20th Anniversary Flashback: The Animal Rights Update

RUSH: Back to the archives, ladies and gentlemen, back to the golden Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites, a look back at much that’s happened over the last 20 years on the EIB Network as we approach the 20th anniversary, which is Friday.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now another golden classic from the Rush Limbaugh radio program.

(Playing of Born Free animal rights update song)

RUSH ARCHIVE: All right, my friends, here are the sordid details of this story. Actually, this wild monkey is out of control: ‘Runaway monkey has eluded police armed with nets and bananas in Osaka.’ Is that not a little prejudicial to think that a banana will automatically catch a monkey? Isn’t that a put-down of monkeys to assume that they’re all going to fall prey to bananas? Anyway, police have continued their hunt yesterday and today for the monkey. You know why? Because it is terrorizing the children and abducting pets, ladies and gentlemen. This runaway monkey is stealing people’s pets. ‘No injuries have been reported yet since the three-foot tall monkey first appeared Tuesday.’ Police cornered the monkey at one point yesterday — and get this, they had it, they had the monkey cornered, but they had to back off after it seized two kittens. ‘They backed off because they feared the monkey might harm the other animals said the city officials.’ That’s right. ‘The monkey then escaped and with the kittens. The kittens’ fate was unknown.’ What do you have here, folks? In a nutshell, you have a runaway monkey in Osaka terrorizing kids, holding kittens hostage, so the police let him go. It is incredible. He seized two kittens and the cops back off. They may not want to end up going to jail for 12 years if anything happens to the kittens when the American animal rights wackos hear about it. Maybe they’re just not dangling enough bananas. Have they tried a monkey of the opposite sex? There’s any number of things they could do here, but as long as this monkey is smart enough to know that by holding kittens hostage it could keep the cops at bay, I don’t know how they’re ever going to catch him.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: Rush Limbaugh, celebrating 20 years of broadcast excellence.

RUSH: Many things happened over the course of these years, one of the things, the Animal Rights Update. We were told by whoever wrote the song Born Free that we were denied permission to use it in that fashion. Andy Williams who portrayed the song vocally, said he was cool with it, he would love it, he loved the airplay, but they didn’t like us putting bombs and explosions and gunfire in the Animal Rights Update, so we had to stop it. That was one of the sad things that happened as this program became more and more successful and got larger and larger and larger, is that a number of people who were not politically sympathetic to this program decided to assert their rights and deny us the ability to use certain musical things. Others didn’t, but that’s why the Animal Rights Update, as you heard it there, we sneak one in now and then, and then we deny it if anybody says and we did it.