Time for a change on the 'Wall of Fame'

I think it's time for a change.

Go down to the 500-foot section of the floodwall next to Independence Street and you'll see workers sandblasting away the paint. You'll see the 45 faces on the "Missouri Wall of Fame" mural melting away one at a time.

Who knew legends could be so easily erased?

Poof. There goes Harry Truman and his spectacles. Whoosh. Stan the Man and his picture-perfect swing are whisked away.

The mural association says it's time to update the fresco. Give it a hipper look with more lifelike renderings of all the inductees.

But I'd like to submit that this is the perfect time to reappraise who stays on and who's left off. This isn't Mount Rushmore after all.

Now we could argue all day about the merits of these legends. A close look shows they all have their warts: Redd Foxx's routine was profanity laced, Jesse James was an outlaw, heck, Josephine Baker ran around Paris naked. But one divisive character stands out above the rest.

That cigar chomping, besuited, demagogue with the famously slicked back hair.

I'm talking, of course, about Rush Limbaugh. He just doesn't fit in.

You see, the idea of the wall of fame is to celebrate people at the end of their careers or lives. File them away in the pantheon after all is said and done. That means they must have hit their last ball, told their last joke, danced their last jig.

But Rush is still active. His resume keeps growing and so does the list of his public embarrassments, ex-wives and low-brow statements.

Even if we plug our ears to the charges of doctor shopping and close our eyes to his Viagra-addled tour of an island nation, we still can't properly judge his legacy because it's not complete.

Maybe 10 or 20 years from now when his career is over, Cape Girardeau will decide he deserves enshrinement. And maybe not.

But I'd ask that we just wait until that time comes. Wait until all the dust settles.

Because personally, I don't think having Limbaugh on the wall does much for the city's image.

I can't help but think his radio show has done more to lower the bar on political discourse than anything ever to hit the airwaves.

There's a word for what he does: reductive. Rush is to politics what Howard Stern is to gender relations and what screeching sports talk radio is to professional athletics. The bottom of the barrel.

And he's got a nasty streak.

Whether he's comparing Chelsea Clinton to the White House dog or saying feminism was invented by ugly women, Rush injects a kind of mean-spiritedness into politics that most of us left behind in our sandbox years.

So why put him up there? Are we desperate for candidates?

I say no. I say even within the Limbaugh family there are better nominees for floodwall canonization.

Take Rush's namesake and grandfather: Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. He was an ambassador to India under President Eisenhower, was president of the Missouri Bar, and practiced law past the age of 100. A great career and a legacy we can all be comfortable with.

I don't think anyone would object to a trade like that.

TJ Greaney is a staff reporter for the Southeast Missourian.