Both sides tend to lack a sense of humor when their own sacred cattle are being gored.
Or Algored, as the case may be.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think I caricatured him in my response to your original post, which I notice that you ignored.
I smell a media conspiracy! 
Limbaugh is a supporter of torture. That makes him a scumbag, and I will not weep when he dies. I will laugh.
I don’t find anything sacred about the Democrats. When I listen (rarely) to Limbaugh, his attempts at humour are forced and sophomoric. If it means anything, I feel the same way about Bill Maher. The self-congratulatory whooping of his audience after some lame observation repels me the same way.
So basically, I rebut your rebuttal.
Everybody just ignore every post in this thread. The reason people don’t like Rush Limbaugh is because Air America failed.
The only good thing I can say about Rush is that he’s a Steelers fan. Other than that well…um, there’s, uh…well.
I dunno, I can’t think of anything except – did I mention that he’s a Steelers fan? Oh right. Well, I think he said something about moving to Costa Rica if the health care bill passed. So, I guess there’s that.
So an unknown for some people is “Why does anyone like his show?” I’ve noticed from when I’d heard it, played in the office where I used to work, that he … speaks … very … slowly … and … deliberately … to make … … his points.
Some people just like that sort of entertainment, it may just be a voice to distract them in the car and at work … other examples I’ve noticed are Tom Likus (sp?) and Dr. Laura Slessenger.
I get accused at least several times a week of getting my opinions from Rush Limbaugh and I don’t listen to him at all, although I did listen sporadically in the early nineties.
Liberals, it seems, just can’t get their heads around the idea that people can actually think in ways that disagree with them without having been programmed to do so by someone with an agenda. If anything, Limbaugh reflects and bolsters his audience’s thinking rather than setting it for them.
And I have no doubt that Limbaugh’s personal politics are conservative through and through. He has said himself that there is nothing liberal about him whatsoever, even boasting that he’s never owned a pair of blue jeans. He was extremely proud of having been invited to dine at the home of William F. Buckley and the friendship that with him that subsequently developed, and of the letter Ronald Reagan wrote to thank him for the role he played in the conservative take-over of Congress in 1994.
I believe the reason some of the board’s members are so quick to believe he’d shift postions for more money is because shifting their positions according to the way the wind blows is a time-honored hallmark of liberal politics. You never know how a Democrat is going to come down on some specific issue without checking the polls first, and yet it’s often said that about conservative politicians that they stick to their guns even when it may hurt them politically. Two perfect examples of this would be Bill Clinton, about whom it was sometimes said that he governed in order to win last night’s polls and next year’s election, and GWB who persisted in doing what he thought was right even though it damaged both him and Republican political prospects in the process.
ETA: And based on what I knew of him in the days when I did listen to him, I would agree with the posters who say he’s right far more often than he’s wrong. Certain posters on the SDMB would have you believe that every word out of his mouth is a lie but that just isn’t so.
I bought both of his books, back about the time they hit the remainders table and were available for a few dollars. I read them and argued with them (by writing in the margins), and they turned out to be good books to argue with. At the time, my impression of his books was that he sometimes made some good points and did a pretty good job of arguing one side (his) of an issue; but he was very one-sided and never acknowledged any validity of any perspectives other than his own.
I’ve never listened to him at any length. From what little I’ve heard from him over the years, I get the impression he thinks of himself as a political humorist—but his “humor” is often juvenile, mean-spirited, and unfair.
I don’t think Limbaugh is clever enough to create what you’re describing, nor to be credited with it. Personally, I attribute the mindset to Christianity mingled with politics.
Oh, if only Bush’s damage was limited in the manner you describe… that’d be nice.
You know the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenberg?
One’s a flaming Nazi gasbag , and the other is a dirigible!
Liberal, age 27.
Rush Limbaugh strikes me as a very mean-spirited person. He’s loud and angry and bitter. When I hear his voice I want to hide under a table because he seems like someone that would just go apeshit violent in two seconds flat. I can’t recall ever hearing him say something I agreed with. I have no doubt he’s sincere in his beliefs. In fact, I have no doubt he’s 100% certain that he’s right, and there’s nothing more terrifying to me than someone who lacks the ability to challenge their own belief system.
In short, I don’t like Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, I don’t know anyone who does. Even the many conservatives in my family feel he’s a little much.
Notice how liberals tell what they themselves think and rush’s fans here tell everyone what liberals think? Have any of his cult followers ever had a thought of their own?
Limbaugh has just about perfected that most damaging of tactics - leading political thought through emotional means. He practically invented (or at least re-invented for Radio) Recreational Outrage. He gets folks stirred up, with very little emphasis on fact-checking or constructive debate.
It’s been over a year since I’ve listened to him, but the last time I was held prisoner in my father’s car with Limbaugh on the air, his MO was to hold a virtual conversation, voicing and scripting both sides himself. He would raise an issue, make up some preposterous answer for the “Liberal” side, then effectively out-argue it on the “Right-Wing” side.
Slight hijack: I think Conservative vs Right-Wing is becoming a very important differentiation in the USA right now. There are very few Conservatives in the Republican party leadership at the moment, they are mostly Right-Wingers. An example of the difference is that a Conservative believes in keeping Government as small and unobstrusive as possible, a Right-Winger wants to legislate the basic details of morality. /hijack
Glenn Beck is (I hope) the logical limit of this tactic, a telelvision personality known for crying on the air, and basically just ranting illogically. It’s hard for me to understand how anyone could listen tot hese people for any period of time.
Bad username/post combo.
Dammit! I came into this thread to make this joke!
I’ll separate three things:
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The news source. Limbaugh rose to popularity pre-internet, pre-Fox. On his show, he would (and still does) highlight stories or angles that the mainstream media ignored or downplayed.
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The commentator Limbaugh is not a dispassionate observer, and never claims to be. He “tells it how it is” in terms of giving his opinion on things.
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The entertainer He makes no secret of the fact that his main goal is to arouse interest, and that he deliberately says or does things to intentionally annoy some people.
As a news source, he’s pretty sketchy. There was value there at one time, but at this point he’s usually picking up on stuff taken from conservative blogs. Of course, not everyone reads political blogs.
As a commentator, I don’t find him particularly insightful, even on the occasions I agree with him. I don’t think many educated people take him seriously, but his views do reflect the views of a significant segment of the populace. I came across Limbaugh in 1988, just after he went national, when I spent a summer driving a taxi that only got two radio stations. I listened to a LOT of Rush Limbaugh that summer, and what caller after caller after caller said was “finally, someone in the media who sees things the way I do.” That was the origin of the term “dittos” – people were not saying that he had persuaded them, rather that Limbaugh was saying what they already thought.
IMHO, it’s as an entertainer where he shines. Part of the gag is the way he goads people who aren’t even on the air with him. He says what he thinks, and you know he’s pissing people off, and that’s the fun of it. When you listen to him, you can quite easily imagine the easily-offended getting themselves worked into a lather, screaming at their car radio. He’s taking the piss, and they don’t even know it. Again, that doesn’t mean he’s trolling; he means what he says. But he also means to piss people off for the sake of amusement.
Everyone here has pretty well described Limbaugh’s appeal and his methods. I voted Liberal, rarely agree with what he says. But I will give him credit - he is very talented at what he does.
My issue with him is his choice of demonizing “liberal” or “the left” (always said with a sneer, as if in disgust). It closes the door for folks who describe themselves as such from finding something he says useful or entertaining or agreeable. The constant insult to us liberals is frankly unnecessarily divisive. He’s got 20 million listeners? Why not 10 million more? He can be outraged about something without insulting half the country at the same time.
Rush Limbaugh is a prominent figure in the partisan-centered talk radio industry here in the states. Individuals such has Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Beck, and Savage have basically discovered that there is a great deal of money to be made in the delivery and reinforcement of a very specific and narrowly-defined worldview to their audience.
They’ve more or less capitalized on one of the oldest political tricks in the book - invent an easy enemy, then blame everything on said enemy.
Politicians have been doing this since politics began. It’s a simple message that barely requires any independent thought. People like this aren’t a new phenomena by any means. The only difference between them and muckraking pundits of times past is the age of mass media. “Loud and bombastic” tends to be the winning narrative style in American media these days. Pundits like Limbaugh deliver this in spades.
People who know better recognize this for what it is - shock jock style entertainment. Unfortunately, there are disturbing amounts of people out there who fail to recognize this and actually take them seriously.
He constantly has people call him who disagree with him. They make for some of the best listening.