RUSH: Can we go back? Play audio sound bite #4 Mister Broadcast Engineer. On Monday, February 5th, the day after the Super Bowl, this is what I, El Rushbo, had to say.
RUSH: And then later in the program, of course, we’re all laughing ourselves silly here. I went into the break with that. That’s the last thing I said before going into the break. We were laughing in the break. Later in the program, I let the audience in on the gag, which was to tweak the media. It’s a takeoff on the old Donovan McNabb comments about the media having “social concerns” and wanting a black quarterback to do well. I thought that maybe, oh, it would be a day or two and all hell would break loose over this. But it took longer than that. Finally, by last Friday, as I’m perusing the Internet during some downtime out at the AT&T National Pro-Am, I’m starting to see on some blogs, “Limbaugh has lost his mind! Limbaugh has gone insane!” Do you remember, Mr. Snerdley, before I made this comment, I said, “Let’s have a little fun today. Let’s tweak the media,” and there was a vote in there: Don’t do it! Do do it! Don’t do it!
The votes to do it were two-to-one in favor of doing it, and the whole point was to tweak the media, and another point was to demonstrate that these people in the sports media that comment on me, don’t listen to this program. They get what I said selectively and out of context from these liberal so-called media watchdog websites. Lo and behold, it took four or five days, and then the dam broke. It wasn’t quite as bad, obviously, as the McNabb situation. I have to think some people out there actually got the joke, but there were those who didn’t — and when I had the time I jotted off a quick e-mail note to some of these bloggers and sportswriters and said, “You know, you guys missed the whole point. If you just listen to my show now and then — rather than get what I say that?s selectively cherry picked from these websites — you might get in on it.”
They said, “Well, if you’re going to crack jokes like this — if you’re going to be humorous like this — don’t you think it would be well worth it for you and your sense of humor to be well-known outside of your audience?”
I said, “How can I do that? How can I make my sense of humor well-known to people outside my audience? Isn’t that up to you? You guys are reporters! How come I am the last place anybody would go to find out what I said?”
Now, this is from the arrogant and condescending, lofty platitudes of liberalism. Mr. King, I resent the assumption that you make. I’ll make you a deal, Mr. King. I will continue to do what I do. I’m the last person that sees black or white or sex. It’s liberals that do this. It’s liberals that have put everybody into groups, usually making them victims, but I’ll make you a deal, Peter. If you’ll stop telling me which coaches in the NFL are black — and if you’ll stop whining and moaning about how socially behind the times the NFL is because it doesn’t have enough minority coaches or assistant coaches or general managers — if you’ll stop pointing out to me every time a player comes up what his race is and what his background was and what his obstacles to overcome were; then I will keep doing what I do. All I do, Peter, is analyze people on the issues.
That’s why I have never gone along with feminism as something oriented toward women. We know that it’s not. Gloria Steinem has a piece recently, by the way, in which she says the choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Why, either one is fine. Either one is fine. She starts lamenting this race and group politics. Well, who started all this? People like Gloria Steinem! This proves to me what I’ve known all along: feminism was never about women’s issues. It’s just another way to advance liberalism, as is so much of the liberal groupthink that happens out there. But, Mr. King, you and I can make a deal here. You stop telling me about all the social problems that exist in the NFL based on race and so forth, and I will keep doing what I do by not noticing those things, and I’ll stop making fun of you guys for doing it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, the people in the media — sports media, news media, it doesn’t matter — it’s just so much fun to make fun of them, because they don’t get it and they don’t understand that it’s happening, and it is so easy to tweak them now. We know exactly how to do it and send them into conniption fits, and then they respond in their high-and-mighty, condescending and arrogant fashions, and then they engage in all the preachiness. But who is it that actually is out there looking at people and seeing skin color or gender first? It’s the left in this country that does this! Here’s Chuck Schumer, from February 1st. This is on the Charlie Rose Show. Chuck Schumer was being interviewed by Charlie Rose. Rose says, “Look at Obama’s first trip to New Hampshire. It was a huge success.”
SCHUMER: I don’t sell Barack short. I like him very much. As I said, if Hillary weren’t in the race, I probably would be for him.
ROSE: Does it make sense for them to be on the same ticket?
SCHUMER: Mmm. Oh, that’s a tough one. Probably not. First woman and first black? (Chuckles.) You know, it may be hard.
RUSH: Why? If they’re the best people, why would this be? I understand he’s been backtracking on this, but so what? What’s the big problem here? Hillary has already asked if America is ready for a woman president. Roger Simon on Meet the Depressed said that an Obama election would show that we’ve “put race behind us.” We’ll never put race behind us! The left will never allow us to put race behind us. But if you’re black and Republican, like Michael Steele or Lynn Swann or Ken Blackwell, you’re ignorant (or worse), and ignored, and you get smeared. If you are a black like Clarence Thomas, you’re not called “articulate and clean.” You’re called stupid and a pervert. If you are a conservative woman who’s pro-life, you don’t exist — and for these people to start preaching to us, as Peter King says, “There’s a fairly significant decision coming in this country in 2008, Mr. Limbaugh. We in New Jersey…and elsewhere have one simple request, as you mull over the candidacies of a black man, a white woman, and many white men in the coming presidential debate: Treat them as candidates, not black candidates or female candidates or white candidates.”
That’s what we always have done here.
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RUSH: This is Rich in Madison, Wisconsin. Hey, Rich. How are you, sir?
CALLER: Great, Rush. Liberal dittos from the greatest Midwestern city in the country. I just wanted to let you know, you must be slipping a little. I’ll attribute this to your sickness, but your response with Mr. King, “you started it; you did it first” argument is pretty weak. I think my kids could teach you a thing or two about blaming each other about their shenanigans.
RUSH: Well, are you telling me that my response to Mr. King’s childishness sounded childish?
CALLER: Absolutely. The idea that I just had to break up a fight this morning with my children, my daughter says, “No, Ethan did it first,” that’s kind of sounding like what you sounded like.
RUSH: You’ve got to be kidding me!
CALLER: No, that’s what it sounded like.
RUSH: You really have got to be kidding me.
CALLER: I’m not kidding you. Of course not. I wouldn’t kid you.
RUSH: One thing nobody has ever called me is childish.
CALLER: Well, again, I might attribute this to your cold. It’s been going around, but the “I’ll stop when you stop,” is… I don’t know about that argument.
RUSH: That wasn’t what I was saying at all! I was trying to point out the utter hypocrisy of Mr. King. Who was he to sit high atop the Liberal Throne of Correctness on Everything and tell me how I’ve got to view people, when he’s the one who views people the way he’s accusing me of doing it? He can sit there all day long and preach to me as though he never makes any kind of mistake in these regards, and then put this whole onus on me (summarized), “We’ve got an election coming up. Please look at these not as female or black candidates, but just as candidates,” when in fact it’s Peter King and his ilk who can’t stop telling us about the skin color or the gender differences among people about which they’re reporting on, and the social concerns affecting them all. I’m not saying, “You stop and I’ll stop,” because I don’t have to stop anything because I don’t do what he says I do.
CALLER: That’s just what it sounded like, Rush. I just want to tell you that even liberals out here enjoy your show, even though I rarely agree with you, but keep up the good work and you’re a great entertainer.
RUSH: See, I knew you were a lib. I knew you were a lib right off the bat. I didn’t want to make the accusation because I wanted to hold up the possibility that in my “weakened state,” being ravaged by the common cold virus, I was wrong. But the fact that you are a lib and an admitted lib, calling to chide me on this tells me something entirely different, and that is I scored points and you had to do something to dilute the point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: David in Needham, Massachusetts. Welcome, sir, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos from the great liberal state here. Rush, using the absurd to illustrate the absurd, I find it pretty funny that Mr. King is questioning you. I’d love to know what his accuracy rate is on predictions of games over the last five years. I say he’s lucky if he’s at 65%.
RUSH: Well, nobody’s perfect at predicting things.
CALLER: Well, he seems to be prefacing questioning how you should be looking at some politics, but as somebody with a 98%-plus rating, Rush, I would be offended that Mr. King would dare question you about politics. Until he gets his own profession down to at least 90% —
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: — I think should stay with himself, don’t you, Rush?
RUSH: I appreciate the support. You have to understand where these people come from. One of the things I’ve learned about the sports media is it’s just as liberal if not more so than the regular 9-to-5 news media. It’s stunning. Peter King can write what he wants. I couldn’t care less. But it doesn’t mean these guys are immune from criticism. I marvel at the sportswriter mentality. These guys do get to act as though they are clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and they get to judge the morality and the human characteristics of virtually everybody they write about — as though they are flawless! It’s stunning. But you can tell when some of these guys venture off the beaten path of sports and into politics, they betray themselves as who they really are, but I wouldn’t care to get into a discussion about his competence based on his predictions and that sort of thing. What? (interruption)
Snerdley is saying I’m “always so generous to these people and they always turn around and attack” me. Well, I know why they turn around and attack, and that’s because they’re small fry and they know it, and they resented my invading their turf when I had the ESPN gig, and they were just — as I had so many tell me on the TV show — “Rush, they were just waiting for you to screw up and they were going to try to drum you out of there for one reason or another,” but they all consider themselves social activists. They all do. Anyway, let me deal with this when I’m more mentally competent to be able to focus on this sort of thing because I’m not really all there today.