Rush Limbaugh is impossibly wealthy and, let's face it, has a better job than you -- talking off the dome about whatever's sticking in his craw for three hours a day. Chances are, at the end of your workday, you feel better about what you've accomplished, or you at least feel entitled to believe that -- I often do. Limbaugh, though, travels about a mile from his fortress-like studio to his palazzo-like residence, and he's earned it, every bit of it, along with the enmity that's come alongside.
Limbaugh rarely gives interviews, because, ultimately, he prefers to answer to no one. The opportunities that have come his way on television have ended badly for him. He despises being photographed, and famously eschews inviting guests on his show ("I don't care what other people think," he tells interviewer Nigel Farndale). There's a certain, inescapable sense that Limbaugh might be the perfect paranoiac - his daily release only refuels the tension, like he's a Tesla-coil of dark, political hypertension.
As rare as it is for Limbaugh to open up to a reporter, the first part of his interview with Farndale for the Daily Telegraph is, truthfully, no great shakes. There's the accounting of his wealth, a description of the cloak and dagger process of getting to his studio, the requisite peek inside the medicine cabinet for Oxycontin (none found), and a generic sampling of his fulminations (he "dislikes [Obama] intensely," in case you were wondering, and hates being "branded a racist"). Outside of a shout out to Conrad Black (Rush pals around with felons!) - which is unusual enough for any interview - there's not much to get interested in.
Farndale does contend, however, that:
What Left-wingers, or 'Rush-deniers', as he calls them, don't get about the self-aggrandising Limbaugh is that he is first and foremost a satirist: funny, self-mocking and entertaining. He couldn't have held his audience for 20 years if he was only nasty, bigoted and extremely Right wing.
Yeah. I'm guessing that actually, he totally could. Some might say, "did."
But then the interview takes an unexpected turn. Rehab led to therapy, which was a tear in the fabric of his world view ("Thought it bunk. Actually that helped."). He's got daddy issues, relationship struggles, and, interestingly, when he speaks of dropping his "public guard," he describes it as a private process. But that's not dropping his "public guard" at all. As Farndale relates:
Nevertheless, he tells me that when he's at home, when he can drop his public guard, he can feel flat. 'Mentally, I'm zapped after this show every day. I don't do anything for three hours. I go read a novel or play golf. I won't speak a word because I don't use the phone. Sure I can get melancholy.'
I never had him figured as an emotional man. Isn't his whole shtick that you have to think not feel? 'Don't cry easily. Get close to crying then I stop it. A movie or a book will get me misty-eyed. It's always happy ending good stuff that gets me crying, not bad stuff.'
'Last time?' Long pause. 'Last time was when my little cat died. Five years old. Had a stroke. I had two cats and this one had the personality and almost humanlike behaviour. Pets are like sports: you think you can invest a lot in them without consequences.'
And like wives. He has been married three times, though he hasn't had any children. He met his current girlfriend, a West Palm Beach events planner, last year. When I ask about the ups and downs in his personal relationships he hesitates again. 'I would find myself very difficult to live with because I am totally self-contained and resent having to do things I don't want to do. Now I can choose. When I'm put in a position where I don't want to be there, I make sure everyone else is miserable.'
It may be that tonight a man of staggering wealth and undeniable influence tonight is rattling alone inside his palatial estate, with a single cat (the one with the cat-like personality) as his companion. Inside, he's melancholy, outside he's prepared to bring everyone's misery level to his own. There is a moral to this story, I'm sure.