LIMBAUGH VS. THE BLOGGERS: Limbaugh’s take doesn’t impress me:

In the audio links below, I treat you to my analysis of pollster Dr. David Hill’s column headlined “Bloggers Won’t Match Limbaugh.” A blogger is a citizen who gets a website and just opines on various topics unrealted to politics. A friend of mine defined the term, derived from “web log,” as “a nerd with a journalist degree and no social life who spends most days and all nights writing e-mails to himself and his friends in hopes of attracting attention from traditional media outlets.” Andrew Sullivan is perhaps the best-known political blogger.

Hmm. I don’t know if Sullivan has “no social life” — seems to me I’ve heard some controversy about his having too much of one — and I’m pretty sure that most of his posts are “realted to politics” in some fashion or other. Heck, they’re even related to politics. Seems to me that Limbaugh has failed this part of his own proclaimed formula for success, here: #2: “Master production technique.” You know, like spelling and research, and having one sentence relate to the next . . . .

Donald Sensing has more on this, including some advice to Limbaugh: “You don’t understand what blogging is all about and what it does.” Nope. Obviously not. What’s funny is that Limbaugh obviously feels the need to put down blogs, and to build himself up at their expense. What’s he scared of? Blogs surely aren’t cutting into his market share. (No Gulfstream jets to bigshot celebrity events here, or elsewhere in the blogosphere!) Are they just making him feel as if he’s behind the curve? This grandpa-Lou stuff won’t help that.

UPDATE: Bill Quick writes: “Limbaugh is nowhere near as stupidly irritating as those of the Michael Savage school of Republican Radio Broadcasters, but every once in a while he does show his age, and his cluelessness about some of the subjects on which he opines.” That seems about right. It’s okay. He’ll catch on eventually.

Meanwhile Daniel Drezner has the answer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mitch Berg, who used to work in talk radio, thinks he knows what Limbaugh’s about. Makes sense to me.

STILL MORE: I’m getting various emails pro and con on Limbaugh. I’m no ditto head, but I have no real beef with him either. He’s very good at what he does — just listen to, well, most other talk radio to see just how good — and, really, what he does seems a lot like what bloggers do. It’s striking to me that this rather artificial one-two assault on bloggers in relation to Limbaugh took place, and I wonder what he’s reacting to.

I (no surprise) think blogs are great, and I think that the blogosphere punches way above its weight thanks to its ability to move fast, incorporate lots of minds, and attract “opinion leader” readers and bloggers. But it’s a very different kind of medium than talk radio, and comparisons seem silly to me. I just wonder why Rush is so anxious to make them.