Limbaugh is terrified. And he has reason to be.

Understand this about Limbaugh. He doesn’t believe half the junk he spouts. I’ve met him, and had pleasant enough conversations with him, twice - at the 1980 World Series when he was still a mid-level baseball flunky with a funny name, and once in the mid ‘90s at ESPN when he was just beginning his campaign to get a toehold there. He is a quiet, almost colorless man who, if he could be guaranteed similar success in sportscasting, would sell out the sheep who follow his every word - and would do it before close of business today.

But with that ESPN bid having gone up in flames just under two years ago, and sports forever closed off to him, he’s gotten into what the novelist Robert Graves called a “Golden Predicament” - overwhelming success in a field he really had no intention of pursuing - and he has to keep churning this stuff out every day. And when you’re just free associating to kill time and keep the ditto-heads happy, you sometimes drive right off the end of the pier.