Agree or disagree with Missouri’s Rush Limbaugh, but don’t cheer his cancer diagnosis

Local fans of talk show host Rush Limbaugh are undoubtedly sending their prayers and best wishes to the conservative icon, who said this week he is undergoing treatment for advanced lung cancer.

A native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Limbaugh spent much of his early career on local radio in Kansas City. He also worked for a time for the Kansas City Royals. Of course, his nationally-syndicated program has been a popular part of daytime radio here.

Limbaugh combined conservatism with bombast and deep-voiced self-promotion. He prompted an explosion of similar radio shows in the United States, yet he remains the master of the form, unrivaled by imitators who lack his unquestioned communication skills.

We disagree with almost everything Rush Limbaugh says he stands for. His misogyny, his fondness for racial caricature and his malleable moral approach served as a template for the divisive politics that have crippled our country. Limbaugh paved the way for Donald Trump’s routine distortions and cruelty, and history will remember that.

But it is atrocious for Limbaugh’s detractors to cheer his disease, as some have done, or to wish him harm. Rush Limbaugh is a human being, just like the rest of us. At the very least, he deserves moral support and the privacy he may want right now.

On Tuesday, President Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union address. It might not be the recognition many of us would pick. The setting was problematic, too, given Limbaugh’s fiery condemnation of many in the House chamber over the years.

Happily, in this country, we are free to agree or disagree with the president’s decision, or anything he does.

But Rush Limbaugh has that same right. He took full advantage of our nation’s guarantee of free speech and turned it into a unique and significant career, as polarizing as it has been. Applaud that if you want, or criticize it. But don’t wish him ill.

No one deserves to be sick.

Perhaps Limbaugh will use this time to reflect on his politics, and to see the nation’s issues in all their complexity, though it seems unrealistic to think he will ever think differently about his world, or his place in it.

In health and in sickness, Limbaugh’s voice will always be a part of the cacophony that defines America’s glorious belief in self-government and free thought.