NY Times: Rush Limbaugh's Newest Lapdog

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted July 8, 2008.

In his Sunday profile of right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh, New York Times Magazine contributor Zev Chafets set the scene by describing his visit to Limbaugh's studio in Palm Beach, Florida. Chafets wrote that when he was buzzed into the control room adjacent to where Limbaugh broadcasts, he was greeted by a Limbaugh associate, a very large man wearing a beret who "glared" at the reporter and demanded in a deep voice, "Are you the guy who's here to do the hit job on us?"

After holding the menacing tone for a long moment, Chafets reported, the associate burst into emphatic laughter.

Get it? The joke was that Limbaugh and his inner circle despise the liberal media so much that they were going to give the Times writer a hard time right from the get-go.

Fat chance.

Limbaugh had nothing to fear from the toothless tiger that came to Palm Beach to profile one of the most controversial media figures in politics today. The Times' resulting valentine was couched in such a creepy, tell-me-more-Uncle-Rush vibe (he was crowned "a singular political force") that readers could almost picture the reporter at Limbaugh's knee, eager to record the next morsel of wisdom.

How squishy-soft were the practically nonexistent edges of the Times puff piece? So supple that giddy staffers at NewsBusters were doing cartwheels in the halls. The right-wing media site alerted readers with an all-points bulletin moments after the Times piece was posted online: "NYT Article on Rush -- This is NO Hit Piece." (It likes him! The New York Times really likes him!)

For Limbaugh, the ego-stroking profile was quite an achievement: The mighty, and allegedly liberal, New York Times conducted what appeared to be a lengthy, in-depth, and objective profile of Limbaugh and came away very impressed by the titan talker. The Times, quite emphatically, provided its editorial seal of approval to Limbaugh, complete with the flattering, Tony Soprano-like cover photo.

But let's go back to that mock stare-down inside Limbaugh's control room for a moment. Because there was another layer of humor involved, but one that was lost on readers -- because they weren't made aware of the fact that the writer who profiled Limbaugh for the Times is pretty much a Dittohead, a Limbaugh devotee. So of course there was no reason to fear a "hit job." The whole notion was literally laughable.

I assume Chafets' right-leaning politics explain why Limbaugh referred to the writer as "a friend" in the article and why Limbaugh allowed Chafets unprecedented access not only to Limbaugh's studio, but to Limbaugh's house ("the first journalist ever to enter his home") and to his friends and his shrink. Limbaugh granted the access because he pretty much knew exactly what the outcome of the profile would be (or at least what the glowing tone of the piece would be), and he knew that Chafets wouldn't come within a country mile of making even a passing reference to the hate speech and unhinged attacks that Limbaugh routinely engages in on the airwaves.

Indeed, out of the 7,700-plus words Chafets wrote about Limbaugh, I counted exactly two in the entire piece in which the writer quoted a Limbaugh critic (apparently secondhand) saying something unkind about Limbaugh's craft.

Does every Limbaugh profile need to be a hit piece? Of course not. Should every serious Limbaugh profile at least try to convey to readers what's so controversial about the host and what he says on his radio program? Of course. And that's where the Times, rather obliviously, took the pratfall with its Limbaugh article.

I understand that Beltway media players routinely play nice with Limbaugh and his fringe brand of conservatism. Spooked by his liberal-bias charges, the mainstream press corps has for years treated Limbaugh with undeserved respect, worked overtime to soften his radical edges, and presented him as simply a partisan pundit. (Time's Mark Halperin has labeled Limbaugh an "American iconic" figure, while NBC News anchor Brian Williams fretted that Limbaugh doesn't "get the credit he is due" as a broadcaster.)

The lengthy Times profile took that trend to a whole new level, because unlike most previous half-hearted attempts to outline, in very general ways, what Limbaugh says and explain why he's controversial, the Times clearly never had any intention of shedding even the dimmest light on the content of Limbaugh's program. Instead, it hired a conservative writer to wistfully dismiss Limbaugh's critics in two or three sentences. And in exchange for playing dumb, the Times was granted unusual access to the talk-show host.

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