Rush Limbaugh by Zev Chafets

Author:Zev Chafets
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW

“Do you know what bought me all this?” Rush Limbaugh asked, waving his arm in the general direction of opulence. We were sitting in his study in Palm Beach, puffing on La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel cigars from his walk-in humidor. There are five houses on Limbaugh’s ocean-front estate in north Palm Beach. He lives in the largest, a twenty-four-thousand-square-foot mansion that he renovated and decorated; the other houses are for guests.

This is a lot of space for a man who was, at the time, living alone with his cat. When I pointed this out, Limbaugh frowned. I was the first journalist he had ever invited over, he told me, and I could see him wondering if it had been a mistake. He told me that the house was actually quite modest by Palm Beach standards. If I wanted to see really ostentatious living, I should go to south Palm Beach, where Donald Trump and other genuine plutocrats lived.

I never got to south Palm, but Limbaugh’s neighborhood seemed plush enough. On the way from the studio he had pointed out some good-sized estates, one of which was on the market for $81 million (and sold shortly thereafter). Rush had been offered $65 million for his place, but turned it down. He was comfortable; why move?

Limbaugh drives himself—at least he did in Palm Beach—in a black Maybach 57 S, $450,000 fully loaded. When we got to his house I saw that he had a garage full of them. “Anticipating a question,” he said, “why do I have so many cars? Two reasons. First, they are for the use of my guests. And two, I happen to love fine automobiles.”

I actually hadn’t been wondering why he had so many cars. Rich people tend not to stint on transportation. What I did wonder is why all of them were black. He told me that he likes black cars, which made a kind of sense. Limbaugh is old-fashioned, even elegant, in his personal furnishing. Flashy cars are for hip-hop artists and arrivistes; professional men of substance ride in dignified black automobiles. It’s what Rush’s grandfather would have driven if, for some reason, he had been faced with the question of what color Mercedes he should own.

There was no visible security at the gates of Limbaugh’s estate. We were greeted at the kitchen door by two members of Limbaugh’s domestic staff, which includes a chef he hired away from a local hotel. It was hard to look at these women without thinking of Wilma Cline, the drug-dealing housekeeper who turned Rush in. Limbaugh is known as a very generous boss, but Cline was an object lesson in the limits of loyalty.

Rush Hudson the First was a man who shunned conspicuous consumption, but his grandson is no Veblenite. Limbaugh’s house is, in the phrase of his close friend Mary Matalin, “aspirational.” Largely decorated by Limbaugh himself, it reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. A massive chandelier in

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