Conservative Provocateur Or BIG BLOWHARD?

By RICHARD CORLISS

PRESIDENT BUSH, ON A VISIT TO America's most popular radio show, addresses the host as "Russ." Hillary Clinton, in a cheerful diatribe against the host, calls him "Lim-bough," as in "Ow! That hurts!" William F. Buckley Jr. says it "Limbo" -- a place a bit north of where many liberals would send this right-wing multimedia motormouth sensation.

. Say the name, with due basso-profundo pomp, this way: Rush (as in rush to hear him while he's hot) Limbaugh (as in awe).

It should not be hard to pronounce; these days it is hard to avoid. Rush (friend and foe alike are on a first-name basis) talks about political and social issues for 15 hours a week, and 13 million listeners tune in on 529 radio stations. He writes a book of his opinions -- a $22 souvenir program, really, of the radio show -- and it sits for weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list; with 1.1 million copies in print a month after its publication date, The Way Things Ought to Be is the hottest hard-cover nonfiction title since Iacocca. Then he tries TV, and within a few weeks his late-night harangue is beating Whoopi Goldberg in the ratings and is up there with David Letterman and Arsenio Hall. These days, Rush is so busy that, as he lamented on the radio recently, "I don't even know what century I'm living in!"

Oh, about the 35th B.C., those on the receiving end of his conservative cudgel would say. But then, Radio Free Limbaugh is designed to raise liberals' dander quotient. Consider: a vote for Clinton-Gore is "a vote for socialism." Rush has been on Slick Willie's case all year, rejoicing in the early tales of infidelity, assiduously promoting this month's mission-to- Moscow story. He loves to rag Democratic politicians: Ted Kennedy, of course, but also "former U.S. cadaver -- ahem, Senator -- Alan Cranston" or "Fort Worthless Jim Wright, the former Sleazer of the House." What about Perot's 50 cents gas tax? "We could've gone ahead and let Saddam Hussein win and accomplished the same thing."

In one sense, the comet of Limbaugh's rise is the traditional American success story, rewritten for the Reagan-Bush era. Less than a decade ago, he was out of radio and out of work; he was fired from five jobs, broke twice. Now he is rich and famous; this June he was an overnight guest at the White House, and the President carried Limbaugh's bag. His juicy fulminations against "feminazis" (militant pro-abortionists), "commie libs" (pretty much anyone to the left of Archduke Ferdinand) and "environmentalist wackos" (tree huggers) have won him the admiration and courtship of many of the right people, and the anger and fear of many of the left people. What hot- blooded conservative could ask for anything more? "This show is not about what you think," he often intones. "This show is about what I think." Bombast away!

% With his convulsively entertaining style, Limbaugh is also the prime exemplar of the crucial debate America is now having with itself, at the decibel level of a Metallica concert. What should the level of political discourse be in an election campaign, or on radio and TV, or at the office water cooler? At what point does comic exaggeration shade into slander? When everyone is shouting, is anybody listening?

Rush is C-SPAN, Comedy Central and the Nostalgia network all in one: 100% politics and 100% show biz. And in that he's like nearly everyone else in public life. The "issues" in the Republican campaign are largely Hard Copy topics like adultery, dope smoking, draft dodging and politically correct itineraries for student vacations. On The McLaughlin Group, the Studs of weekend round-table shows, pundits pretend to be pit bulls. On the late-night talk shows opposite Limbaugh's, comedians pause in their mocking of Bush and Quayle to get serious for just a moment, folks, and put in a plug for Clinton.

Watch these statesmen in motley, clowns on the stump, and Limbaugh's mud track can look like the high road. He meets his own challenge -- to inform and entertain -- and those who don't get it are always free to tune out. But even some righteous liberals are closet Rushophiles, because the man is so good at what he does. And knows it. And tells you, in a voice whose every syllable bespeaks a 25-year apprenticeship in radio oratory, without fear of repetition or contradiction. If vainglorious were two words, he'd fit both of them. He has an ego made for radio.

Radio is the last intimate medium. For harried commuters and lonely homebodies, it is mouth-to-ear resuscitation, a voice crying in their wilderness. In the '30s, radio carried potent political messages, from Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats to Fiorello La Guardia's reading of the comics during a newspaper strike to Father Charles Coughlin's charismatic hatemongering. Today that voice is still as personal as a conscience or a demon. Especially at midday, when the bass thud of a barroom rock band announces the arrival of Rush H. Limbaugh III, 41. "Ensconced in the Attila the Hun Chair at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies," Rush is ready to turn the disparate American radio audience into one big ear. "Turn it up, folks," he commands. "Listen loud."

You needn't bother; his personality is as loud and colorful as his neckties. But his audience does listen up, some of them in "Rush rooms" -- parts of restaurants where the show is piped in for the faithful. They'll talk back too, to offer either "mega-dittos" (indicating total agreement with the host) or nega-dittos. "When he calms down and stops horsing around," says erstwhile movie star Jane Russell, "he speaks common American sense, which we've been throwing into the toilet." Russell's husband, the crusty Texan John Peoples, adds, "If bulls--- was music, he'd be a brass band. But I love him."

Norman Lear, the TV mogul and co-founder of the liberal group People for the American Way, is a fan, sort of. "Real passion is at such a premium these days," Lear says. "In the land of the sitting and reading dead, Limbaugh's got passion, and thus he's watchable." To columnist Alexander Cockburn (the Nation), Limbaugh's is "a funny act. Humor always helps. But he seems to me the last surviving idiocy of the Reagan-Bush years. It's like those stars that give off light long after they've died. Long after everything Reagan-Bush stood for has collapsed into disaster, the sound waves continue, and you hear this mush peddler carrying on."

For some comics, the subject of Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan is as fertile as Bush-Quayle. Will Durst, who refers to Limbaugh as "Jabba the Talk Show Host," says, "Buchanan had a killer instinct; he wasn't afraid to lick up the blood. But Rush leaves it there and just chews off the flesh." Harry Shearer, the actor (This Is Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) and host of his own politico-comic radio show, is kinder, gentler to Limbaugh: "This country runs on personality, not on ideas. I think if Rush were spouting diametrically opposed ideas, he'd be just as popular. The only people he is dangerous for are the people in time slots opposite him."

Limbaugh may be a fresh bag of wind to the radio and TV audience, but his family -- a prominent Republican brood in Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- has heard it all before. "He didn't start talking until he was two," says his mother Millie, "and then he didn't stop." The ideas were familiar too -- a kind of birthright for Rush. "Echoes of my dad reverberate through everything my brother says," explains Limbaugh's brother David, 39, a lawyer who helped Rush assemble The Way Things Ought to Be. "My dad, more than my brother, was the black sheep. He was a maverick, the lone, passionate voice of conservatism. My brother's success is a kind of vindication of my father's lifework in politics." If there is a difference between the lawyer with the booming voice and his radio-star son, the family says, it is in Rush's impish, rowdy sense of humor. "I don't want to brag," Millie says, "but I say he got his sense from his dad and his nonsense from me."

Rusty, as they called him, fell in love as a kid and never snapped out of it. The object of his obsession was radio. "I was jealous of the morning guy, who seemed to be having a lot of fun," he recalls, "while I was dreading getting ready for school every day. It's just that simple." After his sophomore year he abandoned football and debating and got a job at a local radio station. He never studied voice or diction, and during a stint at Southeast Missouri State University he flunked Speech 101, because he did not outline his speeches. And for the next decade, his career sounded more like crr-rash! He was fired from four Pennsylvania and Missouri radio stations and, after a five-year stint, from the marketing department of the Kansas City Royals. Not until he replaced Morton Downey Jr. on a Sacramento, California, station in 1984 did he come close to success. "Up until then," he says, "I failed at everything I did. On occasion, I had potential. On occasion, I was a guy who 'might make it if I could just learn to do this or do that.' "

Limbaugh also had two failed marriages. He was wed briefly, in 1977, to Roxie McNeely, a secretary. "I was doing what I thought I had to do. There was romance in the idea of being married. It was just the wrong reasons." He wed Michelle Sixta, a college student, in 1985; they divorced in 1991. "The love had just vanished," he says. "We're still friendly."

Rush's frequent attacks on feminists -- he has puckishly proposed, for example, that the issue of women in combat be resolved by forming 52 "PMS battalions" of women with the condition, led by "Sergeant Major Molly Yard" -- would seem to restrict his dating range in commie-lib Manhattan. Recently, though, he has been seeing Donna Dees, a p.r. director at CBS News. "She has her reputation to be concerned about," says Rush the male chivalrist, with no evident irony. "It's very embarrassing for a very liberal woman to go out with a conservative guy like me." Dees amiably allows that Rush is "not the Antichrist that my feminist friends painted him as." Listening to his show, she says, "I haven't been that offended. Actually, I think he's kind of funny."

Limbaugh's knack for being funny persuaded Ed McLaughlin, a former president of the ABC Radio Network, to make the talker a national star. "The thing I got immediately," McLaughlin says, "was his sense of humor in a traditionally nonhumorous format. He had all the elements: innate intelligence, a high curiosity and the desire to be a star." In 1988 McLaughlin made Limbaugh a partner in their enterprise and brought him to New York City's WABC, as a base for the so-called Excellence in Broadcasting Network -- a company that does not exist; Rush just thought the name sounded imposing.

Now Limbaugh is a one-man conglomerate. He has the book, which longtime listeners will recognize as Rush's Greatest Hits. (He hits on liberalism, environmentalism, Hollywood, and for old time's sake he hits on Mikhail Gorbachev.) He has an audiocassette of the book -- the ideal way to get through the tome, since Rush not only abridges the text but provides comedy sound effects (dolphin noises, Meryl Streep impressions and a frog slurp). He has the Limbaugh Letter, a monthly compendium "dedicated to preserving my wisdom for the ages" and "printed on nonrecycled paper." He has T shirts, mugs, bumper stickers. In salesmanship as in showmanship, he's a winner.

So why not add TV? Well, there was the question of his telegenicity. At 320 lbs., his weight last year, Rush could hardly have fit on the small screen. And would people want to watch a guy just talking on a show with cable-access production values? It's radio with a night light. One night Rush read excerpts from a book. Nobody had tried that on TV since Billy Graham.

None of this matters, because all of it works. Rush has taken to the medium in no time flat. At a svelte 270, his friendly, full-moon face piked on a Pillsbury Doughboy frame, he looks like a defrocked Friar Tuck. More important, he has underlined another aspect of his personality: that of class clown. He woos the camera like an avid freshman on a fluke date with the senior prom queen. He guffaws, he blusters, he bats his eyes, he makes kissy- face. He will do anything to keep you watching.

Anything but talk sense, say prickly liberals. According to one radio caller, a bookstore in Portland, Oregon, refused to stock The Way Things Ought to Be. "And if we did," the salesclerk said, "it would be in the Children's Fiction section."

The cross and joy of Rush Limbaugh are that everything he says could be filed under Political-Science Fiction. That's because he wants it both ways. * He wants to be taken seriously as a pundit by those he convinces and indulged as a comedian by those he might outrage. He considers himself, with typical bluster, "the epitome of morality and virtue" and "the most dangerous man in America." Are most of his facts factual? Yes. Does he overuse the debater's tactic of tarring whole movements with extreme examples? Yes. Does the distinction between fairness and exaggeration matter? Yes -- every bit as much as it does in any other arena of politics or show biz. Says Buckley, first in the modern line of conservatives who mixed sharp opinions with cutting wit: "Anybody who engages in polemics is, to an extent, engaging in hyperbole. But that's as American as a tall tale of Mark Twain."

Limbaugh is talking to a lot of people, politically stranded by the media, who believe that only he is talking to them. But no one has proposed him for President or Messiah; and he declares he would not apply for either job. Other listeners abhor the political product but enjoy the spiel. You can find diversion in any aspect of the Limbaugh carnival: the tight-wire walker or the Tilt-a-Whirl, the sideshow barker or the geek. You might even find it salutary to have your own exalted prejudices shaken by him. Last time we looked, Rush was still popular, and the Republic was still standing.

With reporting by Georgia Harbison and William Tynan/New York and Staci D. Kramer/St. Louis, with other bureaus