In part two Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi takes a look at the man who has been a political heavyweight in the US for over two decades.
His influence over the Republican party seems unparallelled and has 20 million Americans regularly hang on his every word.
But Rush Limbaugh has never been elected; instead his soapbox is a daily three-hour talk radio show, through which is listened to by a core Republican audience.
Big in the Clinton years, Limbaugh has been reborn with the election of Barack Obama. The advent of the internet and regular television appearances have made him a one-man media powerhouse to the point that many Americans see the man behind the microphone as the de-facto leader of the republican party.
In this week's Newsbytes: Rupert Murdoch's 28% pay cut, the controversial Swedish newspaper article that has Israel banning all Swedish journalists from the country, Zimbabwe's indecision over who should sit on the country's Media Commission, two journalists captured in Somalia have now spent a year in captivity, and the YouTube series about 5 British would-be suicide bombers.
Finally, Michael Moore is at it again. The American film maker, who took on US gun culture in Bowling for Columbine, the Bush Administration in Fahrenheit 911 and the American health care industry in Sicko has now trained his lens on the corporate giants of Wall Street. The irony starts with the film's titled Capitalism: A Love Storyand goes on from there. It is not out till October but the trailer is attracting a lot of hits online. We have made it our web video of the week. You can watch it here.
