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RUSH: Yesterday, I was explaining why it was that women came out in droves for Hillary Clinton, and after I made my explanation — and it was quite detailed, and it was unique; you weren’t hearing it anywhere else in broadcast media — I cannot tell you the number of good-natured e-mails I got from people saying, ‘You know, this is hilarious,’ and many of them were women. ‘This is hilarious, listening to you, of all people, talk about women; listening to you explain women. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard.’ The only woman who I talked to that thought I had a point was Dawn, and even she was somewhat on the fence about this. I even got grief from the lovely and gracious Cookie up in New York about the hormones and the zit line and how it might be Mrs. Clinton’s next technique because she can’t cry but one time here.

So I have assembled here, in my Stacks of Stuff, all of the evidence that has now been forthcoming from angry women columnists from as far away as the UK, whose columns and comments and blog posts confirm virtually everything I said yesterday. It can be summed up this way: Women did not come out and support Hillary because it was chick to chick. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t gender. It was that they need vindication. They want revenge, and they like saying, ‘Screw you, mister!’ Women rallied around because they thought Hillary was being mistreated by a bunch of guys. You can watch Desperate Housewives and you can see women be vicious to each other and women love watching that stuff, and they love watching the evil female villains on soap opera get away with stuff. They sit here and they eat that up. When a man does it, it’s a whole different thing. This, ladies and gentlemen, I know — and I’m going to prove this to you. We even have a theme song for this update, Bill Clinton ripping off Roy Orbison here. It’s Paul Shanklin with the voice.

(playing of Crying spoof song)

We have a little Paolo Conte here: Happy Feet.

(playing of Happy Feet)

Ooh!

(song continues)

Paolo Conte. All right, let’s just get started here with the Stack, ladies and gentlemen.

First from Libby Brooks. I’ve never heard of Libby Brooks. She’s writing in the UK Guardian. ”American Psychos’ — There’s an item lurking in the corner of our office that’s been annoying me for ages. A … gift from one of our Washington colleagues, she is about 10 inches tall, and dressed in a sharp grey suit with metal spikes between her splayed thighs. Yes…it’s the Hillary Clinton nutcracker and it’s truly Hillaryous. You too can dominate the ice queen from the comfort of your own kitchen while opening seasonal produce.’ I have one of these Hillary nutcrackers. Somebody gave me one of these for Christmas. Have you seen one? Have you seen one of these things? ‘It’s hardly news,’ writes Ms. Brooks, ‘that Clinton is, and always has been, a complex and polarising [sic] character. This contest is as much, if not more, about personality than it is about policies. So it’s entirely legitimate to critique Clinton’s public persona, to assess her perceived cynicism and coldness, to query her cross-generational appeal or how she plays to a female audience. That’s politics.

‘Most of the American feminists I know aren’t planning to vote for her, and I’ve not heard a single one argue that there exists some higher sisterly duty to support Clinton simply because she’s a woman. But more now than ever, it’s worth recalling the toxic drip-drip of low misogyny that Clinton has endured since she announced her candidacy — simply because she is a woman. This has been evident not only in the fetid realm of the right-wing blogosphere but on national networks and in the country’s most august newspapers. Because that’s not politics — it’s woman-hating.’ Now, I’m telling you: The purpose of this Stack is to tell you that I called this yesterday. I told you what this was all about. I got female people all over the country, all over the world writing pieces about this confirming that I, El Rushbo (according to many good-natured e-mails yesterday), know zilch, zero, nada, diddly-squat about this.

‘Mid-December, a particularly unflattering photograph of Clinton campaigning in Iowa was posted on the Drudge report, under the headline ‘The Toll of the Campaign’. This was picked up by talk show host Rush Limbaugh who asked his [audience]: ‘Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?’ (Because male presidents age only on a monthly basis, and look all the more patrician for it. Don’t they?) Maybe Limbaugh deserves a get out of jail free card given that he lives in a country where it’s near compulsory for women in the public eye to endure botulism in their facial contours and elevated hairlines. But actually Rush, wrinkles happen and that’s what a 60-year-old woman looks like, not even on a bad day.’ I know, Libby, and we don’t want to have to look at them every day. This is the point! ‘So, to recap: Hillary is too masculine, but also too feminine; too icy and too emotional, too sexy but then nowhere near sexy enough, what with being ancient of years; too calculating and too stupid; too [b-i-itchy], too witchy, too — oh, what’s the word? — female.’ That’s piece number one. (interruption) No, I said it once. Why would I abandon it now? The Sun… (interruption)

Would you just calm down in there? When I say ‘we,’ I mean society. Did you hear me say ‘I’? Chill. Just chill in there. The Reverend Jackson, Jr., has also come out and become critical of Mrs. Clinton. He went on PMSNBC and appeared to question Hillary’s tears, which he called ‘tears that melted the Granite State,’ adding that those tears moved voters. He also suggested Hillary was crying about her appearance. One key quote from Jesse Jackson, Jr., ‘Yeah, those are tears that Mrs. Clinton cried on that day clearly moved voters but somehow connected with those voters but those tears have to be analyzed. They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina, where 45% of African-Americans who participate in the Democrat contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama.’ Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s point here is that we might want to analyze all the times that Mrs. Clinton did not cry, the things that did not move her to tears. Hurricane Katrina is his big item.

Bill cheating, Bill cheating, Bill cheating, Bill cheating, Bill cheating, Monica Lewinsky, 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing: None of these things caused tears, according to Jesse Jackson, Jr. But when a woman asks her, ‘How do you do it?’ Now people are wondering if that was a plant. I have another theory here. Now, I’m sure this is going to offend some of you. It’s not going to stop me from saying it. Again I’m talking here about liberal women. Liberal women have pretty much proven that they are emotional wrecks, and that they also have some problems that go beyond that. I want to point out one more thing about that Hillary crying clip to prove this. Part of that tape that always gets cut off is a testimonial, you know: ‘How do you do it?’ The question is about her hair: ‘How do you do this every day?’ One of the things we don’t see very often in this clip is about how hard Mrs. Clinton says it is to eat right and exercise on the road while campaigning. Now, that, I think, resonates, too, with a whole lot of women, the weight control bit. (interruption) See? Dawn’s nodding in agreement here. Let me tell you, the single biggest reason Oprah Winfrey caught on, the single biggest reason. This is my theory. This is just my theory.

It was when she went on that first diet of hers. Remember this? And she came out thin as a rail in a tight pair of jeans, she was pulling a red wagon full of some kind of animal fat that represented the weight that she had lost — and that was magic. She was doing well up to that point. Don’t misunderstand. The show was not floundering. She was doing well up to that point, but that show and the issue pushed her into the rare air of popularity heights. Women on the left — liberal women, emotionally needy who think they’re overweight — tend to love that talk about how hard it is to be fat and then all the excuses that keeps ’em that way, and they get obsessed with losing weight. So while everybody else is still blabbering about the crying, which wasn’t crying, the real reason is that Hillary admitted in public her problems with weight control. That is another uncommented-on facet of this, and you add to it that it is men that are making all these fat comments and insulting comments as far as women are concerned. Here’s another piece, Catherine Fenton, ‘What Happened in New Hampshire? — A Roar.’ This is from the buzzflash.com website.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the Stack demonstrating how on-the-money I was yesterday, and way ahead of the train, way ahead of the curve. Jodi Kantor in the New York Times, ”Women’s Support for Clinton Rises in Wake of Perceived Sexism’ — … At work, Ms. Six said, she listened to male colleagues make fun of Mrs. Clinton for choking up at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire. ‘She’s over,’ one [of my male colleagues] chortled, Ms. Six said. With that, Mrs. Clinton ‘may just have earned my vote,’ Ms. Six said, adding, ‘I don’t know if I was super-conscious’ of the gender factor in the race before then. In New Hampshire, two hecklers yelled at Mrs. Clinton to iron their shirts … Mrs. Clinton is the only candidate whose critics complain about the pitch of her voice. For many women, these moments are deeply personal. Though Sarah Kreps, 31, who is moving to New York, said she would vote for Mr. Obama, seeing Mrs. Clinton debate was a reminder of her time in the Air Force, and the discomfort of being the sole woman in a group of men. The criticisms of Mrs. Clinton’s voice took Ms. Rees back to the time her boss pushed the mute button on a conference call to tell her that her voice was too shrill. … Other women mentioned how they were shocked to see how the only female candidate was perceived by some voters.

‘For Jodi Cohen, 31, a recruiter in Orange County, Calif., it was the relative who recently told her that he admired Bill Clinton but would not vote for his wife because she had stayed with her husband after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Priya Chaudhry, 31, a lawyer in New York and a supporter of Mrs. Clinton said she heard that criticism all the time. ‘They punish the woman who stood by him,’ Ms. Chaudhry said, ‘but forgive the adulterer himself?” This was ‘screw you, buddy.’ This was ‘Screw you!’ from all these women who have been dying for years, for whatever reasons, to tell the men in their lives, whether they’re married to them, have a relationship with them, or just work with them, who make fun of Hillary, this was their chance to fight back. Catherine Fenton: ‘A roar went up in New Hampshire yesterday, did you hear it? I’m not a Hillary or an Obama backer. As an actual liberal, I’m supporting John Edwards. And yet … something was stirring inside of me this week. Every time I turned on a cable news station, I was greeted with a smirking, overweight man. He had many different names, but he was always wearing the same smirk. And he was mocking Hillary Clinton.

‘Laughing at her. Demeaning her. ‘It was her voice. It reminds men of their wives’ voices.’ How many women knew that a man being reminded of his wife’s voice qualified as a traumatic experience for him? ‘Oh, she’s playing the victim, using tears. Men hate when women do that.’ Do they? Do they also hate when George Bush cries? He has you know. What are we being told here? Women’s tears are manipulative, men’s are real?’ See, folks, this I spotted yesterday. Still, she continues: ‘And still … I found myself wondering if I shouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton anyway. I didn’t like this. It reminded me of every time my brothers had mocked me growing up, made me feel like just a stupid girl. It reminded me of every man…’ These are liberal women writing these things; you gotta keep that in mind. That’s who I was talking about yesterday. ‘It reminded me of every man who had made me feel unfeminine when I got angry or impassioned over something important. Of every man who didn’t take me seriously.’ Screw you, buddy! Screw you, mister,’ is the overriding theme of the female vote. I actually think that what happens is a bunch of non-feminists showed up to support Hillary, based on the theories that I had espoused.

Ms. Fenton continues: ‘So I watched first with interest, then with a growing sense of pride and solidarity, and finally with, yes, tears in my eyes, as women came out in force yesterday in New Hampshire and roared. No poll predicted this. The pundits are flummoxed; could it be racism? Did whites pull their old trick of ‘yeah, I’m going to vote for the black candidate, I’m not a racist, and then pull the white lever in the privacy of their booth? … Yesterday they showed up at the polls in New Hampshire. They roared. Did you hear them Chris Matthews? Did you hear them Tim Russert? Did you hear them Christopher Hitchens? Did you hear them Rush Limbaugh? And yes, you, Maureen Dowd, don’t think we haven’t noticed you over on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, wasting one of the few powerful perches women have in print media with your sly anti-feminism … did you hear them MoDo?’ Catherine Fenton in New York, and then, of course, Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews did say some things here that did somewhat go over the top.

You can sum up what Matthews said by saying: She’s only a presidential candidate because Bill ‘messed around.’ Quote: ‘[T]he reason she’s a US Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is that her husband messed around…. That’s how she got to be a Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win it on her merit…’ Women hear these things. These liberal women hear these things, and it sends ’em off into orbit. So people would be making a mistake here, if it was women to women. If it was simply — you know, Hillary did play a gender card of sorts but it wasn’t so much the gender card as, ‘Gee, all these guys attacking me and I’m just so innocent and sweet.’ Now, she can only do this one time here, folks. And, since she can only do it one time, is this ‘effect,’ if you will, going to present itself again, say, in further states, when they get to South Carolina, when they get to Nevada? Are the women still going to be outraged over this and still support Hillary, or will they need another event like this to show solidarity and tell men where to go? So it could be a one-time phenomenon.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m spending this amount of time on it because it’s instructive. You know, I love analyzing what people do, but also why: What are the psychological and other factors, motivations, that cause people to do what they do. You have to understand that if you want them to behave in a different way, and clearly you had… The Drive-Bys are calling this woman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I forget what her name is, Marianne Pernold Young or whatever, and then they ask her, ‘Were you a plant?’ because she’s the one who asked. No, I’m not a plant. I just showed up, and she said, ‘It’s amazing to me what asking one compassionate question; saying one compassionate sentence, can do,’ and that made me think of something. If she voted for Obama… The woman that asked Hillary this question voted for Obama. But look at what happened here: For the first time since 1992, when Hillary burst upon the national scene, for the first time, she escaped the image of Nurse Ratched and became…human. She showed humanity. Now, fine. What amazes me about this: Have you noticed lately that whenever a Democrat shows ‘humanity,’ it’s a big deal, for a candidate that’s supposedly to be for the people? Remember, Gore had the same thing. ‘Is he a man or a tree?’ They had what’s-her-face, Naomi Wolf out there dressing him up in earth tones, trying to soften his image, and these are supposedly the people who are for the people.

Yet whenever they behave in a way that causes people to stop in utter shock and say, ‘Why, look! Why, there’s human moment,’ doesn’t that tell us about something? I find all this stuff fascinating. We’re cataloging it; we’re filing it away. It’s a long way to go to November. Jonathan Alter, he of Newsweek, said: ‘The gender gap that has characterized general elections in this country for a generation has now opened up within the Democrat Party, too. If men and women had voted in the Democrat primary in equal numbers in New Hampshire, Obama would have won. But 57% were women. In that sense, the continued failure of the Democrats to attract male voters helped determine the outcome of this contest.’ He’s on to something there, by the way. Everybody talks about the female vote, and you gotta have this and you take a look at most cases, this is true, presidential winners attract the majority of the male vote. This is not to discount the importance of female vote. Lord knows, I would never do that. Getting to the audio sound bites and let’s listen to the Drive-By Media try to explain their versions of what I said yesterday. MSNBC’s Morning Joe today talking with Mike Barnicle, columnist out of Boston. Scarborough said, ‘Hey, you know, the longer I get away from it, the more I’m going to be asking, ‘What the hell happened here?’ Because there were no signs of this.’

BARNICLE: The crying, emotion she showed had an enormous impact in the state with working women who aren’t working at hedge funds. They aren’t waking up this morning going to Manhattan law firms. They’re not going out to Santa Monica talent agencies and making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. They are listening to stooges like me saying, ‘Give me a large light with two Sweet’N Lows please and a low-fat blueburry [sic] muffin.’ They are working women. They didn’t like the idea, clearly, of this woman giving the appearance of being beaten up Saturday night and being forced to whatever. The exhaustion of a campaign, the weight of her marriage, many of them go home to guys who say, ‘Hey, is dinner ready?’ So basically they said, ‘Hey, leave her alone,’ —

WOMAN: Right.

BARNICLE: — and they voted for her.

RUSH: ‘And while you’re at it, fix your own dinner, mister.’ The pent-up rage. This is what everybody is saying now, that the pent-up rage that women have for the men in their lives was expressed in their votes for Hillary Clinton. And you know who was doing most of the mocking of Hillary? It was the Drive-Bys. It really was the cable networks that were doing most of the mocking and making fun of her, and then making fun after she cried, making all kinds of fun about that. Next question from Scarborough to Barnicle. ‘You were talking about that husband saying, ‘Is dinner ready?’ Well, I’ll tell you. I felt the worst for her because her husband is going around behind her back saying horrible things about her.’

BARNICLE: If you turn on the radio and you listen to the vast majority of talk radio in this country, most of it tilts right. That’s fine. But the viciousness —

VOICE: Mmm-hmm.

BARNICLE: — the level of hostility and hatred toward this one woman, the demonizing of her; the weight of that, causes something to collapse in the infrastructure, the political infrastructure after awhile.

RUSH: None of these were guys saying any of this yesterday, folks. None of it. (interruption) I don’t know what it means. It probably doesn’t mean much. All these people are trying to capitalize on the unique theorems and analysis that I offered yesterday. So they put their liberal spin on it, and you get basically a bunch of gibberish. Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Dee Dee Myers said this about the New Hampshire primary.

MYERS: What happened was people watched that, and one of the realities of technology is that you can go on YouTube.

MATTHEWS: Right.

MYERS: The thing gets repeated. People saw it for themselves and they judged for themselves —

MATTHEWS: Mmm-hmm.

MYERS: — and what they judged was–

MATTHEWS: Mmm-hmm.

MYERS: — that was a genuine moment of, she’s tired, she’s under a lot of pressure, people are beating her up. —

MATTHEWS: Sure.

MYERS: — women don’t like watching people be mean to other people and they said to themselves, ‘I’m going to take a stand on this. I’m going to take a stand and say. This does not end, not like this, not now,’ and they voted for her.

RUSH: Women don’t like to watch people be mean to each other? See, this, essentially, is what I was saying yesterday, but Dee Dee, it’s liberal women we’re talking about here. But this notion that women don’t want to watch people be mean to each other? If that were the case, Desperate Housewives would have never gotten off the ground floor! What is it but a show of back-stabbing, viciousness, even murder? Soap operas are the same thing. Women love to watch people be mean to each other, they just don’t like men being the ones that are mean. But watching two women go at it? Well, they don’t mind that whatsoever. (interruption) Well, Chris Matthews, in terms of what these people think was mean said, ‘Here was a serious question from a woman: ‘How do you do it?’ And Mrs. Clinton got that choked voice and a couple tears supposedly ran down the cheeks, and all these guys started laughing at it and making fun of it, and here was a woman in pain. Here was a woman suffering! Here was a woman who had been put upon by everybody. She is compared to a witch. She is compared to a nurse in a psycho movie by Rush Limbaugh. It’s just gotten too big, too much, and, finally, she was asked, ‘How do you do it?” I’m going to tell you something. You know, when I watched this, I’m going to tell you folks something. I thought it was the most genuine I’ve ever seen her. Now, I heard the audio before I saw this. I watched the video. I thought she was just real. It was the first time I saw this woman this way. Even though I know she’s faking it, and she’d rehearsed it, she looked real — and then the acceptance speech, after she had won the primary, I thought she looked better than I had ever seen her. When she came out late at night, gave the acceptance speech, she had the hair down. You know, every day during the Clinton years is a different hat, different hair band, different hairstyle. She got the hair thing down. She looked glowing. She looked genuinely happy, Mr. Snerdley. She did! At that acceptance speech, she looked genuinely good. She even looked sexy. I thought she looked sexy at that acceptance speech.

RUSH: Let’s go to the phones. This is Millicent in Cleveland. Millicent, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush! How are you?

RUSH: I’m fine, thank you.

CALLER: Oh, what a delight to be able to talk to you.

RUSH: I appreciate that.

CALLER: Well, I was half listening earlier during your first segment, during the first part of your segment, and you talked about briefly, you hit upon liberal women’s identity, and I think the difference between a liberal woman and a conservative woman is that conservative women, we know what our identity is, whether it’s I’m a stay-at-home mom or I work but I have children or —

RUSH: And you like it.

CALLER: What?

RUSH: You like yourself. You’re not angry at the world over who you are, what you’re not —

CALLER: Right!

RUSH: — who’s made you what you have to be, and a lot of liberal women feel like victims, that they’re subjugated, subordinated, no prayer, no choice. What do you think Undeniable Truth of Life Number 24 was all about? It’s as dead-on accurate today as it was when I wrote it in 1987.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: ‘Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.’

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: All of this stuff proves this, folks!

CALLER: You’re absolutely right. You’re spot on.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate the validation, Millicent.

CALLER: (chuckles) You’re welcome. I have to say there’s nothing sexier than a smart man.

RUSH: I know. The brain — to a refined, educated, sensible woman the male brain — is the largest sex organ.

CALLER: There you go.

RUSH: Is that not true?

CALLER: It is, absolutely.

RUSH: Tell me, people, I don’t know women? (laughs) Now, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing about this, because I know what some of you are thinking. Does this episode with Mrs. Clinton, not just blow to smithereens the whole concept of equality, the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism and so forth? Men, routinely… I mean, life for men is one giant competition, sometimes physical, all the times mental, all the times emotional, all the times attitudinal. Life is one big competition, and men are raised that way — and the moment they show weakness in the face of competition, they’re finished! Mrs. Clinton wants to enter what has been a boys club. Fine and dandy. What was feminism about? Making sure that women could do whatever they wanted to do. The big mistake that I think the feminists made from the get-go was, rather than stick to female issues — having women be who they are, who they want to be — the early feminists said, ‘You gotta be like men! You gotta dress like them. You gotta go to career schools like them. You gotta go to a career path like them. You gotta climb the career ladder like them. You gotta be like men.’ Well, women aren’t like men, despite what TIME Magazine says. There are basic differences, among them the womb — and that is something that you cannot rule out here, the differences, once that comes into play.

At any rate, do we now have evidence that there is no such thing as equality, particularly on the campaign trail? I mean look at what’s been said about Huckabee! Look at what’s been said about Mitt! Look at what’s been said about Fred Thompson, ‘You lazy bum! Where’s the fire in the belly?’ People have been all over Huckabee because he’s dishonest. He’s a conservative, liberal in sheep’s clothing. Look at McCain. These guys have not once broken down and cried. They have not once gotten emotional. They have not once gotten the question, ‘How do you do it?’ No man would think of asking McCain or Rudy or Huckabee or any of these candidates, ‘How do you do it?’ because it’s what it is, and I doubt that a woman would ask these Republican candidates, ‘How do you put up with it? How are you handling this?’ The point is, there is no such thing as equality. There is still — and it will always be this way, as it should be — preferential treatment for women in areas of high competition, high intensity. There always will be, and it should be that way, and you can see in this whole episode the absolute fraud and intellectual vapidity that feminism, militant feminism has always been.

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