Jon Sinton

If you want to argue that Rush Limbaugh the radio sensation will soon crumble and fail, that he's headed for a "last hurrah," would you sign up as your expert....an Air America executive? That’s what media critic Michael Wolff did in a Vanity Fair article on Limbaugh, "the man who ate the GOP." Rush has power now, but soon he won’t:

Arguably no message apparatus like it exists in the nation, except, perhaps, at the White House (or in Oprah—whose position with American women is curiously analogous to Rush’s position with American conservatives). It is concentrated and extraordinary power.

Except that this power ought to be ending. It ought to all be on the wane. It is not just the Obama victory and the magnitude of his approval ratings. It is not just that the gravity of the economic crisis, with historic unemployment rates, means it’s a lot harder to get people excited about Reagan-and-Rush-esque hands-off government.

It is, rather, a crueler demographic point. The dirty little secret of conservative talk radio is that the average age of listeners is 67 and rising, according to [former Air America guru Jon] Sinton—the Fox News audience, likewise, is in its mid-60s: "What sort of continuing power do you have as your audience strokes out?"