Culture Wars, crise du SIDA et médias conservateurs : de Rush Limbaugh comme culture warrior opportuniste (1988-1994)

Résumé En

Although the conservative talk radio program The Rush Limbaugh Show focuses almost exclusively on economic issues and although moral issues are of secondary importance, this article examines the first years of the program in order to show that, through his emphasis on the AIDS crisis and his treatment of the issue, Limbaugh became actively involved in the culture wars. However, as society evolved towards more acceptance of people with AIDS and the epidemic came to be recognized as a sanitary crisis warranting aggressive govemment intervention, discourses stigmatizing AIDS patients and moral assessments of the crisis lost legitimacy. Therefore, this article seeks to demonstrate how, throughout the early years of his program, Limbaugh tailored his rhetorical strategy to such changes in order to continue framing the AIDS crisis in strictly moral terms, thereby minimizing the scope of the epidemic, delegitimizing govemment activism in awareness campaigns and exonerating the Reagan administration.