Has Rush Limbaugh Been Sucked Into the Mainstream Media?

In his bestseller See, I Told You So, Rush Limbaugh says that his job is really pretty simple: to draw the largest radio audience he can. That’s typical Limbaugh faux humility.

Rush knows full well that he’s become a major figure in both American media and politics. That became undeniable last week during the dust-up between The New York Times and John McCain over The Times story hinting that the Senator had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. Not only was Rush’s response to the story covered on talk radio and cable news networks, where the 24-hour news cycle cries for content at any cost, but also on the broadcast network news and in daily newspapers across the country, where editorial standards remain high.

The question is, has Rush been sucked into the mainstream media, the “drive-bys” he so relentlessly attacks?

There’s no denying Limbaugh’s stature in the media; his radio audience alone approaches 20 million listeners per week, plus he publishes some of the best political satire around at The Limbaugh Letter, his books were both bestsellers, and politicos and media critics quote and analyze him ad nauseum.

Maybe five media figures in American history have exerted such an influence over the American public: Horace Greeley, who fostered various social reforms and played a key role in putting an end to slavery; William Randolph Hearst, who is often credited with helping to start the Spanish-American War; Walter Cronkite, who is often credited with ending the Vietnam War (Lyndon Johnson responded to Cronkite’s famous commentary on the futility of that war by saying, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”); Walter Lippmann, who advised five presidents and wrote some of the best works ever on mass media and the relationship between journalism and civil society; and William F. Buckley, who did more than anyone in the 20th Century to keep conservatism alive as a vital and much-needed counterweight to liberalism.

What fascinates many about Rush is that his persona is so multi-faceted, and that his commentary is so deep and funny at the same time. Few on the left or the right quite “get” the man or his schtick. The left, for instance, tends to take him at face value–a shallow, bigoted, knee-jerk conservative. The right, on the other hand, tends to do exactly the same thing!

If you take either the man or his words at face value, you’re missing the point. Rush appeals to so many precisely because he can be interpreted in so many ways. Shallow liberals and shallow conservatives can drink at the surface of his reservoir of knowledge and wit, responding with spite and glee, respectively. More nuanced thinkers can chuckle at his put-on excesses: the feigned bravado, the innuendo, the hyperbole, the intentionally over-the-top tweaking of liberals. The irreverant mind can marvel at his satirical skills, the linguistic at his language skills, the mnemonic at his uncanny memory, and the holistic at his ability to connect the dots of our national conversation.

Rush deosn’t mean for us to take him seriously; he does expect us to take conservatism seriously. That’s the genius of Limbaugh: he’s a virtuoso entertainer and satirist, but at the same time, an unwavering advocate for conservative philosophy. He is to pop culture conservatism what George Will is to intellectual conservatism.

To answer the question above, has Rush been coopted by the mainstream media?

Not even close. In fact, he’s laughing at the drive-bys for taking him so seriously…laughing all the way to his place of worship—the bank.

Newsprism.com