Why does anyone listen to rush limbaugh

For better or worse, talk radio does as much to shape the reality of millions of Americans as any other medium in the country. A recent book by Paul Matzko, called The Radio Right , tries to answer this question and a whole lot more. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. How would you describe the impact he had not just on the evolution of talk radio but on contemporary conservatism?

Limbaugh is the non-politician with the most influence over American politics for the last 30 or so years. As far as his influence on conservatism, I think of it this way: Not that long ago, to be conservative meant relatively little in terms of support for immigration.

During the Reagan era, for example, the Republican Party actually tended to be more pro-immigration than the Democratic Party, mostly because of traditional Democratic ties to organized labor.

But today, we live in a situation in which to be a Republican is to be hostile to immigration reform of almost any kind. Jordan may be the greatest, but LeBron has done it at almost the same level for so much longer. Rush is often assumed to be the face of the modern right-wing radio revolution, and maybe he is, but the story of conservative talk radio goes back many more decades.

What happened in the s? The great irony is that it was sort of accidental. And the reason is there was a huge pivot from radio to television. Everyone thought radio was a dying medium. So as the big networks fled radio for TV, you had all these smaller, more local stations popping up and applying for licenses from the FCC.

The irony is that the decline of radio, due to the rise of television, lowered the barrier to entry to radio, allowing previously excluded and marginalized voices to enter the fray. This is the thing that saves radio. And it just so happens that forces on the right, especially religious broadcasters, had a ready-made audience waiting in the wings and radio was just way cheaper than television, so they developed an outsized presence right from the start.

It was a constant pain in the ass for right-wing broadcasters, but the policy was finally ended by the Reagan Administration in And this is exactly what happens with talk radio once the Fairness Doctrine was removed in This is really the birth of what we think of as modern talk radio.

Was talk radio the original echo chamber on the right that made Fox News such a profitable business model? A lot of it was built through newsletters and newspapers and other forms of media. What talk radio makes possible is way more of this. And the thing about talk radio is that you can have it on all day. This is what makes radio new and so powerful in terms of building that alternative reality or echo chamber. Rush often times discusses sexual topics that children, if they are present in the car or house, should not be exposed to.

He is actually contributing to the early sexualization of our children. If there happens to be a sexual scandal involving anyone atheletes, politicians, entertainers Rush will talk and giggle about it for days. Rush never misses an opportunty to bring up a local story highlighting the sexual deviation or miscalculation of some poor person caught in his or her own trap. He likes talking about sex gay, straight, orgies, beastiality and his audience likes listening to it.

In my conversations with other men, they would often chuckle at the topics and the language Rush used. Rush is able to say in public what they can not. Travis, 42 years old, is a sports journalist, lawyer, TV analyst and founder of sports website Outkick.

Travis has agreed to sell Outkick to Fox Corp. A self-proclaimed political moderate and independent, Mr. Travis last year announced he would be voting for former President Donald Trump , saying it would be the first time he would vote for a Republican for president. Sexton, 39, is a radio host and political commentator who has served as an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency and a New York Police Department counterterrorism expert.

Sexton is a regular on Fox News as a national security analyst, and was previously national security editor for The Blaze. Premiere, which will shop the new program to affiliate stations, expects it to be broadcast on hundreds of stations when it launches. It will also be available as a podcast on iHeartRadio and broadly. Can they continue his legacy? Join the conversation below. As a staple for AM radio for so many decades, Mr.