There was, and is, that matter of military service and avoiding Vietnam. Given Limbaugh's pointed avoidance of Vietnam, it might be considered ironic that this not-technically-authorized biography is titled An Army of One. According to the jacket blurb, what's more, Chafets first met Limbaugh "at Limbaugh's rarely visited"--wait for it--"Southern Command."
It is not new news that Limbaugh is one of a long chain of rightwing braggadocios who vent bellicose rhetoric without having put themselves in harm's way--never met a war they didn't like, except the one they could, chronologically speaking, have served in. Chafets frames the issue in the context of the 1992 presidential campaign, when, he writes, George H. W. Bush eagerly sought out Limbaugh because he needed his support. Chafets is right about the latter; Ross Perot--a man many people actually wanted to vote for, unlike the major party candidates in the race--threatened to eat the other candidates' lunch, especially the Republicans'.
The draft issue flared up in 1992, according to Chafets, because Bush-senior's campaign wanted Limbaugh to bring it up. According to this narrative, the elder Bush, in New York City to address the United Nations, paid a visit to Limbaugh's studio--calling himself, to boot, "just one more fan sitting here." This was after Labor Day, with the campaign on in earnest:
"This wasn't Limbaugh's favorite topic. George H. W. Bush, like Big Rush [Limbaugh's father], was a World War II combat pilot. Rush, like Clinton, sat out Vietnam. Hundreds of his classmates and neighbors from Cape Girardeau served, and twelve died*, while he was skipping class at SEMO and spinning records in Pittsburgh. He had a medical exemption. He pulled a good number. Then they canceled the draft. "Simple as that," he says."
"But"--the author points out fairly--"nothing was simple when it came to the draft, as every man of Limbaugh's generation" and the author's knows. As a college freshman, Limbaugh had the usual 2-S student deferment. "In the draft lottery of 1970, he drew 152. Nobody knew if 152 was a safe number or not," although the war had peaked and troops were scheduled to be withdrawn.
"Four months after the lottery, Limbaugh gave his draft board medical information that led him to be reclassified 1-Y . . . In Limbaugh's case, the disqualifying malady was a pilonidal cyst, a painful, hairy cyst ingloriously located near or in the cleft of the buttocks."
About this widely reported item Chafets says, "Limbaugh probably could have talked his way into uniform if he had wanted to serve. But he didn't."
The statement just quoted is incontestable fact. The next one is not: "If he had been called he would have gone."
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