Now, as the show grew, he added, I mentioned earlier, one of his very first stations was WNTK in New London, New Hampshire, where I had the fun of doing a couple of shows when I began guest hosting this show. And, you know, I love southern New Hampshire. But I couldn\u2019t honestly say that, you know, New London, New Hampshire, it\u2019s a great little town if you ever happen to be in New Hampshire. They got tons of great little stores and everything. But it isn\u2019t what the radio guys consider a major market. And one of the things I loved about Rush, when he acquired major markets is that if he was in the mood for just a really good prank to wind them up, he didn\u2019t care how upset they got. Here is Rush recalling one such time just after picking up some major affiliates, including WLS Chicago.<\/p>\n
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n
RUSH: We\u2019ve been sitting here reminiscing, ladies and gentlemen, at some of the things that have happened in the past over the course of this program, and one of the — we didn\u2019t find the tape of this, I wish we had. But there was an incident early on, shortly after we had secured WLS Chicago as our Chicago affiliate, which to me was huge. I grew up listening to WLS and KXOK in St. Louis, and KMOX as well, and to be on WLS was a real, real, real big deal. I mean, that was major.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Shortly after the clearance on WLS, I was just playing around, horsing around here. I\u2019d found a word in the dictionary that I found fascinating, and after I looked up this word, I said, “You know what we\u2019ve found, ladies and gentlemen?” They were worried about high safety back then, something had happened, and highway safety was a problem, and I said, “One of the things we can do to really clean up highway safety is to get women to stop farding in their cars. If you get that stopped, we\u2019ll be safer. You can see it every time it happens. If you get that stopped, get women to stop farding in their cars, then they\u2019ll be paying attention to driving, and it will be a lot safer out on the roads.”<\/p>\n
Well, all these people started calling. “I can\u2019t believe what you\u2019re saying!”<\/p>\n
“What am I saying? What are you talking about?”<\/p>\n
“Well, how do you know that somebody is doing what you said when they\u2019re driving?”<\/p>\n
“Because you can see it! And I\u2019ll tell you something else: Men don\u2019t do it. You will not see men farding in their cars when they\u2019re driving,” and this went on and on.<\/p>\n
Finally, Tom Tradup, who was running WLS, pulled me off the air, canceled me for 45 minutes and called Ed McLaughlin to say, “This is not what we signed up for. This is not the kind of garbage we signed up for,” and then Tom said, “By the way, I\u2019m sick and tired and hearing that Ted Kennedy song, too. The Philanderer.” I don\u2019t think Ed was even aware of what we were doing. He didn\u2019t monitor every minute of the show. But I knew exactly when I heard this, I said, “This is great.” Of course, the word was fard: f-a-r-d. And you just run that pronunciation real quickly, and people think you\u2019re saying the other word, and it means “to apply makeup.” It\u2019s a French word to apply makeup. So I was on solid ground. I had not uttered an obscenity. I had not even said anything off color. But people thought so, including Tom Tradup.<\/p>\n
END ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n
MARK: Ah, these fainthearted station managers. Rush talking about farding, f-a-r-d. It\u2019s a word from the French, meaning to apply makeup. So in those days women did do a lot of farding in cars. I think some guys do it these days too. By the way, I opened my Oxford English Dictionary and looked at the entry for “fard,” and it doesn\u2019t just mean from the French to apply makeup, but it has a whole other dimension these days that it didn\u2019t have back when Rush was doing that bit, because it means something that an observant Muslim is obligated to do. So if Rush was to start going on about there being too much farding in cars, whoever is running WLS these days would have far more problems with it than he would back when Rush did it.<\/p>\n
I loved Rush when he was just in a playful mood, and here he is — I mentioned earlier Andy Williams singing Born Free, which Rush would embellish with the sound of gunfire whenever he did an environmental story. And actually, Andy liked it. And I know at least one of the two writers whom I mentioned on this show the other day, Don Black, also had no objection to it. But Rush liked to do little embellishments of the pop culture tradition. Here he is, this is a great first line from Rush. Here he is in festive mood.<\/p>\n
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP<\/p>\n
RUSH: Just moseying over here to the yule log to warm up, a little chilly here in the studio tonight, and I was wrong. They do actually make your TV set turn into a fireplace. Isn\u2019t it a miracle? And as we see on our own fireplace, this one has the flames go down a little bit low, too, necessitating a fast-forward to get another log on, which we may or may not do later in the program. Ladies and gentlemen, come with me now as we go over to the audience area of the program. And will the lovely and gracious Janice from Reston, Virginia, please join me. She is going to be our conductor. Janice, let me get my hand-held. I forgot to bring it over here. There we go. Janice, you are here from Reston Virginia, is that right?<\/p>\n