Limbaugh, Rush (1951—)

Rush Limbaugh is a conservative radio talk show host often ascribed with regenerating interest in AM radio when his program, The Rush Limbaugh Show, became nationally syndicated in 1988. By the mid-1990s, his program was attracting more than 11 million weekly [Page 407]listeners and still holds steady today, with roughly 14 million listeners each week. For most of the past 2 decades, the show has been ranked by the media research group Arbitron as the most popular radio talk show in the United States. Limbaugh is compensated handsomely for his success; in 2001, he agreed to an 8-year contract in the amount of $285 million, a salary unprecedented in American radio.

For regularly reaching and captivating such a large portion of the electorate, Limbaugh is credited by many pundits with playing an instrumental role in the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, as well as George W. Bush's defeat of Senator John McCain in the 2000 Republican presidential primary and the subsequent defeat of Vice President Al Gore in the general election. For reasons such as these, Time magazine described Limbaugh as “one of the most influential entertainers in the history of the country,” in its 2004 survey of the most important people in the United States.

During the presidential election year of 1992 and throughout the years of the Clinton administration, Limbaugh's popularity hit record highs among discontented conservatives. In addition to his radio juggernaut, he published a book titled The Way Things Ought to Be that instantly became a national bestseller, and he also starred in a televised talk show, Rush Limbaugh: Talent on Loan From God, which for a time entered more than 2 million homes five days a week.

For nearly 20 years Limbaugh's conservative irreverence has delighted sympathizers on the right and infuriated opponents on the left. Not one for soft tones, he has in years past referred to feminists as “Feminazis” and to animal rights advocates as “ecowackos,” and branded prominent American liberals with the epithet “Commie-Libs.”

Limbaugh began his career in broadcast journalism as a teenager in the 1960s in his home state of Missouri. After dropping out of college in the early '70s, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked as a disc jockey for a top-40 radio station. In 1984, Limbaugh received an important break and was hired and given his own platform by KFBK in Sacramento. In 1987 the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan repealed the fairness doctrine—a law dictating that AM radio stations give equal time to more than one side of an issue as well as response time to persons individually attacked on the air—a reversal that led to Limbaugh's national syndication the following year.