While there are plenty of radio industry insiders who will defend Rush Limbaugh's new $400 million deal — inevitably contingent on ratings delivery and plenty of other factors — one person in particular is pasting a picture of radio giant Clear Channel on his dartboard. It's Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff, who spent the month of May assailing the New York Times and the month of April on the war between John Malone and Barry Diller. On CNBC yesterday, Wolff called the deal "a monster error."

"I know – I’m sitting here saying, ‘What are these people smoking?’ You know, the truth is that Rush Limbaugh has been – he’s ridden the rise of conservatism for 25 years and I don’t, maybe nobody quite, quite has been following the news, but that’s coming to an end. It’s going to be over and Rush Limbaugh in a relatively short period of time is going to look like a really kind of out-of-it kind of oddity and I cannot for the life of me imagine how someone could have made this deal."

This is because, says Wolff, Americans as a whole are shifting to the left, and the profitability of conservatism will wane.

Except that's the most ridiculous argument, like, evs — mostly because it assumes that instead of tuning in to Limbaugh, America would is going to head to talkers like Rachael Maddow in the same droves. And while the MSNBC regular's ratings may increase from here on past November, Wolff's point is still moot; the middle Americans that constitute a huge chunk of Limbaugh's ratings are not, over the next eight years of his deal, going to suddenly find him leaning too partisan in the wrong direction. [Video via Business & Media]