Rush Limbaugh's Callers: are there more than five of them?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Conventional opinion of Rush Limbaugh is pretty standard fare here. I know what the majority of the board thinks of him and the pundits who ride his coat tails. He’s universally credited, and consequently loathed, with setting the bar for what is considered pompous, arrogant, and absurd. I get what he tries to do and I know why people hate him for it, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s anyone out there besides me who listens to him for entertainment’s sake. His act is so obtuse that I’m surprised so many people take him seriously.

He’s a very intelligent person and a fantastic speaker not because I agree with his approach to the issues, but because I love his act. About the only thing I see myself agreeing with him (and most conservatives) on today is the loss of social values and personal responsibility in our society. Sure, the “culture war” between “secular progressives” and “conservative traditionalists” is essentially a talking point manufactured by the media, but I think there’s still a hint of truth to it. I couldn’t find myself ever adopting his points of view, but I am always entertained by them. Personally, I think he’s mostly harmless and a funny entertainer and I’m often surprised that people allow themselves to get as upset as they do over what he has to say. I listen to Rush’s show on a semi-regular basis because I find the absurdity funny in the same way I find The Daily Show and The Colbert Report funny. Colbert is, after all, lampooning Rush and pundits like him.

The purpose of my post is to discuss his so-called fans. Like I said, I listen to the show and often wonder about Rush’s fanbase. His “ditto-heads”. While it’s true Rush has a big following, I find it interesting that his callers seem to be the same five people calling in over and over again. Not only do they all sound like adoring Stepford wives, but they’re also all from the south and southern midwest, they all manage their own businesses or are married to someone who does, and they all have military experience or come from a military background. Based solely on the way they sound, one could easily make the assertion that it was the same dozen people calling in over and over again (with different names, of course). I suppose even referring to them as “callers” is probably a stretch, as I’m sure the proper term would probably be something closer to “paid employees”. Conversely, he also has those callers who take an opposite stance. They’re almost always universally slow to speak, whiney, and unable to gather their thoughts quickly. They make false statements, accusations, and just generally complain and serve to represent any outside opinion as one belonging to a group of aging socialist dimwits and anti-establishment nutjobs from the Pacific Northwest.

So all this pointless thinking got me to wonder whether there’s any evidence to form a case for these people not even being real. Assuming they weren’t, could legal action be taken against Limbaugh for false representation? IANAL, so I can’t speak for the legal ramifications of falsely representing endorsement for oneself if that support is coming from anonymous people whose full names are never actually disclosed. There’s such a thing as voter fraud, so why not caller fraud? If I had my own radio show where nobody ever saw my callers and I just used the same couple people as my “callers” all the time, could I get into serious legal problems if someone caught me?

NOTE: Yes, I know Rush abused painkillers. Yes, I know that for all the traditional family virtues he extols, he’s a thrice-divorced 56-year-old man with no children. Yes, I know he’s a “big fat liar”. Yes, I know he’s a hypocrite and a jerk and a whatever-else-people-say-he-is. And it’s probably all deserved. That’s not what this thread is about, so if that’s is all you have to say, please don’t.

2

Well, I don’t usually listen to him but my boyfriend does (he listens to all talk radio, really) and there was a guy on last week who tore Rush up. It was pretty sweet. No way was that guy paid! I couldn’t believe he didn’t get cut off. He was polite and didn’t raise his voice, but he sliced and diced.

3

I’ve heard callers slice and dice him too, and I think the only reason it doesn’t happen more often is because he has those paid actors waiting in the wings to make up for the few occasions when his calls don’t go smoothly.

4

I think radio talk, particularly the more political shows, is just as real as ‘reality TV’; that is, directed and edited to a fare-thee-well.

I doubt that any talk host would be so foolish as to get caught paying people to impersonate random callers, but my understanding is that most call-in shows have screeners who perform a sorting function to ensure that only the most entertaining callers, and, probably, those least likely to embarrass the host, get to talk to The Man (or Woman). If this is the case for Limbaugh’s show, and I’m pretty sure it is, it would be an easy matter to ensure that only the ‘right’ kinds of callers get through: either fawning dittoheads, or persons from the opposition who are inarticulate or who don’t have well-thought-out positions, thus making them easy targets. In the case of someone managing to actually out-debate Limbaugh, thay are likely to have been a first-time caller, probably had to pose as a dittohead to get on the air at all, and probably would have a very hard time ever getting on the air again.

Of course, the screening can’t be as obvious as all that, but nevertheless I would be very surprised if there weren’t some filtering function in place to manipulate the general tone of the discussion and keep the entertainment value (however that may be determined) as high as possible.

Speaking of local phone-in shows on Houston’s KTRH, which I listen to frequently, there most certainly are favored callers who get more or less regular spots on a particular show. For example, on Cris Tritico’s Saturday show, there’s a guy with a distinctive New Yorkish accent who seems to get on every week. It stands to reason, if someone like that has been entertaining in the past, put them on ahead of unknown quantities in the future. The same sort of thinking may going on with Limbaugh’s show.

5

Where to start here. Yes, the callers are screened, but contrary to belief, opposing views are sought on most talk shows. It makes the show entertaining. And if you think they are screening for inarticulate folks in the opposition, you probably have no idea how many callers are dumped because they are inarticulate. A few weeks ago, Michael Medved took unscreened calls. The results were a mixture of people who were either inarticulate, nutcases, bores, or, most often, a combination of all three. :eek:

The screener is looking for someone who is lively, passionate and articulate regardless of the point of view. They are harder to find than you may realize, and will always be bumped to the front of the list.

Some talk shows have regular callers, it’s true. If the show is national, they must have an inside line (bypassing the public call in number). “Marty” on the Hannity show comes to mind.

As far as Rush is concerned, he most definitely does take calls from the public. If I had a reason, I bet I could get on, but it takes a lot of patience. With an audience of around 20 million, he gets thousands of callers every day and puts on maybe 10 or 15, so just getting into the screener is a lottery. If he IS using planted callers, they have an inside line and he is making a big fraud, but the risks of doing it are bigger for his audience credibility than being exposed as a pill popper, and THERE IS NO NEED. You can say what you want about Rush, and I know a lot of people hate his guts, but he is a professional talk show host. He can take care of himself, as any regular listener knows already.

Local talk shows often have regular callers. They get put through, to be sure, but they have a track record, so the screener knows they will provide an entertaining call. Nevertheless, they have to dial in on the same lines as everyone else and put up with busy signals, etc. The fact is, on a local talk show, even in a big market like Los Angeles, is not that hard to get into to talk to a screener. Wether they put you on the air or not is another question. I have always had good luck.

Tips for getting on the air and having a successful call to a talk show:

  1. Call at the beginning of the show, or shortly before. If the show has an hourly topic, a good host will open the lines after they have “set” the topic with a brief explanation. On those shows, they will often state “so now we are opening up the lines”. Call in slightly before you sense they are going to say that (the radio is on delay) and you are probably going to have an advantage.

  2. If #1 is impossible, wait for the moment you sense a call is wrapping up (remember the radio is on a delay) and start dialing. When the line frees up, you might get in.

Assuming you get through to the screener:

  1. Be passionate.

  2. Be prepared to concisely state your argument to the screener. Talk radio is a time driven format and you have to make your point, give the host a chance to respond, and (hopefully) give your rebuttal, in a minute or two. As Tom Leykis has said, talk radio isn’t for the callers, it’s for the listeners!

  3. Be prepared to wait on hold. Don’t call when your cell battery is about kaput and you aren’t near a charger. Don’t call when you are about to rush out the door for an appointment. They may put you right on or you might have to wait for more than an hour. Turn down your radio. They will almost always pipe a feed of the show to your phone so you can respond to what other callers are saying on the topic.

  4. Use your time on hold to make a brief outline on paper of what you want to say including important points that support your argument. That way you won’t be hemming and hawing when you are put on the air. The paper will remind you of the next thing you have to get into the conversation. You will probably be nervous your first few times, and this helps a lot!

  5. Have fun during the call! This is very important. Your enthusiasm will come through over the air.
    I should mention that it IS possible to do unscreened LOCAL talk radio. It isn’t easy, though. Until quite recently, we had a local host here in LA that did just that, Mr. KABC. He was able to maintain a high tone, however, and thus attracted listeners (and therefore callers) who were mostly reasonable, articulate and thoughtful. He is probably at least a lurker here and has tried to have “Cecil” on his show, although “Cecil” always seems to cancel at the last moment and in his place “Cecil” sends some inferior hack named Ed Zotti. :rolleyes: Maybe someday “Cecil” will have the guts to make an appearance, but I am not holding my breath. :wink:

mini-OT-rant:

To: PD, KABC LOS ANGELES

From: AN ECLECTIC MINION

HOW IN THE HELL CAN YOU FIRE MR. KABC, EITHER #1 OR #2 IN THE MARKET DEPENDING ON THE HOUR TO PUT ON MARK LEVINE YOU BIG MORON!

/and if you are lurking here, Mr. Formerly Mr. KABC type person, your minions are waiting for the new DNA test that will determine your exact parentage for at least another ten years :slight_smile:

6

Oh, and at least Rushbo puts on opposing calls. Ever listened to Air America? :rolleyes: One reason it’s so boring is all the callers agree with the hosts. It is a mutual backpatting society. Rotsa ruck to them when Soros gets tired of footing it.

7

Sorry for the triple post, but let’s do some fermimath:

Say in an average hour, El Rushbo has 10 million listeners. Thousands will call in. During that same period, the screener is going to be able to talk to maybe 40 or 50 callers. So it is just like a lotto just to get in.

Of the listeners to Rush, I would bet a vast majority, maybe 90% are conservative. The liberals that do listen, listen to get themselves into a froth over Rush, and I have a feeling that characteristic may self select for those who might be less proficient at forensics. In addition, they may be inhibited from calling because they feel Rush may be mean to them (although he is always polite to callers) so they may be calling in at a lower rate than his conservative listeners. Rush HIMSELF has said that they have trouble finding liberal callers, although if the OP is correct it is all just some kind of Phil Hendrie show anyway. :rolleyes:

So during that hour, the screener might have time to screen 40 or so callers, so the “fermi question” probabilitstic expectation is that only 4 callers are going to be liberal, and of those four, maybe only one is cogent enough to put on the air. So what do you get?

A bunch of conservative callers. Who cares how articulate or logical they are? They are not debating the host. They are backpatting him, supporting his argument with anecdotes, etc.

The liberal who does get in may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer and is unprepared for Rush who is good at what he does, believe it or not. He is nervous, he is easily flustered and although Rush is polite he uses all kinds of tactics to throw the argument and in fact, as, alas, many talk show hosts do, will dump the call if it seems like he is outmatched. The host always has the last word. At least on Rush’s show, the opposition gets a stab, rigged though the deck may be.

Much better than Randi Rhodes “I dare a consevative to call in about ______! See! I’m right because we don’t have any callers!”

You don’t have any callers, because you don’t have any listeners you shrill harpie!

I think the body politic would be better off if she and Ann Coulter had a caged “death match”. What we don’t tell them until only one is left alive is that the winner gets to eat the loser’s carcass and then starve to death because we threw away the key to the cage. I would buy THAT on pay per view!

8

Awesome posts, Wanderer. :slight_smile: All well-stated points about those with hair-triggers lacking in forensic aptitude. I wasn’t trying to be conspiratorial, I just find it interesting that after listening to Rush’s show as long as I have, that his callers don’t just say the same things, but sound like the same exact people over and over again. Phil Hendrie, no, but repetitive, yes. You seem to think I’m conspiring against Rush like he’s some kind of idiot when he’s anything but. My guess is his callers are real, but they are all Stepford wives.

I personally listen to WLS 890 AM in Chicago in the afternoons. It’s our local syndicate for Rush but I mostly just listen for Roe Conn’s afternoon show (which follows Rush in Chicago) because he’s brilliant and isn’t immune to doing his own hilarious caricatures of Rush, sometimes ending his points with “you people!” in his best Rush impersonation. The thing about his show is that they get a much wider variety of callers. Perhaps the variety of topics is greater because it isn’t solely a political show. Perhaps because it’s Chicago, there are a lot of cultural segregations and differing backgrounds to draw upon. All I can say with certainty is that the callers don’t sound like the same handful of people over and over again.

You also make the kind of case for Rush that I was trying to make in my OP. He’s fun to listen to because he’s essentially a caricature. A jovial one, good-natured, well-spoken, confident and aware of his words. He has a way of speaking that makes people listen, which is why he’s the king of talk radio even though most of what he has to say is conceited. Howard Stern is/was the same way. I liked how in his film Private Parts, there was a scene showing the producers discussing Howard’s skyrocketing ratings and that the only response from people on either side of the listening table was “I want to hear what he’ll say next”.

The opposition on Air America has largely been home to the kind of spiteful, negative people who are not good broadcasters or confident speakers. They don’t know how to entertain, only how to admonish. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. I remember seeing a special on HBO about how Air America was struggling in its infancy and it wasn’t hard to see why. They came across, at least, as a bunch of sociopathic, argumentative dickheads. I don’t agree with either side 100% of the time, but if I had to choose someone to emulate or serve as a role model for how to win friends and smooth over enemies, it would be Rush. You can’t get people to agree with you by poking your finger in their chest, you win them over by kissing their ass and buying them a drink, and Rush knows this.

So who is Air America’s Rushbo?

9

He just quit to run for the senate. :wink:

For good liberal talk radio, KGO San Francisco has some good hosts. You can stream them. Bernie Ward and Ray Taliafero are among the liberal hosts there.

10

No, Randi Rhodes would be the closest thing to a Rush on Air America. Al Franken presents sound arguments based on actual facts, so, sadly, he wouldn’t qualify.

Even after all these years, I don’t know whether Limbaugh actually believes all the bullshit he spouts, or has just been doing a really successful act. Either way, he certainly found a formula that appeals to a lot of people.

11

Air America really bugs you, doesn’t it? :smiley: