The Rush post noticed that Indian Governor Mitch Daniels response speech praised the Obamas for “setting a great family values example.”

“And he’s right,” Limbaugh added, “they do that well.  Mom and dad and the two kids.  It’s a good-looking family.”

But then the commentary, titled “How the First Lady Could Help the Poor,” says that FLOTUS ought to dump the school nutrition standards that are being unveiled this week:

That’s not the kind of teamwork, you see, that the people of this country want.  They don’t want their government telling them what they cannot eat.  They don’t want the government telling them what they must eat.  Even little leftist robot kids don’t.

Instead:

You know, the best thing Michelle Obama could do—and I’m not joking here—the best thing Michelle Obama could do for people in poverty is to simply highlight the solid nuclear family that she has with her husband, Barack, and the two kids.

Oh well, that compliment had to go somewhere like that, or it wouldn’t have been Rush Limbaugh. Sorry Rush, but since huge numbers of kids in poverty depend on schools for meals, it makes sense to feed them things that won’t cause diabetes and high blood pressure. And before we complain about our tax dollars going to new Federal standards, maybe we should complain about them going to lunches that make public school kids obese.

On the other hand, Limbaugh’s praise for the Obamas could be read as an oblique reference to the family values of another presidential candidate.

The story quickly built steam this week, with many liberal and left commentators openly wondering if Premiere’s biggest mouths were in fact fielding calls from plants prepped to set them up. Neither Limbaugh nor Hannity took the insinuation lying down. In fact Limbaugh took to the air Tuesday spending 20 minutes on the issue, in part criticizing Premiere Networks for offering the service in the first place. He claimed no knowledge of the service and said, “if somebody had told me we were going to do this, I would put the kibosh on this.” On his program Sean Hannity also denied ever using the service.

Now there has been conjecture for years that many callers to Hannity and Limbaugh were in the pocket, in part just to set up the host for the next rant or joke. Critical listeners on the hunt for a good conspiracy for years have been discussing callers that just seemed to well timed to be true. However, even if this were true, I’m sure Hannity and Limbaugh would still deny it.

Premiere has gone on the record claiming, “The service is not utilized by News/Talk programs or stations.” The target market for the service appears to be morning shows in need of extra schtick. Limbaugh suggested as much on his show, while taking an opportunity to get in a jab at the FCC, saying that making prank phone calls used to be the bread and butter of wacky morning DJs until the evil Commission stepped in to say airing a call without consent was impermissible.

In the big picture, however, I don’t think it really matters whether Hannity’s, Limbaugh’s or any other talk show’s callers are ginned up or not. Anyone who thinks that call-in talk radio is a fair and equal forum for public discourse is living in fantasy-land. Nationally syndicated programs, in particular, receive far more calls than they could ever put on the air and have always used screeners to decide which are most useful and entertaining to put on the air. Sure, plenty of liberals have complained that they aren’t able to get through to debate Limbaugh or Hannity on their programs. I don’t think the picture would be much different if these hosts were using plants instead of just selecting the most ideologically compatible callers.

Now, I’m not defending the Premiere On Call service, nor am I defending Hannity or Limbaugh. I actually doubt that either hosts gin up calls — they don’t need to. I do believe that plenty of third-rate morning shows do take advantage of actors because it’s easier to plan a wacky call than wait on luck to deliver you one. But in the case of the morning shows — which typically don’t have open lines as a feature of the show in the first place — I really don’t see a problem either.

I have to agree with Rush, much of entertainment radio is about the art of the prank, whether it was Bob and Ray staging “man on the street” interviews or Phil Hendrie’s multiple-personalties as guests. At it’s best radio really is the theater of the mind, and what is theater but a big put-on?

I get how lying is still lying, and that it sounds a whole lot worse when programs that pose like they have serious discussion of news and public affairs seem to be taking phony calls. But I guess you have to believe that Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk are actually serious public affairs shows. Limbaugh himself loves to hide behind the excuse that he’s really just an entertainer, even if he’s in no rush to disclaim any influence he might appear to have over our political landscape.

Callers who can mount a convincing counter argument to these conservative hosts are never going to get on the air, whether or not the other callers are fake or real. So in the end it doesn’t really matter if listeners believe the callers are real or not, either. Only in the case that a fake caller were leveling accusations or making allegations of fact that impact the national debate do I think it would be of particular concern. But there is no reasonable evidence any such thing has occurred.

I also understand how plenty of folks fed up with Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s whole approach would love to find that gotcha moment to undermine their credibility and possibly foment FCC action. There are plenty of good reasons to have a problem with Limbaugh and Hannity, especially when they’re guilty much more egregious fabrications and racist remarks. But these guys are symptoms of the failed political economy of the radio dial brought on by massive consolidation. As long as Clear Channel owns hundreds of stations in need of cheap programming that draws in large numbers of the dwindling AM radio audience, then we will have Limbaugh and Hannity, or their copycat replacements. It’s a system that needs changing.

Go ahead and attack them and their employer. I just don’t think this particular tempest in a teapot will be an effective weapon.

Limbaugh, of course, blamed something else: President Obama.

In 1936 Alf Landon won 8 electoral votes to FDR's 523

“And also keep in mind no president, no incumbent has ever been reelected with an unemployment rate above 8%,” the Rushbo noted. “So that’s where we’re headed here.”

Except, of course, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was reelected twice with unemployment numbers above eight percent—in 1936 when the jobless rate was at 16.9 percent, and in 1940 when it was at 14.6 percent.

Eventually somebody tapped Limbaugh on the shoulder to point out that he was pulling stats out of his rump.

“Now, okay… ” the Rushbo added later, after a pause. “Yes, there is an exception: FDR was reelected twice with a jobless number higher an 8%, but that’s because FDR never squandered the goodwill that he had. Everybody still believed he was doing his best with the New Deal and to fix everything, and they had a lot of hope and change invested in FDR.  That’s missing with Obama now.  I don’t know if ever gonna recapture that.”

Actually, the Roosevelt story should serve as an object lessons to Republicans. One reason for FDR’s huge re-election victory in 1936 was that Alf Landon, the Republican challenger, was a truly mediocre candidate. And FDR beat Wendell Wilkie in 1940 despite the fact that by then he had squandered much of his good will, thanks to blunders like his attempt to pack the Federal courts. But as the war in Europe heated up, Wilkie just couldn’t convince voters he’d represent an improvement in unstable times.

One other point Limbaugh glided past: when Ronald Reagan retook the White House in 1986, the jobless rate wasn’t at eight percent, but it was at an uncomfortable seven. We’ll seeeee . . .

For example, on December 3, Limbaugh noted that hundreds of unemployed people stood in line for assistance at a community center in Atlanta, Georgia to apply for financial help with their heat and power bills. They’re having a bad cold snap in that city. Eventually officials let applicants come into the building, because the temperature outside that early morning was freezing.

“Standing in line for assistance,” Limbaugh repeated as he read the newspaper article on the story. “I just wonder if they would stand in line for jobs?”

Limbaugh didn’t bother to read the article one paragraph further.

“I’ve had three jobs this year, and I’ve been laid off from all three,” one applicant was quoted as saying. “I’m grateful just to get any type of help they’ll give me.”

Then the Rushbo offered this gem:

Here’s the media tweek of the day. We always announce these and it always works. This story raises very unpolitically correct questions. If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote? Should they be voting? If people who are receiving government assistance, that is, taxpayer assistance, if they weren’t allowed to vote, could you imagine the difference in the political makeup of this country? Can you imagine that?

This is just a think piece. I’m just putting this out there for you to ponder.

So let’s ponder the question. This would mean that a large percentage of the population on Wall Street would be disenfranchised, given the huge quantity of “taxpayer assistance” that a number of prominent financial firms recently received. It would mean that the parents of every county in the U.S. that receives federal aid for schools would lose their right to vote—not to mention the parents in states receiving federal aid for universities and colleges (and not to mention all the employees of these institutions).

It would mean that just about every veteran who takes advantage of VA benefits would lose their voting privileges. It would mean the same for Americans who are receiving extended unemployment benefits.

And, of course, something close to the entire agricultural industry would lose their right to the ballot, given the pervasiveness of agricultural subsidies—$20 billion per year to farmers in “farm income stabilization.” That would also go for the proprietors of the thousands of small and medium sized telephone companies that receive support from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, and all the recipients of their services.

I could go on and on. Yes, Limbaugh’s proposal would eliminate the franchise for a huge portion of the population of the United States besides the poor whom he and his admirers obviously hate with a passion. And that would make quite a difference in politics. Sure thing. In fact, hardly anyone in this country would get to vote.

But rather than eliminating their right to the ballot, perhaps we should just take away Limbaugh’s and those of his fans, a not insignificant but smaller percentage of the populace whose evident moronic viciousness would not be missed in many quarters.

This is just a think piece, of course. I’m just saying. I’m just putting this out there for you to ponder. Have a nice day.

As Capitol Hill debates whether to extend the Bush era tax cut for millionaires, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) pushed back on prominent talk radio hosts in favor of the provision, especially Rush Limbaugh.

“They tell us that extending the tax cuts for the rich will somehow create jobs,” declared Grayson on the floor of the House of Representatives. “We’ve had these tax cuts for the last nine years, and I haven’t noticed a whole lot of jobs being created in the last nine years.”

So why do Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity persist in this “mania,” this “obsession of theirs, that we need to have more tax cuts for the rich, when the economy is flat on its back, and unemployment is almost ten percent?”

“I think I have the answer,” Grayson declared. “They want a tax cut for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves.”

Grayson estimates that extending the Bush era tax cuts for people who make over $250,000 a year would save the nation’s most prominent talk show hosts the following:

Rush Limbaugh – $2,689,135.
Glenn Beck – $1,512,352
Sean Hannity – $1,006,352
Bill O’Reilly – $914,352
Sarah Palin – $638,352
Newt Gingrich – $247,352

Grayson’s figures are based on income estimates published by Forbes and Newsweek magazine. Today the Senate balked at advancing two Democratic plans to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle-income people, but letting the higher break rates expire.

The New Deal's Harry Hopkins: "Hell, they've got to eat like other people."

In his March 12 broadcast, Rush Limbaugh freaked out over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) call for artists, photographers, writers, and other creative people to have access to health care. Limbaugh was so outraged that he played Pelosi’s quote four times during the segment, and so I’ll repeat it here:

PELOSI:  Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not [be] job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking.

Limbaugh interprets Pelosi and other Democrats as thinking that, “It’s just such a pain in the rear end to have to have a job. It’s so damn mean of this country to require people to have a job. It stifles people. It stifles creativity and economic growth to require people to have a job, to have health care.”  I only wish every job included health care.

Limbaugh asks why can’t these artists work and practice their craft simultaneously? Let me explain it to him. Most employers who offer group coverage require a minimum number of hours worked weekly (20-30 on average). For parents who want to pursue an art, it becomes impossible to juggle creativity, work 30 hours weekly, and raise their children. In this scenario, something has to give: the art. This is what Pelosi addresses. She wants artists to be able to add to our culture and not have to sacrifice their health or the health of their children.

Clearly, Limbaugh devalues culture. He says that artists don’t work, that what they do is not valuable! And worse, according to Limbaugh, these free-loading artists will not pay taxes and will get free insurance from the government paid by you, hard-working, overtaxed, regular American citizens.

But culture is valuable. In the Great Depression, as part of the New Deal, the Works Project Administration gave work to thousands of artists, musicians, actors and writers. Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins justified the program, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.” He saw the importance of culture, writing, “Few things could add such a permanent volume of employment as would a program of educating the public to use the services and participate in the pleasures of culture we possess. I use the word culture as including everything from basketball to a violin performance.”

Pelosi and other health reform supporters agree with Hopkins on the importance of culture. Hell, artists need insurance just like other people!

Last night Chicago’s famed Second City comedy company premiered their newest production, Rush Limbaugh! The Musical! The play follows Rush through his rise to prominence as aided and abetted by comrades like Anne Coulter and opponents like Rep. Barney Frank. Second City says,

The score for the show will feature a pastiche of Broadway musicals such as Spring Awakening, Wicked, and Rent. You can call it “Dispirit of the Radio.”

I have to admit that I am both intrigued by the concept, and a little disappointed. Limbaugh is such an over-the-top personality on-air that he verges on self-parody. Not only does he seem sometimes to know this, but he even seems to revel in it. So aiming a parody musical at him is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

Reading today’s reviews of opening night, it looks like the critics agree. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones writes,

this uncertain show can’t compete with the outsize personality of the object of its satire….

In last year’s “Rod Blagojevich Superstar!,” the disgraced former governor of Illinois went down like a nine pin… . But Limbaugh is a tougher customer than the truly weird Blago, not least because (like a lot of successfully outrageous radio personalities) you never quite know with Limbaugh where the revelations end and the act begins.

More to the point, Hedy Weiss at the Chicago Sun-Times simply concludes,

Sadly, the whole exercise… turns out to be largely predictable, unfunny and surprisingly dated.

Even so, I’m not entirely dissuaded from checking out the show. In this day and age, when’s the next time I’ll have the opportunity to see a musical (even a parody) about a radio star?

Fundamentally, Air America was a mediocre idea, poorly executed. Make that, disasterously executed. As former Crossfire co-host and current talk radio host Bill Press notes, Air America was insufficiently funded from the very beginning and

Even before its launch, it was taken over by a con artist who was later convicted on un-related charges of business fraud. Managers spent money lavishly on talent and studios, while generating little advertising income….

Except for Jon Sinton, few of their executives had ever worked in talk radio. In many ways, it was amateur hour from the beginning.

Putting aside even that inauspicious start, any new radio network started in 2004 would have faced an uphill battle, regardless of its political leanings. Simply put, timing was not on Air America’s side.

He'll trade you a 3-hour show for 15 minutes of ad time.

That may be how it looks today, but let’s turn back the clock to a time before AM talk equaled all-conservative, all the time. 1988 was the year when Rush Limbaugh’s program first went national with the support of former ABC Radio executive Edward McLaughlin’s newly founded EFM Media Management. While the radio business was stable, at the time AM radio was having a tougher go of it, relative to FM, which offered higher fidelity for music, the mainstay of radio programming for the last quarter century.

It’s a simple fact that Limbaugh’s program grew quickly, reaching a nationwide listenership of two million in 1990. But the question that doesn’t get asked so often is, how did he get there?

Bill Mann, a former contributor to Inside Radio, reminded us just last year:

[a] little-known practice in broadcast syndication called a “barter deal.” (Barter deals were briefly mentioned in Michael Wolff’s first-rate recent piece on Rush in Vanity Fair).

Here’s how a barter deal works: To launch the show, Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks [then EFM] — the same folks who syndicate wingnut du jour Glen Beck — gave Limbaugh’s three hours away — that’s right, no cash — to local radio stations, mostly in medium and smaller markets, back in the early 1990′s.

So, a local talk station got Rush’s show for zilch. In exchange, Premiere took for itself much of the local station’s available advertising time (roughly 15 minutes an hour) and packed the show with national ads it had already pre-sold.

So, imagine you’re a small operator of a local AM radio station in 1990. This is before the Telecom Act of 1996, so, in essence, most radio station owners are small. Also, this is before automation equipment was inexpensive enough to be cheaper than a DJ or operator’s hourly wage.

During drive time you might be doing pretty well with some local news and talk programming, supplemented with call-ins and network features. But during the midday, it’s a little rough. You could just play music, but nobody really listens to music on AM anymore. You’d like to have some entertaining talk programming, but talent costs money, and the ad revenue isn’t there yet. You could pick up some syndicated programming that might be cheaper than good local talent, but that, too, costs money up front that you’re not sure you have.

Then, along comes EFM or Premiere with a great deal for you. You get three hours of a popular talk program out of New York City from an established station with a nationwide reputation. And it won’t cost you one red cent. In exchange you just have to give up some of your (nearly nonexistent) ad inventory. What would you do?

I’m not sure who first said it, but it’s hard to deny: it’s hard to compete with free. In 2010 good ol’ Rushbo’s show isn’t quite so free anymore, but that’s only after building up a pretty good 21-year track record.

But the story doesn’t end there. In 1997 Jacor communications, then an owner of 66 radio stations, bought EFM. 20 of Jacor stations were AM stations in major markets. And guess what show they’d soon be airing if they weren’t already? Yes, the Rush Limbaugh Show. Though not a significant boost to Rush’s overall listenership, the deal foreshadowed the growing relationship between owning stations and owning content.

The benefit of this arrangement wasn’t lost on the new #1 in radio ownership, Clear Channel, which bought Jacor just a year later and merged syndication operations into Premiere. At that time Clear Channel only had 625 stations, but would go on to own over 1200 at its peak. While Limbaugh didn’t necessarily need the boost of these extra stations–he was already heard in almost every market in the country–the deal certainly opened up opportunities for future Premiere hosts like Hannity and Beck.

Now, lets look back at Air America, which started 16 years into Limbaugh’s reign, and six years after the full merger of Jacor, Premiere and EFM into Clear Channel. How do you compete with the nation’s largest radio station owner and syndicator? That’s like asking, how do you compete with Microsoft Windows? Sure, Apple’s been a good competitor for Windows, but it’s success relies heavily on products like iPods and iPhones. And how many other significant desktop operating system competitors are there?

Sure, maybe Air America could have tried the same strategy that EFM did with Limbaugh and give away their programming. The trick worked the first time around, and maybe there were enough stations out there ready to take the deal. But you can’t just wish 2004 into being 1988. EFM and Limbaugh had the distinct advantage of not having to make deals with companies like Clear Channel, Cumulus or Entercom. They built that business from the grassroots on a mixture of cleverness, conniving, business savvy and Limbaugh’s talent as a radio entertainer, taking advantage of weakness in the AM radio marketplace. To trot out another tired cliche: lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Air America’s chances of success as a new nationwide radio network weren’t good from the start, whether it was liberal, conservative, centrist, fascist or socialist. For all intents and purposes, today’s other top conservative talkers started out with access to several hundred AM stations owned by their syndicator’s parent company right out of the gate. Air America had to start from scratch, owning a total of zero stations, with each deal with each station costing time and money.

At the same time, there’s arguably more nationally syndicated liberal-leaning talk on commercial radio than there was in 2004. In part this is because Air America lost hosts like Randi Rhodes, and never cornered the market on liberal talk in the first place. Many stations that were Air America affiliates ended up building a roster of liberal talk programming alongside AA’s offerings. Chicago’s “Progressive Talk” WCPT tells its listeners:

WCPT AM&FM is not Air America and we are not going away. Although Air America became a generic term for the “ Progressive Talk” format, we are a locally-owned radio station that is committed to a voice that speaks about issues which are vital to Americans as well as balancing the Chicago radio dial. …

Programs such as Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann come from other sources. That’s why virtually all of our current programming will continue to be heard….

Air America’s failure is nothing more than the failure of one radio experiment, nothing more and nothing less. Commercial broadcast radio has been a tough business since the likes of Clear Channel squeeze the life out of it beginning in 1996. The kind of success Air America was hoping for required ownership, and they were eight years too late for that.

As everybody in the radio world knows, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh is in a Honolulu hospital, recovering from chest pains. Meanwhile, something of a referendum on his fate is being conducted on Twitter.

“Please, Rush Limbaugh, DIE NOW!” tweeted Chuck69dotcom not too long ago.

“oh pleez oh pleez oh pleez let Rush Limbaugh die . In a year of many dead celebs, let’s end 2009 on a good note,” chimed in The Angry Bacon. ”

Did Rush Limbaugh die yet? Oh, not yet.LMAO,” laments NOVACHANEL. “if there’s any justice in the world… Rush Limbaugh will die before the year is out,” insists Shellistoast.

Other Rush haters are a bit more circumspect about the matter. “Rush Limbaugh has heart attack; fails to die thusfar,” notes Corp8myBaby.

These outbursts, of course, have displeased Mr. Limbaugh’s supporters, who are anxious to derive lessons from the moment. “So Rush Limbaugh can’t say that he wants Obama to fail, but liberals can say that they want Rush Limbaugh to die?” retorts SonSound. Or:  “The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare,” shoots back natatomic.

More draconianly: “DO YOU GET IT NOW? People want Rush Limbaugh to die aresame people who R to control healthcare DEATH PANELS.”

But many self-described leftys insist that they wish Rush well. “As a Liberal I hope Rush Limbaugh recovers quickly,” declares DEMOCRATZxORG. “Because I strongly disagree with someone doesn’t mean I want them to die.” Ditto says zorylynx. “I don’t want Rush Limbaugh to die . I disagree vehemently with him, but that’s no excuse.”

In fact, some say they very much want Limbaugh to live, such as 3rdcoast318: “actually I don’t want dis clown to die .Almost forgot MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK and Rush need to b around for all 8 years.”

Others just wish the matter would go away. “I hope Rush Limbaugh doesn’t die yet, because it will only make us hear about him even more,” laments betaken. Still others are looking to the future. “I guess when Rush Limbaugh does finally die , his peons will blame Obama,” notes jawoodward.

And of course, there are many twitterers praying for Limbaugh’s good health.

“If you haven’t lit a candle for RUSH @ limbaugh , you can at http://bit.ly/4obL5f Very cool site too! I love it! #TCOT # PRAY,” notes CheriDouglas.

Except for the ones who are meditating for something else. “Pray for Rush Limbaugh …to be swallowed by the Earth and his flesh to melt in lava while his screams are recorded,” tweets DrusillaBloeme.

Thus do radio listeners celebrate the conclusion of 2009. We here at Radio Survivor wish all of you a very happy, healthy, and safe new year.