By: Avi Zenilman

The entire profile is worth a read, but there’s an interesting nugget, toward the end of the NYT magazine cover story on Rush Limbaugh, where he discusses other conservative talkers. First, he compares Bill O’Reilly to Ted Baxter and says that Michael Savage isn’t even on his radar. With some needling from the author, Limbaugh then talks about the rise of Sean Hannity:

Limbaugh has a deeply conflicted attitude toward Sean Hannity, his one-time stand-in and now perpetual No. 2 on the Talkers list. He speaks of the younger man with the same condescending affection that Muhammad Ali once showed Jimmy Ellis, a former sparring partner turned challenger. But he wanted me to remember who is the Greatest. “I have no competitors,” he said. “Hannity isn’t even close to me.”

Hannity became a touchy issue in the late spring. For more than a year he was on what appeared to be a quixotic campaign to raise the issue of Obama’s controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Then the story exploded. Not only that, Hannity also led the pack on Obama’s connection to the former Weatherman leader William Ayers. Operation Chaos was still garnering attention and amusing listeners, but the election news was being made elsewhere.

From New York, I sent Limbaugh a teasing e-mail message: “Hannity has been first and hardest on the Reverend Wright controversy and the Bill Ayers thing. Is it possible that he is running a separate Operation Chaos with superior intel?”

Limbaugh didn’t dispute that Hannity was first on the Wright and Ayers controversies. But, he wrote: “Things only take off when I mention them. That is the point.”

Two weeks later, The Daily Telegraph in London published a list of America’s most-influential pundits. Limbaugh finished fourth, behind Hannity. Once again I wrote a message to Limbaugh: “Are we looking at a changing of the guard on the right side of the dial?”

Limbaugh scoffed. “Since when have I cared what the media says?” he wrote. “Media polls are not the measure. Ratings ‘polls’ and revenue are. And it still ain’t close.”

I couldn’t resist. “I wasn’t asking about the media,” I wrote him. “I was asking about Hannity. Hannity can fairly take credit (as he does now, every night) for being more influential than any other commentator in changing the course of this election. That strikes me as new. Or am I wrong?”

At which point Limbaugh, who patiently and graciously answered dozens of my questions, allowed me to invade his bunker and his castle, shared hours of his time, permitted me access to his closest family and most-intimate friends, even his therapist, had enough. “Write what you want,” he snapped across cyberspace.

 

Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC | Distributed by Noofangle Media