Tag: Rush Limbaugh

Charles Osgood, the Last of My Radio Three, Is Gone

Posted on by David Rodeback

This week we learned of the passing of CBS News icon Charles Osgood at age 91. He had other regular roles on television and radio, but I first knew him from his brief “Newsbreak” spots on the radio, which I heard many mornings in my youth.

My parents gave me two of his books, which you can still find if you look. Both are collections of his Newsbreak spots in prose and verse: Nothing Could Be Finer Than a Crisis That Is Minor in the Morning and There’s Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do If You Would Be My POSSLQ*. (POSSLQ, pronounced “possle-queue,” is an acronym for Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. It was a simpler time.)

On the Passing of Rush Limbaugh

Posted on by David Rodeback

I first heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio when I was a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The radio station I usually played in my car bored me one afternoon, on my way to campus, so I found another. He happened to be on it. I’d never heard of him — and was “Rush” even a name?

I had a degree in Political Science by then. I’d worked on several political campaigns and interned at the US Senate. I had even been the token conservative on the op/ed page of an off-campus weekly newspaper. So I wasn’t new to politics and government. More to the point, I had devoured Ronald Reagan’s daily radio spots in the 1970s. Morning after morning the future president talked political sense, and he was, of course, charming and well spoken.

Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea — But Usually Mine

By comparison, Rush was brazen, bombastic, and sometimes completely over the top. He held forth for hours at a time, not just minutes. He was also entertaining – outright funny – in a way I haven’t found in other talk radio personalities. I quickly appreciated that his overblown radio persona was a way of poking fun at Rush Limbaugh, a way of not taking life too seriously. This allowed me to enjoy it, rather than despise him for it.