Hail to the King of the Air waves

On March 8th, 2007, ABC News.com ran a story titled, "Obama Pays Parking Tickets 17 years Late." Just as it has happened before with other presidential hopefuls, the dirt is piling up. The reporting of the investments that Obama had made "unknown" to himself doesn't seem to be sticking so we get treated to another little bit of dirt today. Parking Tickets!! My God, how can he be a president? And then he goes and pays them off 17 years late - how patronizing!

I thought to myself, "Rush will have a field day with this. He'll either make a complete mockery of it or he'll make it a grand crime against the masses that Obama thinks he's above the law. Either way - it'll be entertaining."

It was eleven minutes to the end of Rush Limbaugh's 3 hour show before he mentioned it. "Yes , even King Rush is predictable, I thought." But he didn't ridicule the story. He didn't knock Obama for trying to be above the law. In fact he didn't criticize Obama in any way for his parking tickets. He read the story from the website and let the words of the story (not his words) take on their own level of ridiculousness. With one swing of his majestic verbalage he announced that the source of the story "had to be the Clinton camp." In his eyes and for his millions of listeners and 800 stations there was only one source that could be responsible - "Clinton INC".
He then played a little audio piece of Obama responding to questions about his questionable investments. And pointed out that, for the first time in Obama's speaking career, Obama was using a lot of um's and ah's rather than direct confident oration.

All of this was squashed into the last 11 minutes. In a feat of genuis broadcasting he appeared fairly objective by "defending" Obama against the "Clinton INC" camp and then suggested subtly that Obama was losing his confidence in speaking as a result of the questions about his investments. Then (after 3 hours) he was gone. He left us with 11 dense minutes of 1. defending/supporting Obama, 2. criticizing "Clinton INC", (for something that he had no idea if they were responsible or not), and 3. subtle analysis of Obama to expose the impending collapse of his run for president. And then he was gone.

Golfing is where he said he was going in the afternoon, (in between criticizing all theories of global warming). One might even think that he wanted to get finished and golfing as quickly as possible and that the last 11 minutes were thrown in as an afterthought.

I got the impression that the 11 minutes were orchestrated to be dense and "balanced". That segment gave the impression of an objective broadcaster but under analysis we can see he was trying to knock the two democratic candidates. A fitting finish to his 3 hour broadcast!

He got me. He didn't have a field day in the way I thought he would - i.e. ridicule or criticism.

He is subtle and subversive. He is a genuis. His theatrics are second to none. His voice carries and is perfectly toned for radio. His apparent knowledge (communicated by his confidence) is omnipotent.

I have to admire his performance. I have to lament his popularity. I accept that he has the biggest radio audience in the U.S.
I ask, "Is this what I must be to be a successful talk show radio host?" Maybe not.
How do I define successful? Broadcasting is a competition for the audience. Popularity is success in broadcasting. So, for today, if I want to be the most popular radio talk show host - Rush is the goal!

Hail to the King of the Air Waves!







http://www.abcnews.go.com/politics/wireStory?id=2934061

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld