What a Rush!
He's an American original, fusing news and nonsense, hard-edged humor and hard-right views. And even his critics think he is funny
Welcome! Welcome, one and all, to Rush World, the one-man media theme park of the '90s. Over here, the Radio Show, reaching 20 million listeners a week on 616 stations. Over there, the Television Show, only a year old and already third in late-night viewing, ahead of Arsenio Hall and David Letterman in his final NBC days. At the concession stand, after buying your souvenir mugs and T-shirts, pick up an autographed copy of the Book, "The Way Things Ought to Be," 2.5 million copies in print, the fastest-selling hardcover in history. While you're at it, join 340,000 other patriotic Americans in subscribing to the Newsletter. Coming this fall: another book. In the planning stages: a cartoon series, a sort of "Misterlimbaugh's Neighborhood." Other possibilities: a newspaper column, a summer seminar, recordings from the radio show and a stuffed animal named, of course, Rush Limbear. And now, the star of our park--in fact, the only character in our park--Rush Limbaugh!
What is going on here? A revolution, actually. Since his radio show went national five years ago this month, Limbaugh has evolved into a true American original, fusing the worlds of entertainment and information into a new form of communication: part carnival, part classroom, part church service. All elements of Limbaughism, the news and the nonsense, the hard-right views and the hard-edged humor, reinforce one another. Even his critics concede that he is very funny: One bit last week urged listeners to purchase a Dan Rostenkowski commemorative postage stamp, in honor of the congressional baron accused of embezzling post-office funds. Says one civil-rights activist who despises Limbaugh's conservative creed: "I have to fight the temptation to like his show." Adds Mary Matalin, Republican strategist and TV talk-show host: "He is a new animal, which is why people have a hard time defining him. They want him to be fish or fowl, an entertainer or an ideologue, but he is none of the above."
However he is defined, Limbaugh is a growing force in American politics. When congressmen go home to their districts, Democrats and Republicans alike find themselves berated by constituents spouting Limbaughisms and sporting "deficit reduction ribbons"--dollar bills folded up to mock the red AIDS awareness symbol. Last week, in a deliberate attempt to demonstrate his clout, Rush urged listeners to call Capitol Hill and express their views on President Clinton's budget. So many did that the switchboard briefly broke down.
House Democratic leaders spent part of a recent strategy session discussing a system for monitoring his broadcasts. "If we know what he's saying," says one aide, "at least we'd be able to have a prepared response." Few political figures worry the White House more, and with good reason. As one administration communications expert puts it: "We, the Democrats generally, the liberals generally, do not have anything that rivals Rush Limbaugh. It's pretty pathetic. He's playing rollerball, and we're playing chess."
Indeed, Limbaugh has gone beyond politics to become a popular icon, a part of the language--"Rush Is Right" bumper stickers are blossoming--and a part of the culture: Several hundred restaurants have opened Rush Rooms, where fans can eat lunch while listening to his radio show (story, Page 36). He has reached that rarefied celebrity where one name is sufficient to identify him, like Oprah or Madonna. The publishers of "The Rush Limbaugh Story," an unauthorized biography due this fall, have boosted their initial press run to 125,000 copies, based on early orders. A U.S. News poll shows that 61 percent of those surveyed have tuned him in on radio or TV or both.
If Limbaugh is a "new animal" in the media cosmos, he draws on some of the oldest strains in American thought, prairie populism blended with a dollop of common sense and a dash of xenophobia. The result is a deep-seated suspicion of big cities, big government and big institutions of any sort (in Rushspeak, "the dominant media culture"). His verbal shooting gallery features such tempting targets as radical feminists ("feminazis") and "environmentalist wackos." He is ardently anti-tax and pro-wealth and derides Clinton's economic package as a recipe for recession that will penalize the most productive members of society--including, presumably, him. Tying his message together is a gigantic ego that is only in part a showbiz gimmick. In an interview with U.S. News, he said of his audience: "They think I've got the truth. And I'll tell you what--they're right."
Analysts of Limbaugh's appeal repeatedly refer to their own parents and to their own hometowns, far beyond the beltway and the Hudson, where life seemed simpler and virtue more obvious. Republican pollster Frank Luntz says Limbaugh "passes my mom test--she discovered him before I did," and Matalin quotes her father, a Chicago businessman, on the subject: "This man says what I have been thinking for 25 years and never had the capacity to articulate."
But Limbaugh is also a polarizer: While 33 percent view him favorably, 30 percent hold an unfavorable view, and his critics deride the very approach his supporters find so appealing. One particularly disenchanted listener in San Diego has started the Flush Rush Quarterly, a 12-page newsletter devoted to puncturing Limbaugh's ever expanding mystique. "So many people think of him as a godlike creature; that's our concern," says publisher Brian Keliher. "He gives people very simple solutions to complex problems. You listen to Rush Limbaugh, and you have all the answers to the world's problems."
The information Limbaugh provides is generally accurate, but it is all carefully selected to reinforce a particular world view. As he told his audience recently: "Everything I do here has a political point." More subtly, Limbaugh tends to accuse liberals of supporting even the most outrageous acts, such as the sexual attacks on young girls in New York swimming pools. His facts may be right, but his conclusions are often unfair.
Some Democrats see Limbaugh as a direct descendant of demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin and Sen. Huey Long, who used radio in the 1930s to stir hatred against a panoply of enemies, from Big Oil to Jewish bankers. Says Sen. Tom Harkin, a frequent target of Limbaughites back home in Iowa: "We always have people like this. They feed on fears and appeal to the darker side of human nature. But they don't last long--people catch on to them."
Limbaugh bears a sharp political resemblance to another son of the Middle West who combined politics and showmanship and seldom let the details get in the way of a good story: Ronald Reagan. Their small hometowns provide touchstones for their basic verities--work, home, neighborhood, family. Both share a clear value system that does not bend in the political breeze. Like Reagan, Limbaugh does not always practice what he preaches: For all his talk about family values, he has been divorced twice, has no children and seldom goes to church. But to his army of "Dittoheads," as Limbaugh devotees are known, that seems to make little difference.
Limbaugh believes that he helped fill a vacuum caused by Reagan's retirement and proudly displays a letter, written by "the Gipper" last December, on his office wall: "Now that I've retired, I don't mind that you've become the No. 1 voice for conservatives in the country."
But Limbaugh represents something else as well--the flourishing of talk radio and other new forms of communication that are transforming the way Americans exchange information and, thus, the way politics is practiced. One symbol: While Rush is a master of one of the oldest technologies, radio, at his elbow every day sits the most modern laptop computer, which he uses, on the air, to receive electronic mail and scan computer bulletin boards. Rush World is hard-wired and uplinked to the future, a pioneer in a trend that makes traditional media outlets less and less influential.
Talk radio appeals disproportionately to conservative-minded folks who share Limbaugh's view that the mainstream media are infested with liberal bias. A recent Times Mirror survey found that 4 in 10 Americans listen to talk radio regularly, and they are twice as likely to be Republican and conservative as Democratic and liberal. "Talk radio," says Michael Harrison, editor of a radio-industry newsletter, "has found a niche among those who feel left out of the loop."
Democrats fear this trend makes it hard to combat the raw emotions Limbaugh unleashes. Says one White House aide: "We're wired in real time now. People hear something and immediately react without reflection, without comparing what Rush Limbaugh says to, say, what Dan Rather says. They can wing in with faxes and telegrams and calls based only on Limbaugh, and for many he is the sole source of information."
Limbaugh insists that his influence is overblown: Clinton got elected, after all, despite his incessant campaign against him. But Limbaugh can also be disingenuous about his political role, portraying himself as "just an entertainer" who takes no "marching orders" from anybody and never tells his listeners what to think. In fact, Limbaugh is more closely linked to the Republican Party than he likes to admit. He did several fund-raisers for Republican candidates last year (he now says he won't do any more) and was greeted like a hero at the GOP convention. Recently, the Republican National Committee bought commercial time on his radio show to oppose Clinton's economic package.
More important, Limbaugh stays in private contact with key Republican operatives and, as a result, his on-air comments regularly promote party policy and strategy. Rep. Newt Gingrich, the deputy Republican leader, calls the arrangement a "very loose alliance" but concedes there is "a very close symbiotic relationship" between party leaders and Limbaugh.
To his critics, Limbaugh's impact goes beyond issues like the budget and threatens to undermine the political system itself. For three hours a day on radio and a half-hour on television, he owns a microphone and can say anything he wants, without answering questions or encountering a critic. Rep. Bill Hefner, a North Carolina Democrat and former radio broadcaster, says: "This thing scares me. There are so many cable channels and talk shows now, and they're nothing but negative attacks on institutions, especially government, at all levels. It's getting to the point where we're not able to govern."
Who is this Limbaugh, anyway? He is 42 years old, with a spheroid face and thinning hair. Valiant effort has slimmed him down to about 275 pounds, but he still has the round-shouldered walk of a much heavier man, and his vanity matches his waistline: no pictures allowed unless he's wearing a tie, firmly knotted.
From his earliest days in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Rush wanted to be on the radio. "I saw it as an escape from the things I didn't like," he says. "My first real interest in radio can be traced to a dislike for school. My mother would have the radio on while she was fixing breakfast, and the guy on the radio sounded like he was having so much fun." An early hero was Harry Caray, then the St. Louis Cardinals' broadcaster, and David Limbaugh remembers his older brother watching games on TV with the sound turned off so he could do his own play-by-play. A self-confessed "dork" in high school, shy and awkward in person, Rush found his place behind a microphone, playing records on a small local station.
"I come alive when I perform," he says. And even now, there is a sense that when the dork gets on the air, he is playing a character he has created, an exaggerated version of the modest, almost shy, man who lives in a half-furnished apartment on Manhattan's West Side and whose principal hobby is watching pro football on TV. Judith Regan, Limbaugh's editor, is also editing a book by Howard Stern, the New York radio "shock jock," and she discerns a certain similarity: "You wonder why these guys go into radio? Their fathers were both overbearing people in their lives who made them feel like misfits. In radio, they go into a room, alone, and they can be total exhibitionists. They can be other people."
In a way, Limbaugh's life has centered on his father--rebelling against him, yet desperately trying to please him. The elder Limbaugh was a large, crusty character, a lawyer with adamantly conservative views who was always disappointed that his son did not follow in the family's legal tradition. "He exuded politics," David Limbaugh says of his father. One of the elder Limbaugh's favorite pastimes was to yell at Walter Cronkite during the evening news, and on Friday nights friends of David and Rusty (as Rush was then called) would stop by just to hear the father spout off.
Minor leagues. After dropping out of college during his freshman year, Rusty took a series of radio jobs--and had a series of angry confrontations with his father. For five years he quit radio, doing promotional work for baseball's Kansas City Royals, but his first love kept calling. Eventually, he made his way to a station in Sacramento, where he started honing his particular blend of humor and politics. There, he came to the attention of Ed McLaughlin, former head of ABC radio and chief of a radio syndicating operation. At first, McLaughlin hated the bombastic boastfulness of Limbaugh's show. But he decided to listen again, this time in his car. Soon the humor started showing through: "I realized after an hour or so that I hadn't tuned out mentally for one second of the program. I was totally caught up in it."
Through McLaughlin's industry connections, Rush went to New York and started broadcasting out of the WABC studios. He was still in radio, not law, but the opinions he was voicing came straight from the kitchen table in Cape Girardeau. On Nov. 8, 1990, just a month before the elder Limbaugh died, he heard his son interviewed on the ABC News program "Nightline." The next day, Rush's mother recounted his father's reaction: "He just turned and stared at me and said, 'Millie, where did he learn all that? Where did he get it from?' He was just so proud, Rusty. You should have seen his smile." In his book, Limbaugh adds: "Well, I learned it from you, Dad."
"The Rush Limbaugh Show" started small: 56 stations nationwide, with commercial time selling at $600 a minute. The number of stations has multiplied more than 10 times since then--the show can be heard virtually anywhere in the United States, and on shortwave--and the advertising rates have gone up 20 times. Showmanship is a critical element. As Rush says, "You turn on the radio for three things: entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. I'm in the business of drawing a crowd and then holding them."
He holds them because he understands radio so well. It is an extremely intimate medium, based solely on sound, and, as he sits alone in his booth, Rush creates a bright, bold world of color and texture, a world people want to visit every day to hear their old friend.
Boomer beat. His radio world is geared mainly to the baby boomers, his own generation. Normally, the talk-radio audience is much older, but Limbaugh's core constituency is adults 25 to 54, two thirds of them men. He plays their music, zesty rock but no heavy metal, and throws himself into his favorite tunes, strumming an imaginary guitar or pounding the table to keep the beat. He taps the boomers' satirical sense of humor, nurtured by Letterman and "Saturday Night Live," with movie parodies like "Free Willie ... Horton." Above all, he courts their focus on personal profit and development. His parents' generation, Limbaugh notes, learned through war and the Depression that "there were things far more important than themselves." He adds: "My generation never has."
The show also understands the baby boomers' information environment. "I'm convinced these people want to learn," says John Mainelli, WABC program director, who helped bring Limbaugh to New York, "but they don't want to wade through the New York Times to do it." Michael Harrison says Limbaugh grasps that the boomers "perceive news and current events as pop culture." For them, the nation's president is a "pop star," and the Persian Gulf war was a "CNN miniseries." Limbaugh's fusion of news and entertainment is a perfect fit.
Bill Clinton's election was probably the best thing that ever happened to Rush Limbaugh. Clinton has provided so much good material that Roger Ailes, producer of Rush's TV show, recently gave the president a credit as head writer. And with a marketing genius matched only by Disney, Limbaugh's Magic Kingdom is only going to get bigger.
Rush-O-Mania Among talk-show personalities, Limbaugh is as popular as Larry King, according to a new U.S. News poll. Rush runs well behind Oprah Winfrey, a bit behind Phil Donahue and well ahead of Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson. Other key poll findings:
SHOULD LIMBAUGH RUN FOR PRESIDENT? YES 8 pct. NO 57 pct. Even among his most ardent listeners only 17 pct. say he should run for president.
AMERICANS' VIEWS OF SOME PUBLIC FIGURES
Favorable Unfavorable Oprah Winfrey 66 pct. 19 pct. Ross Perot 61 pct. 32 pct. Bill Clinton 56 pct. 39 pct. Rush Limbaugh 33 pct. 30 pct.
WHAT TURNS DITTOHEADS ON 61 pct. of Americans have seen or heard of Limbaugh's shows.
They listen to him because: He is fun and entertaining 28 pct. He gives better information on the issues 10 pct. He better represents their views 10 pct.
LIMBAUGH'S AUDIENCE 58 pct. are men 55 pct. are Republican 28 pct. are under 30 years old 96 pct. are white 62 pct. of Bush voters like Rush 41 pct. of Perot voters like Rush 11 pct. of Clinton voters like Rush
DO YOU AGREE WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH'S VIEWS ON MOST ISSUES?
Yes No LISTENERS 47 pct. 23 pct. NONLISTENERS 5 pct. 13 pct.
HIS INFLUENCE. Some 9 pct. say they would be more supportive of a cause that he endorsed, and 12 pct. would be less supportive--with blacks and women being the groups he most heavily turns off. Among his strongest supporters, 22 pct. say his views help determine theirs.
ISSUES WHERE HIS VIEWS HAVE THE MOST SWAY
REAGAN'S LEGACY. Limbaugh's positive assessment of Reaganomics increases voters' approval of Reagan's impact on the 1980s from 38 pct. to 42 pct. and lowers their level of disapproval from 51 pct. to 42 pct..
THE ENVIRONMENT. His view that Americans' lifestyles will not seriously harm the environment boosts voters' assessment of their benign impact on the environment by more than 20 points.
This story appears in the August 16, 1993 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.