Mister Sinfonian's Neighborhood

I've mentioned before that Palm Beach County attracts some real winners -- I share my home county with Ann Coulter, Mark Foley, and Rush Limbaugh, for example -- but I didn't realize until yesterday that it also is the center of a talk radio battleground of sorts. Not only does Limbaugh live here, but so does Randi Rhodes, formerly of Air America Radio.

For example, Rhodes, who calls Lake Worth home and worked for WJNO locally for 10 years before she signed with Air America in 2004, just brought her newly syndicated show to satellite broadcaster XM Radio this week.

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Consider that other nationally syndicated talk host who lives in our back yard: conservative pundit and Palm Beach resident Rush Limbaugh (heard midday locally on WJNO). He not only commands a weekly audience of 14 million-plus, largest in the industry, but he also is widely credited with helping to bring the conservative cause to the fore in the post-Ronald Reagan era.

Limbaugh's latest effort: "Operation Chaos," a plan to encourage Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in states and territories where they are eligible to participate in Democratic primaries. The goal is to keep the Democrats divided for as long as possible, thereby boosting Republicans' chances in the fall.

If Limbaugh represents the old guard of talk radio, there's a sizable new guard, and many of them are branching out beyond radio.

Take Glenn Beck, a conservative who's heard weekday mornings on WJNO. He hosts a show on CNN's Headline News. He has written two books, including the recent best-seller An Inconvenient Book.

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But talk radio has remained strong. In many ways, the format can credit its existence to the 1987 repeal of the FCC "fairness doctrine," which meant opinions could now run wild without a need for a response.

In an instant, the big-mouth era was born.

Beck, who started as a music DJ, says the most successful talkers understand that the format is driven by the need to entertain, not necessarily to inform. "It's got to be bigger than politics," he says.

Rhodes agrees that talk radio is more about provocation than promoting a cause.

"People listen to me even if they disagree with me. ... It has to do with the question of can you evoke emotion?" says the controversial host, who came under fire from New York-based Air America for referring to Hillary Clinton as a "(expletive) whore."

(Rhodes resigned after being suspended, but she insists her problems with the network were related more to contract discussions.)

The best two reasons for reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine? Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

Any questions?