WATCH: King of Conservative Talk, Rush Limbaugh, Announces Advanced Lung Cancer

LITERALVILLE – As you’ve likely heard already, Rush Limbaugh announced on his legendary talk radio show yesterday that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. In yet another jarring reminder of everyone’s mortality, the depressing news dominated the conversations among conservatives, Republicans, and Americans in general.

Rush Limbaugh is a man that many of us grew up listening to and have admired for decades; a man who led a conservative movement over the airwaves to let a silent majority know they weren’t alone; and, a man that helped shape American political discourse as much as any politician could hope to.

He did it all with half his brain tied behind his back, talent on loan from God, and came to represent not just conservative media, but conservatism for so many Americans. Many of us have never lived in a world in which Rush Limbaugh was not ‘The Great Rushbo’ or the ‘Mayor of Realville,’ dissecting the nonsense from the political Left and making them squirm because he understood liberal better than they understand themselves. We shutter to think of a world with out such a consistent voice of reason. We all have ‘I first listened to Rush when…’ stories, and he’s achieved a status as a cultural icon few can match. The prospect of considering the ‘last time’ we’ll listen to America’s voice of reason is quite a different story altogether.

May his treatment and recovery be effective and swift, so that we may not have to consider that inevitable reality just yet.