Rush Limbaugh Called 'Huckster', 'Male Oprah' By Critics

NO END IN SIGHT

Furious Media Insiders Continue Limbaugh Slams







Nearly a week after news of Rush Limbaugh's jaw- dropping, megabucks contract renewal first broke here, "drive-by media" attacks on the talk titan continue unabated.

And since that first story, your Radio Equalizer has been tracking the media backlash, which has certainly kept us particularly busy. From the usual "Rush is fat" line of "reasoning" to blaming El Rushbo for Clear Channel's stock decline, the left has been throwing everything at him but the kitchen sink.

Day Five of Bash-Rush Fest 2008 has brought some new twists, however, as liberals look for more effective methods of waging war. With accusations of insincerity toward his conservative listeners, this newest strategy closely resembles last year's ridiculous "phony soldiers" smear campaign.

For a no- holds- barred example, we turn to New Jersey.com (a regional newspaper chain), where Paul Mulshine accuses Rush of being a "huckster":

I have long maintained that there are only two types of people who see Rush Limbaugh as a conservative: liberals and morons.

I have to thank Limbaugh himself for making the same point in a profile in the New York Times Magazine of Sunday, July 6.

Here's the money quote, the one in which Limbaugh describes how he came to own all the expensive stuff he has accumulated over the years:

"Do you know what bought me all this?" he asked, waving his hand in the general direction of his prosperity. "Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn't buy this house. First and foremost I'm a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime."

The author of the piece, Zev Chafets, is no moron. He's a liberal. That's why he falls for the idea Limbaugh is a conservative.

A similar argument has been made at OpEd News:

Although Limbaugh will never, ever directly admit that his ideology is flawed, that it has no substance, that it is only a vehicle to make him famous and weallthy, he has indirectly admitted this and confessed that he has no confidence in his beliefs.

He has done this by bring to the attention of his listening public the one devastating flaw in an unsupportable belief. That one flaw that Limbaugh fears is that if there is just one dissent containing truth, reason and logic from his made up, contrived and invented ideology, it is such a danger to his beliefs that he will be exposed as a faker and his whole, fake ideological empire will be destroyed.

It's fascinating to think that after Air America's spectacular financial failure, our lefty friends still don't understand Limbaugh's point: talk radio is first and foremost an entertainment medium, with politics of secondary importance.

Entirely agenda- driven talk will lose every day of the week to an entertaining, energetic and energizing presentation. Air America and its libtalk fellow- travellers will never recognize this key concept, that's why ratings remain absent.

Limbaugh isn't saying his ideological beliefs have been faked, the entirely correct contention is that his delivery led to the luxury residences and fancy cars, not conservative politics.


Next, moving the Rush debate into the Twilight Zone is The Atlantic's Ross Douthat, where the assertion is that Limbaugh has become a male version of Oprah Winfrey (and oddly, he isn't the first):

Writing in response to Rush Limbaugh's remarks on our book, Reihan compared El Rushbo to Oprah Winfrey, and I think the Times profile of Limbaugh this weekend's Times Magazine confirms that insight.

The piece paints Rush, accurately I think, as a fascinating and enormously talented entertainer, a guy who addresses the anxieties, aspirations and prejudices of put-upon, middle-class white men in much the same way Oprah speaks to the anxieties, aspirations and prejudices of angsty middle-aged white women.

If Oprah is selling, in myriad ways, a particular (and particularly American) worldview - one defined by self-help and sisterhood and spirituality - then so is Rush: He's a voice for a self-reliant, up-by-your-bootstraps vision of American life, in which perpetual material abundance is available to anyone willing to work for it, and people who insist that there are limits to growth just don't understand what the U.S. of A is capable of.

Is that an attack, or a compliment? Could it be a little of both?

Or, is it merely bizarre?


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