From: Agent Orange
Re: Rush Limbaugh
Date: Jan. 3, 2003

Some fresh dirt on Rush Limbaugh from Usenet and the gang over at DU. Enjoy!

from DU:

Dr Fate (4015 posts)
Jan-02-03, 03:38 PM (ET)
17. Rush did in fact have a gay mentor named Norm Woodruff
LAST EDITED ON Jan-02-03 AT 03:41 PM (ET)

Rush did in fact have a "gay mentor" named Norm Woodruff, who "taught him how to dress". This does not make him gay, but it certainly is an amusing image to think of tough-guy Limbaugh off on a care-free shopping spree with his gay "mentor." I think that this fact combined with Rush's public homophobia is bizzare to say the least.

Here's more:

Yes, Jeff Christie is Rush Limbaugh ! Jeff Christie was at KQV twice in the early seventies. Jeff originally came to Pittsburgh to work at WIXZ. He came to KQV to do nights in 1972. A number of the phrases we still hear on his Rush Limbaugh show today on more than 600 stations "all across the fruited plain" were heard when he was on KQV. You can hear a sample of Jeff's work during the 14K days at the Reel Top 40 Radio Archives. He returned for a short time during KQV's final days of top 40 filling in middays before moving on to Kansas City. Rush Limbaugh's EIB network came from a term he used here in Pittsburgh in the early seventies. EIB = Excellence In Broadcasting.

---

Usenet via Deja/Google:

From:Robert M. Topolski
Subject:RUSH! by Michael Arkush
View:Complete Thread (3 articles),Original Format
Newsgroups alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh
Date: 1993-09-20 18:07:39 PST

Avon, Pocket Books, $4.99 in paperback only
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
Library of Congress catalog number 93-90612
ISBN: 0-380-77539-5

The long awaited unauthorized biography made it into my hot little hands about 20 hours ago, and I have thoroughly devoured all 233 pages of it.

I am not a book reviewer, nor do I even claim any proficiency in literature or grammar -- as this article will undoubtably tattle. Nonetheless, I am a Rush Limbaugh fan who just had to have this book the moment I saw it.

I asked the clerk how long it had been out (two weeks) and how well it had been selling. The answer to the second question was surprising: Apparently confused Rush fans were buying it and many were returning it after right after discovering that it wasn't the impending second book, SEE I TOLD YOU SO by Rush Limbaugh. After thinking about it for a while, I decided the response couldn't have been that bad because she didn't offer this information until I asked. I think that a store clerk, afraid that a sale might result in an unsatisfied customer, would warn that customer if she thought that he might be getting something other than what he wants.

I couldn't put the book down. Arkush, who is not a writer of many books, did a fine job of research, interviewing, and chronicalling Rush Limbaugh's career, friends, soul-mates, and conservative ancestry.

Arkush, who obviously is not totally enamoured with Rush (more on this later), takes readers step-by-step, job-by-job, relationship-by-relationship through the life of Rusty Limbaugh (aka Jeff Christie). The writer keeps it moving and interesting, complete with quotes from the appropriate sources from times in Rush's life.

Rush's second ex-wife, Michelle (Sixta) (Limbaugh) Wennerholm, was wonderfully open and obviously still has warm regards for Rush, whom she left after Rush went national, apparently to escape the ever-brightening lights and fame.

Arkush was not entirely complimentary. He criticizes Rush for not crediting Norm Woodruff for pulling the strings that got him into KFBK, which was where he was working when he met Ed McLaughlin. Norm gave Rush that last chance (he had been fired a number of times and fallen into obscurity while working in baseball). Norm taught Rush how to dress for success and presented him to KFBK at a key moment -- upon the firing of Morton Downey. Arkush says Rush fails to give Woodruff his just credit for his involvement in Rush's success, which if it ever does come will have to come posthomolously. Woodruff died in the mid 1980's of AIDS. He was gay.

Arkush also touches on Rush's military deferrment in a less-than-complimentary manner. David Limbaugh says Rush had a student deferrment and a pilonidal cyst. Arkush found room to print lines from people who questioned the deferrments and whether Rush should be allowed to comment on matters military.

Yet Arkush either missed or just failed to take the more obvious opportunity to cast Rush in a questionable light. Ex-coworker Mary Jane Wolf recalls attending a 70's pot party with Rush. As the joint was being passed around, Wolf told Rush she didn't want any. Rush told her to act like she was busy scratching his back and he would pass the joint on without using it either. "Nobody is going to dare say anything to me," she credits Rush (then Jeff Christie) as saying. For all the guff Rush gave Clinton about attending a pot party but claiming he "didn't inhale", the truth was that under similar circumstances, Rush didn't either. Arkush never links the event with Rush's later critisism of Clinton.

These only mildly disparaging events take up only a few of the pages of the biography, which is overall complimentary toward Rush's talent, ability to think and to speak, and to capitalize on his gifts. There is an overall theme concerning Rush's insecurity, his devotion toward excellence, and his love for show business. It is Arkush's first book (he co-wrote a sports book and writes for the LOS ANGELES TIMES) and is beautifully written.

All Limbaugh fans and devoted foes should RUSH! to get this book.

from DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID60/21210.html

The point here isn't that his mentor was a gay man, the point is that it is another dot to connect to a pattern.

We have;
1. The rumor about DJ Jeff Christie being fired from KQV in 1973 after an arrest on Winthrop Street for gay pandering. This rumor supposedly circulated on the UPitt campus for weeks following the firing. Verified parts are that Christie was fired by KQV, that Winthrop Street was a gay pickup spot in that era, and several people have confirmed hearing that same rumor at the time. One person confirmed having heard the rumor a couple of years later in water-cooler gossip at the Richmond VA radio station where he worked. At this time, nobody knew who Jeff Christie was.

2. Verification that KQV's Jeff Christie went on to become the man behind the Golden EIB Microphone, Rush Limbaugh.

3. Verification that the fellow who helped him get his second start in radio, and who taught him how to dress, was a gay man. Not that significant in itself. but you know, it is rather odd for a guy to be going clothes shopping with another guy.

4. The mysterious "cyst" that kept him out of 'Nam. One cause of anal cysts can be receptive anal sex, but of course we have no way of knowing in this case. We do know that this was on his draft deferrment documents, and that he now denies that he ever had an anal cyst. (He did so on the air just the other day.)

5. He keeps getting divorced. Not a lot in itself, but one wonders why? And we hear exactly nothing from him about his current wife.

6. The hearsay from a posting elsewhere on this forum that Rush used to go drinking at gay bars in in CA. Mind you, I do know that some open-minded people who are not gay go drinking with friends at gay bars. Rush has never struck me as an open-minded person. Or do I mis-read him?

7. In spite of the sexual preference of his mentor, and in spite of having socialized with gay people in the past, Rush has spared no effort to trash "the gay agenda" on his program. He has been especially nasty to Rep. Barny Frank.

None of these things by itself constitute evidence that Rush is gay (or, more likely, bisexual), but all of them together form a growing pattern. This leads me, and others, to the conclusion that it is possible that Rush really was arrested in 1973, as the rumors indicated, and suggest that it would warrent the time and money of somebody to run down the leads, check official records, and talk to people from Rush's past. None of this is proof, but it does suggest that the proof may be out there, if only it can be collected

from DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID60/20818.html

Back in 1983-84, my next door neighbor used to talk about meeting rush in the Sacramento Gay bars. We both lived in Lodi CA. He was a Log Cabin Republican www.lcr.org <http://www.lcr.org/>

I asked him once: "Do you mean Rush is gay?" "Gawd! I hope not!" he replied (aghast at the thought)

He went on to explain that Rush was the most unattractive man he had ever met. "Why does Rush hang out in Gay bars then?" I asked. "Rush is simply not the bigot he gets paid to portray on the radio." he explained.

Note: Rush Limbaugh was then host of a local talk show on a Sacramento radio station. John "McGoofy" went to Sacramento to buy the station...didn't buy the station, but bought Rush instead. (and moved him to NY NY where the rest of you heard of him)