Yes, He Was Toxic, BUT

 Yes, Rush Limbaugh was toxic to the country, but as I have said before, he wasn't the cause of the decline of public discourse.  The real culprit was the Reagan administration's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the worst federal policy decision of the past fifty years.  The "free speech" claims for repeal were and are completely backasswards, intellectually dishonest,  as providing opposing viewpoints for controversial issues  IS about free speech for other viewpoints and not nonstop propaganda.  The broadcast airwaves, unlike print media, also are limited in spectrum, so it was vital that they serve the public interest.  However, the issue was about the ownership of the airwaves, and those airwaves belonged and still belong to the public.  Providing differing viewpoints serves the public interest, and the public owns the airwaves.  This concept got completely thrown out the window in favor of neoliberal crackpottery the Reagan administration was enamored with.  He vetoed the continuation of the Fairness Doctrine when it passed Congress, and an appeals court said it was strictly discretionary.  Why it was not appealed to the USSC is a mystery to me.  Bork and Scalia were on the appeals court ruling on the matter at the time.  It had nothing to do with "free speech."

And then the feds continued to deregulate the broadcast media into the 1990s.  The situation got much worse with the establishment of Fox "News" by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian PRINT media mogul, and headed by a political operative by the name of Roger Ailes.  Ailes had no background in journalism; he was a propaganda artist first and foremost.  This should have raised alarm bells.  The late senator Ted Kennedy tried, without success, to keep Murdoch out of owning U.S. media, and here we are now with a couple of generations of completely brainwashed people who live in a complete alternative universe.

It was our elected officials who sold us down the river, once again, in favor of ideology or outright greedy corporate interests.  Limbaugh, with huge backing from moneyed interests, became a star and the most prominent hate radio host because of our elected officials.  If it hadn't been for them, he'd have lived out his life as a local or regional talk show host or perhaps returned to the public relations field.