{"id":35220,"date":"2010-04-21T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:05:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T01:05:35","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:05:35","slug":"rush_limbaugh_svengali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2010\/04\/21\/rush_limbaugh_svengali\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush Limbaugh, Svengali?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: As you know, I don\u2019t talk about myself very much. That happens anyway. I have had this piece sent to me by a number of people. It is a blog called Bookworm Room. It\u2019s a woman. I don\u2019t know her identity. It\u2019s BookwormRoom.com, and she posted the following piece yesterday. ‘Ordinary People View Rush as a Dangerous Svengali — If you\u2019d been around in 1894, you would instantly have recognized the name ‘Svengali.\u2019 He was the chief villain in George du Maurier\u2019s blockbuster novel Trilby. The Svengali plot-line was a simple one: Trilby was an innocent (and tone deaf) laundress and model living in fin de siecle Paris. Svengali hypnotized her into becoming a great singer and the toast of the music world. When [Svengali] suffered a heart attack during one of her performances, his spell over her broke, and she was left standing on stage, bewildered and humiliated. Since then, we use the word ‘svengali\u2019 to describe a person who steals the will of another with evil intent. <\/p>\n

<\/a>‘It\u2019s become increasingly clear to me that liberals view Rush Limbaugh in precisely that light. And no, I\u2019m not making the obvious point that the Obami and the Democratic [P]arty fear Rush\u2019s bully pulpit and consistently demonize him. I\u2019m talking about the rank-and-file\u2019s fear that even listening to Rush for a moment or two causes a person to lose the will to be a liberal. Those liberals to whom I speak shy away from him, not because they disagree with what he has to say, but because they fear he will convince them that he\u2019s right. The following is a talk I had just the other day while driving in the car with a liberal friend who, having voted for Obama, is now deeply regretting that decision:<\/p>\n

‘Me: How would you like to do something completely different? Let me put Rush on the radio.<\/p>\n

‘Her: No, no. I don\u2019t want to do that.<\/p>\n

‘Me: Come on, you\u2019ll like him. He\u2019s not at all the way you\u2019ve heard him described in the other media. He\u2019s very well-informed, quite funny, and amazingly prescient.<\/p>\n

‘Her: No, no. He\u2019s too arrogant.<\/p>\n

‘Me: Nah. That\u2019s just an act. Give it a try, for just a few minutes.<\/p>\n

‘Her: No. I can\u2019t listen to him. I watch Fox sometimes.<\/p>\n

‘So here we have a woman who realizes that she made a mistake voting Democrat this election, who is open to conservative news … yet who assiduously avoids any contact with Rush. Incidentally, this was not a one time-only conversation. I had virtually the same conversation with two other regret-filled liberals. The belligerently liberal ones are equally averse to exposing themselves to Rush.<\/p>\n

‘Me: I challenge you to listen to Rush for a half hour.<\/p>\n

‘Him: No. He\u2019s an idiot.<\/p>\n

‘Me: Have you ever listened to him?<\/p>\n

‘Him: No.<\/p>\n

‘Me: Then how do you know he\u2019s an idiot?<\/p>\n

‘Him: He is. He\u2019s a wacko. He doesn\u2019t know anything.<\/p>\n

‘Me: How do you know that?<\/p>\n

‘Him: Are you trying to make me mad?<\/p>\n

‘Me: No. But I do think that you should listen to him. At least then you\u2019d have firsthand knowledge of what he says and whether you agree or disagree with it.<\/p>\n

‘Him: I\u2019m not going to waste my time.<\/p>\n

‘And so on, ad infinitum and definitely ad nauseum. During the 1990s, when I was an unthinking liberal, I knew Rush was out there, but he existed on the periphery of my existence. I read Al Franken\u2019s [book], and laughed at how ‘stupid\u2019 Rush was, but I actually didn\u2019t care about any of the core issues at stake. I had no interest whatsoever in finding out what Rush was like, because nothing he said really mattered. I was working hard at my career, getting married, starting a family, and was therefore disinterested in things political. The world seemed to be rolling along just right, with a Democratic president and a booming economy. To give myself some retroactive credit, though, if a conservative had challenged me back then to listen to Rush, I would have done so &mdash; because I would have been certain that Rush was a big joke, and that I could have laughed at him just as Franken did. <\/p>\n

‘I might have expected to be bored or offended, but I wouldn\u2019t have been worried about being mesmerized and brainwashed. And then came September 11, 2001 and I started paying attention. I began to be concerned about what was going on around me. This concern led me to start reading anything I could get my hands on about all sorts of subjects. I read blogs, both liberal and conservative. I opened my mind to the possibility that my attachment to the Democratic party was wrong — a possibility helped by the fact that I found myself agreeing with the major political decisions George Bush was making, both regarding national security and the economy. In other words, once I realized that my old political staples were failing, I started looking for new information. I wasn\u2019t scared of the new information but, rather, was curious. <\/p>\n

‘Both my old attitude (‘Sure, bring silly Rush on, \u2019cause he\u2019ll be good for a laugh\u2019) and my new attitude (‘There\u2019s something out there I need to learn about\u2019) make it impossible for me to understand the resistance, shading into fear, that my friends and family show when confronted with the possibility that they might hear a minute or two of Rush\u2019s mellifluous tones over the airways. They don\u2019t seem to recognize either the possibility that they might laugh at a fool or learn from a wise man. Instead, they seem genuinely afraid that any exposure to Rush will corrupt them irreparably. Like poor Trilby, they\u2019ll be seduced into an unsustainable way of being, only to find themselves suddenly abandoned and exposed. To them, Rush is no mere conservative; he is Satan incarnate, a tempter who will destroy their liberal souls and leave them in an endless conservative Hell. It\u2019s quite a high compliment to Rush that ordinary liberals believe he has extraordinary powers. It isn\u2019t every conservative radio or talk show host who is perceived as so compelling and seductive that he can destroy people\u2019s world view in an instant. … For all the wrong reasons, they\u2019re right about one thing: he will change their minds.\u2019<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Back now to ‘Ordinary People View Rush as a Dangerous Svengali,\u2019 from a woman identified as Bookworm, her website is BookwormRoom.com, although we\u2019ve shut it down. ‘It\u2019s quite a high compliment to Rush that ordinary liberals believe he has extraordinary powers. It isn\u2019t every conservative radio or talk show host who is perceived as so compelling and seductive that he can destroy people\u2019s world view in an instant. It\u2019s also very frustrating to me because, in a funny way, I agree with my liberal friends that Rush can rejigger their world view very quickly. The only thing is that I don\u2019t believe Rush works his magic through hypnotism and trickery. Instead, I think Rush\u2019s real magic lies in his ability to view the political world as a vast chess board, one on which he can see multiple future moves; his prodigious memory; his well-informed mind; his logical analyses; and his funny persona. He convinces by appealing to our rational mind, our sense of humor, and our knowledge of the world as it is, and not as some Ivory Tower liberal tells us it should be. So, whether by cajolery or challenge, I\u2019m still trying to get my liberals to listen to Rush. For all the wrong reasons, they\u2019re right about one thing: he will change their minds.\u2019<\/p>\n

A rare, rare, rare accurate interpretation of what happens here and what I do. I have referred to myself as a Svengali, people thinking I\u2019m a Svengali on the left. Again, BookwormRoom.com. I have no idea who the woman is, zilch, zero, nada. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: As you know, I don\u2019t talk about myself very much. That happens anyway. I have had this piece sent to me by a number of people. It is a blog called Bookworm Room. It\u2019s a woman. I don\u2019t know her identity. It\u2019s BookwormRoom.com, and she posted the following piece yesterday. ‘Ordinary People View Rush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRush Limbaugh, Svengali? - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2010\/04\/21\/rush_limbaugh_svengali\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Rush Limbaugh, Svengali? - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: As you know, I don\u2019t talk about myself very much. That happens anyway. 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