On the back cover Limbaugh is sitting on a stool, hair slicked back, wearing a collared black leather jacket looking like a backroom poker player. The first page had a red American flag symbol on it-the imprint of Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster that specializes in conservative nonfiction. On instinct, I knew not to eat while reading, the same way I know not to eat dinner while watching Hoarders. I had to go the website to find the reading order.Īfter disinfecting each volume with a Clorox wipe, I finally sat down to read Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans. Plus, it wasn’t clear which book was book one. I’ve spent nearly a decade reviewing books and can cruise through pages, but I couldn’t bring myself to even open book one. The books sat on my window seat for weeks. I walked two miles with the heavy hardbacks, weighing six pounds, sweat dripping down my back in the Texas heat. When I went to pick them up I was thankful for self-checkout. I put all five books- Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims Rush Revere and the First Patriots Rush Revere and the American Revolution Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner and Rush Revere and the Presidency-on hold at my local library. Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom a year before he croaked. He died in 2021 at the age of seventy from lung cancer. Limbaugh, a college dropout who hated school, eventually gained an average of 15 million listeners a week and earned over a billion dollars. Limbaugh took the lead, helping to spawn, in Gremlins form, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones. In 1987, when the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which called for contrasting viewpoints to controversial topics, an explosion of conservative radio shows soon followed. He was sixteen when he first appeared on local radio. He unabashedly built his career on bigotry-making fun of people with AIDS, calling rape victims “hoes”, and expressing a particularly strong disdain for people facing homelessness. If school districts wanted literature that upheld white supremacy, then Limbaugh’s Rush Revere series presented a sanitized option for teaching fragile white kids about history without hurting their feelings. As I pictured books like Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation and M.L.K.: Journey of a King being pulled from school library shelves, I wondered what sorts of books would fill the gaps. Rowling’s Harry Potters-a transphobic Brit and a rightwing conservative vying for young minds against the backdrop of book bans in Texas. I texted back that the photo was even more disturbing because on the shelf above was all of J.K. Limbaugh’s chicken-sausage pallor was superimposed on an illustrated rendering of Paul Revere. From BookPeople, located in Austin’s international airport, my friend texted me a photo of Rush Limbaugh’s Rush Revere chapter book series for kids.
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