in Paris with North Vietnam. From 1981 to 1985, he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, the place he helped perform the Reagan administration’s efforts, utilizing the Contra rebels, to oust the Sandinista authorities in Nicaragua. He additionally served as ambassador to Mexico and the Philippines. After leaving the diplomatic service in 1997, Negroponte labored as a senior govt with the McGraw-Hill publishing firm. In 2001, Bush appointed him as ambassador to the United Nations, a submit he held till he was named ambassador to Iraq final yr. A 1960 graduate of Yale College, the London-born son of a Greek transport magnate speaks 5 languages.
Billmon gives “context”:
“The DNI [National Directorate of Investigation] maintained a secret unit – the Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Military (ELACH), a rightist paramilitary group which carried out operations in opposition to Honduran leftists. Based on DELETED, through the interval ELACH operated (1980-1984), ELACH’s operations included surveillance, kidnappings, interrogation below duress, and execution of prisoners who have been Honduran revolutionaries.”
