When you indict a company, you pretty much kill the company. It’s a publicly-traded company. So Greenberg resigned. He’s never been indicted, not one thing’s happened to him legally. Greenberg was a huge Republican donor, hugely active in Republican fundraising circles and so forth. I’m watching this Spitzer-under-fire business, and our side is just tiptoeing along, making sure that we are honorable and understanding and compassionate and all of that. You know, folks, we are so worried, are we not, about the messages that boys get from sports stars? We worry about, ‘Look at the gang influence in the NFL. Look at the gang influence in the NBA.’ We’re worried about the messages that young boys who idolize these athletes are getting. But then we have these highly visible political wives, what are they doing? They send a message that it’s okay to let men humiliate them in public. You think this is a healthy message for young women to see? Remember how upset the Clintons got, remember how upset Bill Clinton got when David Shuster over at PMSNBC said that Chelsea was being ‘pimped’ out? Well, what about what Clinton did to Chelsea’s mother? Didn’t Clinton do the same thing? Didn’t Clinton pimp her out? What message did Hillary give to Chelsea? And what would Clinton do? What would Clinton do if someday Chelsea marries a guy just like him, and someday has to do the downcast eyes, ashen face, Stand by Your Man thing? I mean, that’s the role model that Chelsea has seen.
We never talk about the aspect of the effect on young girls and women that this has. What does this say about feminism, if you want to bring politics into it? You might say, ‘Rush, it’s none of your business.’ But if we’re going to sit here and get morally judgmental about what happens to young boys because of the effect athletes have on them, you can’t take this out of the equation. There are so many people saying, ‘Well, you know, this whole prostitution thing, it’s so outmoded, it ought not even be a crime.’ All the intellectuals on the Internet are going back and forth on the whole premise that this is an outmoded law; it’s a private matter; it doesn’t affect anybody, particularly the way they do their job, just so unfair. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Here’s just a montage of a whole bunch of people all over the Drive-By Media yesterday and last night.
D’AMATO: This is a tragedy, an enormous tragedy.
CARVILLE: It’s a tragedy.
LIASSON: One of those political tragedies.
KING: A personal tragedy.
SHEINKOPF: This is a tragedy.
SHAWN: A personal and political tragedy, a sadness and a tragedy.
COLMES: This is a tragic thing.
BARRETT: It’s just an enormous tragedy.
ZIMMERMAN: The reason I use the word ‘tragedy’ is he showed such potential as attorney general.
RUSH: Did you hear anything like this when the Mark Foley thing happened or when the Newt Gingrich thing happened or when anything like this on the conservative Republican side happens, do you hear any, ‘Oh, we’re so sad, so sorry, what a tragedy.’ No, all we hear about is what a bunch of hypocrites Republicans are in these circumstances. Well, why can’t you say that Spitzer himself is a hypocrite? Because he clearly is. Here’s a guy who sought to bust up two prostitution rings on the basis that they are destructive to society and families and so forth, while at the same time he’s patronizing one. Just such a good Democrat, such a good liberal, had such a wonderful future. And, of course, our guys just sit around and tiptoe around this and do the same thing. Here’s Mrs. Clinton last night in Pennsylvania at a campaign event. Here’s a portion of her remarks about this.
HILLARY: I don’t have any comment on that, but I obviously am sending, you know, my best wishes and thoughts to the governor and to his family. Let’s wait and see what comes out over the next days, but right now I don’t have any comment, and I think it’s appropriate just to wish his family well and we’ll wait and see how things develop.
RUSH: Yeah, she didn’t want to get close to this. She didn’t want to get anywhere near this. Can you imagine the nightmare she was having last night. It’s like Spitzer was minding his own business, some conservative got inside his brain and sent him down to the Emperor’s Club. I’ve had female friends who said, ‘Why would a guy do this? Why would a guy do this?’ (interruption) Have I seen what pictures? Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the pictures of the girls at the Emperor’s Club. Why pay for it? Why 5,000 bucks an hour? Why would somebody like this do it? I mean, above and beyond the psychological reasons, you know, the Type A personality, the risk, gotta take the risk to keep the adrenaline, I’m not talking about that kind of thing. Why do it? (laughing) Ladies, Charlie Sheen said this when he was asked the same question. Why in the world, Charlie, I mean here you are a big Hollywood star, you’re married to Denise Richards for a while, why are you out there buying all this sex? He said, ‘I’m not buying the sex. I’m paying them to leave.’ That’s what Charlie Sheen said. I’m by no means an expert on this, ladies and gentlemen, so I could not answer these ladies’ questions. I’m a little offended they were asking me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. I want to give you a flavor for some of the things that were said about the Spitzer situation, that seem to complain about the problem here being prostitution being illegal. We’ll start with Alan Dershowitz. He was on PMSNBC Live and he was talking to the anchorette Contessa Brewer. She said, ‘What’s your reaction, Professor Dershowitz?’
DERSHOWITZ: I feel that this is an America-only story that we have to put into perspective. You know, big deal! Married man goes to prostitute. In Europe, this wouldn’t even make the back pages of the newspaper. It’s a uniquely American story. We’re uniquely, you know, pandering society and hypocritical society when it comes to sex.
BREWER: Okay.
RUSH: See? We’re so old-fashioned. This wouldn’t even make the back pages of the newspaper in Europe. I mean, big deal! Married man goes to prostitute. Yip yip yip yip yahoo. So I guess what we are to conclude here is prostitution doesn’t harm the family. No big deal, right? Let’s ask Mrs. Spitzer and her daughters about that. Ask them how they’re doing today, now that they’ve found out about it. What about the value of human dignity? How many of these women — I don’t care whether they’re ‘high-priced’ call girls or hookers prowling the corners — how many of these women go into prostitution willingly? How many of them become pregnant? How many of them seek abortions? How many end up having wholesome lives or even a chance at it? To view this as simply a commercial transaction — to me, anyway — is to reject the entire moral belief structure of (well, for lack of a better word) conservatism. These are attitudes that lack a moral belief structure. To excuse this, or blame it on us being Victorian or old-fashioned and not significantly advanced or evolved as a culture, is typical of the left. I don’t know. Do the American people accept prostitution as an acceptable form of conduct? Do you think they do? Do they? I don’t know. I’m asking the question. This is a field I have not plowed. All I can do here is ask questions and share with you my virgin thoughts on this. Here’s more of Dershowitz. Contessa Brewer says, ‘You’ve called Spitzer ‘brilliant.’ How does somebody ‘brilliant’ get caught in something like this?’
DERSHOWITZ: Well, because men don’t use their brains when it comes to something like this. They think with a different part of their body and that part of the body, the — the level of brains there are no relationship to the level of brains in the skull, unfortunately, and when people think with that organ of the body they make these kinds of really, really terrible mistakes.
RUSH: What, now it’s a terrible mistake? I thought it was no big deal! I thought it was a ‘tragedy,’ then it was ‘no big deal,’ now it’s a ‘terrible mistake.’ Let’s listen to Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. — Tucker Carlson — last night, on his own show, had this to say about Spitzer.
CARLSON: Spitzer’s true sins, in my view, are the ones that he commits in public — crushing other people for the sake of his own political career, for instance, which has been the hallmark of his time in public life — not going to a hooker. You know that’s no way to get, in my opinion, at your political enemies. And to see the press — a group that, you know, frankly has pretty unconventional personal lives by and large — getting all high-handed about the fact that a grown man went to a prostitute is — is — is (snicker) — is nauseating. I think it’s a shame when we go through these spasms of self-righteousness and we all beat our chests and say, ‘Look at the bad guy!’ You know, ‘We’re nothing like him,’ when in fact a lot of us are like him, frankly.
RUSH: So there’s Chatsworth indicting the Drive-Bys, saying they all go to prostitutes, or a number of them do, and that they’re being hypocrites here in calling Spitzer out on it. Why is it illegal, if it’s such an accepted thing? You know, the Drive-Bys said the same thing about Clinton back in Lewinsky days, ‘Oh, in Europe, why, it wouldn’t even make the paper, much less the back page! We’re the laughingstock of the world over this, and the world can’t believe what we’re reacting to with Clinton having an affair with an intern and so forth,’ and this is what happens. You know, Democrats circle the wagons. It’s like I was saying yesterday, folks. (sigh) We’re in a war with these libs. Yeah, I feel sorry for Spitzer’s family, and I think he needs to resign. Hillary and Obama, by the way, need to explain why they don’t support it. They need to be made to weigh in on this. I mean, look. Foley, Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich — who else? David Vitter, Larry Craig. You look at the posse that was formed to go nail these people and get them out of town within minutes of when the information was learned.
McCain won’t talk about this. Well, I know that’s because Democrats are ‘honorable people’ and we’re going to run an ‘honorable campaign.’ But, look, McCain is claiming to fight government corruption, is he not? What is honorable about the silence in the face of this? We had more noise about Larry Craig, Mark Foley and all this, than this. This guy was setting himself up to be blackmailed! This was not just a ‘private matter.’ The possibility of blackmail was going on here. This is the governor of New York. (sigh) Anyway, here’s James Carville, ladies and gentlemen, on Larry King Live. John King was filling in for Larry King. John King, filling in for Larry King, said to James Carville, ‘Many people in Washington say the last thing Hillary Clinton needs is a public discussion about sexual…’
CARVILLE: I don’t think he should resign. The worst thing about this is you gotta listen to all these moralizing, self-righteous jerks on TV pontificate about all this. I mean, if this is what this man did and it’s all he did, then it’s a — it’s a shame. It’s a tragedy for his family. I’m a little bit skeptical that this thing is not — there’s not some political motivation that’s going to be uncovered. I think the press needs to look into why are we sitting here going crazy on this about a man hooking up with a prostitute? This is not the first time it’s happened.
RUSH: Well, James, why the hell did Washington shut down and go into a tizzy last October about Mark Foley? I mean don’t we know, from looking at the House of Representatives, that certain members have always been running around with d’pages? Some of them were even honored for it. Foley didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before. In fact, Foley did far less! All he did was send some e-mails. They never found him in contact with any of these pages. Why the double standard here folks? This is what I was talking about yesterday. (doing Carville impression) ‘It’s a tragedy, media running around out there, why, time in Washington, man goes…’ I’ll tell you what, James. Go see a prostitute and go tell Mary you did and see what happens, if it’s no big deal. All you guys out there, all you libs who think prostitution is no big deal, go visit one and let the world and let the country find out that you did it and go home, and find out how big a deal it isn’t when you get home. Mara Liasson says there will be no impact whatsoever on the Democrat Party.
LIASSON: The scandals really hurt a party when they — when there are a bunch of them and they happen in Washington. If it’s a governor here and there, I don’t think it has that same impact. I’m saying when they’re outside of Washington. They have to be national figures.
RUSH: She may have a point. Hurt the Democrat Party? This is a resume enhancement in the Democrat Party, and you can hear it in the audio sound bites. (sigh) Brent Bozell’s bunch in the Media Research Center went out there and they analyzed news coverage, and it was amazing. I think the networks last night didn’t even mention he was a Democrat. The New York Times in their first report had him as a Democrat in paragraph three, then they revised the story later and were reporting him as a Democrat in paragraph 15. Don’t tell me they don’t think it hurts when they want to shield the party ID or identification of a suspect like this.