{"id":242681,"date":"2017-08-01T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=242681"},"modified":"2021-04-28T10:17:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T14:17:59","slug":"the-eib-29th-anniversary-look-back-through-sound-bites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/08\/01\/the-eib-29th-anniversary-look-back-through-sound-bites\/","title":{"rendered":"The EIB 29th Anniversary Look Back Through Sound Bites"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Okay. Now I see the staff has left their posts in there. Yeah, here comes the open door and the giant cake and balloons and staff trooping in here. You can see \u2019em passing on the Dittocam. All right. I\u2019ll make room for the cake. Gonna put the cake right there. Starting our 30th year today at the EIB Network.<\/p>\n

You know, I started my broadcast career in August of 1968… well, it\u2019s 50 years today. I actually started radio at age 16. So 50 years total, starting year 30 for the EIB Network. And what a gorgeous cake. I hope it\u2019s the kind I like. White trash cake. That\u2019s affectionately named, by the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"Okay. So there\u2019s only four candles on it. That signifies what? Four-stars. So, okay, make a wish that a new beta release comes today. (interruption) Tricked me. A trick candle! Thank you very much. Yes, my friends, it\u2019s no longer even worth asking them not to do it. They\u2019re going to do it anyway. I\u2019ve had to work on learning to receive, learning to accept. It\u2019s one of these things that I\u2019ve never been good at. Surprisingly, many people may be shocked at this; I don\u2019t like being the center of attention, particularly birthdays, anniversaries, and so forth. It just makes me a little nervous. But I\u2019m trying to work at it and get better.<\/p>\n

Greetings. Great to have you all here; 800-282-2882, if you want to call and be on the program. Send an email, it\u2019s ElRushbo@eibnet.us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Now, on anniversaries Cookie goes back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites and tries to pull some things from previous programs that we can highlight and demonstrate to people who are new. Things that happened in the past on the program. She tried to make them different each year, and with 30 years, 29 years to choose from, she\u2019s come up with some new things.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I thought, you know, rather than shelve this for the third hour, somebody made a comment to me some time ago that made sense when I said I didn\u2019t want any kind of blowout or party or recognition. They said, “You\u2019ve gotta mark the anniversary. If you don\u2019t, it may as well not have happened. Don\u2019t be embarrassed about it. These are accomplishments, achievements, these are timelines. You\u2019ve gotta mark it, if not for you, for other people.”<\/p>\n

So rather than move these highlights from previous programs to the third hour, I\u2019m gonna start into them now, because the news of the day is what it is, and we always get to it. Nothing ever gets short-changed here, depending on how we choose to start. So what Cookie did, the first bite here is somewhat unique. She came to the conclusion that one of the ways, one of the techniques that I have employed over the years is to paint pictures.<\/p>\n

Radio has no TV, obviously, no screens, so the host paints the picture; the audience envisions the picture in their own mind. That\u2019s why radio, by the way, can be the most intimate of all media. Done right, radio can have much more intimacy and much more impact than television, because it\u2019ll all be active participation rather than passive. You don\u2019t have it on in the background, like TV can be on in the background, you\u2019re doing something else, you watch it, something catches your attention, you go back to it.<\/p>\n

But a good radio program commands your attention from start to finish, such as this one. She said, “The way you have tried to tell people who you\u2019re talking about by comparing them to other people,” she said, “I noticed this.” So she\u2019s put together a little montage here of two and a half minutes of how I employ this technique.<\/p>\n

RUSH ARCHIVE: Have you ever, by the way, heard of a better name for a CEO of an oil company, Rex Tillerson? And he looks like a Rex Tillerson. John Kerry looks like Lurch from the Addams Family. The Pajama Boy, Ossoff. My security guy Joseph Stalin. That Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. He looks like Alfred E. Neuman with a hundred more pounds. If I occasionally slip up and call Scaramucci “Tom Hagen,” it\u2019s on purpose. Chris Cuomo, the Fredo of the Cuomo family.<\/p>\n

\"\"This Jim Acosta guy, this guy reminds me of, have you ever had a cat, pet cat, and get one of these red laser pointers? The ferret-like Paul Krugman. Norah O\u2019Donnell, her bathwater can\u2019t possibly stink. John Edwards, the Breck Girl. Susan Hoerchner, it literally looked like they dragged this woman out of a casket. Chatsworth Osborne Jr. this would be Tucker Carlson. That is a pretty good comparison, Tom Daschle to Eddie Haskell. I saw Ichabod Crane on TV this morning, Austan Goolsbee. You know, one bald guy looks like every other bald guy to me.<\/p>\n

\"\"Algore, the guy\u2019s starting to look more and more look Rodney Dangerfield. It\u2019s uncanny!<\/p>\n

Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, who looks like a Cabbage Patch doll. Andrew Napolitano, the adult Eddie Munster. Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam\u2019s henchmen, looks like Felix the Cat. Kuchar is a great guy, got Joker-like cheekbones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Neil Gorsuch, the man really is coming across as Jimmy Stewart. Martin Savidge, CNN lifer. He looks just like the Ken doll. John Roberts, cookie-cutter anchor. James Carville, Serpent Head. Dana Perino, she\u2019s got this piano teacher look in her eyes, waiting for a mistake. Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz, she\u2019s doing something to her hair. Looks like mayonnaise.<\/p>\n

Wolf Blitzer, who, if it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, would be totally colorless. Saxby Chambliss, if it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, this would be a totally colorless guy. David “Rodham” Gergen, if it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, he\u2019d be a totally colorless guy. Leslie Gelb if it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, this guy\u2019d be a totally colorless guy. Ken Starr, if it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, he would be totally colorless, folks.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sitting here watching Hillary. Is it just me, or is she starting to look more and more like Mao Tse-tung? Hillary Clinton as Nurse Ratched, the nurse, the evil, bullying, mean-spirited nurse from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest. Sounds like your ex-wife screaming at you.<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH: Second ex-wife screaming at you. So this is some examples. Obviously I\u2019m gonna have to change up this varicose veins line, like maybe refer to it as an aerial display of varicose veins or some such thing.<\/p>\n

Okay. Next up, not many more of these, folks. Just some. This goes back to 1993, November 5th. ABC News, 20\/20 with Barbara Walters. She doesn\u2019t know who I am. She is trying to figure out who I am. And they\u2019re still trying to figure out who I am, people in the Drive-By Media. For 29 years they\u2019ve been trying to figure it out, and alternately they have the various explanations for it. One day an entertainer, the next day the titular head of the Republican Party. The next day the guy scaring Republicans in Washington into following my lead.<\/p>\n

But, you know, they\u2019re no closer now than they were then because they simply don\u2019t understand conservatism. And they probably don\u2019t spend much time actually listening to the program. But back on November 5th of 1993, which is Bill Clinton\u2019s first year in office, Barbara Walters did a profile of me for 20\/20, and it was called, “Who is Rush Limbaugh?”<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Will you tell us what it is that you basically believe?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019m mainstream conservative. I don\u2019t consider myself right wing, although I have, as I look at the newspaper accounts of my goings and comings, I see that I have come up with a third name, ultra-conservative Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Do you mind?<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH: No, I think it\u2019s part of the territory. I think what I do is shine the light of truth on things. And then the reaction is, “Well, let\u2019s label this guy something that will discredit him. Let\u2019s call him a bigot. Let\u2019s call him a racist. Let\u2019s call him ultra-this or ultra-that.”<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Do you care? I mean, does it hurt?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I look at myself as a harmless, lovable little fuzzball and so now —<\/p>\n

WALTERS: (laughing) No kidding.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. I\u2019m just touchy-feely. I\u2019m not a threat to anybody.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Come sit on my lap.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I would, I would love to. I\u2019ve wanted to for the longest time.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Sitting in Barbara Walters\u2019 lap. It continued November 5th, 1993, coanchor Barbara Walters, another portion of the feature “Who is Rush Limbaugh?”<\/p>\n

WALTERS: His talk radio competitor, Larry King, has said Limbaugh is a zealot who\u2019s made a career out of bashing people. Nightline\u2019s Ted Koppel, who\u2019s had Limbaugh as a guest, views him differently.<\/p>\n

KOPPEL: He\u2019s extremely articulate. Rush Limbaugh is… I guess to the left, he is sort of like an aching tooth — they can\u2019t stand him, but they can\u2019t leave him alone — and to the right, he\u2019s like cotton candy: They just keep gobbling him up.<\/p>\n

\"\"WALTERS: What influence do you think you have? Can you make people a vote a particular way? Can you really change their views?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I can. I can. I think I\u2019m validating. I think I am ratifying what people already think and I think they\u2019re happy because I\u2019m one of them. Also, I have fun. I combine, I think, two things that are not found anywhere else in the media — television, radio, newspaper. I combine irreverence — a sense of humor — with a serious, credible discussion of consequential issues, and there is no one else who\u2019s doing that left or right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: One more bite from this show, November 5th, 1993. We haven\u2019t used these bites before, which is one of the reasons I like this. We have not. In all of these anniversary shows, we\u2019ve not gone back. These bites I haven\u2019t heard since they happened. In fact, I don\u2019t even know why the quality is poor. The quality sounds like we got these over the phone. Anybody know why this is so…? It sounds like someone phoned these things in, sounds like telephone quality. It\u2019s 1993. This next one… It\u2019s kind of similar to what they\u2019ve been doing with Trump for the last two years.<\/p>\n

They can\u2019t understand the appeal. They\u2019ve never understood the appeal. They can\u2019t fathom why Trump works. They\u2019ve never been able to fathom where this program works, and they don\u2019t get the joke when the joke\u2019s about them. You cannot joke about the left. They don\u2019t get it, they have no sense of humor. And they don\u2019t understand the bond with the audience. They don\u2019t understand that about Trump. They still don\u2019t and you can see by how they\u2019re trying to break that bond. They don\u2019t have any idea how to do it and the same thing here.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another example, Barbara Walters\u2019s profile, “Who is Rush Limbaugh?” ABC\u2019s 20\/20 in 1993…<\/p>\n

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Rush, you want to ever be in politics?<\/p>\n

RUSH: No. Sitting here today, telling you this, I have no desire to go into politics.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: You\u2019d be very effective that way.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I can\u2019t see doing the basic thing one has to do in politics.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Which is?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Pshew! (lays out his hand) Put your hand out and ask people to put something in it: Money.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Ah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: When money is in your hand, people want a payback, and it\u2019s never with money. And it just… It\u2019s “say good-bye to independence.” It\u2019s “say good-bye to who you are.”<\/p>\n

WALTERS: With all the stuff that\u2019s written about you and all of the stuff that you say people make up and so on, what\u2019s the biggest misconception?<\/p>\n

RUSH: They can\u2019t discredit my views, Barbara. They can\u2019t discredit my discovery of the truth because it\u2019s not based on anything phony.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Mmm-hmm.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But, boy, if they can label me as some kind of oddball, something with a childhood where my father beat me or I\u2019m still on a mission to prove my father wrong and all this —<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I am a threat to a specific group of people in this country known as liberals. I don\u2019t want to be a threat; I don\u2019t think they should feel threatened. If they do, it must be because I\u2019m saying things… It\u2019s only the truth that hurts, Barbara. It\u2019s only the truth.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: Say something lovable and modest, please.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (laughing)<\/p>\n

WALTERS: (chuckles) Please say something modest.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I have for about an hour.<\/p>\n

WALTERS: (laughing)<\/p>\n

RUSH: Modest about why my show is a success?<\/p>\n

WALTERS: About anything! (chuckling)<\/p>\n

RUSH: I can credit it to the good taste and refinement of the American people.<\/p>\n

END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: See that? “Say something nice. Can you say something nice? Can you please just say something modest about yourself? Why can\u2019t you?” It\u2019s like there\u2019s always this thought of bombastic, mean-spirited extremism. But privately, I mean, you could tell she liked me. I\u2019ve been in her top 10 list at the end of the year I think three different times — Top Ten Most Fascinating People. There\u2019s no animosity between me and Barbara Walters. I should tell you about a dinner party that she and Liz Smith hosted one Christmas that Roger Ailes and I attended, and…<\/p>\n

\"\"(laughing) Ahhh! I ended up singing a homeless aria as my Christmas tune. They ran around the group and they wanted everybody to sing a Christmas carol, lead the group. By the time they got to me, all the Christmas carols I knew had been sung. So I sang Ain\u2019t Got No Home as Placido Domingo, and you should have seen Liz Smith and Barbara Walters. They wanted to grab the hook, get me out of there, because I was (laughing) embarrassing them and their friends.<\/p>\n

That was about the time I figured out that when I was being invited all these things, I was the circus act. “Hey, here\u2019s this new oddball curiosity in town, this conservative! Let\u2019s have him over here and see if he can entertain us.” Now we move on. David Brinkley. This was my first appearance on This Week with David Brinkley. It aired December 26, 1993. I also got on well with him. I loved David Brinkley. I loved watching his show and it was an honor to be on it. He said, “You obviously enjoy very much kicking liberals around and a great number of people enjoy you doing it. When did you find out it was so much fun to do that?”<\/p>\n

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: Anybody can tell you what you think. But if you can illustrate what you think then you have a better chance of persuading people, and I\u2019ve just chosen to illustrate absurdity — which I consider much of liberalism to be — with absurdity. There aren\u2019t many people that make jokes with liberals. They\u2019re afraid to.<\/p>\n

\"\"BRINKLEY: Why are they afraid?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I think liberals have for so long had a corner on their issues. They don\u2019t even consider themselves ideological. They just consider themselves right. Conservatives are ideologues and wrong and liberals are right — and if you attack that, you\u2019re attacking sacred cows.<\/p>\n

BRINKLEY: You were a radio announcer. Suddenly you discovered liberals, began attacking them. What, um —<\/p>\n

RUSH: (laughing) Back to that. See?<\/p>\n

BRINKLEY: No, not back to that. I never left it. But why has talk radio — which you represent more than any other one person, the success of it. Why is it become such a factor in this country?<\/p>\n

RUSH: ‘Cause I think that there are more and more people who want to know information from alternative sources than what have become known as the dominant media. See, the liberals think that I\u2019m creating this little army of mind-numbed robots out there, David, that are just carrying out my marching orders. That\u2019s not at all what\u2019s happening. There\u2019s an entire segment of our population which saw that the things it believes in are routinely the insulted or laughed at or made fun of in all other areas of the media. Not just news, but books and television shows, movies and so forth. And here I come and I stand up for what these people believe, and they\u2019re just happy about that.<\/p>\n

END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: And that\u2019s been the case since day one. Do we have time to squeeze…? Ah, da-da-da-da. We got two more of these. Let me take a break here so I can get both of them in on the other side. We\u2019ll be back. Let me see if it\u2019s just… Yeah, just two more of these, and we\u2019ll wrap the anniversary stuff and get on to rest of the program.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Starting our 30th year here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, behind the Golden EIB Microphone. I just checked the email, and there was an email from a guy who said, “You sound like you\u2019re hurrying through this stuff, like you want to get past it. You should do more of this. This is great stuff. The news is the news and it\u2019s the news every day. But this stuff from the archives; we haven\u2019t heard this.” Another email: “You sound the same. If this is anything, it\u2019s a testament to how consistent you are.”<\/p>\n

So I appreciate all the nice words that people have shared with me. The email is overflowing today — and, as always, I\u2019m not gonna be able to thank people individually. One more with Brinkley. I remember this moment when he asked me this. By the way, Mr. Snerdley said, “It\u2019s so great to hear David Brinkley\u2019s voice.” This is back when Sunday shows were the Sunday shows. I think the only link to the Sunday shows being the Sunday shows is Chris Wallace on Fox today. But Brinkley said, “How do you regard yourself?<\/p>\n

“Are you a newsman? Are you a philosopher? What are you?” I\u2019ll never forget, he asked me this question and he said, “‘Cause I don\u2019t know we\u2019ve ever had anyone like you before.” And I\u2019ll tell you, when he said that, I was swelling with pride. But I had… I couldn\u2019t betray that. I had to answer the question \u2019cause I\u2019m on there as a guest. Do I have time to squeeze…? Here is, I think… There\u2019s no time. It\u2019s 51 seconds. We got time. Here\u2019s my answer to, “I don\u2019t know we\u2019ve ever had anyone like you before.”<\/p>\n

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019ll tell you very simply what I do — and one of the reasons that people have so much trouble dissecting me and categorizing me is that I combine two elements that most people don\u2019t combine and are very rarely found anywhere in the media. And that is a serious, heartfelt analysis and discussion of issues and ideas every day, combined with an almost irreverent sense of humor. It is thought by some serious journalists that once you start cracking jokes that you\u2019ve disqualified your credibility on the serious side. And since my jokes and since my humor are all aimed at my serious side too — making the same points in just a different way — I think that\u2019s where people have trouble categorizing. Is he an entertainer or is he a provocateur? Is he a philosopher or commentator?<\/p>\n

BRINKLEY: You also have another description of yourself and then we have to go. You call yourself “a harmless, lovable, little fuzzball.” (hearty chuckling)<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s right. (laughing) That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n

RUSH: And I still do. That\u2019s in reaction and response to all of the paranoid schizophrenia about me being all these horrible, rotten things that every conservative happens to be accused of being — and I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, this next and last bite that has connections to the anniversary program today, you\u2019ve heard this, we\u2019ve played this one before. December 10th, 1994, in Baltimore, Heritage Foundation congressional freshman orientation at Camden Yards. I was named an honorary member of the freshman class of 1994. There were 50 of them, 52, maybe.<\/p>\n