1. He is lampooning the way the Rev talks.
2. He is providing further explanation for the folks who may no be able to grasp what is being said. At some point, he felt that Rio Linda, CA was a hotbed of this. There may be more to the Rio Linda thing but I am unfamiliar with it.
3. He is making fun of Reich’s sense of, shall we say, “self-importance”.
I disagree. He said many think so but that he really is imitating how Wm. F. Buckley said the Most Reverand's name
Rush got his real start in Sacramento, CA on KFBK. Rio Linda is a very down-market ‘suburb’ of Sacramento, if you can say something that nice about it. I’ve been there. It was awful in the days Rush lived in the area and never improved in all the years afterward. It might be nice now, I guess: I won’t return to CA without a court order.
It was probably the closest thing to a trash neighborhood in the Sacto area at the time (you know, where the locals have their car broken down in parts on cinder blocks in the front yard? I lived in Sacto for many years, somewhat to the east in Carmichael). So, when Rush restates something said in relatively educated English, he then dumbs it down and says he’s doing so so that people in Rio Linda can understand him. One could substitute any really poorly-educated community in its place.
Negative. He is affectionately lampooning his hero and mentor, William F. Buckley. Buckley, as you probably know, had some very unusual speech patterns, and in his television show when he introduced the Reverend Jesse Jackson, he pronounced it much like Rush does.
When Rush began his Sacramento show he drove around the area and hit a slum area on the fringe of Rio Linde. He decided to poke fun at the ritzy Rio Linde folk for the cars he saw sitting on blocks, the couches on the front porches, etc.
He is imitating the way Reiche introduced himself after his appointment to the Clinton cabinet.