Limbaugh was great before he sold out

Matt Taibbi, after the election:

Now, Trump is likely to leave the White House, but he created a coalition that some Republicans already understand would deliver massively in a non-pandemic situation. As Missouri Republican Josh Hawley put it the night of the election, “We are a working-class party now. That’s the future.”

Matt Taibbi, on Hawley’s idol Rush Limbaugh:

“Limbaugh was good in the beginning but then he sold out” pic.twitter.com/glI2NN5WKF— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) February 18, 2021

Rush Limbaugh, at any point in his career, was exactly as “anti-Establishment” as Josh Hawley has ever been — which is to say, not in the slightest unless you think that the central truth of America is that heterosexual white guys can’t catch a break.

The idea that a guy who worshipped Reagan his entire public career and had a segment where he mocked people dying of AIDS with musical accompaniment ever did anything but either punch down or punch at people trying to make even the mildest reforms to unjust hierarchies of power is insane, but it’s the kind of insanity that can seem logical if you’re the kind of person who thinks the “authenticity” of music is determined by which company makes it commercially available. His buddy Glenn’s claim that Donald Trump was “fervently opposed” by “elite circles” in the U.S. is the classic example — what unites Taibbi and Greenwald and their new hero Hawley is their apparent belief that an assistant professor of English literature at the University of Central Missouri is more representative of American elites than, say, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.