The radio icon's channel comes clear

Good for Rush Limbaugh. His $400 million deal for an eight year contract extension fazes me not.
Yet I don't care for the gentleman and don’t listen to him.
That seems to me sensible instead of getting into a swivet over outlandish pay for outlandish people.
Rush comes across as the cigar-reeking, bad habit, loud-of-mouth passenger lumbering down the airplane aisle toward the empty seat next to mine.
His opinions soar with a lot of his fellow travelers. I’d have to consider a later flight if I were forced into his company.
I don’t even think it’s a liberal vs. conservative thing. My taste simply is substance over image, reason over rhetoric, meaning over controversy. Give me an open mind over an open mouth anytime.
In fact I flow from the left full circle again into conservatism and completely defend any commentator’s First Amendment right to become the unwanted flight partner.
Ah, I hear you say. How can you judge Limbaugh if you don’t listen to him?
Well, you don’t have to eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten. I’ve heard enough.
I've also read enough in Time and Newsweek and elsewhere to know their coverboy is a national phenom who isn't going away. Americans made him what he is, phenomenally.
NYT Magazine writer Zev Chavets called the guy an American icon. Yes, well, icons are one dimensional religious images.
This one's veneration comes from being "confrontational, deliberately insensitive and funny," Chavets wrote.
And his single dimension?
Well, Rush himself told The New York Times Magazine it isn't his conservatism but his business ability: "My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06Limbaugh-t.html?ex=1373083200&en=96d69779ce7c0fb1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Sounds like sham, a case of entertainment profit and not movement standard bearer.
Is he worth what Clear Channel is paying him? Sure, if the market will bear it. Commercial radio is like every information platform, grabbing at gold-plated straw men to cope with the digital and demographic revolt by audiences.
Media salaries at upper echelons took off into the wild blue yonder long ago.
The merger of the information industry with entertainment is like gay marriage will seem 20 years from now. What once appeared strange and perverse to some people turns ho-hum in time.
That means, of course, the Rush Limbaugh star will flame out too.
Newspapers started the star system long ago when they began running photos of their top columnists and having them speak at the Rotary and booming them in house ads.
Those promos seem primitive now. But TV news built on the concept to the point Katy Couric became CBS-TV's astronomically paid evening news anchor with $15 million a year. Now there's talk she'll be pushed out.
Katy doesn’t even mouth cigars or pop an excess of prescription drugs like ol’ Rush.
Then again, for all her personality attributes, The CBS celebrity can’t match the radio man for his familiarity with audiences.
Talent? How much does it take?
It’s that connection that matters.
Instead of getting jealous at Rush Limbaugh, we should all study how he does it.
Trouble is, then we’d have to listen to him.
Clear Channel would have to pay me the $400 million.