Before right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, before Fox News, there was Limbaugh. His voice entertained millions of listeners, cheered conservatives hungry to see their beliefs reflected on the airwaves, and elevated long-shot Republicans to national prominence.
His father was an attorney locally, while his mother was active in local Republican politics. He got his start at a station partly owned by his father, and his early years in radio were marked by clashes with bosses.
But after the Reagan administration set aside the Fairness Doctrine, which instructed broadcasters to present opposing views on controversial issues, Limbaugh unleashed his buoyant conservatism to great effect in Sacramento, Calif., and then New York City. And in his emergence on the national scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the man perfectly met the moment. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies would give Limbaugh a huge amount of credit for the GOP's rise in 1994, when the party took over the U.S. House and Senate for the first time in four decades.
"There's a whole psychology of doing the program the way that I do it," Limbaugh told NPR. "And there is a lot of schtick and a lot of humor to it. But the one thing that I don't do is make things up or say things I don't believe, just to cause a reaction. Because that takes no talent."
In the early-to-mid 1990s, Limbaugh hosted a TV show run by Roger Ailes, who went on to help Rupert Murdoch create and run the Fox News Channel. But radio proved to be Limbaugh's perfect medium.
The show ran for three hours every weekday. Limbaugh riffed on the news, largely without guests to interview. Instead, he read and responded to news articles with opinions and voices, pumping the program with satire and parody, puffing himself up while mocking himself thoroughly. He promoted conservative priorities such as deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, and muscular military intervention in the Middle East. He also cast doubt on established facts, including global warming, and propelled conspiracy theories, such as the baseless claim that Joe Biden's address to the 2020 Democratic National Convention had to be stitched together from numerous takes.
And Limbaugh staked his claim for a vision of the United States that resurrected a more seemingly traditional, more conservative and whiter past. In so doing, he trampled the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. He often traded on decades-old stereotypes to offend women, Blacks, Latinos, gays and liberals.