Just as he is about to come across as a charmless blowhard, Limbaugh undercuts himself with this sort of semi-irresistible bravado: then screw it!") His most endearing shtick is a riff on his own magnificence. There is no denying that as a way of passing a midday hour in traffic there are worse places to set the dial for a cheap laugh: ("If the spotted owl can't adjust. Any discussion of his politics seems always to fall short, ending with the frustrated refrain that he is, after all, just an entertainer. ("Nice guys never get laid," he grumped.) Limbaugh everywhere comes off pretty much the same: funny, chubby, charming and just a little bit naughty. Playboy talked him through his two divorces and painful searches for a date. Since Ross Perot's self-immolation during the great NAFTA debate, Limbaugh has become the most incendiary figure in the American media.īut who is Limbaugh exactly? Or better, what does he represent?Įver since he moved from Sacramento to New York in 1988 and went national with his call-in program, Limbaugh has not wasted for certain kinds of celebrity attention. The more Olympian media, print or electronic, just does not have the same intimate rapport with its audiences. They can really light up those switchboards." The same cannot be said of David Broder and William Safire, nor of Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. Limbaugh's listeners can "be a real pain in the ass," one of President Clinton's political advisers, Paul Begala, told me. Suffice it to say that Limbaugh, at 43, has captured the attention of a hardcore public of angry white men - his self-proclaimed Dittoheads - and even the White House. Pocket Books published another tome this fall, "See, I Told You So," that also became a top seller. His first book, "The Way Things Ought to Be," should pass "Iacocca" as the biggest non-fiction seller in American history. Limbaugh is also a sensation of the written word. His late-night television program, a kind of radio show with bookshelves and a desk, is on 220 stations. In the history of radio, only Fred Allen, Paul Harvey and Arthur Godfrey compare. His audience numbers, at any given moment, more than 4.5 million. Limbaugh was the first to seize on the rise of satellite technology and cheap 800 telephone numbers to become a national phenomenon. His three-hour-long call-in program is broadcast five days a week on 600 stations across the country (including WABC-AM in New York, where it originates, and WMAL-AM in Washington). On the air, Limbaugh archly describes himself as "just a harmless little fuzzball," but he knows otherwise. The most skilled, and dangerous, of them was Father Coughlin, who started as an entertainer, even as he railed against the "godless capitalists, the Jews, communists, international bankers and plutocrats." It took awhile for his opponents to take his powers seriously. Reagan came of show business age in an era when orotund commentators spoke for 15 minutes or so on the issue of the day, a forum that made stars of Lowell Thomas in New York, Baecke Carter in Philadelphia, John Nesbitt in California. America needs to hear 'the way things ought to be.' " I know the liberals call you the most dangerous man in America, but don't worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. I don't mind that you have become the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country. After the 1992 election, he wrote a "Dear Rush" letter tapping Limbaugh as his spiritual son: "Now that I've retired from active politics. Reagan, for his part, has heartily endorsed the idea of Limbaugh's ascension.
Limbaugh had originally been a Pat Buchanan supporter all the same, the commander-in-chief carried his guest's bag for him to the Lincoln Bedroom.) Not long ago, William Buckley's National Review, which had done so much to legitimize the Right and then herald its supremacy in the 1980s, put Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, the radio talk-show host and belletrist, on the cover, declaring him "The Leader of the Opposition." The article suggested that Limbaugh, like Ronald Reagan before him, could easily make the leap from show business to national politics.ĭan Quayle, Phil Gramm, Jack Kemp and other Republican luminaries all joined in the tribute, with William Bennett declaring Limbaugh "the most consequential person in political life at the moment." (George Bush was not part of the Review's hallelujah chorus, but he had already done his part in 1992 when he invited Limbaugh to stay overnight at the White House.
QUIETLY, ON the back bench of American political life, the conservatives have held a coronation.
0 kommentar(er)
