What’s It Like Being A Limbaugh?
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 9:36 pmRush’s cousin lets you in on the feeling:
Well, he’s the relative you don’t see much, who shows up on Christmas Eve on his own plane with an anchor lady you didn’t know he was dating until your friend’s dad told you the night before. He’s fairly loud, but all the Limbaughs are. He’s that one over there with the cousins singing rowdy Christmas carols around the piano. Yeah, the one with the cochlear implant, the guy holding a humidor. He’s Cousin Rusty, and he’s OK.
Sometimes he invites you to his house for Thanksgiving, you and every single one of your relatives, all expenses paid, and he puts you up in a resort that makes you feel like a movie star. He gives you a room key that doubles as his credit card and you can’t help but charge Chanel sunglasses on it for everything he did the previous year that had made your job as a new teacher in a liberal high school any harder.
He’s the guy who puts “March of the Penguins” on his home movie theater screen for the little cousins to watch and makes sure his candy bowls are filled with jelly beans and doesn’t swear when my nephew tries to throw his antiques down the stairs. He’s the guy who came from nothing to something and knows what it feels like to miss Missouri.
One Thanksgiving he stands in front of all us relatives in his Versailles-looking living room, and before my grandpa prays over our meal, Cousin Rusty apologizes. He says he’s afraid he has made it tough to be a Limbaugh this past year, and his voice breaks like I have never heard it do before. Cousin Rusty is OK.
Now that I’m at Columbia University, some relatives like to ask about the “climate” at school, and if I’m becoming “liberal,” like it’s a disease. I don’t think they understand that you don’t have to agree with your family to love your family.
Yet when people ask me about him or when I hear my name during roll call the first day of a new semester, I still get this complex. Will they like me less? Do they already have a view of me? Have they pegged me as loud, opinionated and ultra-conservative? Should I raise my hand less? Do they think I’m looking at their Obama buttons with disdain? Should I wear a T-shirt announcing I didn’t vote for Bush or McCain?
Would it be OK if I did?
Comments
One Responses to “What’s It Like Being A Limbaugh?”
So change your name. Pretty hard to run up much sympathy for someone who wants to enjoy the upside of being related to the guy, without being penalized for the downside.