Rush to judgment - radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh

Reason, March, 1995 by Thomas W. Hazlett

By some coincidence of nature I moved to Sacramento, California, in the very same month - September 1984 - that another American, also fascinated by politics and critical of liberal orthodoxy, did. He was just one-and-a-half years my senior, and we became friends. We enjoyed many chats about life, public policy, politics, economics, and women. I met his family, he met some of mine. And then in 1988 he moved to New York City where he became the most famous political commentator in America: Rush Limbaugh.

It is amusing to read journalists report on a person one knows, all the more so when the reporting is biting, tendentious, and ambitious. It is interesting to actually see both sides of a controversy: Rush is a walking controversy. It is annoying to know someone so famous that a good deal of my mail and telephone traffic is composed of messages from people (from French-Canadian businessmen to congressmen to women seeking courtship) trying to "get some information to Rush."

Now I see, as reported in The Washington Post by Jack Anderson, that the gurus who brought us ClintonCare and a Republican Congress have dedicated themselves to promoting a left-wing Rush. This is a sensational window into the thinking of the Clinton brain trust, a term that has more political than biological significance. In their view, devastating Democratic losses are simply the result of...nasty comments on talk radio.

The rise of Limbaugh is a phenomenal experiment in the consumer economics of broadcast markets. Rush was not plucked out of an Ivy League school and placed at the pinnacle of political debate in America by the networks, the Times, or the Post. He dropped out of college only one semester in. He bounced around in a disc jockey's chair for most of the next two decades and was fortunate to grab a chance at a Sacramento talk-radio outlet when he was well into his 30s. It was likely his last chance in show biz.

What propelled Limbaugh? Ratings. Somehow, Rush got tons of people to spin that dial to KFBK, 1530 on the AM dial. But did any national network or syndication snatch him up? Nay. No one would touch him. Too controversial. Too right-wing. Too opinionated. Too...never went to Harvard.

The makeshift distribution chain that put Limbaugh on 55 radio stations in August 1988 was entirely ad hoc - and people tuned in en masse. Now, with 650 stations and 22 million weekly listeners, Limbaugh is the King of Talk. He went on TV in September 1992, and ratings are similarly amazing, as his ragtag syndication pulls in viewer numbers rivaling Jay Leno's - which are backed by the National Broadcasting Corporation.

This is the audience talking, but all the Clinton wunderkinder hear is Limbaugh's rant. It haunts them, and they know: If they could just get their own mouthpiece, all their Great Plans would succeed and the people would love them! But liberals roam talk radio: Michael Jackson of Los Angeles's KABC failed in heavily marketed national syndication by ABC Radio just before Limbaugh's Excellence in Broadcasting launched. Jim Hightower, Gloria Allred, Jerry Brown, and Tom Leykis spit their anti-Republican venom daily. But where are the numbers?

What the White House does not understand, and will not understand even after I explain it to them, is that the key to Rush's success is the very totem they insist on dragging out to save themselves. It is the liberal media dandies off whom Rush plays, whom he mocks with unending glee and merciless buffoonery. There have been other conservative talk-show hosts. But Rush - each and every time he takes to the air - gives the listener some politics and a bonus: He sticks his finger in a liberal's eye.

He does it not by meanness, as the clueless wine-and-cheese crowd whines. He does it by joyously celebrating the existence of an alternative medium - his parallel universe - where the prevailing pieties of the liberal elite carry no weight whatever. The condescension of the elites is Rush's launch pad. He blasts off at the very moment his show begins, bellowing that his is the "only information superhighway you'll ever need."

The boastfulness strikes much deeper than the liberals will ever know. When Rush barks that listeners tune only to him, "because I'll tell you everything you need to know, and I'll tell you what to think about it to boot!," the anguished White House monitors and their electorally challenged minions cry that legions of mindless "dittoheads" are taking their orders from a talk-show lunatic.

In fact, Limbaugh is sparking a huge reaction by mimicking the very liberals who decry him: This is Rush's impersonation of the all-powerful network news anchorperson, saying out loud what is the subtext in any of the auspiciously introduced and expensively produced national news shows. Their rectitude, their certainty, their values spark Rush's counter-attitude. He's just as cocksure, and he's actually honest about his edge. It is a spoof, and the spoofees don't get it. Ha, ha, ha!

When Rush screams, "I am equal time," he is not merely responding to the proponents of the Fairness Doctrine. He is revealing whence he came, out of the belly of the beast. It is against the backdrop of a news media obsessed with the tragedy of American life, fascinated by the do-gooders of government, bent on giving shortshrift to the decency and hope which the American Dream has inspired, that Rush Limbaugh roars. The sanctimony of your typical news story about homelessness, racism, poverty, AIDS, crime, the environment, schools, taxes - the sappy subtext that says, "I, the muckraking reporter who knows so much more than the complacent uncaring middle-class bigots whom I will soon expose, am here to set this country straight about its priorities" - triggers the wildly enthusiastic response, and the huge numbers for Limbaugh. The Ditto Master explodes the taboo, saying aloud what the liberals whisper between the lines - while expecting those they scorn to remain politely seated.