In the course of the six years or so that I’ve been posting weekly offerings I’ve written about the passing of a notable person only once; former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, in 2016.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this week’s edition to honor the memory of Rush Limbaugh, the creator and reigning heavyweight champion of talk radio.  Since he appeared on the national scene in 1988, Rush has been the driving force of conservatism, and thus, the bane of Leftists everywhere.  For three hours a day, five days a week, he entertained and informed us with his “talent on loan from God.”  Every day was different.  Every day was stimulating.  Every issue was tackled with the ease of a man who had no trouble deciding what he believed, and with the unique charm of a man who was having the time of his life, at the same time building up his supporters, and destroying his detractors.  Regular listeners developed an almost personal attachment to Rush.  For me, as for many of his listeners, Rush was the best friend I never met.  He was a pioneer who created an industry.  People have compared Rush to Babe Ruth, but as others have noted, while the Babe was great, he didn’t invent baseball.  Before Rush, talk radio was local.  In New York we had Bob Grant in the afternoon, but talk programming was mostly a nighttime thing, with people like Barry Farber.  As wrong back then as they are today, the experts said there was no market for a nationally syndicated daytime talk radio program.  AM radio was a dying industry.  There weren’t enough talk format stations to make it work, and anyway, you couldn’t have a successful talk show on radio in the middle of the day.  It just wasn’t done.  Until Rush came riding in from Sacramento in 1988.  His show took a while to catch on.  That soon changed.  Restaurants established Rush Rooms, where patrons could have lunch without missing Rush.  Rush eventually expanded his reach to 600 stations across the country.  As this is written, the AM radio industry, once pronounced dead, now has more than 1,400 talk radio stations.  Rush’s rise wasn’t always a smooth process.  To an extent, Rush was an acquired taste for station owners and sponsors.  It took time to understand that much of what he said was tongue in cheek, with a sly twinkle in his eye.  For instance, many stations threatened to cut him off when he discussed “women farding in their cars.”  According to Merriam-Webster, “farding” means the application of cosmetics, but no one had ever heard that word in 1988, and of course, Rush, being Rush, didn’t immediately explain.  He just set off the bomb and then stood back to admire the mayhem.  That was typical, and Rush’s opponents on the Left never got the joke.  Rush was so hated by the Left because he had their number.  Only Rush could christen them “the drive by media,” it drove them nuts.  The Left complained that Rush Limbaugh was responsible for the rise of conservative political movements, like the Contract With America and the Tea Party, because he turned his listeners into mind-numbed robots who simply parroted his heresy.  They were half right.  Rush Limbaugh provided his listeners with the message that they were neither alone nor out of the mainstream.  We didn’t need Rush to tell us what we believed.  We already knew.  We were conservatives who were constantly bombarded by a liberal media.  There was no national voice of conservatism, until Rush.  Remember, in 1988, there was no Fox News, OAN or News Max, and no internet.  But there was Rush, proclaiming the gospel of Ronald Reagan, whom he dubbed, “Renaldus Magnus.”  And contrary to Leftist opinion, there was nothing extreme about the message.  It was simple.  “We have a Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, it guarantees us certain freedoms, and is supposed to ensure the separation of powers, to prevent the federal government from dominating the States.  These freedoms were endowed by God, and no government has the authority to infringe them.”  Strangely, Leftists consider such sentiments unacceptable.  Rush straightened them out.  And since tyrants don’t enjoy being told they’re wrong, they hated him, and denounced his every utterance.  In a way, the treatment the Left gave Rush was just a warm up for its treatment of Donald Trump, and like Trump, Rush gave them plenty of ammunition, and delighted in their attacks.  They never understood that their attacks only made him stronger.  Leftists have no sense of humor, so some of the attacks were based on their real or feigned failure to comprehend what was a joke.  For instance, one April 1st, Rush came on and for the first hour he expounded on the idea that we ought to tax the poor, before revealing it was a joke.  The Left reported it as his serious opinion.  Again, as with Trump, the Left criticized Rush’s “tone.”  How dare he claim to be right 99.8% of the time, although he was.  How arrogant to claim he had half his brain tied behind his back, just to make it fair?  Sometimes the Left just made stuff up, branding him racist, sexist, etc., based on imaginary statements that they attributed to Rush.  They had to lie about him, because they never could handle the truth.  And afflicted as they are with delusions of rectitude, they never could understand why conservative talk radio thrives, while liberal attempts to enter the format, like Air America, have been utter failures.  The Leftist whacko organization, Center for American Progress complains that, of the 1,400 talk stations, only 9% air liberal programming.  It hasn’t occurred to them that this is because nobody wants to listen to their bullcrap.  Rush knew that the American Dream wasn’t a white male dream.  His genius was his understanding that, once properly informed, most Americans will choose an America endowed with the blessings of liberty, over the Progressive gulag.  The American Dream was for all Americans, regardless of their backgrounds.  This was the message that the Left had to stifle.  They considered Rush the most dangerous man in America because he endangered them.  The best testament to their fear and loathing was the fact they denounced Rush even after he died.  For Rush listeners, 12:07 p.m. will never be the same.  His voice may have been stilled, but his impact lives on.  No one can ever fill the Attila the Hun chair, behind the golden EIB microphone.   So Mega-Dittos Rush.