If Algore Is the Highlight of Your Show?

RUSH: I have to share with you some of my thoughts of the Academy Awards and I do it from this perspective. You had four hours last night. You’re a business. You’re Hollywood. You’re in trouble. Box office receipts are not what they have been in the past. You have four hours to make your case to the American people and to the world about your business and about your industry. That was the dullest, the most boring ever. This was the third-lowest rated Oscar show ever, and I have been told by a reliable source that has seen the numbers, the overnight numbers from city to city, if it weren’t for New York and Chicago saving this telecast last night, they would have bombed big time. It would have been the lowest rated Oscar show ever. From the get-go, something about it seemed like a high school talent show to me. You’ve got four hours, and you have — whatever you think of their politics — some of the most talented people in the country out there!
Every song was a downer. Every bit was a downer. The audience seemed bored. Nobody seemed happy last night! Even some of the winners seemed to be a little perplexed and curious. It was a strange thing. I haven’t watched one of these in years, and as I say, I don’t know why I did last night. Maybe it was because I was hoping for an implosion during the two Algore segments. He was called up there twice, folks. As I say, if Algore is your highlight, you are in trouble. In the entertainment world, if Algore is your highlight, you’re in big trouble. Now, I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on it, because it was so bad — and I’m a class act, as you people know, so I don’t want to dance on the grave of this show, but I do want to offer you a little comparison here. You remember back when — oh, by the way, 1/2 Hour News Hour last night? I warned you people it was a rerun. I’m getting e-mail: “Hey Rush, it was a rerun!” I know! I told you it was going to be a rerun last night. You people are going to have to start listening more closely. Next Sunday, March the 4th, is the second episode. I happen to think it’s better than the first one.
Anyway, remember when the first episode originally aired a week ago yesterday, and, of course, here came the critics and all the people complaining. There were people that praised it as well, but the critics: “It was sophomoric. I could have done a better job than that. Horrible, horrible, horrible.” My gosh, and I tried to explain to people: Look, this is an evergreen show. They had to shoot this six weeks before it aired. There’s not a whole number of ways that you could do specific issues six weeks out because who knows what they are, and if you do six episodes based on issues that are six weeks old, that looks old. That’s not going to do. But I’m watching the Oscars last night, and I’m thinking, “No wonder these people mess around in foreign policy.” The whole Hollywood community — Algore, DiCaprio, all of these people — had to make some comment about being green, environmental, because that’s easy.

Flat-out, it is easy to go up there and start ripping whatever you think is environmental destruction — and, by the way, did you happen to hear Algore make a point? He said, “People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It’s not a political issue. It’s a moral issue.” I told you! I told you, folks: this is a religious issue to these people. The facts are of no consequence whatsoever. It’s a scientific issue, Algore. It is not a moral issue. When you go out and call it a “moral crusade,” what do you do? You remove it from any kind of cost-benefit analysis or serious investigation, because if you’re going to peg this thing as something that is morally imperative, then whatever it costs is irrelevant and whatever you have to do to deny people’s freedom, that’s irrelevant! A serious investigation? We can’t do that because we have a moral crusade going on here!
So it gives them the right to say, “What, you want to examine our claims? How dare you! Are you a tool of the devil? Why, you must be a climate denier,” which they are calling all the people who don’t buy into this stuff. But my point is, it’s easy to get up there and pontificate on foreign policy or any other kind of political issue. Doing good entertainment is hard! It is very, very difficult work. It’s not easy, even for the people who are very good at it and it looks like no effort was put into this last night whatsoever. I also was reading a blog last night by Nikki Finke of LA Weekly, and she made an excellent point: “My gosh, if you have a foreign accent tonight, the odds are for you.” I guess it was DeGeneres that said that. She said, “If you’ve got a foreign accent, the odds are that you’re going to win.” It was Nikki Finke who said after the first half hour, “My gosh, we’ve outsourced all the makeup jobs. We’ve outsourced all of the lighting jobs. Are these jobs Americans won’t do anymore in Hollywood?” Here’s a little montage of just how it sounded, the announcer and some of the recipients, the nominees and so forth just to give you the international flavor of this.
ANNOUNCER: This is the first Academy Award and nomination for Eugenio Caballero and Pilar Revuelta.
JOHN C. REILLY: David Marti and Montse Ribe!
GWEYNETH PALTROW: And the Oscar goes to Guillermo Navarro.
PENELOPE CRUZ: And the Oscar goes to Gustavo Santaolalla.
ELLEN DEGENERES: This is the most international Oscars ever. We have the — record nominations for Mexico here tonight, which is a huge, huge thing.
RUSH: Yeah, and they were waiving little Mexican flags in the audience last night. (laughing) They were. People were waving little Mexican flags. This is the last thing I’m going to say about this until we get to the actual Algore segment. I’m not even sure I’m going to do that, but they brought Jerry Seinfeld out. He presented the award for the best documentary, and he was very right when he said, “For the five most depressing nominees tonight, one of them is going to win,” and blah, blah, and then he started telling a joke. Now, some people say he was auditioning for the host ceremony duties next year, but I have to tell you something, folks. Purely in a business sense, what he did last night was idiotic.
As you know Hollywood is not doing well. The box office receipts are down, down, down, and the movies that do well, the movies that really gross don’t ever show up in these awards. The movies that people really go see, they’re never in the nomination list. Well, what does Seinfeld do? He gets up there and insults theater owners. That was the crux of his bit. Now, these guys, the theater owners, are not doing that well lately because the box office receipts are not good. The whole thing was just perplexing to me, and there wasn’t any politics, other than Algore, and there wasn’t a whole lot of controversy. It was just boring. The mood, the attitude, these people did not seem ecstatic or happy in any way, shape, manner or form, and I thought it was quite telling.
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RUSH: Don in Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, I’m glad you called, sir, and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Rush, it’s great to speak to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Mega dittos. I saw part of the Academy Awards last night. I really had to get my snow shovel and rock salt ready for the overnight snow here in the Northeast. But I thought it was highly hypocritical to call the Academy Awards a so-called green event when it’s detailed on the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website how the Oscar statues are flown into the event on a special United Airlines flight from Chicago.
RUSH: (sigh) Look… (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Finding the hypocrisy with this crowd is not difficult to do. It’s all over the place. Look, since you brought this up again — I want to tell you audience base members. I had intended to let this go after my comments — but when Melissa Etheridge, who’s up there singing the nominated song, the title song from Gore’s stupid movie, James, you should have seen this! They had this giant screen in the back, bigger than the screen I have in my home, a huge, huge screen, and as Melissa Etheridge is singing the song, they put things up there like “Take mass transit and light rail as often as you can” and other little tidbits of advice on saving the planet. Now, this is the Academy Awards! Plus the song is a downer. “I Woke Up.” I don’t even want to get into this. It was just a total, total downer, and all of these stupid things that Hollywood people will never do.
They’re never going to take light rail. They’re never going to get on mass transit. They’re never going to do any of these things. I’m watching this, and I just can’t believe this. You know, Algore got at least $3 million of free political airtime for his issue last night from ABC and the Oscar group. That was one of the funniest things: I’m sitting there watching this in stunned disbelief. My mouth was actually open. My mouth was open for so long during the whole song I was drooling because I didn’t have the energy to swallow. I was in such stunned amazement at this. I wish I could remember some of the other things that they had on the screen up there. It was like, “Don’t use toilet paper, use leaves.” It wasn’t that, but it was things like that, and I’m looking out in the audience, and of course there’s nobody in that crowd that’s going to do anything of the sort. Here, try this. I want you to grab audio sound bite #6. You gotta get this. This is Joan Rivers last night on the TV Guide Channel, before the Oscars started, and she had this exchange with one of the producers of Gore’s idiot move, Leslie Chilcott. Listen.

RIVERS: Leslie Chilcott, who was the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, because she is wearing a gown that is biodegradable. Explain to me about your gown.
CHILCOTT: It is organic cotton and bamboo fiber. It’s a brand-new organic bamboo fabric that just came out, just a few weeks old.
RIVERS: Did you plan to wear something like this and you just were waiting to find the fabric, or was this just luck?
CHILCOTT: I was really trying to either wear vintage, to go with the recycling theme, or to wear something organic.
RUSH: Bamboo fabric now, ladies and gentlemen. You know the panda bears? We’re already crowding them out of their diet with all of the bamboo steamers that are out there. Now, if they’re going to use bamboo and put it on women’s clothes, it’s going to cause a shortage of the primary foodstuff of pandas. (laughing) I’m watching all this stuff and my head is spinning. But the greatest part of the night was when all those idiotic little tips of advice were showing up behind Melissa Etheridge warbling this stupid tune. Mike in Pittsburgh, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Good to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I was listening to Algore last night and he was talking about this — and repeating what you had said — this being a moral issue, and I know myself, I have a couple of quads, and I have a pleasure boat.
RUSH: What’s a quad?
CALLER: An ATV, a small, four-wheel drive, uh, craft.
RUSH: One of these things running around on the beach?
CALLER: There you go.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: I’m thinking, every time I get on this, am I an immoral person? Because I’m not using these for transportation. I’m using them for fun. I’m burning fossil fuel just for my own enjoyment.
RUSH: Yeah, and you’re disturbing the natural tranquility of the beach. You’re putting tracks in there and noise, all that.
CALLER: But I’m also burning all this fuel.
RUSH: Yeah. You’re totally sinning. You’re a reprobate! Look, I’ll tell you, when you call it a “moral crusade,” folks, as Gore did last night, you remove it from any kind of cost-benefit analysis or any serious investigation. That was a purposefully used word.

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RUSH: Here’s Ryan in Hollywood. Ryan, thanks for waiting, and welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
CALLER: Hey thanks a lot, Rush. I just wanted to give a comment here. After watching the awards show last night, I decided that Hollywood is totally out of touch with the rest of America. They have no idea what people really want to see out there and I think the awards show kind of just —
RUSH: Well, let me address that. There are two schools of thought on this. Let’s say that you… Well, let’s just talk about these people. Let’s say that you’re the Academy and you’ve got these awards every year, and you’ve got on ABC four hours of prime-time television in America and around the world. Now, you can look at this opportunity in one of two ways. You can say, ‘Okay, we’re here to serve our audience and we’re here to entertain our audience, and we are here to build upon the trust that our audience has with us and do a show that the audience would like to see, that exposes our talents, that airs our abilities,” and so forth. Or they could look at it as total insiders and say, “Look, this is our night, and we’re awarding people within our business for their achievements and their accomplishments based on votes of people in our business. We’re not tallying the votes of the movie-going public. We’re not tallying the votes of anybody else. This is what we think,” and I think more and more Hollywood has chosen the latter way to go, which is fine.
They can do with it whatever they want but they’re passing up a great opportunity, because they’re in some financial trouble. DVD sales are leveling off. Box office receipts are down. Just the occasional exception comes out and scores big at the box office. Some of the most popular movies, some of the biggest grossers, the movies of the largest audience never show up. They never get nominated, in practically any category whatsoever. So it appears that Hollywood has chosen the latter. These people are liberals. You have to understand something, and this is something that’s always perplexed me about them, and it perplexes me about the Drive-By Media. They have customers. The Drive-By Media has customers and Hollywood has customers. If it weren’t for the movie-going public and DVD sales and all these other things, I don’t know where the money to pay Hollywood people would come from.
They seem uninterested in that. They want to preach and they want to instruct. This comes from basic liberalism, arrogance and condescension. They’re better than everybody else. They’re elitists. They are smarter than everybody else. It’s the same thing with the Drive-By Media. It’s the one business I know of where the customer is always wrong. Newspapers have these ombudsmen where if you don’t like something in the paper, you can write the ombudsman or call the ombudsman. The ombudsman will then write a little column once a week of what he thinks was wrong in the paper, but nothing is ever going to change because of this. Now, let me throw myself in this mix here since we’re discussing this, because I have the same challenge, and I’ve mentioned this to you people before. When I moved to New York in 1988, I had a goal — and that was to become the most listened to person on radio. I figured there were ways of doing this, and that was connecting and relating to and respecting the audience, you, not looking down, not condescending, not assuming that you’re a bunch of ignorant oafs and won’t have the ability to understand what I do.

I eschewed public relations people. We didn’t go out and have all these giant campaigns that suggested this show was hot. You made it hot! The audience made this show what it is: your willingness to listen, your admitting when asked that you listen to it, and so this is the most listened to radio talk show in the country. We still don’t have any PR people. We’re not out there doing a lot of spin. There’s no buzz about this program being big, but there are a lot of radio shows that don’t have anywhere near the size of this audience who do get a lot of spin, a lot of buzz, and they are portrayed as much bigger and having much more impact than they ever have had or will have. Now, choosing between the two, I’d rather choose what I have. I’d rather be a legitimate number one with no buzz and no spin, rather than an artificial number one said to be big and important when it’s not true. Why would I want to live a lie?
You translate this in the Drive-By Media. They obviously are not interested in acquiring and holding a large audience. They’re interested in an agenda and pushing it and — well, you might say that their audience is liberals and that they serve that audience, but at the same time they compromise the so-called sacred principles of journalism in the process because obviously they choose sides. They have an agenda, and there are favored people and then there are others that never get a break from them, and you know whom I’m talking about and what side of the political aisle they sit on. In Hollywood, it’s gotten to the point here where when they think their most artistic works and their really important things are rejected, don’t do well at the box office, Hollywood, rather than saying, “Hmm, what do we have to do to change this?” What they do is say, “Well, you know, the audience doesn’t get it, but we’re about art and we’re going to continue to do the art that we want to do, and our awards show is going to be devoted to that,” then they’ll go out and do movies that really do earn a lot of money.
They’ll go out and earn the money necessary with the kind of movies people want to see, but when it comes time to do their awards show, those movies get ignored and the audience that attended them is ignored, and so it becomes just a celebrity gab fest and a train wreck for the awards show. They’re free to do what they want with this, but whether they’re out of touch or in touch, I don’t think they care. In fact, I think they prefer to be out of touch in the sense that they refuse to come down to the level of the average American for their art.

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RUSH: Jacquelyn in, what is it, Kenai, Alaska? Hi, Jacquelyn. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hello.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Do you hear me?
RUSH: Yes, I hear you just fine. You’re a woman.
CALLER: Okay. It’s big thrill to talk to you. So this is a very exciting day for me.

RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Listen, are you actually in the running? There’s a little bit of confusion among some of my colleagues about are you an official candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize?
RUSH: (laughing) Well, there are two ways to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. One is for the Nobel Committee itself to nominate you.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: And the other is unsolicited nominations. It’s not clear when you go to their website whether unsolicited nominations are accepted. The case could be made for both ways. My nomination for the peace prize was made by the Landmark Legal Foundation and submitted to the Nobel Committee, and they have not rejected it. It’s gotten to them, and we haven’t heard anything from them rejecting it, so we’re taking it as a serious nomination.
CALLER: Well, listen, if it came down to where it was between you and Algore, whose chances would be better, say if they had to do a debate? Who do you think would be the stronger candidate?
RUSH: (laughing) No, no. Wrong question. There’s no question I’m the stronger candidate for peace. But who would get the award is an entirely different matter. It’s not who’s the stronger candidate. You tell me: what does global warming or dealing with the so-called climate crisis have to do with world peace?
CALLER: Well, I have to give Al Gore this, that it’s not a bad legacy to at least open people’s eyes and be a good steward of the planet and to really think about our habits. You know, he’s an intelligent man, and whether or not you agree with the global warming issue being caused by us, I believe that he has, you know, good intentions and — and he’s intelligent, and I have to give him credit for that. I just really can’t write him off as a nut.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad you said that because the people that designed the war on poverty had great intentions, but they destroyed the black family. The people that designed all these other social programs had great intentions, but they failed miserably. I want to honor results. Anybody can be honored for their great… I mean, everybody has good intentions except criminals.
CALLER: Okay. On another note, you know, the polygamist thing, everyone knows there was a big interview not too long ago where they had one of the biggest polygamists in Canada, it was one of the nightly news shows that did an hour long look at their life, and it’s the women that bring home the money. The men, it’s not really their worry about where the money is coming from. The wives go out to work during the day.
RUSH: Even better.
CALLER: You can’t tell me that there’s not a little bit of Viagra going on there, I’m sorry, but I have to think it’s a prime market right there.
RUSH: How do you know that?
CALLER: Oh, come on, Rush. These guys are 50, 60 years old. Come on.
RUSH: That doesn’t mean anything.
CALLER: Well, I don’t know.
RUSH: Well, how do you know?
CALLER: (cackle)
RUSH: You just said you don’t know. Look at what you’re doing. You’re assuming all kinds of things, and you’re imbuing tremendous success and progress and great works to Algore when he’s done nothing but concoct a documentary that’s full of falsehoods and untruths.
CALLER: You know what? Listen, I think Bush could redeem himself just a little bit more if he could really learn to pronounce “nuclear” the correct way.
RUSH: Are we having a conversation or are we just playing ping-pong back in here with sentences?
CALLER: Okay, thanks.
RUSH: You bet. That’s Jacquelyn from Kenai, Alaska. There may be something to this global warming thing up there.