TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092391/0923240.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.0 KB | 203 lines

                                                                                RADIO, Page 65

A Man. A Legend. A What!?


Raging against "commie libs" and "femi-Nazis," Rush Limbaugh is
bombastic, infuriating and nearly irresistible

By RICHARD CORLISS -- With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/New York


    The voice is intimate, sonorous, authoritative, urgent.
It has stories to tell, issues to explore, products to promote.
One product above all: itself. Turn on one of 400 radio
stations around midday, and listen:

    "Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain,
this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with
the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity
simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the
Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly
with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied
behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on
loan from . . . God. Rush Limbaugh. A man. A legend. A way of
life."

    At first listen, the mind spins, the ear reels. It sounds
as if Ted Baxter, the preposterously pompous anchorman on the
old Mary Tyler Moore sitcom, had escaped into the ether and had
been resurrected as a talk-show host. Dial scanners have to
wonder: Is this guy kidding? Well, of course. Sometimes. As when
he announces the Limbaugh neutron bomb: "It vaporizes liberals
but leaves conservatives standing." Or when he bleats a
duh-duh-lut duh-duh-lut fanfare, announcing a Pee-wee Herman
news update to the tune of Michael Jackson's Beat It. Or when
he handicaps N.F.L. games by political correctness: "The Eagles,
an endangered species, will of course cover the spread against
those pillaging, earth-destroying Cowboys." Or when he
(infrequently) admits to a gaffe and as punishment spanks
himself and squalls like a colicky baby. Or when he sucks on a
bottle of diet iced tea and snorts like a happy hog at the
trough.

    These days Limbaugh, 40, must be in pig paradise. His
daily New York City-based harangue -- three hours of nothing but
Limbaugh pontificating on political and social issues with only
occasional phone calls from listeners -- is the most popular
talk show on radio, reaching 2 million people at any moment and
nearly 8 million during the week. It has made Limbaugh a
millionaire, a richly satisfied limousine conservative and a
star. His personal appearance fee has leaped from $1,200 three
years ago, when his show was first syndicated, to $25,000. His
"Rush to Excellence" speaking tours sell out and do a brisk
business in Rush T shirts and bumper stickers. He has signed
with Simon & Schuster to write a book, The Way Things Ought to
Be, and is planning with Republican media mastermind Roger Ailes
a half-hour nightly Rush to television. And, accolade of
accolades, the moon-faced monologuist had his portrait painted
by LeRoy Neiman.

    In one sense, Limbaugh is only the latest and most extreme
in a line of right-wing savants, from William F. Buckley Jr. to
William Safire to Patrick Buchanan to P.J. O'Rourke, whose
Manichaean world view and scathing wit make them livelier
pundits than anyone in the gray liberal establishment. But he
is also, and mainly, an old-fashioned radio spellbinder in the
seductive Midwestern tradition of Jean Shepherd, Ken Nordine and
Garrison Keillor. "Rush utilizes the medium better than any
talk-show host I have ever heard," says veteran comedy writer
Ken Levine, who with his partner David Isaacs is developing a
TV series loosely based on Limbaugh. "He sounds like a good B
novel you just can't put down."

    Rush gives great spiel. His radio persona, which is nearly
identical to his genially blustering off-mike personality, mixes
country lawyer with sideshow barker, tent evangelist with Spike
Jones rhythm section. In the space of a single sentence, he will
rattle newspapers into the microphone, impersonate Benjamin
Hooks (Does the N.A.A.C.P. director really sound like Amos 'n'
Andy's Kingfish?) and break into an impromptu chorus of Blue
Moon. When Limbaugh gets revved up, he comes on like John Madden
with a grudge.

    Grudges by the vanload: Limbaugh has a hate list bigger
than his capacious ego. Of course, those on the list are all
liberals, some formidable, some fringe. Feminists -- in
Limbaugh's terms "femi-Nazis" -- argue for equal rights on the
job because "they can't get a man, and their rage is one long
PMS attack." People critical of Los Angeles top cop Daryl Gates
"want to abolish the police." The N.A.A.L.C.P. (National
Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People) is
a "Nazi-like police force" because it wanted to investigate one
of its chapters' support for Supreme Court nominee Clarence
Thomas. Indeed, most black leaders -- complacent slaves on the
"liberal plantation" -- are stripping their people of pride and
initiative by insisting on welfare programs and affirmative
action. Environmentalists -- "extremist wacko-nut cases" -- are
"a bunch of socialists who want bigger government and poorer
people." Some animal-rights activists "want the extermination
of the human race."

    In the Rush demonology, Senator Edward Kennedy is both
Satan and satyr -- a perfect target. Last year, when an opponent
of Judge David Souter hypothesized that the Supreme Court
nominee was "in the closet," Limbaugh said, "I think any of us
would be safer in a closet with Judge Souter than we would be
in an automobile with Ted Kennedy." Any member of the Kennedy
family is vulnerable to Limbaugh's scorn, and in the unlikeliest
contexts. Last week Rush noted that accused murderer-cannibal
Jeffrey Dahmer would plead innocent by reason of insanity.
"That's like finding William Kennedy Smith guilty of rape," he
opined, "and then having a trial to see if he was horny."

    Limbaugh picks his spots. He praises Ronald Reagan
("Ronaldus Magnus") for everything he likes about the '80s and
blames the Democratic Congress for everything he hates. Snail
darters get more play on his show than the recession. The chief
miscreants in the B.C.C.I. scandal are not the Justice
Department honchos who quashed any investigation for two years
but Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Clark Clifford. Big
Government is bad, except when it provides plenty of guns and
bombs; big corporations are good, except when they knuckle under
to liberal consumer groups. "You simply cannot have the public
at large telling corporations how to run their business," he
avers. He also believes in America, the family, capitalism and
the inalienable right of fat guys in phosphorescent jackets to
lumber through the woods with an Uzi and blast Bambi to bits.
One of Limbaugh's favorite callers, "Mick from the high
mountains of New Mexico," says he dines frequently at the
Roadkill Cafe on "tacos made outta dead puppies."

    Ever the salesman, Limbaugh has created brand names for
political groups. Do-gooder liberals are "compassion fascists,"
and "commie libs" are pretty much anyone to the left of David
Duke. San Francisco is "the West Coast branch of the Kremlin."
Limbaugh, a rock-ribbed skeptic, believes that reports of the
death of Soviet communism have been greatly exaggerated. A
"Gorbasm" is the sound people make when hailing Mikhail
Gorbachev -- "and of course every Gorbasm is fake." Listeners
who agree with Rush shout "Mega-dittos" as a greeting. Those who
don't agree, he says, endanger his concept of "safe talk" (to
guarantee which Limbaugh once placed a condom over his
microphone) and may get a "caller abortion." They are cut off,
with vacuum-cleaner noises and a woman's scream in the
background.

    Is anyone offended yet? Does anyone out there feel like
stringing up the self-described "epitome of morality and
virtue"? (If you do, bring a crane; the man weighs 317 lbs.)
Rush would be shocked if you did. "I try to make my points with
humor," he says mildly. "I attack the absurd by being absurd."
Flattered as he is by the praise of those who despise his
opinions, Limbaugh thinks he is popular because most Americans
-- disenfranchised by the liberal media -- agree with what he
says. "The majority of people just don't want to hear their
country ridiculed or accused of being wrong. Let's not flog
ourselves. I happen to believe in love of country, and that's
what people want to hear."

    Limbaugh has every reason to believe in America's reward
for hard work; he is reaping it now. Born into a family of
lawyers in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Rush sat behind his first radio
mike at 16. He spun records and made with the cute chatter
under a couple of pseudonyms until he decided the medium would
never give him a sense of self-respect. In 1979 he joined the
Kansas City Royals as promotion director, where he made many
friends (George Brett wears a DITTO T shirt at batting practice)
but was still restless. "In 1982," he recalls, "I was looking
at a $35,000-a-year job selling potato chips in Liberty, Mo.,
as Nirvana. But I didn't get the job." Nothing to do but go
back to radio, this time in the burgeoning field of talk. He
spent four years in Sacramento before moving to New York's WABC
in 1988 and becoming the Clown Prince of Conservatism.

    Would he be king? Not just now, thank you; he's having too
much fun rubbing noses with Bill Buckley (who admires
Limbaugh's "preternatural fluency"), chairing seminars with
Robert Bork and General Thomas Kelly and sitting in a tiny booth
redefining radio entertainment 15 hours a week. "I am having an
adult Christmas every day," he says. "If I'd wanted to affect
policy, I'd have tried to join the White House or a Senator's
staff. That's not for me. I am honest and passionate and sincere
about my politics, but mostly I love being on the radio." He
says it luuuuuuuv. And if some liberal listeners -- "and you
know who you are" -- loooooooathe him, that is their
constitutional privilege. Rush will laugh all the way to his own
wing in the Museum of Broadcasting. The right wing, of course.