After the Wednesday passing of talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh, blue check leftists took to Twitter to bash and mock the conservative icon while rejoicing over his death, including driving the hashtag #RestInPiss.
Limbaugh, who hosted The Rush Limbaugh Show for 32 years, had been battling stage IV lung cancer since January 2020.
Within minutes of the announcement of Limbaugh’s death, leftist Twitter users took to the social media platform to mock his memory and criticize both him and his positions.
“Rush Limbaugh was a Nazi who delighted in the suffering of others,” wrote writer and producer Wendy Molyneux. “We do not mourn and we do not care.”
“Rush Limbaugh was a shitty, cynical person who did everything he could to make the world meaner, dumber, and more divided,” wrote Andi Zeisler, writer and cofounder of the Portland-based feminist group Bitch Media. “I’m glad he’s dead and I wish it had happened a lot sooner.”
“With hate-peddling and conspiracy theories, Rush did more harm to the US than just about anybody,” wrote filmmaker and progressive activist Adam Best.
“Media mustn’t pretend that he was anything then one of the most toxic right-wing liars who has done more than any other media figure to harm and divide this nation,” wrote left-wing editor Alex Morash.
“Rush Limbaugh was a bigot and a misogynist who saturated America’s airwaves with cruel lies and conspiracy theories for decades, transforming the GOP in the process,” wrote senior HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias.
“Rush Limbaugh was a coward and white supremacist,” wrote left-wing activist Charlotte Clymer. “He aggressively and cynically exploited divisions in our country by weaponizing hatred and bigotry for his own personal gain.”
“He was in service to his own greed, prejudice, and hypocrisy, and that is how history will remember him,” she added.
“I don’t really have any strong emotions at all about Rush Limbaugh dying,” wrote Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox.
“He will be replaced by someone who is just as adept in stoking hate and resentment, and that person’s success will give me comfort that the world would be exactly the same if Rush had never lived.”
“Every day, when Rush Limbaugh got out of bed, he had pretty much one job: make the world a worse place,” wrote bestselling author Maureen Johnson.
“He made himself into a vortex. He caused tremendous amounts of suffering and poisoned people against their fellow humans. His life story is a cautionary tale,” she added.
“Rush Limbaugh fostered a culture of meanspiritedness that still poisons our politics and culture,” wrote Tom Winter, a former Democratic member of the Montana House of Representatives.
“Don’t do him the favor of perpetuating it – we’ve got bigger things to do than dance on that small man’s grave, everyone,” he added.
“Rush Limbaugh spent decades advancing his career by opportunistically spreading vicious lies that got a lot of bad people elected, whose corrupt policies in turn got a lot of Americans killed,” wrote liberal political blog Palmer Report. “Now he’s dead. So be it. There’s a reason ‘Rest in Piss’ is trending right now.”
“There are so many things I could say about the death of Rush Limbaugh but you’re probably already thinking them and with even better adjectives,” wrote Joe Hagan, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair.
“Don’t let anyone shame you for pointing out what a pig Rush Limbaugh was as if their tweets dancing on RGB’s grave aren’t even six-months old,” wrote journalist Kris Wernowsky.
“There are few people who have zero redeeming qualities,” wrote sports agent Ron Waxman. “Rush Limbaugh was one of them.”
“For years as a kid when my dad took me to school or various other activities I got to listen to rush limbaugh on the radio, and I’m just glad the cancerous shit coming out of his mouth wasn’t as effective on me as the cancer in his lungs was on him,” wrote author David Ruddock.
“He was, in short, an awful awful person,” wrote writer Eric Boehlert.
Many expressed sheer glee in Limbaugh’s passing.
“It’s easy to make fun of Rush Limbaugh right now, but it’s important to remember that he also brought a lot of people a lot of joy by dying,” wrote writer and comedian Mike Drucker.
“Say what you will about Rush Limbaugh and you may not agree with everything he had said, but with everything going on right now (pandemic, Texas etc) he gave us a reason to smile today,” wrote writer Philip Henry. “For that, I’m grateful.”
“I may have disagreed with him on everything, but I think we can all agree that even the worst of us doesn’t deserve the suffering that Satan is going through now that he has to deal with Rush Limbaugh,” wrote reporter Sam Thielman.
“Rush Limbaugh is dead,” wrote Grammy award-winning jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez. “Good riddance.”
“Rest in piss, Rush,” wrote sports journalist Tony Posnanski. “You won’t be missed.”
However, some expressed dismay at the extreme vitriol.
“The fact that people are celebrating the death of Rush Limbaugh is disgusting. I don’t agree w everything Rush says, or Pelosi, Trump, Schumer but I’d never celebrate that they have passed,” wrote former professional athlete Jordan Schafer.
“What has this world come to that we cheer a persons death Bc we don’t like their politics,” he added.
While prominent conservative voices and masses of conservative users on social media platforms have been “purged,” with some reporting losing tens of thousands of followers, left-wing users have little reason to fear writing inflammatory tweets such as those celebrating Limbaugh’s death.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.