The Media and Mrs. Bush

RUSH: How many of you are keeping up with the story of Mrs. Bush’s, the first lady, cancer, her malignant skin cancer, tumor, removed from her right shin in early November? The Drive-By Media is seething because they weren’t told in November. I have a sample story here from Terence Hunt of al-AP. “The White House on Tuesday defended Laura Bush’s decision not to disclose she had a skin cancer tumor removed from her right shin in early November. … [U]nlike her husband, the first lady is not an elected official,” said Tony Snow.
“The cancer was a squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common form of skin cancer, said Susan Whitson, her press secretary. She said the troublesome patch was about the size of a nickel. Mrs. Bush decided the cancer was a private matter and did not reveal it publicly. On Monday night, the White House acknowledged the first lady had the tumor removed after Mrs. Bush was noticed with a bandage below her right knee. Whitson said the first lady was still wearing a bandage more than five weeks after the incision because the skin on that part of the leg is thin and ‘it takes a little while to heal.’ Asked if plastic surgery might be required, Whitson said, ‘No further procedures are needed at this point.'” Now, is this anyone’s business? They saw the bandage and asked and the White House said, “Well, we’re not going to lie about it,” but is there a duty on the part of the first lady to go public in the country with something like this, a medical matter which, up until the time — well, three or four years ago — medical records were private, and then that sort of got blown to the wayside?
Perhaps Terrence Hunt will share his medical records with his readers and his editors. Perhaps the Drive-By Media will open their medical records, since they are so eager to see everyone else’s. These people are the self-appointed guardians of our freedom and our government and our did you not and the Constitution itself! Are we not entitled to know the status of their health? “But, Rush? But, Rush? They’re not elected.” That’s right, and they’re not accountable, either. There is no accountability for the Drive-By Media. So isn’t it about time what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? You know I read the sports pages. I’m like every other guy. I read the sports pages, and it is funny to me to read the sports media people. I don’t care where they are. It could be in LA. It could be Dallas. It could be in New York. It could be anywhere.
The arrogant, holier-than-thou, better-than-everybody-else attitude with which these people write, be it about Barry Bonds or the latest brawl in the NBA at Madison Square Garden the other night, or any other professional athlete that has a Miss USA kind of problem, these people write as though they are clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and they advise commissioners and presidents and league officials what to do about these malcontents and so forth. It always makes me wonder: “Could I see your high school and college transcripts? Can we open up your police file? Can we find out just who you are?” I want to see the evidence of your clean-and-pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow life. Just because you got the job at the local gazette, does that automatically bestow upon you, a Drive-By Media reporter, infallibility? If the rest of us in this society of ours are going to run around acknowledging our shortcomings and admitting our mistakes and saying we’re sorry and saying, “Gosh, if I’d have known then what I know now, X,” then when’s the media going to join us in this?

When will Terence Hunt tell us what his medical problems are? When will any of the network news anchors do the same? Well, you say, “Never,” but what if somebody formed an organization, a counterweight organization to find out just this kind of stuff? Do you know the caterwauling that would go on from the Drive-By Media, if somebody started doing the same kind of investigations of them that they do of everybody else? You know what their reaction would be. “You can’t get away with this! We are journalists. We are not the story. It doesn’t matter.” Oh, yes! You have become the story. You have wanted to be the story, and it’s time you got treated like everybody else who is the story! I would love to see what’s in some of these people’s backgrounds. Who has Helen Thomas been married to? “Has she been married?” I should ask. Who asked her to get married?
There are any number of things. Let’s see their tax returns. How many freebies do they take? How many junctures do they go on in return for writing favorable things about things and people and events? We don’t know any of this stuff. We just assume everything they write is gospel, and that it’s unquestionable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Clay in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: I’m a little confused about the story about the first lady and the cancer situation.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Yeah. It was my understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, that if a woman, after careful consulting perhaps with her physician and her conscience decided that she needed to have a nonviable tissue mass removed, that this was a private matter and should not be open to public criticism or comment.
RUSH: Exactly right. Exactly right. This was an “unviable tissue mass,” this tumor, and they noticed the bandage, so the first lady had no privacy. That’s my point in this whole thing. Let these people air their own medical records. Let’s see what their diseases are, what they’re being treated for, what their prescriptions are.