Stay Classy, Sacramento

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I appeared this morning on my Sacramento affiliate, my adopted hometown and radio station that launched me to where I am now, KFBK AM1530. I did about 17 minutes there talking about this…this… I don’t know what this is, other than just sheer incompetence, but what I want to say about this flap yesterday with the ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ song and the television station in Sacramento, Channel 13, I’m actually feeling sorry for these people today. It’s been a day and they still can get nothing right. As I told the audience on KFBK this morning, I remember when I lived out there, local television news was huge and it was respected, and the people, the anchors and the reporters were all very well credentialed and it was must viewing. I don’t know what’s happened out there, but clearly the television news, at least on this particular station has gone south. It’s breathtaking how incompetent these people are. They had a whole day yesterday to get this right, and they still don’t have it right. Obviously they’re on defense, and they’re backpedaling and they’re trying to suggest, ‘We’re just starting a dialogue. We just saw this in the newspaper and we thought we’d ask the question,’ blah, blah, blah. They said that you have to pay to vote on my website, which you don’t. They said that I got into this and attacked them. Folks, I didn’t attack them yesterday. I destroyed them. But I was simply sitting here minding my own business, and, of course, I find out that they’ve done this, this is my adopted hometown, and I know it’s part of an ongoing campaign, and they’re just little small time dupes that don’t even know they’re being used by this organized campaign, and they say I attacked them. They didn’t attack me, oh, no, no, no, they were just starting dialogue. Then they said I was doing this for ratings. Like I need to waste my time on a local television station for ratings. ‘This is May sweeps week in radio,’ they said. There is no sweeps week in radio. Every week we are rated in radio. Besides, everything I do is ratings. Why do you think my name is bandied about on every cable television show as often as possible? Why do you think authors put my name in the titles of their books? They’re a bunch of parasites that couldn’t sell their books without my name in the title. Everything I do, I am ratings. I am Rush Limbaugh. So it’s become apparent that they see this as a glorious opportunity to call attention to themselves. I was asked by the two people on KFBK this morning, Kelly Brothers and Amy Lewis, said, ‘You think that they’re dumb like foxes, doing all this for PR?’ ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they’re dumb like foxes. I just they’re pathetically incompetent. There’s not even any journalism that’s gone on here. Journalists investigate. They don’t see something on Wikipedia and YouTube and assume that it’s true and run with it, like these people did.’ But the thing is, I don’t know how anybody could believe any news story now ever again on Channel 13 Sacramento. If they want to attract idiots, and if they want to use this as a ratings benefit or bounce to attract idiots, there are plenty of them out there. If that’s what they want to go for, more power to ’em. But I don’t want to spend any more time on it than that. There’s nothing more that can be said. Now, look. Snerdley is in there groaning. You know, I didn’t get to half the stack yesterday, and I, by the way, am not going to be distracted by this small fry stuff out there from getting to the real meat of the matter in terms of the big-time news that is out there. So yeah, they wanted me to come on their show. There’s no way. Why would I do that? Well, it depends — take some calls, depending on what the call — they said that we flooded their poll with my listeners. They played their video. It was their video that gave out their website for people. I didn’t tell people to go vote on their stupid poll. That’s another thing. We don’t do activism here. We don’t tell the audience what to do. This is the most informed and knowledgeable audience in radio, and it’s the most loyal, and it’s the deepest. They don’t have to be told what to do. BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tim in San Marcos, California, I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing? RUSH: I’m great, sir. Thank you. CALLER: I have two things. One is a bit of praise, and another is a little bone to pick with you. But first I want to mention, you know, you’ve been using the phrase Drive-By Media for a long time. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: I thought that incident yesterday with that little TV station was probably the perfect illustration of that term. RUSH: Yep. CALLER: It really opened my eyes. I thought, ‘Man, this is perfect because here they took a story that was two months old; they extrapolated this ridiculous premise such as him needing Secret Service protection as a result of that song, and then they tried to influence their own poll results by using phrases like, ‘What’s going on? Does Rush want to keep his job?’ or, ‘He’s in really dangerous waters here,’ and then they say, ‘But what do you think?’ Well after they poison the well then they want your opinion.’ RUSH: Right. CALLER: And so then they started reading e-mails that were either completely negative or were at best backhanded compliments. And I thought, you know, I can’t help but imagine these people sitting around in their conference room at the office saying, ‘Hey, you know, let’s go after Limbaugh today. We can call him a racist and then we’ll act like we’re real concerned for his career.’ RUSH: That’s not what happened though. Let me tell you very briefly what happened with these people. They all claim, by the way — now, on their air this morning — to be Rush babies. They all claim to have grown up listening to me, and that I’m a good guy, and that I have a loyal audience and all this sort of stuff. One of guys says, ‘Look, I got into work at 3:15 in the morning and I see this newspaper story about this song, so I went on the Internet, and I heard the song, and I thought, ‘Whoa.’ And I sit right next to a black guy, gosh, I thought about turning it down because I didn’t want him to think I’m a racist, and that’s what led to our poll.’ Their story was not about a poll anyway. They’re just trying to cover it. But the truth of the matter is, this is a news organization that was totally unaware this song existed for two and a half months until they read a newspaper story on it sometime Sunday morning or Monday morning at 3:15. They didn’t do any investigation. No research to find out, ‘What is this?’ They accepted a video on YouTube as source authority. Everything about journalism that is wrong, these people did it. It is an example of the Drive-By Media. ‘Let’s stir the pot out there today; this could be really, really good!’ CALLER: Exactly. There was a guy yesterday who said, ‘It’s more than just sloppy journalism.’ He said, ‘These people purposely went after you.’ And, you know, as I listened to the comments that they were making and this faux concern that they had in their voices of, oh, you know, as if it’s like, ‘Poor Rush. He’s going over the edge! Can we call him, find out what’s going on?’ I thought, ‘Stop the fakery. You people are doing exactly what you want, which is a hit piece.’ RUSH: Right. And they could have called. They never did. CALLER: Yeah. Exactly. So, anyway, that was my praise. RUSH: What’s the bone to pick? CALLER: Okay. Well, I called about six months ago, after the Michael Richards incident, the guy from Seinfeld? RUSH: Oh, yeah. CALLER: And, you know, he was being referred to as a racist at the time. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: And I live here in San Diego, and we are routinely referred to as racists if we are against, for instance, 20 million people sneaking over the border —
RUSH: Yeah? CALLER: — and taking over the schools. RUSH: Yeah? CALLER: My kid yesterday tells me that he’s constantly being called a ‘gringo’ in school, being teased, and so I called up and I was tongue-in-cheek I was going to say, ‘Rush can you help me figure out whether or not I’m a racist if I’m opposed to such things?’ And one of the things I asked Bo Snerdley, I said, for instance — RUSH: I’ve got 30 seconds. If you can get it in.
CALLER: Okay. I said, ‘Am I a racist if I’m against any group in which nine out of ten of them vote for the exact same party?’ And he said, ‘Them, them? No. Sorry, we don’t want that tone on the show.’ And I thought, you know, you’ve had Rita from Detroit on here so many times with her blue eyed devil rhetoric — RUSH: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But Rita… (Laughing). Do not compare yourself to Rita X. I’m going to ask Snerdley. I’ll get the details. Don’t take that personally. Please don’t take it that way. It was not meant that way at all.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just got the most unbelievable note here from a friend of mine at KFBK Sacramento. I did a little radio interview there, 17 minutes this morning. It’s our affiliate on the EIB Network, and it’s of course the 50,000 watt blowtorch station that launched this show. It’s 17 minutes talking about this flap with the local TV station out there.

‘You may want to check out the CBS 13 website. Yesterday, they asked if they could have a camera crew here in our studio to tape Rush’s appearance on KFBK this morning, and we agreed.’

This is the first I knew that Channel 13 had a camera crew in the studio. Now, why get a camera crew in a radio studio to record a telephone interview? Well, the next line: ‘When they arrived, Chris Burrous, one of the three morons, was with them and wanted to go on and ambush you, and we said no. Now on their website, they’re reporting that Chris Burrous’ request to talk to you was denied and that you are gutless.’ (Laughing.) This is juvenile. I didn’t know they were there. I didn’t know they had asked to be there. I knew they had asked me to go on their station, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to grace my presence on that television station out there. But they planned an ambush. Typical Drive-By Media. This is it, folks: false pretense, dishonest setup. This guy’s a perfect candidate for 60 Minutes. I think he ought to send his résumé in to them.