Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger
  Why he could be a TV star, and she won't be.
  By David Plotz
 
 Talk radio, which forfeited whatever cool it had in the '90s
 to the Internet, is reclaiming its buzz. Rush Limba has made
 headlines by nominating himself to host Monday Night Football.
 He auditioned for the job, and ABC is treating him as a serious
 candidate. Meanwhile, Laura the Unloved,  the Ma Barker
 of radio therapists, is warring with gay activists over her
 planned TV show - Schlessinger.
 
 Enraged that Dr. Laura calls homosexuality "deviant" and a
 "biological error," gays have persuaded advertisers such as
 Procter & Gamble, Xerox, and Toysrus.com to sever ties to
 her. A board of Canadian broadcast censors just sanctioned
 her for anti-gay bigotry as well. The upheaval is flustering
 Paramount, Schlessinger's network, and may be jeopardizing
 the show's September launch.

 This hiccup of talk radio news is a reminder that radio gab is
 not merely alive, but healthy. Radio revenue is soaring. Talk
 radio may not be the ground zero of GOP activism, as it was
 in 1994, and Limbaugh is no longer, as William Bennett once
 claimed, the "most consequential person in public life," but
 Limbaugh attracts as many listeners as he did at the height
 of his fame, at least 14.5 million per week, according to
 Talkers magazine. (He is still the leading radio talker in
 the United States.) Limbaugh has become Republican
 establishment radio, and he retains enormous influence in GOP
 politics. His carpet-bombing of John McCain as a closet
 liberal (an assault unremarked on by the mainstream media)
 is widely credited with ensuring Smirk's Carolina primary victory.
 Laura the Unloved draws 14.25 million listeners per week,
 placing her a close second to the vulgar Pigboy.

 Those who don't pay attention to Rush and Laura, (that is,
 most Americans) tend to lump them together. That conflation
 is understandable, because they seem the Ozzie and Harriet of
 conservative radio. Rush takes care of the right-wing politics
 (down with Hillary, etc.), while Dr. Laura supervises the
 conservative home (no divorce, no premarital sex, shut up
 and listen to me, you idiot).

 Their shows are similar in format: Both talk virtually nonstop for
 three hours, use their callers as foils, and never have guests.
 Both are bombastic.
 And both are most appealing for their absolute certitude.
 They allow no gray to creep into their black-and-white worlds.
 Nothing shakes their conviction that right is right and that left is evil.

 But there is a critical difference that separates Laura the Unloved
 and Rush, the reason why his TV venture will succeed and hers
 won't: He's a professional, and she's not.

 Limbaugh's critics have been flaying him for his Monday Night
 Football ambitions: He has never broadcast sports, they say.
 He is detested by too many people;
 Dittoheads are a tiny  minority.
 He couldn't keep his politics off the gridiron.
 (Imagine if Clinton showed up at a Redskins game!)

 Such skepticism underestimates Limbaugh. When he first
 emerged, liberals pegged him as a really fat Morton Downey Jr.,
 a loony caveman who would self-destruct on-air. But Limba has
 grown more acceptable with age, largely because he has always
 paid attention to the "real goals of radio: ratings and revenue,"
 says Talkers Editor Michael Harrison.

 Limbaugh has smoothed his rough edges.
 He has all-but-dropped the term "feminazi."
 When he was lambasted for mocking AIDS victims, he quickly apologized.
 He stopped performing "caller abortions."

 Other political talk radio shows stumble because their hosts
 put the politics before radio (see sclerotic Bob Grant).
 But Limba never makes that mistake. He is a genuine conservative,
 but "he is a political entertainer and a consummate pro," says John Fund
 of the Wall Street Journal, who helped write Limbaugh's first book.
 "Don't forget he was a DJ."

 Limbaugh the vaudevillian (not Limbaugh the winger); could be a delight
 in the Monday Night Football booth. Even people who can't stand his
 politics concede that he's a wonderful, funny talker.
 Limbaugh would play Howard Cosell.
 He would talk big and loud and use his bombast (most of which is a put-on)
 to generate the controversy and vim absent from football now.
 (Why would Rush succeed on Monday Night Football when he bombed
 as a TV talk show host several years ago? Rush is not telegenic,
 and he proved himself a poor TV interviewer. But the football
 broadcast, unlike his old TV show, would essentially be a radio gig:
 Rush would be off-camera for 99 percent of the broadcast,
 and he would be riffing, not interviewing.)

 Where Limbaugh smirks, Schlessinger glowers, and that may be
 her downfall. She has proved strangely impervious to the criticism
 that should have ruined her, that she's a hypocrite.

 http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/00-05-26/SideB01.asp

 But Laura does have an Achilles' heel: her conviction.
 She considers herself a savior, not an entertainer.
 The longer the vulgar Pigboy is on the air, the softer he becomes.
 The longer Schlessinger is on the air, the harder she becomes.
 Limbaugh's bombast is an act; Schlessinger's is real.
 She has no doubt and no sense of humor.
 "I am a prophet," she says. "I am a philosopher."

 She knows how everyone else should live.

 Popularity has made her arrogant. Three years ago, Dr. Laura
 made at least the pretense of listening to the people who phoned in.
 Today she berates them before they finish a sentence. Her idea of
 constructive criticism is a frying pan in the head!
 "You're a bad parent, you're a liar, you're a coward."

 Dr. Laura's acid enemas work on the radio, a medium that has always
 been hospitable to ranters. But that style will bomb in the winking,
 shrugging medium of television. Television abhors a moralizer.

 She's so vicious, in fact, that gay groups might want to reconsider their
 campaign to stop her TV show. They should push to get her on the air.
 She will find her studio audience stupid and her guests morally lax.
 She'll tear muscle from bone then spit out the blood.
 She will be canceled in months.

 Eventually, reruns of Schlessinger will play on the Discovery Channel,
 after Predators of the Serengeti.