RUSH: This next story I just absolutely love. I just love this story. It’s from the Boston Globe. ‘Shortly before landing, Bob Hayden and a flight attendant had agreed on a signal: When she waved the plastic handcuffs, he would discreetly leave his seat and restrain an unruly passenger who had frightened some of the 150 people on board a Minneapolis-to-Boston flight Saturday night with erratic behavior. Hayden, a 65-year-old former police commander, had enlisted a gray-haired gentleman sitting next to him to assist. The man turned out to be a former US Marine. ‘I had looked around the plane for help, and all the younger guys had averted their eyes. When I asked the guy next to me if he was up to it, all he said was, ‘Retired captain. USMC.’ I said, ‘You’ll do,” Hayden recalled. ‘So, basically, a couple of grandfathers took care of the situation.’ The incident on Northwest Airlines Flight 720 ended peacefully, but not before Hayden, a former Boston police deputy superintendent and former Lawrence police chief, and the retired Marine had handcuffed one man and stood guard over another until the plane touched down safely at Logan International Airport around 7:50 p.m. State Police troopers escorted two men off the flight. Trooper Thomas Murphy, a State Police spokesman, said one of the men was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital for ‘an unspecified medical issue, possibly mental health.”
Now, here’s the best part of the story. ‘Hayden’s wife of 42 years, Katie, who was also on the flight, was less impressed. Even as her husband struggled with the agitated passenger, she barely looked up from ‘The Richest Man in Babylon,’ the book she was reading. ‘The woman sitting in front of us was very upset and asked me how I could just sit there reading,’ Katie Hayden said. ‘Bob’s been shot at. He’s been stabbed. He’s taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody’s neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn’t know how the book would end.” (Laughing.) That is just fabulous. Wife knew how it was going to end, didn’t care, kept on reading the book. Guy says to the Marine, ‘You’ll do.’ (Laughing.) I saw this guy interviewed on Fox this morning, but there’s a point here. He says, ‘Yeah, all the younger guys had averted their eyes.’ This guy is 65 years old, Hayden 65, he comes from a generation where they weren’t taught conflict resolution in school, and the schools weren’t raising a bunch of sissies in little boys and young men as a result of the chickification of the culture. Great, great, great love this story.
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RUSH: Curt in Rockford, Illinois. Nice to have you. You’re up first today, sir, on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. It’s an honor to speak to you from flyover country.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, on the first story that you had about the folks that wouldn’t help the two grandfathers.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: To subdue a passenger?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I know why nobody helped, and it’s because of the litigious society we live in. Get rid of the lawyers and people will help.
RUSH: Uh, so the theory is that the younger guys on the flight wouldn’t help because they’re afraid that the victim would sue them for manhandling them?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Well, I can’t deny that we’re a litigious society, and I can’t deny that people might have somewhat of a reluctance to get involved in something like that, but I don’t think that’s the first thought that crosses their mind. Most people are of the ‘I’m not going to get involved’ type, but when somebody starts disrupting an airplane with the experiences that we’ve had in this country, with that happening, it’s time for action.
CALLER: Well, if I was on that airplane I would have helped those grandparents, so —
RUSH: Well, it turns out they didn’t need it. But the guy made a point, Bob Hayden, in looking around and said that the punks on the plane averted their eyes and weren’t interested. Thanks Curt. This is Scott in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. You’re next on the EIB Network.
CALLER: A pleasure to talk to you, Rush. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to call. I’ve got to take issue with that younger person comment, though. I’m under 30 and I know a lot of guys just like me. If they would have been on the plane, those two guys would have been taken apart. It has nothing to do with age. It’s all about your mind-set.
RUSH: Well, look, I did paint with too broad a brush. I realize that there are some young people out there like you that would take matters in their own hands. My only point is that —
CALLER: Not even some, there’s a lot. We get painted into this demographic of wusses —
RUSH: Look, I don’t know if there’s a lot. I mean you take the passengers in that plane, there wasn’t one young person that stood up. You could extrapolate that to the national population. The point that I was trying to make, and maybe I obscured my point with the invective and the inflamed rhetoric — but we are raising a bunch of sissies.
CALLER: I don’t know.
RUSH: Yes, we are. The new castrati. You can’t deny that they’re out there.
CALLER: They’re out there, but they’re not everywhere. I’m a retired Army. I was in Iraq, got blown up in the —
RUSH: Well, now, obviously —
CALLER: There’s so many people, like hundreds and thousands of guys that I’ve met throughout the course of my career and being at Walter Reed for two years. They would have ended that so quick, it’s not even funny.
RUSH: I feel like Wolf Blitzer trying to talk to Rudy Giuliani.
CALLER: Sorry.
RUSH: No, it’s okay. It’s good. You gotta give me some credit for sense. You know I’m not including you military people in this.
CALLER: Oh, okay.
RUSH: Gee whiz. (Laughing.)
CALLER: You sounded really general, I mean, I wasn’t trying to, you know —
RUSH: Even if I was general, I mean I’m — (laughing) — you know me on the military, and you know that I’m familiar with how tough you people are. You have to just be able to assume some things here. But I’ll make the point I was not talking about any military people or anybody in law enforcement, either.
CALLER: Okay. All right. But still, there are a lot of — you know, I’m young, or whatever, and there’s still a lot of people who would have. I don’t think wusses are a majority.
RUSH: May not be, but it’s a growing number and it’s worse than it used to be. We never used to raise little men to be sissies. We can’t play dodge ball in school! We can’t play tag. We can’t play kick ball. You can’t raise your hand in class now because that intimidates somebody else who doesn’t know the answer. We’re raising a bunch of sissies.
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RUSH: Well, this is getting fun. I have some Marines writing in saying, ‘Don’t speak too soon here about those Army guys, Rush. There’s some sissies in the Army.’ Let’s stop this. Now we got intra-service humorous rivalries going on. I don’t want to get in the middle of this.
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HAYDEN: Looked to me like it was — it would have almost looked like a heart attack but it was something staged about it. So I immediately changed seats with the kid next to me and took the aisle seat and then I walked to the back of the — all the way from that seat to the back of the plane, because I thought it might be a diversion, it might be something coming from the back of the plane while we were all watching this and I looked at every person’s face, didn’t really see anything too worrisome.
HILL: Uh-huh. So you went to the flight attendant and said, ‘Look if anything happens, you give me a signal.’
HAYDEN: Yeah.
HILL: At that point you had already talked to the guy next to you —
HAYDEN: Yeah.
HILL: — who it turns out was an ex-Marine, and he says, ‘I’ll help you.’ What was the trigger?
HAYDEN: The trigger was they waved plastic handcuffs at me. Being an ex-cop that was like sort of Pavlov’s dog, I knew what they wanted and I got up and the Marine came behind me and we subdued these guys and cuffed one of them and put them in the seats and belted them in.
RUSH: There were two guys being unruly. They way it went with the Marine, Bob Hayden is scouting the plane for assistance, because there’s two guys and there’s one of him, and he didn’t find any looks of interest from the younger guys on the plane, because we were raising a bunch of sissies in this country, not including military people. Give me a break on this! You know, can’t play tag. We can’t play dodge ball. We can’t play kick ball. We can’t do any of these things in school anymore. ‘Somebody might get hurt!’ We can’t raise our hands in class anymore because it humiliates those who don’t know the answer. Let’s face it. We can’t applaud. Wait ’til you hear this. You can’t applaud at your own graduation. They’ll take your diploma away from you! You cannot applaud at your own graduation. Wait ’til you hear that. Yeah, it’s the new castrati taking over. Anyway, these two guys, the 65-year-old Bob Hayden and saw this guy, another gray-haired guy sitting next to him and said, ‘Here’s the plan. Are you interested?’ The Marine, ‘former captain, ex-captain, retired captain, United States Marine Corps.’ Bob Hayden said, ‘You’ll do.’ So then E. D. Hill got to the question about his wife, quotes what she said. ‘Bob’s been shot at he’s been stabbed he’s taken knives away, knows how to handle those situations. I figured he’d go up there step on somebody’s neck and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know how the book would end so I kept reading.’ She mentions that question to him, and here’s Bob Hayden’s response.
HAYDEN: Katie’s the coolest customer I ever member.
HILL: (Cackles)
HAYDEN: When we were 14 is when we started going out, and all the way home on the ride home, she never mentioned this happened. We went shopping, she didn’t mention it. We watched an old Sopranos, she never mentioned it — and then going up to bed, she got up to go to bed before me, she said, ‘Stand up.’ And I stood up. And she gave me a little kiss, and she said, ‘By the way, nice job on the plane.’
RUSH: (Laughing.) I love this, folks! I love this whole story, everything about it. I just absolutely love it.
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RUSH: Let’s go Charlotte, North Carolina, Paul, welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Rush, mega Marine Corps Devil Dog dittos.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just wanted to bring to mind that the young man on Flight 93 were young men who stepped up to the plate and became heroes through their actions.
CALLER: No question about it, no question about it.
CALLER: We just want to remember that.
RUSH: That’s an excellent point. Let me give you an illustration. Are you watching The Sopranos, Paul?
CALLER: No, I don’t. I’m sorry.
RUSH: Too bad, because the perfect illustration of the wusses that we are creating in America — not every man — some reject it. They’re not succeeding in totally —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: A.J. Soprano, Tony’s son, is the classic example, for those of you watching the show, of what I am talking about is happening to young boys in skrools all over the country today.
CALLER: Well, I’d like to also mention a good example for young men to follow would be to remember those who died today June 6th, 1944.
RUSH: We’re going to get to that. I’m going to read to you a prayer that FDR offered, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and it is going to shock you.
CALLER: I remember that.
RUSH: And it’s haunting. To this day it’s still haunting. It’s a source of great pride, Pointe Du Hoc. It is unbelievable what happened at Pointe Du Hoc with the Rangers. But this prayer offered by FDR will stun you in that you will realize a president could not deliver it today.
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RUSH: Damon in Homer, Louisiana. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Dittos there, Rush.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: From the oil fields in Cajun country.
RUSH: Yeah, thank you, sir. It’s always love getting people from Cajun country.
CALLER: Hey, look, Rush, I’m going to go ahead and take the other side of this. I say that the two wimps on that plane were the guys who didn’t put up a fight.
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: The thing is this. I worked in the oil field and have been all over the world, and I’ve traveled a lot on the airplanes and I know how it works. You know, after a couple weeks on the rig, you want a couple’a drinks.
RUSH: Wait a minute. These are troublemakers. These people intended… You don’t ever know what they intend on this airplane. You wish they would have been successful?
CALLER: Oh, see the, the thing is, is that if they were mostly harmful it was okay but you know, I’ll tell you what. If I was drinking and the flight attendants didn’t even give me a warning, and some two old guys came up to me and throwed up to me, there would be a fight. I can guarantee you that! I might not have won, but I would have gone down swinging.
RUSH: (Laughing.) Well, that’s a fantastic perspective. I enjoy getting the real-man perspective on this: taking the side of the perps all because you don’t think they got a warning, right?
CALLER: Well, I mean, I don’t know, but I —
RUSH: I think they did.
CALLER: — know the standard procedure when you’re drinking excessively on a plane, you know, the first thing they do is they stop selling you drinks.
RUSH: Wait a minute. It’s hard to believe. Wait a minute, now. Wait a minute. Wait. It’s hard to believe that you may be more informed than I on this, but were they drinking?
CALLER: Well, if they were being rowdy, they probably were drinking, but if it was just a bunch of boys… You know, if they were warned to stop making some noise and they didn’t —
RUSH: It was more than that.
CALLER: — then yeah, I guess old guys coming up and —
RUSH: It was more than noise. They were faking heart attacks. They were clearly trying to disrupt. There was curiosity about whether or not they were, you know, scoping things out for future mission. People have to be concerned about this on airplanes these days.
CALLER: Ah, yeah, well, all I know is that if two old guys woulda come up to me and I wouldn’t have been warned by the flight attendants to stop making a little rowdy scene, there would be have a fight. Like Justin Wilson always said, ‘I gar-on-tee!’
RUSH: (Laughing.) Justin Wilson! Is he still around?
CALLER: I don’t know. He ain’t even from Louisiana.
RUSH: Damon, look, I appreciate the call. You have a fascinating perspective on this.