Want to Rile Limbaugh? Compare Him to Downey or George

Rush Limbaugh tries to distinguish himself from radio’s new breed of “shock jocks.”

“I think talk radio has a rotten image these days because of that kind of stuff,” he said. “It can hurt (the success of) people like me. . . . If you look at people who have endured in this business, they’re not racist or vulgar.”

These days when a caller tells him, “I feel like you’re more like the Morton Downey of radio,” Limbaugh does not hang up on the man nor does he berate him.

He counters with this logic: “Downey was known for being rude to people. Downey was profane. Downey was not a substantive conservative. If you think Morton Downey Jr. was a substantive conservative, then you don’t know what one is!”

A man waving a small American flag in each hand and calling himself Bobby Bible said he came to the Irvine show to “support a man that stands for decency and goodness, like Wally George.”

Limbaugh is not at all pleased with that comparison either.

“Wally George is the last kind of person I want to be associated with. I want to be respected and taken seriously. I don’t want the ultra far right, the John Birchers.”

Yet, for all his ideology, Limbaugh mostly just wants to be loved--and become an even richer Republican.

“I’m not out to save the country,” he says. “I’m out to get a large audience. I’m an entertainer first and a conservative second.”