When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

Dubbing himself “Rusty Sharpe,” he cribbed his on-air schtick from Midwest radio stars like Chicago’s Larry Lujack—famous for his dry, exasperated mockery of his listeners’ letters on the air—and Harry Caray, the famous Chicago Cubs broadcaster.

have never owned a pair of blue jeans.”

Instead of the party of the prosperous and secure, Limbaugh viewed it as the haven of the alienated and angry.

The right liked to blame the rise of feminism for the new regime of divorce, but the trend toward no-fault laws in the states predated the women’s movement. In any case, the new laws were not really proposed to institute gender parity as much as to put an end to the often needlessly painful and difficult courtroom dramas required by “at-fault” divorces: even couples who mutually wanted to part had to contrive situations where one party could be implicated in misbehavior to the law’s satisfaction. Courts often winkingly colluded in these charades. Whatever its consequences, no-fault was as much about making a concession to reality and reforming institutionalized dishonesty as about signaling a great ideological change in society. Still, conservatives imagined a grand historical narrative of decline and destruction: according to National Review, no-fault divorce was the drawn-out consequence of the Protestant Reformation and “the domestic equivalent of a political revolution,” sharing with historical revolutionaries “a common willingness to scrap a civilization … and start again.”

In order to escape the pain of being alone, Americans turned to talk. Intellectuals explained the mushrooming of talk radio and TV talk shows in the 1980s and ’90s as a consequence of the loneliness epidemic.

The characteristic expression of the daytime TV host was a concerned furrowing of the brow; for the radio host, an incredulous sneer. Sincerity, a tone that conveyed openness and a desire for honest exchange, even when it was actually a bit oily and disingenuous, was the characteristic mode of talk TV; authenticity, the appearance of no-holds-barred self-expression, more often than not a carefully cultivated schtick, was the quality affected by radio shock jocks.

Geraldo Rivera dutifully made a show asking if television had gone “too far,” prompting Harold Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times to crack that the question was “about as sincere as Adolf Eichmann questioning the excesses of genocide.”

America’s character was imperiled just as it seemed to find its freest expression.

Although stations didn’t fear revoked licenses as much anymore, the Reagan-era FCC couldn’t abandon all its regulatory responsibilities. It still had its mandate to punish indecency and obscenity on the air, and the presence of the religious right in the Reagan coalition meant that there was significant pressure to flex that muscle. The National Federation for Decency, founded by the United Methodist minister Donald Wildmon, began to picket the FCC’s offices in 1986, calling for a crackdown on indecent TV and radio. Fowler, although he said he was “sympathetic” to the protesters, issued a circumspect bureaucratic reply: “In view of the fact that a critical legal element in assessing material alleged to be ‘obscene’ is whether it violates ‘local community standards,’ it is more appropriate that such allegations be referred to local prosecutors, including U.S. attorneys, for potential adjudication. If a local jury makes a finding of ‘obscenity’ against an FCC licensee, it will then take appropriate action, including a possible stripping of the license.”

Limbaugh’s listeners were mostly white, skewing higher income than the general population. The well-fed host continued the Reaganite cult of prosperity, extolling wealth and the wealthy, even taking callers with cell phones first because they were most likely to be rich.

“I’m disappointed you didn’t call me ‘Bubba.’ It’s an honorable term where I come from. It’s just Southern for mensch.”

The Republican Party under Trump, tasked with his fixations on tariffs, immigration, and an “America First” foreign policy, owes much more to Pat Buchanan than to Ronald Reagan.