“Rush is just an amazing radio performer,” says Ira Glass, a star of the younger generation of public-radio personalities. “Years ago, I used to listen in the car on my way to reporting gigs, and I’d notice that I disagreed with everything he was saying, yet I not only wanted to keep listening, I actually liked him. That is some chops. You can count on two hands the number of public figures in America who can pull that trick off.”Glass compares Limbaugh to another exceptional free-form radio monologist, Howard Stern. “A lot of people dismiss them both as pandering and proselytizing and playing to the lowest common denominator, but I think that misses everything important about their shows,” he says. “They both think through their ideas in real time on the air, they both have a lot more warmth than they’re generally given credit for, they both created an entire radio aesthetic.”
GAH. I used to listen to Rush every now and then while driving the FM-less blue Volvo down upstate interstates. And the guy isn't warm, at least in the way Glass means. The guy feeds off anger. His humor is mean-spirited. He protests he is the reasonable common man, while his audience huddles around the silent sneering spectre of old-school rascist, nativist, hatred. The bullying is wrapped up in half-truths and careful omissions. There is nothing to like in Limbaugh's broadcasts if you disagree with him: they inspire only disgust, like catching a friend cheating on their significant other.
I understand that the reporter is interviewing you for a few kind words, but that can be done without finding anything likable in Rush's ugly, ugly approach to the world.
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