Rush Limbaugh Profiled in NY Times Magazine

“For 20 years he has been the leader of his own parade.”
--Karl Rove

Fans of Rush Limbaugh will want to read Zev Chefet's article "Late Period Limbaugh" available online here. At over 7,700 words it's loooonnnggg, but you'll love it for all the personal stuff Rush doesn't talk about on his show.

Did you know he has a fleet of cars at his Palm Beach estate including many like the Maybach 57S he drives, which runs around $450,000 fully loaded? And that on his estate there are five homes (4 for guests) not to mention Rush's luxurious 24,000 square foot main house with a guest suite modeled on the Presidential Suite at the George V Hotel in Paris?

And you might have heard that Rush just signed another 8 year contract that topped $400 million including a nine figure singing bonus. That's selling a lot of Rinnai tankless water heaters. And Rush will spend it on his new Gulfstream G550 jet.

I won't spoil the fun read for Limbaugh fans, so only the shortest excerpt:

Roger Ailes, a frequent guest and the chairman of Fox News, put the Limbaugh lifestyle in perspective. “He lives the way Jackie Gleason would have lived if Gleason had the money. Some people are irritated by it.”
...
Recently, I sent Limbaugh an e-mail message, his preferred means of long-distance communication, asking what his own presidential agenda would look like. His answer reflects his actual concerns. A Limbaugh administration would seek to:

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.

3. Privatize Social Security.

4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.

5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.

6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

No. 5 was a joke. I think.
...
He has no writers or script, just notes and a producer on the line from New York with occasional bits of information. That day, and every day, he produced 10,000 words of fluent, often clever political talk.
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But if you think it is easy turning ancient Greenland, the influence of the teachers’ unions or changes in E.U. foreign policy into polemical comedy that will hold an audience for three hours — try it for 15 minutes at your next cocktail party.
...
At dinner the night before, Bill O’Reilly’s name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn’t been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, “somebody’s got to say it,” he told me. “The man is Ted Baxter.”
...
As for politics, Rush has already picked his candidate for the Conservative Restoration: Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a 37-year-old prodigy whom Limbaugh considers to be a genuine movement conservative in the Ronald Reagan mold — “fresh, energetic and optimistic in his view of America.”
...
Presidents rise and presidents fall, but “The Rush Limbaugh Show” will go on, weekdays at 12:06, Eastern Standard Time.

The article also has an attached slide show of Rush photos, including el Rushbo at 14 and a photo of Rush with his new girlfriend, the blond bombshell Kathryn Rogers.

Love him or hate him, it's impossible not to know that Rush is "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have,”