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Ever the salesman, Limbaugh has created brand names for political groups. Do-gooder liberals are "compassion fascists," and "commie libs" are pretty much anyone to the left of David Duke. San Francisco is "the West Coast branch of the Kremlin." Limbaugh, a rock-ribbed skeptic, believes that reports of the death of Soviet communism have been greatly exaggerated. A "Gorbasm" is the sound people make when hailing Mikhail Gorbachev -- "and of course every Gorbasm is fake." Listeners who agree with Rush shout "Mega-dittos" as a greeting. Those who don't agree, he says, endanger his concept of "safe talk" (to guarantee which Limbaugh once placed a condom over his microphone) and may get a "caller abortion." They are cut off, with vacuum-cleaner noises and a woman's scream in the background.
Is anyone offended yet? Does anyone out there feel like stringing up the self-described "epitome of morality and virtue"? (If you do, bring a crane; the man weighs 317 lbs.) Rush would be shocked if you did. "I try to make my points with humor," he says mildly. "I attack the absurd by being absurd." Flattered as he is by the praise of those who despise his opinions, Limbaugh thinks he is popular because most Americans -- disenfranchised by the liberal media -- agree with what he says. "The majority of people just don't want to hear their country ridiculed or accused of being wrong. Let's not flog ourselves. I happen to believe in love of country, and that's what people want to hear."
Limbaugh has every reason to believe in America's reward for hard work; he is reaping it now. Born into a family of lawyers in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Rush sat behind his first radio mike at 16. He spun records and made with the cute chatter under a couple of pseudonyms until he decided the medium would never give him a sense of self-respect. In 1979 he joined the Kansas City Royals as promotion director, where he made many friends (George Brett wears a DITTO T shirt at batting practice) but was still restless. "In 1982," he recalls, "I was looking at a $35,000-a-year job selling potato chips in Liberty, Mo., as Nirvana. But I didn't get the job." Nothing to do but go back to radio, this time in the burgeoning field of talk. He spent four years in Sacramento before moving to New York's WABC in 1988 and becoming the Clown Prince of Conservatism.
Would he be king? Not just now, thank you; he's having too much fun rubbing noses with Bill Buckley (who admires Limbaugh's "preternatural fluency"), chairing seminars with Robert Bork and General Thomas Kelly and sitting in a tiny booth redefining radio entertainment 15 hours a week. "I am having an adult Christmas every day," he says. "If I'd wanted to affect policy, I'd have tried to join the White House or a Senator's staff. That's not for me. I am honest and passionate and sincere about my politics, but mostly I love being on the radio." He says it luuuuuuuv. And if some liberal listeners -- "and you know who you are" -- loooooooathe him, that is their constitutional privilege. Rush will laugh all the way to his own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting. The right wing, of course.