Rush Limbaugh mocks Bill O’Reilly in book

In a new biography on sale Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh calls fellow conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly a “Ted Baxter” — after the fictional character on the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” who was portrayed as a vain, shallow, buffoonish TV newsman.

“Sorry but somebody’s gotta say it,” Limbaugh is quoted as saying in Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One by Zev Chafets. At press time, O’Reilly had yet to respond to the comment.

But it wasn’t just Bill-O who took grief from Big Rush. Limbaugh said he doesn’t consider any of his fellow conservative talk show hosts to be in his league.

“Sean Hannity and Mark Levin are protégés,” writes Chafets, “and [Limbaugh] has defended Glenn Beck.”

But Limbaugh “doesn’t really consider them, or anyone else, in his league.”

Also on Limbaugh’s hit list is CNN’s Larry King, whom Limbaugh “really doesn’t like.”

“He has never had nice things to say about me,” Limbaugh says about King in the book. “He was working midnights [on the radio] when I started and demanded that his syndicator move him to afternoon drive when my success was obvious. He bombed and quit radio for CNN exclusively.”

The book also divulges how Limbaugh spends his multimillion-dollar earnings: The radio host owns five houses on an oceanfront estate north of Palm Beach, as well as a garage full of Maybach 57Ss (all black) and a $56 million Gulfstream G550 jet.

Limbaugh’s main home on the estate is 24,000 square feet, while the remaining homes are for guests.

The décor includes a massive chandelier just like the one that hangs in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel, as well as a full suit of armor and a “life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo.”

And according to Chafets, “fragrant candles” burn throughout the place. The main guest suite is “an exact replica of the Presidential Suite of the Hotel George V in Paris.”

The publisher notes that the biography is unauthorized, but Limbaugh gave Chafets extensive interviews for it. Chafets first wrote about Limbaugh in a 2008 New York Times Magazine cover story.