Mr. Beck's paycheck would put him among the top 25 highest paid baseball players, and it's not bad for a radio personality either. Sirius XM reportedly pays Howard Stern $60 M. a year after production costs, Rush Limbaugh's eight-year contract is worth $50 M. annually, and Sean Hannity's five-year contract is worth around $20 M. a year, plus a profit share on his show.

A talk radio fixture for about a decade, Mr. Beck left Fox News last year to start his paywall protected streaming network, GBTV. "The Glenn Beck Program" is syndicated to hundreds of stations by Premiere (owned by Clear Channel), making it a highly rated marketing opportunity for Mr. Beck's other ventures. Premiere also sells advertising for some of Mr. Beck's sites.

Sandra Fluke. (Getty)

The landmark confrontation between Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke came wrapped in irresistible media tropes. There was, first off, the reliably charged set of associations that come with pinning words like “slut” or “prostitute” on a heretofore unknown woman, for the trespass of speaking out on a public health question that might conceivably also touch on matters of sex and reproductive rights. There was also the David-and-Goliath symbolism of a media titan such as Mr. Limbaugh brought low by a composed and articulate college student: We were seeing not just the weary politics of “slut-shaming” backfiring at last, but also an overdue and refreshing real-time crash course in debate. After no end of jowly posturing over Ms. Fluke’s alleged sexual license and the aloof cultural mores of liberal elites burrowed into institutions such Georgetown Law, Mr. Limbaugh came off to any fair-minded listener as the terminally louche and untrustworthy figure here—and not just because of his own flagrantly hypocritical record as a Viagra enthusiast and reputed sex tourist. No, Limbaugh was seeking to exercise the crass historic prerogative of the powerful male to smear his antagonist (be it Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, or the numerous accusers of Dominique Strauss-Kahn) as a sexualized nonentity—another soon-to-be-forgotten casualty in the culture war.

But here’s the thing about Ms. Fluke: When it comes to the standard rules of media engagement, she’s something of a conscientious objector.

Speaking with The Observer by phone over Georgetown’s spring break, she waved aside any invitation to return Mr. Limbaugh’s ad hominem fire, with a certain Terminator-like efficiency. Bashing the personal excesses of El Rushbo may have cleared Al Franken’s path to the U.S. Senate, but Ms. Fluke has evidently elected to foil Mr. Limbaugh’s slut-shaming efforts with something long absent from our culture war donnybrooks: a firm refusal to play.

Wasn’t it rewarding, we asked, to see a serial impresario of verbal abuse like Limbaugh wilt under pressure, like any browbeaten schoolyard bully? “Well, I just really hope that we don’t have to watch this again,” Ms. Fluke replied evenly. “I hope it’s the last time.” Likewise, when we queried her about her own family and religious background, and whether anything in her past might have primed her to do battle with the Jesuit administration at Georgetown, she announced, “I’d rather not discuss that.” OK, then, but what’s it like to be thrust into the center of a national media firestorm when you’ve mainly just been trying to wrap up law school and land a job? Has anyone recognized you on the street, or bought you a drink? “I have been recognized in public a few times,” she conceded, almost grudgingly. “I did have some people offer me to buy me a drink. It’s hard to get used to the impact of all this on my private life, on my daily functioning.”

Imagine, say, the motivational speaker and freshly minted Tea Party congressional candidate Samuel Wurzelbacher (aka “Joe the Plumber”) waving off questions about his life story—let alone the scores of curiously quasi-public figures who have nothing but their personal sagas to retail before the press (cf. the Kardashian of the moment). Even a sober policy-minded media campaign like the viral Kony 2012 video, pushing for the apprehension and trial of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, has overtaken public debate thanks largely to sensationalized narrative tricks and the recruitment of big-ticket celebrity backers such as Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie. By contrast, Ms. Fluke bristles noticeably at the idea that any of the controversy surrounding her should somehow translate into any sort of conversation about her.

So resolutely does Ms. Fluke focus on the core policy questions obscured by the Limbaugh kerfuffle—“focus,” like “policy,” is one of the words she leans on most heavily in conversation—that the president himself was hard-pressed to get her to talk about anything else. Mr. Obama had called Ms. Fluke to thank her for her support—but also to stress that her parents should be proud of her.

He was barely able to get the point across. “When the president called me it was sort of funny,” she said. “I guess I’m just a consummate activist and policy person. And I just wanted to talk to him about the policy. I kept saying, ‘Thank you for your work on this, Mr. President—you know, this is an incredibly important issue.’ And he had to interrupt me—he said, ‘Yes, yes, I know that. But I just want to make sure that you’re okay personally.’ ”

That, indeed, is the singularly un-mediagenic message of this latest media celebrity: It’s not about me. “The fact that it was not personal—that this really was about the effort to silence women in general—allowed me to keep from responding personally,” Ms. Fluke explained.

“I wish that this would be a lot less about me and my identity,” she added of the Slur Heard Round the World. “I wasn’t testifying about me so much as about a lot of other women.”

By not allowing herself to become the framing device for a proxy debate over contraception funding, Mr. Fluke has also let the larger dynamics of opinion on the issue take their own course. The emergence of Rick Santorum, an ardent patriarchal policer of sexual mores in the Comstock vein, as a top-tier GOP candidate had already raised the specter of a significant gender gap between the two major parties, as did this winter’s controversy over the Susan J. Komen Foundation’s withdrawal of support for Planned Parenthood. With the Fluke-Limbaugh showdown storming center stage, women voters—who broke for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterms by a small margin—are proving very leery of a party that suddenly looks keen to roll back basic protections of their reproductive rights. The Washington Post reports that a new survey from independent pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff finds that 51 percent of women now want a Democratic majority returned to Congress, with just 36 percent of female respondents backing the GOP.

And the Obama campaign has already moved to capitalize on the gender divisions dramatized in Limbaugh-gate, sending out one million direct-mail pitches to female voters in a dozen battleground states this week.

Not surprisingly, the ever-cautious Ms. Fluke has also been careful not to depict the issue as election-year fodder: “I’ve not been getting into anything partisan,” she said. “But I am totally confident that American women will pay attention to which candidate talks about these issues knowledgeably, and to the kind of language that they’re using.”

She also noted that in her own work seeking to rally her male law-school peers behind expanded contraception coverage, she encountered very little of the sex-driven outlook that Mr. Limbaugh revels in. “I’m not sure if it’s generational, but young people live in reality; they believe as I do that these are serious issues—and that their health needs have to be addressed in terms of reality, and not ideology.”

Still, she was asked, wasn’t Mr. Limbaugh perhaps owed a certain paradoxical debt of gratitude for rallying fresh support behind a feminist movement that has at times struggled for a surer footing in the political mainstream?

For a moment, Ms. Fluke seemed about to let her guard down, but not quite. “I’m definitely never going to say anything like that,” she said with a laugh.

editorial@observer.com

But of course: Twitter.

Rush Limbaugh didn't have but 10,000 followers on December 5th, but his growth—for anybody, let alone a blowhard in the midst of a Republican presidential primary season—was solid, averaging about 230 followers a day through the last month.

And then, on February 29th, the Sandra Fluke comments—and controversy—were yielded by Rush. And instead of pulling away from him, Twitter users flocked...

...To him:

On March 1st and March 2nd, Rush picked up somewhere in the ballpark of 5,400 followers. For context, @RushLimbaugh had about 29,471 followers before the 29th, and started this week out with 38,911.

He's tacking on about 617 followers a day on average, but that average is of course skewed by the last few days of abnormal gains.

Now, let's compare this to the Twitter account of Sandra Fluke, the target of his comments:

Fluke's growth looks anemic compared to Rush Limbaugh's, no? But:

@RushLimbaugh's was born unto Twitter on July 26, 2011 (or 224 days ago), and @SandraFluke was born unto Twitter on February 17, 2012 (or 18 days ago).

In other words:

Rush has been gaining followers on a full-timeline average of 173.7 followers a day.

Sandra Fluke, who has 24,319 followers, has been gaining on a full-timeline average 1,351 followers a day.

The Takeaway:

1. Everyone loves to watch a good Twitter trainwreck, but you get more followers with honey (or by being literally slutshamed by a pompous, pill poppin' blowhard).

2. At this rate, Fluke might do well to try to pick up some of Rush's sponsorships.

3. The only thing worse than not having a verified account is actually having a verified Twitter account with far fewer followers than an unverified account of you that's never actually been used.

4. People clearly like Rush Limbaugh most when he has absolutely nothing to say.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Rush Limbaugh (Getty Images)

Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh has issued an apology for the incendiary comments he made on his radio show earlier this week regarding Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Mr. Limbaugh drew fire for remarks implying Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and for stating that if Ms. Fluke felt taxypayers should fund contraception via President Barack Obama's healthcare measures, "and thus pay for you to have sex," she should "post the videos online so we can all watch."

Mr. Limbaugh's words drew immediate fire from the left. His commentary also led some advertisers to withdraw their spots from his nationally-syndicated radio show.

Today, in a post on his website, Mr. Limbaugh apologized--for "insulting word choices." His full statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

Rush Limbaugh (Getty Images)

On the same day Rush Limbaugh made bigger waves than usual with some remarks on his nationally syndicated radio show, Suspicious Package Santa visited the long-time conservative radio host's  home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Mr. Limbaugh's frequently white-hot rhetoric may have reached the melting point Thursday when he addressed Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who was famously ejected from Rep. Darrell Issa's  February 16 hearing on whether the health reform law's contraceptive coverage was a violated religious freedom. Mr. Limbaugh implied Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and a "prostitute" but didn't stop there. Addressing Ms. Fluke directly, Mr. Limbaugh said, "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

As a furor was erupting in the media over his remarks, someone at Mr. Limbaugh's oceanfront home in Palm Beach reported a suspicious package. A bomb squad was dispatched and traffic re-routed from a nearby road.

The package proved harmless. Based on the Palm Beach Daily News description of the parcel's contents it was still odd:

The package contained an electronic plaque commemorating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, authorities said. No further details about the plaque were immediately available, and Limbaugh sent word through his property manager that the news media would not be allowed to photograph the package.

The Palm Beach paper also reported that the Pittsburgh, PA sender of the package described it as a "business opportunity" for Mr. Limbaugh.

There was, in the end, no connection between Mr. Limbaugh's comments and the strange delivery. Neither he nor his wife Kathryn made any further comment.

— In other news, city records confirm last week's Wall Street Journal reports that Rush Limbaugh's tastefully muraled penthouse at 1049 Fifth Avenue has sold for $11.75 million (a steep shave off its original $13.95 million asking price) to an LLC-shielded, Florida-based buyer.

cmalle@observer.com

Going too far for Mr. O’Reilly is going very far indeed, but the madness of the conservative reaction has yet to abate. His friend and colleague Glenn Beck declared that health care reform means “the end of prosperity in America forever … the end of America as you know it.” Bill Hemmer, another Fox host who probably needs medication, has suggested that the legislation will send Americans who don’t have health insurance to prison. The Washington Times editorial page compared the bill to the Black Death, and the Drudge Report put up a headline suggesting that its passage is the equivalent of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On the radio, Rush Limbaugh, the past master of extremist chatter, told his listeners that the bill is an “utter disaster” that represents “the destruction of America as founded.” With its new regulation of insurance companies, he warned, this reform will inexorably lead to the destruction of the private health care industry and bring down the health care system, because the real plan is for government to take over all medical care. Lesser wingnuts in print and on the air scream that this bill means government will take over the entire economy and control everything we do—and even that the costs of health care will somehow result in “global Armageddon.”

Stirring up such lunacy almost worked for the Republicans, who came close to stopping health care reform again. Each episode of reform versus reaction has seen them go further and further in falsehood and demagoguery, and each time they have prevailed until now. But this time, with reform signed into law, they may suffer the consequences, when their own lies come around to hit them like a boomerang.

Health care reform isn’t socialism (just ask the old Socialist Party USA, which has denounced the bill for that very reason). It isn’t the end of the world, the destruction of the American system or the ruin of democratic capitalism. It won’t mean that government is taking over the health care system. It isn’t going to send anyone to prison or arraign elderly patients in front of “death panels.”

Over the next six months, millions of voters will take a deep breath and realize that those attacks were blatantly untrue. They may even discover that the bill passed by the Democrats and signed by President Obama will benefit their families immediately.

Although many of the bill’s most significant changes will not become effective until 2014, several important reforms will take effect this year. Insurance companies will be prohibited from their notorious practice of dropping coverage of people who get sick. Their rules on lifetime limits will be eliminated and their limits on annual coverage will be liberalized.

Insurers will no longer be permitted to exclude children from coverage because of preexisting conditions. And uninsured adults who have preexisting conditions that prevented them from obtaining insurance will get coverage from a special risk pool that will end when the new insurance exchanges—where private companies will compete—go into operation a few years from now. A similar program will cover early retirees who are too young to qualify for Medicare, assisting companies in turning over their workforce and creating jobs.

The bill also closes the infamous “donut hole” that the Republicans created when they wrote the Medicare Part D drug coverage bill. Patients who fall into that gap will receive a $250 rebate right away, and the hole will eventually be closed completely.

The Limbaugh listeners and Fox fans will stick their fingers in their ears and scream “socialism,” but the rest of America may listen—and decide sometime between now and Election Day that passing health care reform was the right thing to do.

jconason@observer.com

The Democratic Party's congressional candidate interrupted a supporter at the Clinton County Democratic headquarters here on Route 3 to call comments made by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh "obscene." This afternoon, Limbaugh said Scozzafava, a Republican assemblywoman who ended her campaign this weekend and is actively working for Owens, is "guilty of widespread bestiality."

"She has screwed every RINO in the country," Limbaugh said on his radio show. "Everyone can see just how phony and dangerous they are. 2010 might be a nightmare for PETA. Two animals may become extinct: RINOs and Blue Dog Democrats."

Limbaugh has endorsed Doug Hoffman, he Conservatve Party's nominee who is now blessed by Republicans.

Below is a video of raging Owens.

"I have not been angry in the course of the campaign, the comments that Mr. Limbaugh made today made me angry," he said. "This is not the way to have a civil discourse; this is not the way we conduct politics, and I think it was wholly inappropriate. These are the people that are supporting Mr. Hoffman, this is the kind of agenda they're going to push if they are successful."

It's not that Owens is now running in high gear against Hoffman, Clinton County Democratic Chairman Marty Mannix explained to me, it's just that "the new message is that you can't tolerate this ilk of candidate."

Hoffman's spokesman Rob Ryan, when reached by phone, said of Limbaugh that "those are other people's comments--that's all I have to say."

Several players had said they would rather not play for someone who has compared their sport to a brawl between the Bloods and Crips without the guns, and the Reverend Al Sharpton spoke out against the bid last week. Commissioner Roger Goodell prefers a minimum of controversy, so it's not entirely surprising that Mr. Limbaugh won't be in the owner's box anytime soon. But, according to Mr. Limbaugh, this isn't about any of that.

"I am a subhuman species with no right to exist outside these radio waves," the Daily News quotes Mr. Limbaugh as saying on his radio show after the news. The Post, quoting his on-air comments, gives him a longer rope: 

"This is not about the NFL, it's not about the St. Louis Rams, it's not about me," Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio program. "This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. Therefore this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we're going to have."

In the Daily News, Flip Bondy--who apparently maintains infrequent e-mail contact with Mr. Limbaugh during football season--reminds his readers that the other principal partner in the deal, former Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts, isn't exactly a politically correct bleeding heart. "Hey, Olden," Checketts once heckled Olden Polynice. "You're leading the league in stolen VCRs."

No, Bondy doesn't seem particularly impressed with Checketts, who he says has somehow "turned himself into a respected metrosexual, into a multisport, entertainment guru."

There's a lot of hand-wringing around the Yankees too, with only one day until they finally start their second round series against the Angels. Are the starters good enough? Will the rain wreck Manager Joe Girardi's plans for a three-starter rotation? This seems to be what happens when you have a five-day intermission in the middle of the playoffs. There'slots of interest, and therefore lots of space that needs to be filled by baseball stories. But there's actually not that much to write about.