{"id":153333,"date":"2021-02-20T15:00:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=153333"},"modified":"2021-02-20T15:13:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T20:13:14","slug":"erickson-my-friend-rush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/erickson-my-friend-rush\/","title":{"rendered":"ERICKSON: My Friend, Rush"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ferickson-my-friend-rush%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=153333&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/30B5278E-961F-4051-93CB-A6C6067F3F09-1200x800-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>In December, I was sitting on my front porch when my phone lit up with a message from Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n<p>He and my wife have variants of the same type of lung cancer, though hers was caught very early, and her treatment has thus far contained it. Rush knew she had an older iPhone with touch-ID, and he had been chiding me to upgrade her phone. He didn\u2019t quite understand my wife\u2019s resistance to technology and insisted I was neglecting my wife by failing to give her a state-of-the-art phone.<\/p>\n<p>Undeterred, he now wanted me to know he was sending her a new iPhone 12 Pro Max because he was convinced her chemo would screw up her fingerprints and make unlocking her phone difficult, which it already had been. My wife now has a better iPhone than me, thanks to Rush.<\/p>\n<p>That is the sort of guy Rush was. In the midst of his own far more serious battle with cancer, he was insistent my wife have a better phone.<\/p>\n<p>I was not alone in benefiting from his generosity. He was generous with advice and with iPhones, and God help you if you offered to buy lunch at a restaurant. You\u2019d inevitably wind up aggrieving the wait staff, who knew Rush was the best tipper in the restaurant. The Erickson household has had several generations of iPhones show up thanks to Rush. At one point, Rush and I would race each other to buy the phone and email to claim victory. Then he started letting other people order for him, and it wasn\u2019t a fair fight anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2010, as Herman Cain was preparing to run for President, Cox Media Group offered me Herman Cain\u2019s job. I was running the website RedState and also on CNN and served as a city councilman in middle Georgia. I was not sure I should take the job, but Rush told me he would never speak to me again if I said no.<\/p>\n<p>A decade later, having filled in as a guest host for Rush along the way, I\u2019m now doing five hours of radio \u2014 my own syndicated show and local drive-time radio in Atlanta on one of the most listened to talk stations in the country.<\/p>\n<p>I owe much of my career to Rush.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a teenager making obligatory college visits with my dad, we stumbled on Rush\u2019s program while driving through Alabama. My dad was searching for Paul Harvey. We developed a shared affection for Rush, and even when we couldn\u2019t talk about other things, we could talk about things Rush had said on air. I\u2019d stay up late at night and watch Rush\u2019s TV show, which Fox News head Roger Ailes had produced.<\/p>\n<p>The day my parents finally stopped suggesting I should probably hold onto my law license was the day I filled in for Rush the first time. Years before, Rush had referred to me on air as \u201cmy friend Erick Erickson,\u201d and it was the first time I could remember my dad calling me to say how proud he was \u2014 not that it was the first time, but it was the first memorable time, because he just about ran off the road when he heard it and was out of breath when he called.<\/p>\n<p>Rush Limbaugh pioneered a model of radio, and a lot of us would not be doing what we are doing but for Rush. He created an industry that did not exist before him. All of us in this business know none of us will ever be as good as him. Rush Limbaugh was the best and will perpetually be the gold standard by which everyone else in talk radio is measured.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a public caricature of Rush Limbaugh that was formed by those jealous of his success and contemptuous of his views. Then there is the real Rush Limbaugh \u2014 a friend, a mentor and now the man who gets to personally deliver his talent back to the God of all creation from whom Rush got it and who Rush knew, loved and served.<\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In December, I was sitting on my front porch when my phone lit up with a message from Rush Limbaugh. He and my wife have variants of the same type &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893504,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}