Thursday, August 11, 2011

Rush Limbaugh blowing his foghorn

I'm not a highly trained broadcast specialist. But I did work at a radio station for, I don't know, six or seven years.

And I would walk in to hear the voice of Rush Limbaugh coming from the AM broadcast booth each and every morning. Usually 'Clinton' or 'Monica' would be the first word I'd hear, even years after Clinton left office.

Rush experienced some sort of hearing loss, if I recall, related to his years of wearing 'cans,' which I would call 'headphones,' as I'm no highly trained broadcast specialist.

I also experienced a sort of hearing loss related to radio work, though mine was of a self-preservationist type where my brain learned to tune out Rush Limbaugh, because otherwise I would have gone crazy.

So. Despite knowing better I listened to a clip this morning from a recent case of Limbaugh talking.

The context is Rush Limbaugh criticizing Al Sharpton for making a mistake while talking.

Message being: if you can't talk and not make mistakes, don't talk for a living.

Here's Rush's delivery:

"...Al, lemme just tell you, as a -- as a highly trained broadcast specialist: stick to activism and the fog horn. . . ."

The fog horn?

I, uh . . . Rush, I'm not -- do you mean fog horn, like activism is warning others of peril in the way that a fog horn is blown during foggy conditions that . . . I don't. . . .

Then Rush goes on: ". . . and the bull horn. . . ."

And he does it pretty seamlessly, just adds bull horn to the fog horn and I guess that's where his high degree of broadcast specialist training kicks in. But, um, you just . . . uh, flubbed what you were saying which was making fun of somebody else flubbing what they were saying by way of telling them to get out of broadcast journalism if they can't keep from -- oh, to hell with it. I don't have to worry over these things anymore since I blew the fog horn and got out of radio.

Here's the audio if you want to hear it. You only have to make it to the :21 second mark. But also notice the sputtering that goes on from :07 to :11 seconds. That's some highly trained jibberish right there.


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