I'm a listener of Rush's since 1990 and unlike some, I'm not embarassed to admit it. I was first attracted to his show by his thoughtful and erudite commentary, not so much with the comedy routines, which when I first began listening was the First Gulf War, a Musical Comedy Parody. His comments on science are almost a parody, his ignorance is so on display.
Rush Limbaugh is not the most outrageous of right wing pundits by any means. Except in jest, he says nothing in the political arena that is not entirely possible, plausible, and even likely to be proven correct in the reasonable near future. That is a significant part of his genius that holds his audience.
Besides being extremely perceptive and canny in the political sphere, he has a phenomenal memory for names and details, accurate beyond anything, I at least, have ever seen. A listener might bring up a detail from the past, or a name of a political or social activist from the past 20 years or so and he instantly has a contextual analysis; that is the second part of his genius; he is an institution of political context (at least for those on the right)
For the first couple of years I did what I had been doing for several years prior with other good radio entertainment, I recorded daily on one hour tapes segments of his show; sometimes an entire show if it was an extraordinary one. I made these to pass on to friends. Besides tapes, I was such a steady listener, that if some critic made a claim that he’d said something that he hadn’t during one of his shows, I could confidently verify or refute it the criticism.
An example was that some said that he had condemned drug users of whatever variety to be dealt with harshly. Quite the contrary, he stayed away from those kinds of recriminations or calls for incarceration of users, to such a degree that I suspected that he had certain sympathy for drug use, and that goes far back as I can recall. He was not a hypocrite about drug use. The nearest I recall he came was his talking about the uselessness of the “war on drugs.”
At first, besides taking calls, he gave out a FAX number for callers to use. As the years passed, from time to time I noticed affectations in his manner, be they spoken, or just forms of rudeness to his listeners. As these would develop over time, and form a pattern, I would send him a FAX (Later emails) to let him know that he was exhibiting inappropriate or affected tones or noises that suggested he was becoming obsessive in a mannerism, or exhibiting a hubris that turned me off, I found excessive, or indicated some “problem” that would cause him to lose audience.
An example: during one period his voice took on such a stilted, phony intellectual tone that I sent him notes telling he that he seemed to be suffering an ostensible loss of confidence. On that particular, he was losing his hearing and had become unable to hear his own voice. As he recalled later, until he got his cochleaire implants, he was completely without hearing, even of his own voice. Loss of hearing like Rush’s is claimed by some to be connected to the over use of Oxycontin; that may be a fabrication. It might also be a fact.
Another example: for a long period he “sniffled” constantly. I wrote him about that and he began apologizing to his audience about it. Another time he introduced into his manner, a harsh, burly, crude laugh that sounds more like a sneer or a gloat than a healthy expression of humor. That too, I wrote him about. He took time to explain it (only once) and now uses it as a device to express his (our on the right) laughter at the hubris or incredible tone deafness of folks on the other side; him laughing at them laughing at us.
As an artifact of his phenomenal memory, no instance of mockery or showing the "affectations" of others has ever been forgotten by him and when the context calls for it he uses it. The way Robert Reich, former labor secretary pronounced his name when he was on a talk/interview show is used every time he mentions the name. He says Robert Reischnnnnnnnnnnuh! stretching it out until he runs completely out of breath.
Whether he says “Scrool” for School, “Bidness” for business, “Shedool” for schedule, “Strategery” for strategy, “Sex-ratery” for secretary, “Orifice” for office, “Cubar” for Cuba, “Laar” for law, Reverund Jacksunnnnuh” for reverend Jackson, or any Arabic-Muslim name with a distasteful guttural inflection, it has all grown old, the points of original meaning long past, and makes him, possibly, the most clichéd man of words in America.
So recently he got a caller calling him on this extreme use of irrelevant cliché: His answer: I get emails about this folks, I actually do have people sending me emails about these words. This is what they are concerned with! Then he took the example complained about by the last caller and used it disdainfully to ridicule the segment of his audience this offends.
About two years back he got a call from a well spoken elderly lady who said to him “Rush, you sound so angry at your staff, yelling at them, you almost seem to be angry” He excused it, turned and asked his staff if they felt any anger or were hurt by him, got the expected answer, and dismissed it. But more than a year had passed after he got his angry voice before this cultured elderly lady felt it necessary to call.
But his voice has become so grating in recent years, and gets worse all the time, that he constantly sounds angry. He also has taken on an affectation with a stutter: I.. I.. I.. I.. (and only on the fifth) I.. does he go on with his thought. Someone here on this board rightly calls him “the stutterer.”
All of this may sound like complaining and focusing too much about “idiosyncrasies” rather than “content” but for my old ears it has become intolerable. I actually believe that the way he rushes through his delivery of EIB commercials with such an “angry” sounding voice he actually loses them business that another voice on his network could deliver to them. I instantly turn off all his commercials, as I do his commentary when he sounds like this.
Maybe this is a problem mostly elderly people have; we don’t like anger and being constantly confronted by what sounds like anger or angst. I’ve asked some people my own age, and they feel the same; they don’t want to hear it and they’ve completely quit listening. Maybe the younger listeners cotton to it, but I’d think that wouldn’t work for them either. Unquestionably a large part of the senior listeners are leaving.
Rush was off on Friday, and will be gone the coming whole next week, and threatens to take some time off the following week. Any more my best days with his show are when he leaves one of his capable guest hosts in charge.
