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For Rush's Cousin, It's All Relative

Life as a Limbaugh

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 1, 2009 8:35 AM CDT

(Newser) – Almost all her life, people have been asking Julie Limbaugh if she’s related to Rush. It’s a vexing problem for a teacher at a very liberal high school, but she doesn’t deny the connection. “He's the relative you don't see much,” she writes for Salon. “He's that one over there with the cousins singing rowdy Christmas carols around the piano. The guy holding a humidor. He's Cousin Rusty, and he's OK.”

But Cousin Rusty has caused her no end of grief. She’s been hassled at airports and libraries, judged by teachers, classmates, and students—“Do you do drugs too?” asked one new co-worker when introduced—and once, at a family gathering, she was forced to be nice to Ann Coulter. Relatives ask if she’s becoming liberal “like it’s a disease,” she says. No one seems to understand “that you don’t have to agree with your family to love your family.”

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In this Jan. 13, 2009 file photo, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh talks with guests in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

In this Jan. 18, 2009 file photo, talk show host Rush Limbaugh is interviewed on the sidelines before the start of the NFL AFC championship football game in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)

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He's the relative you don't see much, who shows up on Christmas Eve on his own plane with an anchor lady you didn't know he was dating until your friend's dad told you the night before. - Julie Limbaugh

I would like to believe that he has created a semi-tongue-in-cheek persona for entertainment's sake, a self-aware self-parody, the original Stephen Colbert. - Julie Limbaugh

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For Rush's Cousin, It's All Relative