Dan Price on LinkedIn, explaining what Rush Limbaugh got wrong
Too few remember Paul Harvey now. In some ways that’s good — his columns for southern states of the old Confederacy were not the often-cheery dispenser of news and wisdom we heard at noon on ABC’s national radio network. Meaning, I found the columns too often-racist, and too seldom supporting freedom and civil rights. But Harvey hit on a good story-telling format that he marketed as “The Rest of the Story,” and selling hope, he was rarely racist and often informative.
“The Rest of the Story” was a five-minute insert, syndicated by ABC or someone else, often run in the afternoon on AM stations. Harvey would tell about a person who encountered a problem, and describe how the problem was solved and how happy it made people. Something like, ‘As an adopted immigrant child, young Steven didn’t take well to academic settings, coming close to flunking out of schools and finally dropping out of college, though sticking around campus to learn design, a topic the school didn’t have a major in.’ Then there’d be a lot more about things that sounded like failures, until young Steven started tinkering with building computers but got hammered by other computer makers in the market place, though people said they liked his machines. Then one day another worker at his company convinced him to build a phone, even though it was likely Steven would lose big in a market dominated by other legacy companies. But he introduction went well, and someone asked him what they’d call the phone to distinguish it from others. “‘We call it the iPhone,’ Steven said. And now you know the rest of the story.”
Harvey never used the format to criticize or denigrate anyone, which surprised me considering his newspaper columns. I wish someone had used the format recently when Rush Limbaugh died. You hate to say bad things about someone who recently passed; but Limbaugh was a special case. He created anger and division with his radio program, and he profited and reveled in that anger and division.
On LinkedIn, someone posted this story; and it fits the Paul Harvey format so well, and doesn’t really criticize Limbaugh that much.
Dan Price took the astonishing action of slashing executive compensation and dramatically raising pay for workers in his company. It was news for a couple of weeks. During that time critics of equality, like Limbaugh, lambasted Price and his company, and the idea of equity and equality in pay for workers. Then the story fell out of the headlines — except perhaps for snark from critics like Limbaugh.
Here’s what Price said in his Linked-In post:
Now you know the rest of the story.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
5 years ago my parents called me: “Rush is about to talk about you!” I was in the news for slashing my CEO pay to raise our min wage to $70k. I excitedly turned on his show.
Rush said: “I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work because it’s gonna fail.” I was devastated. My dad said Rush got it wrong. But it led to a flood of hate-mail against me.
Rush was right: we were a MBA case study. Harvard Business School concluded the $70k min wage was a huge success. Our revenue tripled. Retention & productivity skyrocketed. We were featured as success stories in the BBC & NY Times.
Rush incorrectly said everyone would make $70k when only me & a few new employees do. It’s a min wage. It’s not socialism; he knew that. He never agreed to have me on to give my side or do an updated story on our success.
His listeners still assume we failed. A top auto-complete search for our company is “out of business.” I’ve had 5 years to tell our story & prove him wrong but most people crushed with misinformation don’t have that luxury.
I’m sad he died & my thoughts are with his family. But I’m not sad his show is over. He hurt a lot of people with his words.