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I am the product - Rush Limbaugh

Success - June 1, 1993

"GREETINGS CONVERSATIONALISTS ALL ACROSS THE FRUITED plains," the voice booms from your radio. "This is your host Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity with talent on loan from God, with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair. If you're wondering what to think of Slick Willie's latest policies, fear not! I'll tell you what to think."

Rush keeps his promise. He'll spend three hours telling you exactly What He Thinks. He'll take a few calls, but they won't take up much time. As Rush likes to explain, "This show isn't about what you think. It isn't even about what America thinks. It's about what I think."

He isn't kidding. And if you don't get enough of What Rush Thinks on the radio, you can read his book. Or subscribe to his newsletter. Or watch his TV show.

Reading what the press says about Rush and his fans, you could begin to suspect that Rush's whole schtick is pitched at Archie Bunker's younger brother -- the kind of guy who personally resents everything that arose since the 1960s, from feminism to transvestite-pride marches, with the possible exception of Clint Eastwood -- who smokes a cigar and wears a fedora while driving, who pays more attention to his cigar than the road. Now those guys have a new driving distraction; Rush Limbaugh blaring from their radios cracking jokes at the expense of Governor Mario "Coomo."

If you're tired of speeding up to get away from the Guys in the Fedoras, you can pull off the road to one of the 100 or so restaurants nationwide that has a Rush Room. I guess that's a place where dozens of Fedora Guys can get together over lunch and not talk to each other, because they're listening to the radio! You can imagine them all, sitting around tables in reverential silence over their Jumbo Double-Juicee Burgers and Pork Chop N' Egg breakfasts, listening to Rush's latest Condom Update:

"(Wouldn't You Like to FLy in) My Beautiful Balloon" plays, as Rush winds up to slam bureaucrats and social engineers who hand out condoms to teenagers (like former New York City Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez):

"They say that kids are going to have sex, that we can't stop them. Therefore they need protection. Hence, condoms. Why limit that brilliant logic to sex? Let's just admit that kids are going to do drugs and distribute safe, untained drugs every morning in homeroom. Kids are going to smoke, too, we can't stop them, so let's provide packs of low-tar cigarettes to the students for their after-sex smoke."

The guys chuckle and light their cigars. Rush presses on: "Kids will get guns and shoot them, you can't stop them, so let's give all the teachers bulletproof vests."

The burgers go down. The guys are ready for a Snapple ad so they can say something. But Rush is on a roll. He is nothing if not thorough, often spending 15 to 20 minutes hammering at one point or calmly dissecting the logic of a hostile caller. He hammers opponents to the thinness of gold leaf:

"I mean, come on! If we are really concerned about safe sex, why stop at condoms? Let's convert study halls to Safe Sex Centers where students can go to actually have sex on nice double beds with clean sheets and under the watchful and approving eyes of the school nurse, who will be on hand to demonstrate, along with the principal, just how to use a condom. Or even better: If kids are going to have sex, let's put disease-free hookers in these Safe Sex Centers. Hey, if safe sex is the objective, why compromise our standards?" Slamdunk! Everyone laughs until they choke on their food.

Who listens to this show? Who are all those people shouting "dittoes, Rush!" every time he refers to Teddy Kennedy as "The Philanderer" and Anita Hill as "the Liar?" Newsweek calls them examples of "white male paranoia." The New York Times Book Review dubbed them "the booboisie," while The Oklahoma Observer offered a handy guide: "You Know You're a Dittohead When: There's a stuffed possum somewhere in your house. Your mother was in a fistfight at a high school sports event. You lose a tooth opening a beer bottle. You know how many bales of hay your car can hold. Your mother keeps a spit cup on the ironing board."

The Library Journal called his fans "gaping primates."

In 1982, Rush Limbaugh was a couch potato on the brink, working as a public relations hack, eating out of Circle-K's, contemplating his failed marriage and broken dreams. He flunked Speech 101 in college, then dropped out to become a disc jockey. Then he failed at that. Now he was floundering in a dead-end job with nothing to live for except a half-dead dream of becoming a somebody on the radio.

Eleven years later, Rush sits atop a sleek multimillion-dollar operation encompassing radio, TV, and publishing. His radio talk show rules the airwaves for three hours a day on prime airtime on more than 590 stations nationally. His new syndicated TV show reaches more markets than Nightline. His favorite radio routines end up in The Limbaugh Letter, which comes out every month. His book, The Way Things Ought To Be, has been at or near #1 on The New York Times best-seller list for more than 30 weeks. There are more Gaping Primates than you thought. And they buy books.

Who is this guy? An angry populist politician? A simple comedian who uses conservatives as his niche? His media competitors have their own opinions:

"Inherently mean. A political shock-jock." (Lansing State Journal)

"Pompous and a scapegoater and a hatemonger." (Los Angeles Times)

"Neofascist ... woman-hating pathological liar." (The Oklahoma Observer)

"Scumbag." (San Francisco Examiner)

A GUERRILLA MEDIA EMPIRE

Limbaugh sums it up this way: "People want me. I am the product." Limbaugh's guerrilla media empire exists entirely to market his personality and opinions. Here's Rush on the "Year of the Woman:"

"Carol Moseley Braun claimed during the campaign that women are better equipped than men to 'nurture' the economy back to health. What are you going to do Senator Braun, breastfeed it?"

Limbaugh on homosexuals in the military:

"Feminine Logic. In a recent column, liberal columnist Ellen Goodman defended the lifting of the ban on gays in the military. Why? Ms. Goodman believes it is important 'so that straight men will learn what it's like to be sexually ogled.' That's a brilliant, mature argument to counter the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with their 200 years of combined military experience."

Rush takes on his opponents with all the subtlety of the Notre Dame defensive line, with the same sensitive concern Bernhard Goetz displayed when he asked the mugger he'd just shot once: "How do you feel now? Would you like another?" That's how Rush treats an argument. He doesn't just make his opponents straw men, then knock them down. He immures each one inside a straw man, sets it on fire, then roasts a hot dog over it, which he eats very slowly.

"The only thing I ever pursued was success on the radio," Rush explains before going on the air. He already looks tired. He's just spent four hours clipping newspaper items for his show at noon, which he delivers ex tempore. He's loved radio since he was 10, when he used to do "broadcasts" to his family from a walkie-talkie in his room. It was no surprise when he quit college after 17 credit hours to work as a DJ.

And fell flat on his face, according to Tom Leathers, who publishes The Squire newspaper. He knew Limbaugh back in Kansas City when he was flipping Osmond records under the nom de guerre "Jeff Christie." Leathers remembers, "He was nothing special. He didn't have that dominating personality you hear now. He was painfully shy. Still is, in private life."

Rush didn't last long at the next gig, either. "I quit radio, partly to please my father," he admits. He'd spent much of his life living up to the challenges the elder Limbaugh set him. The staunchly conservative attorney's encyclopedic knowledge and rock-hard opinions shaped the young Rush. Listening to Dad hold forth for hours at a time in the family living room trained Rush to articulate his own beliefs with crystalline clarity and drive them home remorselessly.

"I took a safe, corporate job for the Kansas City Royals. It was totally wrong for me. I'm not cut out to be an employee. After five years of PR work, I was earning $20,000 a year. I'd already failed at the one thing I really loved, radio. Now I'd failed at the 'real job' which was supposed to make me a 'real person.' I was looking into the future and I saw absolutely nothing. I had no idea what I was going to do, who I was going to call.... I have never been lower. I was 32 years old, making less money than I earned at 21. I was empty, directionless, and futureless." This is not the radio voice. The glimmer vanishes from his eyes.

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