Hear the one about Rush Limbaugh and the nurses?
The chest pains that sent Rush Limbaugh to the hospital last week turned out to be nothing serious. But for a while, they were enough to give an already ailing radio industry a heart attack.
Limbaugh is expected to return to his show today — one week after his health scare in Honolulu made worldwide headlines. The prospect of losing the 58-year-old talk radio titan — in same calendar year that saw the passing of the legendary Paul Harvey — sent shock waves through the broadcast business. Among the most worried had to be executives at Premiere Radio Networks and parent company Clear Channel Radio, which had just signed Limbaugh last July to a $400 million deal renewing him through 2016.
Nowhere would the loss of Limbaugh’s show be felt more deeply than in Chicago, where it long has commanded top ratings and enormous revenue for Citadel Broadcasting news/talk WLS-AM (890). Arbitron averages released Tuesday for all of 2009 showed Limbaugh’s time slot (11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday) solidly in first place overall with a 6.0 percent audience share.
That’s not to say all Chicagoans embrace Limbaugh with the passion of his “Dittoheads” (the nickname given to fans who agree with Limbaugh’s opinions on all issues and stand behind him without question). One consistently outspoken critic, the esteemed Roger Ebert, couldn’t resist tweeting more than a dozen zingers about Limbaugh over the weekend. Here’s a sampling of Ebert’s quips:
- Rush: Hawaii is the only country where the Hawaiian shirts come in S, M, L, XL, Rush, and Sumo.
- Rush: I’m learning this aloha cuisine. Papaya is conservative avocado. Rum punch is conservative iced tea.
- Rush: Nurse at snack time: “You have nuts?” “No!” “You have dates?” “Hey, if I had nuts, I’d have dates!” Ah . . . Har! Har! Har!
- Rush: This hospital food is confusing. I thought I was the smoothie. Blueberry is best for my heart. With ice cream.
- Rush: Our U.S. health care system is the best in the world. The nurses here in Hawaii keep offering me lays.
- Rush: “They told me aloha means hello. Only now do they tell me it also means goodbye. Everybody keeps using it around me.”
- Rush hopes docs will discharge him in time to crash the luau at the Obamas.
- Rush says docs found nothing wrong. They’re obviously not listeners.
- Surgeons: “Rush doesn’t require a heart transplant, but an installation.”
- Rush Limbaugh finds one fault with peerless U.S. hospital care: No cigar bars.
- Rush from Honolulu: “The nicest thing about the foreigners working in this hospital is that they’re all good Americans.”
- Tests find nothing wrong with Rush Limbaugh’s heart. Physically.
By Monday, Ebert apparently felt charitable enough (or remorseful enough) to want to take it all back. “I feel bad about my cheap Limbaugh jokes,” he tweeted. “Sincere apologies to Rush and you folks. He said he was fine, but that’s no excuse.”
One other Chicago footnote to the Limbaugh story came from the producers of Second City. Hours before his health scare, the famed improv company announced plans for “Rush Limbaugh! The Musical,” a full-scale send-up to run Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the Second City’s e.t.c. space, starting in February.
Their last big hit, you’ll recall, was “Rod Blagojevich Superstar!”
Elsewhere on the media beat:
- Tuesday turned out to be Brant Miller’s last day on the air as morning personality at WLS-FM (94.7). The Citadel Broadcasting “True Oldies” station chose not to renew his contract, which runs through April. Filling in for now will be part-timer Tom O’Toole. A permanent replacement is expected to be named soon. Miller, who’d been hosting mornings from a studio in his home since 2008, continues as chief meteorologist at NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5.
- Newsweb Radio has begun its search for a new general manager of its four simulcast progressive talk stations here — WCPT-AM (820), WCPY-FM (92.5), WCPT-FM (92.7) and WCPQ-FM (99.9). “You must have a passion for progressive politics, a willingness to do whatever it takes and the creativity to be successful in the third largest radio market as a small player amongst the giants,” the company’s job posting says. Harvey Wells announced last month that he’s stepping down amicably at the end of February after six years as vice president and group station manager for Chicago-based Newsweb.
- In another first for Chicago television, two stations owned by different companies have acquired rights to air syndicated reruns of the same show. Fox network’s animated comedy “Family Guy” will be seen on both Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Channel 9 and Weigel Broadcasting’s WCIU-Channel 26, starting in the fall of 2011. Channel 26 also picked up “American Dad,” another animated series from Twentieth Television.
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01 2010
blogs.vocalo.org
Devotion to Accuracy Contribution: You said “…”Dittoheads” (the nickname given to fans who agree with Limbaugh’s opinions on all issues and stand behind him without question).”
That’s not what the term means – at least to people who listen to the show.
In order to understand the term you need to understand the history. If you call into to any talk radio show you have seconds to get your point across so any time you spend saying “I like your show, yada, yada, yada…” is time you lose trying to make your point. Recognizing this, listeners started using the term “ditto” as the abbreviation for “I like you, I like your show…” For example, they would say “Dittos from Chicago…” and then go on to make their point – often times disagreeing with the host or at least challenging him regarding certain points.
Like with most things regarding politics it is fairly easy to find something that two people agree on but very difficult to find two people who agree on everything. The relationship with Limbaugh and his listeners is no different.
What a miracle. I didn’t know he had a heart.
Mr Ebert’s better judgment eventually won out. That’s good; no sense kicking the man when he’s looking mortality in the face.
Besides, Rush is probably the ideal political foil. His ditto-heads may love him, but 20 or 25 million listeners in a nation of 315 million people is still a puny following. And Rush’s negatives outweigh his positives among the general population. Get beyond the white, middle aged types you see at a Republican Convention or a tea party rally; and really, there is not much of a following.
And who knows, the next big conservative media figure might be somebody smart AND likable to the general public. That would be an upgrade over Rush or anybody of the lesser right wing wannabes.
It would have been funny if the hospital would have admitted Rush to the left wing of the building. LADY!
It was funny enough for me Rush was admitted to the same hospital where President Obama was born in August, 1961.
So glad Tom O’Toole is doing mornings on WLS-FM. He sounded great when he covered mornings during Brant’s vacation at the end of December. His knowledge of the music and his sense of humor really added to the morning show and I am anxious to hear more.
what about me?
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/blogshakalaka
something about ron turner. i can’t remember.
as for this post, roger ebert is to political commentary as michael jordan is to baseball. and i like roger ebert. you might want to read thomas sowell’s new book about the dangers of intellectuals who stray from their areas of expertise. noam chomsky, for example. roger ebert for another. i enjoy ebert’s movie reviews so much that i won’t read them for fear that he’ll influence me too much before i see the film. and his piece on his struggles with alcoholism was beautiful. but he continues to be bamboozled by the likes of michael moore, whom he even admits stretched the truth. ebert mocked reagan for saying the soviet union was the “evil empire.” well, it was. he said george bush didn’t want to improve the education of minorities when bush actually did in texas. he doesn’t understand evolution when he writes about it. but he is a helluva writer and a lot of fun. and i’d like to do a show with him. on radio or tv. we could figure a way. one thing for sure: if i thought what he said was sh–, i’d say it was then and there. and not wait ’til the coast was clear.
St. Ebert, with all of his history of medical ailments and who not failed to miss a beat in manipulating that, he is going to make mean-spirited Rush Limbaugh remarks? Probably the only reason he tried to retract the statements is that a savvy PR person got to him. I’ve never understood the love for Ebert and the late Gene Siskel, who made their livings on the backs of criticizing and destroying the careers of others. Never understood it. Look at Mr. Feder. Does he take some pot shots? Yep. Some mean ones? Sometimes. But there is a lot of news that he reports in the process and his work always has been an education in the way the local media works. An education from Ebert? Notsomuch. You don’t have to skewer Limbaugh to intelligently disagree with him. The level of vitriol never ceases to amaze me.
Disappointed for Brant Miller. From the get-go he always seemed to be the nicest guy on the Big 89. Well, he and Tommy Edwards. His performance on WLS-FM likely was hampered by his meteorological career. Also, is a part-timer that cheap to pay? This is a microcosm of the Lovie Smith episode. What difference is it going to make in paying a part-timer when you already are paying a guy you’re going to replace anyway. Why pay two people? You still can’t do a job search for someone else? In Lovie’s case, his presence continues to degrade the value and success of the Bears. Was Brant Miller’s presence doing the same to WLS-FM?
Thanks.
Rush experienced something that seemed like a heart attack and no medical or organic problem was found.
Well, it is clear, the big fat old lying racist right wing jerk had a classic panic attack. Finally his guilt and lying is affecting him and he is having panic attacks.
With all those opiates he is taking he is taking, he is finally experiencing panic attacks.
Good luck to Brant, truly one of the good guys. Last post mentions Tommy Edwards in the same “e-breath” with Brant. Excellent candidate to take over morning chores at WLS-FM. He did a fine job hosting mornings on that 11-watt AM station out of Berwyn several years back. Animal Stories returns yet again?
Those who adore him needn’t worry about the demise of Rush.
As long as there are abortionists who need to be crushed, Rush will be there.
Anywhere you find heartlessness and cruelty, and the war against homa-sexshuls, Rush will be there.
Why, wherever men stand and fight for the Republican way and the use of odd little pills to get them through their week, Rush will be there.
And just as Rush started small time at a radio station in Kansas City, rising to sit at the right hand of Sarah Palin and the Republican Guard, another radio warrior has appeared in the distance.
Worry not, oh fans of Rush. When The Great One falls, there will be another groomed and ready to take his place.
Out of the mists of the Elk Grove, comes the young warrior, Sis-ko Ko-Toe . . .
“Think Rush Limbaugh will respond to Roger Ebert?”
Why? Rush is an old, fat, sick ex-media icon who has completely outlived his usefulness (if he ever had any) on the media stage.
Totally unlike Roger Ebert…
Actually ebert was funny at one time….do a search for siskel and ebert outtakes from that movie show they did and you’ll be howling with laughter….
Politics aside – is Roger Ebert really qualified to make fat jokes about anybody?
I’m glad he apologized, those jokes were awful. He could have done way better. And, really, Roger Ebert… fat jokes?
Well, yeah, Ebert was great in his day. I remember him commenting on the lovely Vanessa Angel in her movie debut in the (now totally forgotten) movie “Spies Like Us” way back in 1985. Something to the effect that she will really get the blood up in every guy in the theater. I and my fellow frat boys completely broke up (and eventually went to the movie–and you were right, Roger!) while Gene looked at Roger like a father looks at an unruly eleven-year-old.
But you see, in the course of the last 25 years, Roger has gone from Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party, to Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Perhaps we all have, to a certain degree, but, jeez, what a curmudgeon!
Seems to me a case of the pot calling the kettle fat. Hey Hoover I bet you wish you thought of that one yourself! Lady!
“Oriental” Nurse: I heard that Roger Ebert may be losing his sense of taste because of his medical condition.
Caucasian Nurse: I assumed he had already lost his sense of taste after I saw that he put Richard Roeper on the Siskel and Ebert show.
Ebert should not consider a future with Comedy Network. People who are uncomfortable with Rush can always ask for a pillow.
Wow, Ebert calling Limbaugh fat, that’s rich. When he was with Siskel, they looked like the number “10″, Gene being the 1, Rog as the 0.
I thought Ebert had one foot in the grave, too. Several times.
It’s pretty clear Rog is just an ignorant, unlikeable, irrelevant drunk. Pretty much what Rush’s critics say about him.
the only thing Ebert has to apologize for is that some of the jokes weren’t that funny. Rush is an idiot.
Ebert lost weight. Well, he lost his chin at least.
But, seriously folks.
LADYYYYYYYY !
Ebert is a pathetic.
strut2k: You dislike him as do I, but you’re still overemphasizing his puny audience. Rushbo doesn’t really have 20-25 million listeners.
That’s his weekly cume, the total number over the five days he broadcasts.
So divide that number by five & you get 4-5 million, which in a country this large is really a joke. A really big, fat joke.
Ebert has obviously become a bitter, old, crippled man. Though, to be sure, he’s always been a reactionary, knee-jerk, un-thinking liberal (as if there were any other kind).
Anything negative about ol’ Rush brings out the circling wagons. Teh explanation of ‘dittos’ was claaaasic!
Rush is the best self-inflicted deaf drug addict on the radio now!
How dare Roger make fun of the mythical Ronald Reagan and his mythical contributions! And he is being bamboozled by the likes of Michael Moore? Wow, I certainly hope he comes to his senses and works with a guy like Bruce. Brucey will straigten him out and teach him a lesson on the spot when he gets out of hand. Of course, no one seems to want to work with Bruce because no one can figure out exactly what his area of expertise might be. Is is evolution? Is it sports? Please Bruce enlighten us all with your infinite wisdom and knowledge of whatever it is you are suppose to be an expert on. Is it not being able to keep a job? Please explain to us how Roger is all wrong about evolution and doesn’t understand it when he writes about it and how Michael Moore has taken advantage of poor, simple Roger.
I laugh at the notion that people think championing liberty means one is heartless. What is heartless is ripping away the fruits of someone’s labor and calculated risks to line the pockets of the connected and the unproductive.
Get well, Rush!
what about the truth?
apparently the truth that dare not speak his name but hides behind the truth.
meantime, i must suffer being called “brucey” for the first time since my beloved tamron hall (who said that she played sally hemmings (sp?) to my thomas jefferson) uttered that nickname. i am glad to be enlightened that my problem has been finding an area of expertise. i think the truth is correct when he guesses that my expertise lies in the area of evolution or sports, both of which must come in handy now since jerry angelo yesterday coined the term “evolvement” when discussing what the chicago bears need to do. roger’s problem with evolution, as i recall, was that he thought all mutations lead to improvements. but many do not. he also admitted that moore was quite misleading in “bowling for columbine,” and i believe it was the part about the little kid with the gun. i could google all this, but i think my true area of expertise is laziness, so i won’t.
Mister Wolf speaks the truth when he says “…roger ebert is to political commentary as michael jordan is to baseball…” it’s kinda like watching sheryl crowe leave the melody line in “soak up the sun” to comment that “one piece of toilet paper saves the earth…” or awaiting devin hester to successfully complete a sentence. don’t think, folks, it only hurts the ballclub.
Rush Limburger makes me sick. what a blowhard. I’m taking Mr Eberts side on this. I’m a leftist liberal and the brainless/heartless dittoheads can go pound sand.
William Hassig… You don’t know the first thing about me and yet you seemingly have no problem throwing insults my way because I listen to a radio show. Interesting what politics does to otherwise normal people…
Ya know, all this banter back and forth between the left and right just goes to show how much impact Mr. Limbaugh has. Love him or hate him, gotta admit (even you Hassig) he gets to you. hehehhehehhe
Keep going Rush!
Hey Roger
Time for some cancer jokes…yeah that will be funny. NOT!
Who knew there were so many righties around Chicago? Mention their hero, Rushie, and they all crawl out of the woodwork. So let me get this straight… It’s OK for Limbaugh to spout libelous fantasies about anyone and everyone, but if someone dares direct a joke at him, they have moral issues? Umm, yeah.
But I have to admit that I love Bruce Wolf, have loved him since Fox Thing. I would be willing to be the Carville to his Matalin. I would also love to hear more dirt from the bad old days. I always disliked Tamron Hall, and once Fox Thing was canned, I moved on to WGN morning news (yeah, I know – topic for another day) and have boycotted local Fox news ever since. So I say, bring it on, Bruce!
It would’ve been pretty ironic if Rush had been diagnosed with a bleeding heart.
“…just signed Limbaugh last July to a $400 million deal renewing him through 2016.”
There is something terribly out of kilter in America today.
@Mike:
Absolutely agree. How much does Clooney, Pitt, etc. get paid for a few weeks work? And those people are complete morons, with more skeletons in their closets and bizarre lifestyles than anyone on radio. So let’s agree, all entertainers make crazy money, but if you can get it, more power to you.
Last time I checked, Hawaii was a “state”
I heard the chest pains were due to getting one of his man-boobs caught in the ball washer on the 13th tee.