Look Who's TALKING

By RICHARD CORLISS

Hi there, listeners! This is Rash Lambaste, the liberals' Limbaugh, with all the news you need to know. Well, we just had another beaut from Newt. The Speaker hired a House historian who thought Nazism should be taught in schools. That's good sound Republicanism: instead of condoms, let's distribute SS armbands. Newt dumped her, but in the nicest way: he visited her and served her with divorce papers. And how about term limits, that great notion of an electorate that can't trust themselves to vote the rascals out? Old Guard Republicans must love that! Newt's in his ninth term, so he's way over the limit. And Senator Thurmond -- wasn't he the Founding Father who filibustered against the Declaration of Independence? C'mon, Republicans! Don't make it so easy for me!

Now let's go to the phones.

< THAT'S A RADIO MONOLOGUE YOU didn't hear last week, and not only because we in the evil dinosaur liberal media made it up. We don't matter anymore. Today the big noise comes from talk radio. Its conservative hosts are the kings of AM radio and the kingmakers of the new Republican majority; one survey showed that hard-core listeners to the format voted 3-to-1 Republican. As could be expected, the hosts showed little interest in ribbing Newt Gingrich and the G.O.P. They had bigger fat to fry. Have a listen:

Ken Hamblin, a hot-button black conservative, on "the Nazi point of view" comment that cost Christina Jeffrey a Capitol Hill job: "Being a bigot does not void your First Amendment rights." The self-styled "Black Avenger," who is syndicated to 63 stations nationwide, has also railed against gun control and even against James Brady -- "the cripple guy" -- for promoting it.

Neal Boortz, morning commentator for Atlanta's WSB, on the arrest of three local boys for attempted robbery, and a later fracas involving the boys' mother: "When the police came to her welfare house and knocked on this welfare queen's door and took her little predators away, this woman, who by the way was about the size of a phone booth -- she obviously puts her food stamps and welfare checks to good use! -- she was screaming like a stuck pig because the police were taking her little predator welfare tickets away! . . . Lady, your ((kids will)) go into the system and they'll be home in a few days, and when they grow up, they'll probably kill somebody! Maybe even somebody you know!"

Sean Hannity, Boortz's competition at Atlanta's WGST, on the Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage: "How much more can you pay to someone who flips burgers for a living? Are you willing to pay more for a hamburger? ((But)) the Democrats feel they can get a lot of mileage out of this because they can create this class envy and strife -- which they're masters at."

The true masters are motormouths like Hamblin, Boortz, Hannity -- and the supremo, Rush Limbaugh, whose syndicated sermon is attended by 20 million people a week on 660 stations. Talk radio trails only country music as the nation's most pervasive format; it commandeers more than 15% of the fragmented audience. More than 1,000 talk stations (up from 200 ten years ago), and hundreds more with Evangelical Christian commentators, deliver hot chat to an avid constituency. About half of all American adults listen to the format at least once a week for at least an hour, according to Talkers magazine.

E-mail and other tech talk may be the third, fourth or nth wave of the future, but old-fashioned radio is true hyperdemocracy. Very hyper. Like the backyard savants, barroom agitators and soapbox spellbinders of an earlier era, Limbaugh & Co. bring intimacy and urgency to an impersonal age. "If we still gathered at town meetings, if our churches were still community centers," says Marvin Kalb, former CBS reporter who is teaching at George Washington University, "we wouldn't need talk radio. People feel increasingly disconnected, and talk radio gives them a sense of connection."

What's new is that today the radio rightists are wired into the political process. In 1994 the scream rose to the top. These fervent spiels, in which we heard America slinging, stinging, cajoling, annoying, persuading, finally transformed the social dialogue. In a 1993 poll by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, 44% of Americans named talk radio as their chief source of political information. Listeners tend to be white, male and hep to conservative ideas -- just the audience the Republicans wanted to mobilize.

They knew how to do it too. Last September, when Gingrich announced the Contract with America, the Republican National Committee had lined up 300 talk-radio interviews for its signatories. Coordinating the blitz was Virginia's Contract Information Center, which has 500 radio talk shows on its superefficient fax network. CIC sent pro-Contract clips and talking points to the shows; many hosts read the material verbatim on the air. The scheme worked handsomely; the Rush Republicans went to the polls. Limbaugh's clout is immense; former Congressman Vin Weber says Rush is as responsible as anyone else for the G.O.P. victory, and last week the Democrats of Texas paid him the compliment of a "Crush Rush with the Truth" campaign to fight his views by heckling stations and pressuring advertisers. Limbaugh, of course, loves the attention.

So, now that they've won -- elections, ratings, the grudging acknowledgment of traditional journalists -- what do they do for an encore?

Some seem almost hoping for the winners to fail. "If they don't perform, we're likely to put the heat on them," says David Gold of KLIF in Dallas-Fort Worth. "There'll be a lot of angry folks out there, and the talk-show hosts will be leading the charge." They already helped reverse Gingrich's decision , on his $4.5 million book deal. Other hosts are spoiling for a fight. Says Norman Resnick of KHNC in Johnstown, Colorado: "Gingrich is no better than George Bush" -- the sort of apostasy of which only true believers are capable.

In this church, there are many cardinals. At one edge is San Francisco's J. Paul Emerson, a mammoth fist-pounder who doesn't mind saying he hates "the Japs." Toward the middle is syndicated host Michael Reagan, son of the former President; he and Limbaugh are the only persons made honorary members of the 104th Congress. Perhaps Reagan's most rebellious moment was when, he says, "I took on Nancy," by opposing his stepmother and supporting Oliver North for a Senate seat.

Oh, somewhere on the dial you can find liberals (like Mike Malloy of Atlanta's WSB), black nationalists (including several hosts on New York's WLIB) and a few leftists. Tammy Bruce, a lesbian feminist and head of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW, works weekends on Los Angeles' KFI. Jim Hightower, a folksy, funny Texas populist who is nearly as quick to criticize Clinton as he is the right wing, graces 180 stations.

"Liberals must stop hugging trees and start kicking some ass," says liberal syndicated host Tom Leykis. But even in sympathetic markets, liberals are the kickees. Surely the Bay Area is the Mecca (or, as Rush would say, the Moscow) of the California left. But in San Francisco, KSFO has just dumped all its moderate and liberal talk-show hosts -- including Leykis -- to go to a conservative format featuring Hamblin, Reagan, Emerson and Pat Buchanan. What's the problem with liberals? "They are genetically engineered to not offend anybody," says Tom Tradup, general manager of talk station WLS in Chicago. "People who go on the air afraid of offending are not inherently entertaining."

The trailblazer in entertaining, eager-to-offend conservatism was William F. Buckley Jr. in the early '60s. His cutting wit had the patina of moral certitude, in a fight his liberal opponents were often too genteel to win. Buckley's heirs (William Safire, Buchanan, P.J. O'Rourke) helped lift from Republicans the stigma of the pruney banker. On the radio side, conservative talk also had '50s and '60s pioneers: cantankerous Joe Pine and Bob Grant. Grant and Limbaugh, who have broadcast back to back on New York City's WABC since 1988, have set the limits -- one growly, the other comic-pompous -- for Right Radio.

Grant, a pro-choice conservative who can be gracious to guests and rapacious to callers, got a dose of his own malice last fall. Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democratic Senator who was in a bitter race with Republican and frequent Grant guest Chuck Haytaian, ran ads stating that "Grant calls blacks savages, and called Martin Luther King a scumbag." A tri-state ruckus ensued, with New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Whitman declaring she would no longer appear on Grant's show and citizens calling for the host's scalp and other body parts. But all the heat didn't hurt him. Whitman was soon back on the show. Grant achieved his highest ratings in a quarter-century. And WABC now proclaims itself the No. 1 radio station in America.

Say this: Just on pungent personality, the right-wingers are usually more entertaining hosts than the drones of radio liberalism, who share flaws with their elected counterparts. Decades of power made Democrats soft, logy, too eager to compromise; they showed compassion but rarely passion. By the time Limbaugh went national in 1988, the Dems could do little but sleepwalk into the propeller. How could they know that the winning attitude of the '90s -- on radio and on the stump -- would be to show a killer instinct?

Consider, then, the plight of the group that WNYC's Brian Lehrer calls "the politically complex." As Lehrer, host of On the Line, New York City's most thoughtful, informative talk show, notes, "Some people's views don't fit neatly into traditional conservative or liberal labels. But that's not what's wanted in the media these days, especially in talk radio. They want you to be 100% confident that you have the truth and 100% predictable in your views. It's a comedy of clarity, a circus of certainty." But even to admit that an issue has two sides, as one Lehrer caller suggested, is to admit you're a liberal.

Don Imus is one liberal -- well, he did vote for Clinton -- who succeeds with a comic-misanthropic style he has established in 27 years of radio, the last seven on New York City's WFAN. Imus, whose morning potpourri of talk and sharp parody sketches is syndicated in 23 cities, has interviewed Clinton, Bob Dole, Alfonse D'Amato, the lot. The rest of the show revels in bad taste, spitball humor and abolition of the Fairness Doctrine; it's radio freedom with a vengeance. (His show last Wednesday claimed that Gingrich earned his college degree from the "Close Cover Before Striking University of Armpit, Georgia.") "The news isn't sacred to me," Imus gruffs to a reporter. "It's entertainment. The show is an entertainment device designed to revel in the agony of others."

The radio rightists offer a cloaked version of the same. But they don't care to admit it. Hot talk? Shock talk? Ban that speech! "To me," says Tradup, "shock talk is Howard Stern. Period. It's for 12-year-olds who get excited when they hear the word penis." Stern, natch, considers himself a political commentator and motivator. So does George Pataki; supported by Stern, he unseated New York Governor Mario Cuomo and saved an honored seat at his inauguration for Stern. But Howard, whose mixture of sex, politics and humongous self-pity has made him the morning star across the country, takes consolation in his popularity. "I know what my fans like," he said on the air last week. "Penis! Vagina!"

Other talk-show hosts also know what their fans like: to be flattered with a few minutes in which to say their piece on the air, then insulted into oblivion. Tangle with WABC's hosts, and you risk the sharp end of their shtick. Grant: "Ah, get off the phone, you sick degenerate!" Lyn Samuels: "Oh, shut up!" Jay Diamond: "Are you on anything? How do I know you're not poppin' speedballs?" And so it goes on politically perplexing insult radio. "A lot of talk-show hosts are opportunistic twits," says David Brudnoy, the gay libertarian (with AIDS) at Boston's WBZ. And the listeners hover on the brink of a solipsism: that they and they alone know the answer. No one says, 'I don't believe in my doctors anymore so I'll take out my own appendix.' But with politics, somehow we don't need any experts."

Will the mood of radio listeners change? Can the hot-talk hosts continue to squirt scalding water on the body politic without one group or the other crying "Enough!"? If 1994's electoral trend continues, there may soon be few demons left to bitch about. And as Grant misses "those nice days when I was the only conservative on the scene," many radio rightists betray a truculent nostalgia for the old foes who became their roadkill: Cuomo, Howard Metzenbaum and the man from Arkansas who roams the White House like the Ghost of Clinton Past.

If these victims of the radio right have one thing in common, it's that they can talk up a storm. Now that all these victims but the President are at liberty, perhaps they could get behind the microphones and stir up a true debate between the right and the center-left. Or at least one hell of a shouting match. "This is Mario Cuomo, here to mix it up with the violent majority. Let's go to the phones!"

With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington, Sophfronia Scott Gregory/Atlanta, John Moody/New York, Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles and Richard Woodbury/Denver