Rush to judgment: Burlesque, tragedy, and hierarchal alchemy in the rhetoric of America's foremost political talkshow host

Abstract

To account for the success of Rush Limbaugh as radio talkshow communicator and gauge something of his relevance to recent political history in the United States, Kenneth Burke's notion of genres of drama and hierarchal identification were applied to 21 consecutive broadcasts of the Rush Limbaugh Show in October and November, 1996. Limbaugh was deemed a skilled and generically appropriate spokesman for the conservative restorationist movement that came to dominance, or near dominance, in the 1980s and 1990s. Limbaugh articulated his message in the burlesque accents that usually accompany restorationist politics. Employing tragic‐frame discourse as well, coherently mixing dramatic genres it would appear, Limbaugh lifted his ordinary listeners to heights of symbolic identification with the values and achievements of capitalism's “superior class,” the rhetorical ingredient that seems to have made him a uniquely appealing conservative polemicist.