Uncovering the First Wave of Conservative Media - Part 4

It is July 1988. A 37-year old radio talk show host, rising fast but still known only regionally, leaves KBFK in Sacramento and moves to Manhattan, where he makes his inaugural broadcast on WABC. He does so under a deal that has him do a daily local program, essentially for free. In exchange, the ABC Radio Network has agreed to air a second, national program each day on its affiliates. Within a month, fifty-six stations are broadcasting the national show to an audience estimated at 250,000.

After two decades in the radio business, Rush Limbaugh has hit the big time.

By 1990 the national audience numbers 20 million. “New York Times Magazine” runs a profile on him. So does “Vanity Fair.” So, for that matter, does “Cigar Aficionado,” with a piece written by a reporter for the New York Times. Ted Koppel, the well-known host of ABC’s “Nightline,” brings him on the show, telling viewers, “There is absolutely no one and nothing else out there like him, anywhere on the political spectrum.”

There’s just one problem: among the media elite Limbaugh is a pariah. “You have no earthly idea how detested and hated I am,” he tells New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who knows exactly how detested and hated Limbaugh is. “I’m not even a good circus act for the liberals in this town,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that just possibly the liberals in town are not enthusiastic about his ceaseless attacks upon liberals.

In my lifetime I’ve seen my share of mavericks who thumb their nose at convention, and then are genuinely puzzled to reap the consequences a maverick ought properly to expect.

But his situation is by no means all bad. Barely a month after he begins his national show, Limbaugh receives an invitation to a reception hosted by Wall Street investor and conservative benefactor Lewis Lehrman. Lehrman’s splendid salon contains a harpsichord, seated at which is a figure Limbaugh recognizes at once: 62-year old William F. Buckley, Jr., a Renaissance man who is a gifted musician, world-class sailor, expert skier, and, once upon a time, formidable amateur boxer. Not to mention a novelist who writes spy fiction inspired by his days as a CIA operative in Latin America, as well as a one-time candidate for mayor of New York (a quixotic effort he recounts in one of the 55 books he will write over the span of his 82 years).

Buckley also happens to be the most famous conservative in the country, mainly because he is the host of “Firing Line,” aired on PBS and well on its way to becoming the longest running public affairs show in television history, boasting 1,504 shows over 33 years.

Limbaugh is thrilled to discover that Buckley is one of his listeners, flattered when Buckley pours him a drink, and utterly bewildered when Buckley holds forth with a group of editors about whether James Joyce’s “Ulysses” could still find a publisher in the present cultural climate. But overall, Buckley lavishes attention upon Limbaugh. What are his thoughts on politics, the secrets to his broadcasting success, his aspirations for the future? It is heady stuff, and years later Limbaugh will still shake his head in wonder. “It was one of the most memorable nights of my life . . . that night I was made to feel welcome in the conservative movement as started by its leader.”

Buckley is everything Limbaugh is not: poised, patrician, and able to articulate the conservative world view in a way that is compelling rather than off-putting. And yet Buckley becomes Limbaugh’s patron, introducing him to such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, Norman Podhoretz, and Richard Brookhiser. In the mid-1990s Limbaugh will host Buckley at his own home. They will smoke cigars and sip brandy and presently Limbaugh will raise his snifter in a heart-felt, almost worshipful gesture, saying, “You know, my father passed away in 1990, but you make me think my dad’s still alive here with me.”

But what is Buckley’s story? That will be the focus of my next post.