Bluster on the Airwaves

TO COOLER HEADS AND CALMER HEARTS, he is an infuriating loud-mouth not to be taken seriously. But for most of his eight million listeners, he's hot, he's right, and he's the best thing they've heard in a long time.

Five years ago, Rush Limbaugh was an unknown San Diego talk show host just beginning to work on a risky and untried liberal-bashing schtick. The concept was simple: Put down anything that's not a part of the American feel-good myth.

Now, ensconced at New York's WABC, he's moved to three hours of daily prime time as America's most popular radio personality. His midday fireside spats go out to more than 400 radio stations, and his rantings can only get more pronounced as he readies a syndicated weekly television show, to be launched sometime this spring.

America loves this guy. In a country where political discourse has mainly been the domain of media cogniscenti and elected double-talkers, Limbaugh is refreshingly blunt about what he likes (very little) and what he won't stand for anymore. Where media etiquette has required talk show hosts to take the polite middle ground, Limbaugh is potty-mouthed and partisan. His long list of pet peeves includes uppity women, uppity blacks, uppity foreigners, poor people, the unemployed, the homeless, and anyone who would come to the defense of the above.

He's the John Sununu of the air waves, a populist bully who delights in offending and taking offense. He's the kid in junior high that nobody liked, and now he's getting back at us.

His favorite targets, of course, are liberals, a word he cannot pronounce without sounding like a man wincing from the taste of rancid meat. And his daily critiques of Democratic mood swings may be the most important ally the Republican Party has in its arsenal of election-year propaganda.

His popularity has coincided with the growing resentment and isolation Americans are feeling against the powers-that-be. For many Americans, the only recent pride in themselves was found in our war in the Persian Gulf, a victory that Limbaugh predicted, championed, then slobbered over for weeks afterward. The war changed a lot of things for a lot of people, but no one could have benefited more than Limbaugh. He spoke up for America's right to might in a way that brushed aside any lingering post-Vietnam shame. He proclaimed a new era of pride in this country's accomplishments, and he railed mercilessly against anyone who might refute his bluster with facts.

In Rush Limbaugh's America there is no racism, just ungrateful black people. There is no poverty, just lazy welfare cheats. There is no hole in the ozone, just "environmental wackos." No gender inequities, just "feminazis." No AIDS epidemic, just homosexuals and drug users we can do without anyway.

In short, there's nothing wrong with America that couldn't be countered by the vision of wholesome, white men eating meat, watching Father Knows Best, and reminding their sons to register for the draft. Limbaugh is the quintessential 1950s man...with an attitude.

RUSH LIMBAUGH'S FANS don't just approve of him, they adore, they fawn, they're hopelessly devoted. He has tapped into a motherlode of pent-up people who are sick of their government, sick of their taxes, and above all, sick of their own limitations.

At a time when people genuinely don't know how to respond to the problems facing this country, Limbaugh tells them not to worry about it. In his view, the blame lies squarely on those struggling in precarious situations. It's their own fault if they're poor, or homeless, or sick, or out of work. There's nothing the rest of us can do about it, except get on with our lives, and maybe have a couple laughs at someone else's expense on the way.

Limbaugh takes jaded, hurtful cliches and gives them a fresh voice, a whole new texture that disguises their original hatefulness. He rebirths attitudes which have become justifiably taboo, and returns them to the lexicon of American legitimacy. He's politically incorrect, and loving it.

Such a repulsive exercise seems so obviously unpalatable that your basic decent American would simply change channels, right? Unh-uh. The problem is, Limbaugh is good. Darn good. You can't turn him off. He's funny, he's clever, and his use of the medium borders on genius.

There has never been a radio show that uses the airwaves as effectively as Limbaugh and his staff. The show begins with a hot-licks theme song that sends boogie-woogie chills down the spine. Limbaugh voice-overs some behind-the-scenes banter with his crew, then launches into the verbal menus of the day. With each topic, there's another theme song, with musical ad-libs and layers of sound effects that are so well put together the listener is hopelessly hooked.

Just when you've had it up to here with his racial stereotyping, his reliance on cheap put-downs and insensitivity, he'll hit you with another piece of music, such as the Sinatra-like intro to his "Rush to Excellence" road shows, or Andy Williams singing "Born Free" to the sound of machine-gun fire and screaming animals. His condom update (where he derides any and all efforts at AIDS awareness or sex education) opens with the Fifth Dimension singing "Would you like to ride on my beautiful balloon."

He has original music as well. Merciless (and hilarious) musical spoofs on Ted Kennedy, New York Mayor David Dinkins, and Mario Cuomo. His listeners send in tunes they've written, at obvious expense to themselves, that he proudly broadcasts to display their sacrificial adoration. (One Dallas musician produced a funk-rap Limbaugh theme song that I can't get out of my mind, or my dancin' feet, no matter how disgusted I am with myself.)

His program is a variety show, a multilayered magazine of sound, a viscerally satisfying performance that makes you laugh, and join in the fun, and then feel terrible about it later.

When his show first pre-empted the local folk music program here in Washington, D.C., I was outraged that such a geek could be considered prime-time material. How could this David Duke of the airwaves, this preposterous, pseudo-intellectual lout ever survive, especially in this town? That was several hundred radio stations ago. Now he's nationwide.

His talent for keeping things at a superficial level is critical to his success. Since most issues of the day are fairly complicated, Limbaugh simply boils them down to black and white. Then he chooses white and starts his rant. He is alone on the show, the sole voice, save for the call-ins who mainly gush with approval. There is no second opinion, and that's the way his listeners like it. He is hopelessly devoted to himself, with "talent on loan from God."

He picks and chooses the news tidbits he cares to comment on, mainly obscure happenings in this or that progressive movement that make easy targets for his diatribes. He quickly dismisses an entire organization over the actions of some marginal crackpot.

He regularly quotes from industry propaganda to refute legitimate private or government studies about a particular environmental, social, or other problem.

We don't need old growth forests, he contends, because the logging industry claims to plant more trees than it cuts down. There can't be a nuclear waste problem, he insists, since the radioactive waste we've created so far would "barely fill up a single supertanker." (He fails to point out that such quantity is more than enough to poison our planet for thousands of years.) If there is a single scientific group that will refute prevailing opinion, Limbaugh will find it--no matter how obscure or preposterous--and quote it ad nauseum. His is a one-man disinformation machine that wants us to doubt everything we've heard that would question what is most holy: the American lifestyle. Hard-working Americans shouldn't give apologies for their overconsumption, just an occasional belch.

POLITICALLY, his cut-and-dried worldview suggests an ideologue whose thick-headedness borders on the Reaganesque. Despite his cleverness, his obvious facility for radio, and his ground-breaking creativity within the medium, Rush Limbaugh seems to be little more than a knee-jerk conservative exploiting both the legitimate desires of Americans to understand their world, and their unfortunate habit of believing in their stereotypes.

Limbaugh has become a millionaire appealing to the worst in people's predilections, but just as bothersome are his direct connections to the Republican re-election campaign. Limbaugh admits that he regularly consults with "my good friend" Roger Ailes, the surviving member of the GOP's two-man dirty campaigning team that brought us Willie Horton and the "let's be afraid of black people" ruse that helped elect George Bush. Ailes is the producer of Limbaugh's new TV show, and is probably lurking in the shadows of Limbaugh's radio show.

Limbaugh's shotgun critiques of everything liberal have taken on a sharper, more refined edge in the past few months. Because of his increasingly pointed and well-timed denunciations of Democratic policies, one could argue that he's being "handled" by strategists wishing to affect legislative initiatives. Where he used to refuse to discuss religion and was obviously uncomfortable with his born-again fans, Limbaugh now includes prayer in schools and "Christian morality" in his laundry list of what America needs. He's bending--maybe being shaped--as his commentary becomes less iconoclastic and more mainstream conservative. He still pokes fun, rattles his papers, and whines like a 3-year-old, but his subject matter is sounding like Pat Robertson meets Lee Atwater.

At the risk of seeming paranoid, I think Limbaugh's influence, and the ability of right-wing forces to manipulate and manage it, is beginning to alter the balance of the national debate. People--lots of people--take Limbaugh's pontificating as refreshing gospel for their time, and they'll vote that way.

If Limbaugh's television show is as well-crafted as his radio performance--and it would be a surprise if it's not--the Republicans won't need to spend their money, or sully the GOP name on hate propaganda and scare tactics. Rush will happily oblige. He'll be a one-man political action committee forcing Democrats to respond to him at least as much as they'll have to compete with official Republican campaign tactics.

Limbaugh will be a formidable foe.

INTERESTINGLY, Limbaugh's giddy excitement about being a major political player may yet be his downfall. He is tying all his ropes to the Republican ship, lashing himself to the right wing and not looking back. If the country's economy continues to stagger downward, and more and more Americans suffer the consequences, Limbaugh's blame-the-Democrats harping may wear thin.

Already, more and more of his callers confess to being unemployed, and he is less glib, less at his best when consoling the newly poor. Nothing takes the wind from his blustering cheeks like people who can't be easily dismissed by his prejudices. Limbaugh's perverse charm can't answer the intimate questions of hurting citizens.

And most Americans realize their problems weren't caused by environmental wackos, or Jesse Jackson, or homeless people, or any of the other favorite targets of Rush Limbaugh. As the real culprits--the savings and loan debacle, the bloated defense budget, among others--come more into view this election year, the mouth that roars may run out of food for thought.

Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners.