At least once a week during the years I was The Virginian-Pilot’s resident conservative, some irate reader would let loose with what they assumed was a stinging insult. A variation on this theme:

You sound just like Rush Limbaugh.

You and your pal Rush are idiots. 

Why don’t you stop listening to Rush and think for yourself?

Did these knotheads honestly believe that someone with a full-time job could spend three hours a day listening to talk radio? Was it inconceivable that a woman could craft conservative opinions of her own without being told what to think by a talk show host?

Then again, that was just a sign of how closely Rush Limbaugh is associated with modern conservative thought.

Rush isn’t just some guy on the radio. He’s the king of the airwaves. He’s been the number one radio host for 30 years. His show is carried by 600 stations and estimates of his audience range from 15 million to 20 million listeners. A week. For 30 years he’s been an unbridled antidote to the increasingly liberal drivel creeping into the mainstream media.

He’s a broadcaster. An entertainer. A smooth-talking lightning rod.

I didn’t get my ideas from Rush but always hoped he’d get one from me. I still wish Rush would read one of my posts on the air, instantly bringing me millions of new readers.

Hasn’t happened. Dammit.

Which brings us to the news you’ve no doubt heard: Rush, 69, shocked his audience yesterday by telling them that he’s been diagnosed with “advanced lung cancer” and he’ll be missing some air time as he undergoes treatment.

Stunning.

I lost my mother to this grim disease 22 years ago. Treatment has presumably come a long way in that time. I’m praying for him.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact of Rush Limbaugh on the world of broadcasting. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine talk radio without him. He arrived on the national scene in 1988 and radio has never been the same.

I remember driving, with my newborn daughter, in early 1989 and listening to this bombastic newcomer on WNIS AM-790.

I didn’t know what to make of him. But he was weirdly addictive. His humor, his way of looking at the world. His ability to irritate the heck out of liberals. Rush has the unique capacity to be entertaining, informative and outrageous, all at once.  

Writing in 1992, The Washington Post’s Henry Allen described Limbaugh’s new-found success this way:

He was the right man to articulate the resentments of the liberal haters of the '80s -- a lonely small-town guy who was just as smart and funny as the people who sneered at lonely small-town guys. 

Talk radio, it has been said, is the last small town in America.

Social media was lit yesterday afternoon, full of Limbaugh fans sending messages of love to America’s Anchorman.

The haters were out, too. With unspeakably vile messages. 

Who wishes cancer on people who disagree with their politics? Go on Twitter to meet these hairballs. They were crawling out of the digital woodwork Monday.

I found a transcript of Limbaugh’s announcement on his website. It’s clear that something special exists between this radio host and his audience. They share almost an intimate relationship. Listeners think of Rush as an old friend who keeps them company as they drive trucks, cut hair, work in offices or enjoy retirement. He, in turn, seems connected to the millions who listen to him everyday.

Here’s how Limbaugh signed off:

I know you’re there in great numbers, and I know that you understand everything I say. The rest of the world may not when they hear it expressed a different way, but I know that you do. You’ve been one of the greatest sources of confidence that I’ve had in my life. So, I hope I will be talking about this as little as necessary in the coming days.

But we’ve got a great bunch of doctors, a great team assembled. We’re at full-speed ahead on this, and it’s just now a matter of implementing what we are gonna be told later this week. So, I’ll be back here. I hope I’ll be back Thursday. If not, it will be as soon as I can — and know that every day I’m not here, I’ll be thinking about you and missing you. Thank you very much.

Cancer sucks.