We are coming up to Rush Limbaughs 20th annivesary. He began his incredible journey to superstardom on August 1, 1988. On that day his national show aired for the first time emanating from WABC in New York. Before that he was in Sacramento on KFBK. Today he is heard on over 600 radio stations by 14,000,000 americans. I am proud that our stations here in the upstate were among the first in the country to  recognize the brillance of Rush. We started carrying his show in 1989 and even brought his “Rush To Excellence” tour to Greenville’s Memorial Auditorium. I remember Mike Gallagher and I picking him up at GSP ( it had to be a big american made car per Limbaughs request) and then spending time with him at the downtown hyatt. We had to find snaple iced tea ( diet peach  if memory serves) and dinner had to be double cheesburgers and fries and ordered from room service. Mike and I had the chance of a lifetime to spend the evening with the man who has to be  credited with making talk radio what it is today and single handedly saving the AM dial.

So here we are 20 years later and we have to ask the question,” where would we be without Limbaugh”?. Part of the answer is there would be no talk radio. There would be no Newsradio Word in the upstate. I would probably be a distant memory because my radio career would have ended in 1992 when my contract was not renewed at WFBC-FM. I came back in 1994 to WORD to do talk radio because of Rush Limbaugh. By listening to him, I realized that radio could provide us all with a way to fight back. He has shown us the essence of free speech and how to express our frustrations locally and nationally. If Limbaugh had not created the so called ” new media” we would be stuck with the ” main stream media” and we all know that would be a disater. Al Franken may call Rush a ” big fat idiot”, but who’s the idiot now? Limbaugh just announced that he has signed a new agreement  worth 400 million dollars through 2015. Franken is running for the U.S. senate and the latest polls show that he doesn’t have a snowballs chance in you know where. Even with ” half his brain tied behind his back” he is the best there has ever been. Lets all give Limbaugh his due