Rush Comments on Reaction to His Ad

When it comes to broadcasting, other than in the mainstream news media, it’s getting harder and harder for liberals to be heard and seen out there. So that video is posted. Roy Black was interviewed by Matt Lauer. It got a little heated today, Roy did. “Passionate,” let me put it that way. Both videos are posted at RushLimbaugh.com. If you didn’t see them live they’re there for you if you want to go look at them. Only one thing I wish to comment on, the Associated Press. [program observer interruption]. Hang on, Mr. Snerdley. (Laughing) We need to get a Dittocam on him, the hell with the Dittocam on me! (Laughing.) I mean, are you muttering obscenities in there or what? In front of (transcriber) Dawn? Yes, you are! Just [program observer interruption]. Of course it was a hatchet job of a story. What do you think it’s going to be? That’s only a testament to the effectiveness of the ad.
You people have to learn how to judge the reaction. If the media goes berserk, it means they’re reacting to something that’s effective. I’m not supposed to get my point of view in the Palm Beach Post, and I did. And so since I’m not supposed to get my point of view in that paper, they’re mad. Let me just say a quick little story. The AP reporter, whose office is in the Palm Beach Post building, and so she’s on the phone yesterday while I’m on the air so I got a representative talking to her and we send her transcripts of the May 4th program to illustrate how I was taken out of context in the column on Sunday, that this ad was really the result of, and so she writes her piece, and none of the things — I mean I was finding the transcript during the program yesterday — none of the transcript evidence that I sent her ended up in her piece. Her name is Jill Barton. None of it, which was the whole point of the ad.
At any rate, she went and she talked to the editor of the Palm Beach Penny Saver, a guy named Sears, and Sears said [paraprasing], “Weeell, you know, he can get his point of view any time he wants in this paper if he would return our calls and talk to our reporters. He never talks to us.” So that story runs, and I looked and said, “Wait a minute. We talk to these people all the time. We talk to ’em all the time! We spend more time with them than any other publication because they’re here in the backyard.” So we called her back and said, “He’s wrong about that. We’ve had an editorial board meeting with the Palm Beach Post. We’ve had meetings with the news reporters. We’ve sent transcripts, statements. We respond to every request we get from the Palm Beach Post,” and so the AP reporter…
We said, “Go over to the newsroom and ask ’em. Walk over to the newsroom and ask the reporters there if they are shut out when they want information from us.” So she walked over there, found out that what the editor said at first was incorrect, so did a little bit of a rewrite, and the rewrite said, quoted the editor as saying, ”Limbaugh’s never personally responded.” (Laughing.) Now, wait. It gets even better. Then the editor goes on and says, “I don’t understand why Limbaugh is afraid of opinions.” (Sighing) We’re not afraid of opinions. It’s just I was responding. It’s the only way I can respond is to buy space in your stupid paper, and when you’re going to tell your readers that my opinion on the Iraq prison issue cements the fact I ought to go to jail, I’m going to respond to it. So I did.

Anyway, let me just say this to Mr. Sears and all these others who are running with this AP story that is unchecked and not all that balanced. Oh, and the local Palm Beach Post reporterette opens her story by saying, “Rush Limbaugh’s rage returned.” Those ads represent my “rage.” (Chuckles) But Mr. Sears, let me just tell you something. I’ll address you personally here: “You’re right. I’ve not spoken to you or your editors or your reporters personally, nor have I spoken to the Washington Times personally, nor have I spoken to CNN personally, nor have I spoken to MSNBC personally, nor have I spoken to the American Spectator personally, nor have I spoken to Tampa Tribune personally. I haven’t spoken to any media, period, on any of this because I can’t.” Now, despite the fact that I haven’t talked to any of them, they have all examined the procedures being employed by the state attorney’s office in Palm Beach County, and they have found suspicious behavior and they have concluded there may in fact be a political component and maybe a witch hunt here — and I haven’t talked to them at all, just like I haven’t talked to you.
Furthermore, my lawyer and representatives have spent more time talking to the Palm Beach Post editorial board and the Palm Beach Post writers and reporters than we have spent talking to any media outlet in this country, and yet this editor allows himself to be quoted, and it gets passed on as though we are freezing them out and we are not talking to them at all. It’s the exact opposite. I just want to pass this on to you, ladies and gentlemen, just to square this up because I have the opportunity to. Most people, when they get skewered and lambasted and treated unfairly by the media don’t have a chance to reply, but I do, and I wanted to take that opportunity that I have now, and I thank you for your indulgence in this.
I thank Kate O’Beirne from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know how to thank her any more. I really hope you go read this — and every journalist ought to read this, too. Every reporter that’s reporting on this whole prison matter ought to read Kate O’Beirne’s piece today at National Review Online. Take a quick time-out. We’ll be back and resume with all the rest of today’s Open Line Friday program. [program observer interruption] Mr. Snerdley, would you smile? Please smile in there. You know, get over it. I mean, it takes (clap). This is going on for 16 years. I know, it irritates you, but you’ve got to learn to recognize victory when it’s happening. We all need to learn that. We’re in the middle of a victory in Iraq; we just don’t know it because people don’t want to see it media don’t want to report it. We’re in the middle of victory in Iraq.
We’re almost in the middle of Iraq in Najaf, folks. The people in Najaf want those holy clowns thrown out of there. Read William Safire in the New York Times today. We are close to victory in Najaf and all this other stuff is going on. We’re winning! Our uniformed personnel, our military is winning over there, while their critics and their enemies in this country focus on trying to dispirit them — and I’m winning here. You know, we’re all Americans, and those of us who want to win are. Now, just sit tight there. We’ll take a break and come back and resume with all the rest of this. Wait till you hear Judge Napolitano on Fox News last night. He puts all this in Palm Beach involving me in perspective with two sound bites. I need Snerdley in a good mood here, folks, so I’m going to play the Napolitano bits, sound bites, when we come back after the break.

I want you to hear what happened to Pam Bondi last night, the assistant state attorney who is going to take up the case, the side against me on this case on the Scarborough Country show on MSNBC. Scarborough is talking to her, introducing her, and says, “Doesn’t Limbaugh have a right to this type of thing, go on the offensive against this prosecutor, Pam, because doesn’t it appear, does it not, that he’s running a very politically motivated prosecution of Rush Limbaugh?”
BONDI: Joe, I don’t know how in the world it can be considered politically motivated. Rush Limbaugh ? [ear-splitting test-bar tone.]
SCARBOROUGH: Uh, okay, Joe (Tacopina)– why don’t you —
TACOPINA: I knew I would shut her up.
SCRABOROUGH: You did. You’ve won this debate.
RUSH: That’s the last we saw or heard of Pam Bondi. She’s on this show a lot. I mean, just one of those quirky accidents but they weren’t able to get the bird back for the rest of the segment. In fact, we’ve got a still shot of the bars going up when they lost her feed that we might put on the website just to acknowledge that she was there. Now, I want you to listen to this, Mr. Snerdley. We’re going to go back to this. It’s audio sound bite #8. Last night, this was Fox News Channel, the big story with John Gibson, who said — in talking to their legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano — Gibson says, “You know, Rush Limbaugh always has something to say. (chuckles) Now he’s running a full-page newspaper ad in Florida, claims a local prosecutor is out to get him for political reasons. Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano will tell us what this has to do with the actual case against Limbaugh. So what is it?”
NAPOLITANO: In Florida the prosecutors are popularly elected they join political parties and they run political campaigns ,and the guy that’s after Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat, an avid Democrat who participated in Al Gore’s campaign and was involved in the recount — and Rush is being targeted with a crime that nobody else has been prosecuted for, John. It’s a very unusual crime. It’s called “doctor shopping.” Essentially they’re saying to him, “You failed to tell doctor #2 that you were also being treated by doctor #1, and you accepted prescriptions from both of them.” The Supreme Court says about that, “It’s none of your business, Mr. Prosecutor, the communication between a patient and a physician.”
RUSH: (Laughing.) About this doctor shopping… I got to shut up, but I could end this with one answer. Anyway — but I can’t. You have to trust me on this. Here’s one more. Gibson says, “Well, the courts are about to rule on that, aren’t this they?”
NAPOLITANO: Here’s what he (the state attorney) did. He sent his investigators to seize from drugstores and hospitals and doctors all of Rush’s medical records. You don’t do that in America. You send a notice to the defendant saying, “We’re going to ask for your records. If you don’t want to surrender them, we’ll let a court decide,” and that court is now deciding whether the prosecutor did the right thing — he didn’t — and whether he can use Rush’s medical records against him. He oughtn’t to be able to.
GIBSON: Boy, that stinks.
RUSH: There you have it. That’s Fox News. Now, you feel better, Mr. Snerdley? Feel a little bit better? This perspective has yet to show up in the Palm Beach Post is the point, since October. It is not there and their editorial page, their columnists, it’s not there — and that’s the reason we ran the ad, pure and simple, to get that side of it in the newspaper had to buy my way in.
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