Ordinary Americans Brought Down CBS

RUSH: (Laughing) That’s right, but there’s more. The documents were real before they were fake, but they’re still the truth.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: (Laughing) That’s what we’re all being asked to believe. Well, Chris, I appreciate that. I can’t thank you enough, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. I just gotta say thanks, people are trying to be nice. I’m going to say thank you, I get all embarrassed, like I don’t like birthdays being celebrated, that’s somewhat embarrassing. [Program Observer interruption] But — what? What? What? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I think the main reason that I am reviled, if I can use a mild term, the main reason I’m reviled today is because I’ve had a single target, if you want to say, during these 16 years, it has been the media. It has been my attempt to explain to people how it works so they can understand when they watch it or read it what they’re actually seeing and what the motivations are, and what he’s saying is that this is the ultimate example of what those of us who have been sounding these warning bells, raising these red flags have been talking about.

So, yeah, I mean, it’s not correct to say I’m targeting the media. Those of you new to this program, and you’re trying to figure it out and you’re trying to balance what you hear here with all this criticism you may have heard over the years from people who have not listened to this program or not listened to it very much, you’ve probably heard that I’m a mean-spirited extremist, cold-hearted, cruel bigot, make things up just to fit my agenda and all that. And of course you probably also believe that I go through the newspapers every day looking for any target that I can find to attack, and, of course, that’s not what happens. From the get-go, what I have done on this program is get up and look at how the institutions, traditions, and people I believe in are under attack, and then I defend them. And in the process of mounting a defense of the things I believe in and the people I believe in, it is incumbent upon me, as part of the defense, to try to explain the attacks that are being made by the people that bother me. And so it’s basically true to say that the focus of this program has been the American left and whoever is on it.
Wherever I go, wherever the American left takes — if it’s the animal rights movement, if it’s the wacko environmental movement, if it’s elements of the media, if it’s the Democratic Party, if it’s the Soviet Union, that’s what I criticize, and always have. And of course it’s quite understandable the people who exist in those groups don’t like being criticized, especially when it never stuck before and they had a monopoly for all those years. And now it’s falling apart on them. It’s understandable that they wouldn’t have anything nice to say about me, it’s understandable that they would be doing whatever they can to discredit me. It’s part of the game. It’s the league that we play in here. So it’s part and parcel of it.
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I want to say something about the CBS business and the bloggers. There’s a lot to be said about this, actually, based on this last call that we took from the gentleman who wanted to thank me for the information and the guidance over the years of learning to translate and dissect what is happening in left-wing America, including the media. Over the course of these 16 years that I have served behind the Golden EIB Microphone, many people have expressed gratitude and I’m overwhelmed on all occasions to receive it, because I’m just a guy on the radio that has access to a microphone and has the ability to be honest about what I think, and the fact that it caught on was a huge thrill. It was not a grand strategy, just went out and did it.
Over the course of these 16 years, when this program started in 1988 in August, I mean the first year, every caller would call here and say, “This is just great! I’m so glad finally there’s somebody in the national media that says what I say and thinks what I think.” And what happened was this program did not create mind-numbed robots, it validated a whole lot of thinking that already existed in America, but the people that thought and felt that way didn’t see it reflected back at them in any media. All they saw was the things that they hold dear and their beliefs being laughed at and impugned, and in some cases destroyed, or attempted to be destroyed. So people would say to me during the course of the growth of this show, “You know, we could use a lot of people like you.” And I would always say, “No, no, we don’t need any more people like me. I can handle it.” And I was just being humorous. But what’s happened in these 16 years is that there are now countless people like me.
You look at the growth of the so-called alternative or new media, and I don’t care where you take it, you take it to talk radio, Fox News, the Internet, the blogosphere, whatever you want to call it, the Washington Times, the new emphasis on conservative magazines and their impact, there are countless people like me out there, and it’s terrific. And you know what’s happened? You take a look at the CBS story. One of the things that I have always said about this country, one of the ways I’ve always described this country, to try to convey my deep love for it to people and to try to convey just how unique the country is and just who makes it work. It’s a favorite phrase of mine actually looking out across America and finding who is it that makes this country work, and it’s not Tom Daschle, and it isn’t John Kerry, and it’s not John McCain, and it’s nobody in Washington.
The people who make this country work are people you’ll never meet, people whose names you’ll never know, because they’re just toiling away living their lives, trying to do the best they can against whatever obstacles they face. They’re not seeking fame and they’re not finding it, and nobody is making stories about them, but the vast, vast, vast majority of the people in this country who make it work will never, ever be known nationally. Known by their friends, known by their communities and neighbors, but who are these people? These are not people that exist in the ebb and flow of media every day, they don’t have time for it. They are people who have their own passions; they have their own dreams, and they’re out there following them every day. They’re out there living their lives. And if they’ve got time for media they squeeze it in whenever. Some people more than others, but I’ll tell you, if everybody is watching TV all day we wouldn’t have the GDP we do. If everybody was listening to radio all day we wouldn’t have the GDP we do.
There are a lot of people out there that really make this country work, you start talking about who are heroes and who are not heroes and we loosely define it now. But there’s a lot of people out there doing things that very few of us would do, and they’re not complaining about it, and they do it because they like it. And one of the bounties of freedom, as opposed to oppression, in an oppressive society the state goes and finds people to dig ditches and they go find people to work in sewers, and they go find people to do long haul truck driving, any job. They go find people that are going to be doctors someplace.

In our country people who want to do those things do it. Some don’t want to do it but have to as a means of getting somewhere else. But people are nevertheless out there engaging in whatever it is that inspires them or motivates them. And at the same time all this is happening, this radio program is growing and all these people when they did have time to access media got a little different take on things and they found out that there’s a little different coloring to the mainstream press nowadays than there was say 15 or 16 years ago. All of these people that told me over the years, “Boy we could use a whole lot more people like you,” and I jokingly said, “No, I can handle it.” Well, there have been countless people like me out there. And among them, and this, by the way, these — I forgot my place for a second, but this group of people that we never will ever know, these people are not seeking fame, these people are just making the country work, they live in a society which permits ordinary people to do extraordinary things. That’s one of my favorite phrases to describe this country: ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things, every day. It happens every day in this country. We wouldn’t be the country we are if it weren’t happening. That’s why I’m just so impatient with all the negativism that emanates from wherever it emanates. I don’t understand it, there’s no reason for it. Yeah, life has ups and downs, but when you look at the overall potential and opportunity that every American has to explore each and every day, there’s not time to be depressed about it. Now, most people, a lot of people still do get depressed, and it’s a shame and so forth, but still the opportunity here is there. And when you have all these ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things, that to me says more about the kind of country we have and the people that live in this country, and it’s one of the reasons I remain forever optimistic about our fortunes and future as Americans.

Well, take a look at this CBS story. Take a look at it. What actually happened here? What actually happened here is that one of the time-honored, greatest institutions of highest repute in the history of media attempted to pass off a fraudulent story attacking a sitting president for the purpose of dooming his reelection in the middle of a campaign using forged documents. And look what happened. Ordinary people, sitting at home, with computers, were able to deduce in two hours that CBS was perpetrating a fraud on the American people. This would not have happened 16 years ago, it would not have happened 30 years ago. Independent of the existence of the Internet here. Of course, the Internet’s ability and the rise of the digital world with the ability to make these instant comparisons and the fact that there aren’t any 1970s typewriters around in great number to go forge things on, yeah, those are all factors, but still here you have by reputation the best, those that work at CBS. There’s none better, that’s why they’re there ostensibly. Maybe some at CBS and maybe some at NBC, but I mean that’s the pinnacle. You want to go into TV news, that’s where you want to end up. These are the best of the best, and look what happened, ordinary Americans, using average, ordinary, everyday American products, a computer, a telephone line, American written software, have brought down one of the most powerful and unassailable institutions in the history of American media. And don’t think they haven’t been brought down. And they haven’t yet, they’re in the process. They’ve been cut down. Now, this is a classic illustration of what I mean. And this is not to criticize the bloggers by calling them ordinary Americans. I’m merely using this as a comparative term. To me, remember, the ordinary American is a person who makes the country work. The ordinary American you never hear of, who is by definition anonymous because nobody can know everybody. Here’s who’s making the country work. And look who brings down the great Tiffany network, CBS. It wasn’t other news networks who doubted this. They’re late to the chase. It wasn’t CBS that brought themselves down in an effort to save themselves and get the story right. Nope, they were prepared to perpetuate the fraud. “The documents were true before they were forged, but they’re still accurate,” is the CBS line today.

And, of course, in the midst of all this, the same thing that’s happening to the bloggers today is the same thing that happened to me 16 years ago. The bloggers, ah, you can’t take these people, they don’t have any checks and balances, they don’t have any editors, they can say whatever they want, there’s no guarantee of honesty. This is what the people at CBS say. This are the people that perpetrated the fraud criticizing the ordinary Americans who caught ’em. The ordinary Americans who caught ’em are there because they have been informed, attuned, sensitized to the operating techniques of CBS over the years.

Let’s say the CBS does the story, the blogosphere ignores it. If the blogosphere ignores it, it’s because there’s no reason to suspect CBS. But there is reason to suspect CBS. Why is there reason to suspect CBS? Well, because enough people now know that CBS is not what it portrays itself to be. It’s not a down-the-middle, objective bunch of journalists just standing on the corner telling us what goes on. They have an agenda designed to try to destroy President Bush. And they have now been discovered to be in cahoots with the Kerry campaign. And none of this would be known were it not for ordinary Americans, who have been characterized by a former CBS News executive, Jonathan Klein as just a bunch of people in their pajamas at their computer writing things at 12 noon, the pajamahadeen, they’ve called themselves. But there is no limiting ordinary Americans.
This little blogger story here can illustrate to every other ordinary American what is possible against these big, powerful, supposedly unassailable institutions, so big and powerful, nobody could get close to them, so big and powerful, they can’t be defeated, they can only be stopped occasionally, it’s not true. Ordinary Americans. And ordinary Americans have dragged, slowly but surely, other big institutions to the truth. The big institutions were the last to arrive at the truth, and some of them to this moment are still not there.

Now, I realize that within this new alternative media there exists some jealousy. I sense that some people don’t want to give the blogosphere the full credit. They have to parcel it out because everybody wants a piece of the action, this is quite normal, this is human nature. The fact of the matter is it was the blogosphere and it was a couple of sites, power line and Free Republic, and the Free Republic has been one of the most impugned blogs, websites, in the history of websites by the very institution that’s been brought down. When Dan Rather talked about partisan political operatives he means those who lurk at Free Republic. Who’s Free Republic? It’s ordinary Americans. Liberals look down on ordinary Americans, don’t have enough decision-making power, do the right thing, not smart enough. You don’t know how much it grates on them at CBS that it’s something like Free Republic or one of their chat rooms or one of the Freepers there or the Powerline. You have no idea how it irritates them that that kind of person brought them down. The average, ordinary, untrained journalist, you just do not know how this irritates them inside, more than the fact that they got caught, it’s who caught ’em that irritates them. And so just as I started out, I was a fad and I was a liar and I made it up and I was bad for America and I posed threats to democracy, as the cover of TIME said, so now the same things are being said did the bloggers. Fox News has had its turn, and we all continue rotating in the criticism carousel of the left. They’ll take shots at this program one day or other talk radio hosts, they’ll take shots at the blogosphere, then they’ll take shots at Fox News, rather than clean up their own act. As long as that continues, their erosion will continue. Because the one thing I’ve learned is those of us in the so-called alternative new media, ain’t going anywhere.
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You know, Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS the whole shebang is out there saying, clearly something went wrong with the process. That isn’t true. Nothing went wrong with the process. This is like saying democracy is corrupted by money. It’s not. Democracy is corrupted by people. This is not a process problem at CBS. Well, I can understand that the process may have been corrupted, but how does it get corrupted? It gets corrupted by people with an agenda. This isn’t a process that went wrong here at CBS, unless, as I just said, you know, it’s the chicken or egg thing, which comes first, corrupt people that corrupt the process, or corrupt people? I mean, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other. But again it’s an effort to slough this off. Well, I guess our systems broke. The system — the systems are people! The people broke down at CBS, and there’s a reason they broke down. And everybody knows what the reason is. They wanted this story to be true because they wanted to get Bush out of the White House. They’re in the tank for Kerry. There may be more eloquent ways to put it but they have a choice, they’ve made a choice.
Now, we live in America. Why shouldn’t people have choices? Well, that’s fine and dandy, but if CBS would just say, you know how to clear this all up? Really the best way to clear this all up for CBS, just say, yeah, we’re for Kerry, and everybody would then understand. But it’s this continued effort to persuade everybody that they are disinterested and don’t care, that they are objective journalists, that they are unbiased and that they are uninterested, that’s what causes them the problem. Because I don’t care how stupid they think the American people are, we’re not that dumb. You know, we see a freight train headed to our president, and we do our best to derail it. We’re not stupid here. So if they just come out and say, yeah, we’re in the tank for John Kerry, and you can look at our news in that light from now on out, fine, everybody would praise ’em for finally being honest. Of course they can’t do it, because then the Shorenstein school and all these other journalism outfits would have heart attacks, and all the Pulitzer prizes that have been won would have been immediately rendered worthless.
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