We have here in President Bush a consummate politician, a man whose entire life has been spent in government. Limbaugh leans into the mike hanging in front of him and launches a long monologue on his disenchantment with the President. His engineer and call screener are behind a window, watching him for cues. In shirt sleeves and earphones, he sits ensconced behind a console decked with buttons and flashing lights. Soon Limbaugh's bluesy rock theme is heard. "I wanted to be the reason people listened," he explains. There are callers, a few recorded bits, but mostly it's Rush Limbaugh talking, ad-lib. He does three hours - less breaks for news and commercials - five days a week. The noon newscast blabs faintly in the ether. "Good luck," people call from desks and offices as the phenomenon marches by. There he spent the morning scanning seven newspapers, his fax mail, his Compuserve mail and his just plain mail in search of useful facts and liberal atrocities to fuel today's oration. Ahead lies the studio, receding is Limbaugh's small office. He is in the offices of 77 WABC, as the promos sing it, high in a Manhattan monolith spurting out of Penn Plaza. Six feet and 320 pounds of Rush Limbaugh stride purposefully down the hall, clipping-crammed briefcase in hand. Well, perhaps a bit more boyish (he is 39), eager and vulnerable-looking than the Egomaniac of the Airwaves he portrays, a man who describes himself as "destined to have his own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting." Limbaugh sounds like a huge man who would wear bankers' suits and ties and have short, neat Republican hair. IT'S A WELL-KNOWN principle of broadcasting that radio personalities never look as they sound. He resents the resentment and declares, with great passion, that he is doing legitimate political satire aimed at movements with leftist agendas, and anyway, why are those "commie libs" always calling us conservatives bigots?īut the net effect, this being 1990's America, is that it all becomes Show Biz. Sometimes they hit back in anger and call Limbaugh names: racist, sexist, homophobe. Sometimes the tweaked don't seem to appreciate the joke. His penchant for the outrageous he explains thusly: "I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd." "The simple fact of the matter," Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphin savers and tree lovers, "is that we are human beings, and we are the most powerful, smartest species, and we can damn well do whatever we want." They arouse in him the irrepressible urge to tweak. For in that universe are Limbaugh's favorite enemies: black activists, gay activists, abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists, artists with erotic tendencies and, above all, "the NOW Gang." Such people he sees as crackpot oddball weirdos yet somehow, at the same time, a growing menace. Oil is the fuel of the engine that runs the free world." Blah, blah, blah.īut when he contemplates the universe of liberal activists and protesters, lecturer gives way to lampoonist and out pours the broad, bruising humor. It is the means of social architecture in this country. On certain weighty, if arid, topics, Limbaugh will discourse (some would say harangue) long and earnestly: "The tax code is the single greatest power Congress has. Molly Yard leading a battalion of Amazons with PMS over the hill! That would be enough to scare the pants off anybody." All of a sudden, you hear this bloodcurdling scream outside: 'I AM OUTRAGED!' And there is Sgt. You are in the Papal Nuncio in Panama City. Imagine that you are Manuel Antonio Noriega. We can prepare the nation so that we have on any given week of the year a combat-ready battalion of Amazons to go into battle. Here's my proposal: We have 52 battalions. We know that PMS has been used as a defense against a charge of murder. We also know that there is this thing called PMS, and we know that it turns a woman into a hellion. "We know that women in groups - same office, same dormitory, same barracks - eventually have synchronized menstrual cycles. Here (bearing in mind that it's impossible to re-create in print the full Rush Limbaugh experience, as you get only a dry approximation lacking his exuberance, his energy, his volume, his sobs, giggles, sighs, coughs, snatches of song, simulated trumpet fanfares and other vocal effects) is a small sampling:
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