Book Review: Rush Limbaugh -- An Army of One

Back home in Cape Girardeau, MO, Rush Limbaugh was known as "Rusty".  He shined shoes in a barber shop and worked at a radio station.  He strayed from the path of studying the law unlike most of the men in his family.  

It's hard to believe that he was pretty much "apolitical" until his mid-thirties!  In fact, he didn't register to vote until that age.

Zev Chafets, a writer for the New York Times somehow managed to get Rush's permission to visit the Cape, speak with friends and relatives and write this biography.  Limbaugh also granted Chafets access to his studio in Florida, the "Southern Command", his fiance, psychiatrist, and Rush himself.  

Perhaps not since the 1993 Playboy interview has Limbaugh been so accessible. Chafets did not squander the opportunity.

Rush Limbaugh's typical modus operandi is an almost masterful use of satire and parody. Often he pushes the envelope to the extreme. Is there a literary term for "extreme satire"?

My review of Zev Chafets' new biography of Limbaugh is available now at Blogcritics.org -- the link is below.

One of the many topics covered is a favorite tactic of Limbaugh. He takes things his opponents say, write, or do, and turns it on them as parody or comic farce. A noteworthy example is the reference made to Obama by David Ehrenstein, an African-American writer for the Los Angeles Times. Ehrenstein referred to the then candidate as "the Magic Negro". (See the video.) More details in the review.