RUSH: Up next is Deanna from Sidney, Ohio. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am.
CALLER: Well, a little bit off the beaten path, but I was wondering what you thought about the whole Brett Favre situation.
RUSH: Well, tell me something. Last I heard, the head coach, Mike McCarthy, was to have a little meeting with the Packers quarterbacks and the team last night and then go out and have a press conference that was scheduled to start at 8:15 Central Time. The meeting with Favre and the quarterbacks went over two hours, they canceled the press conference. So has Favre taken the field yet? Is he actually out there, has he taken the field for the Packers, do you know something I don’t know?
CALLER: I have not heard that yet.
RUSH: Okay. Well, when I first heard about this, I was fascinated to watch, as I always am, the Drive-Bys’ reaction. Now, you have to understand something about the sports Drive-Bys and Brett Favre. He is The Messiah. He is like Obama, he can do no wrong. Brett Favre gets media coverage unlike that which 99.9% of the people in this country, sports or otherwise, get when they are reported on. He was idolized; he was revered; he was built up. In fact, I have to think that any human being who received years and years and years of genuine idolization, idolatry, worship, and devotion would have to be affected by it. You’d have to have trouble letting that go. You know, most people, Deanna, really care what people think of them.
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: Sadly, it’s true. And when you’ve got the national sports media thinking you are the greatest, and they’re out there treating you like a god, it’s got to be hard when that goes away, such as when you retire. So he announces he’s coming back. I wanted to watch the reaction of the Drive-Bys who had built Favre up, not that he didn’t deserve a lot of it, don’t misunderstand. I’ve met Brett Favre. He once wore a Rush Limbaugh tie. They had a Rush Room in the Green Bay Packers locker room, Rich Moran and Ken Ruettgers of the offensive line, this is back in the early nineties, they started it, and I have a great picture of Favre and the whole team in their jerseys wearing the ties. I’ve met him a couple times, he’s a very nice guy. But human psychology is what it is.
So I’m watching the Drive-Bys report on Favre coming back and there’s a genuine, ‘Don’t do it, Brett, don’t do it! We don’t want to see you become Willie Mays. We don’t want to see you destroy your career. Let us have the memories, Brett. Let us have the memories we have of you, Brett. Please don’t come back.’ I’m saying to myself, why? The guy still wants to play, he’s still got two years left in his contract and he wants to come back and play, let him play, let him come back and try to play. Then the Packers made it clear they had no desire for any of this to happen. And that’s when I think this started to become a circus to tell you the truth, Deanna, and I don’t think anybody in it looks particularly good right now. The Packers had their plans all set up. Now those plans are apparently blown to smithereens. They wanted to move on with a quarterback that has not started a game in his career, Aaron Rodgers. Now Favre comes in, wants to play, they don’t want to trade him, ’cause he’ll end up with the Vikings, which is a division opponent.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, I’m glad he turned down the 20 million over ten years to be a marketing representative, because they were essentially paying him to stay down in Mississippi.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Paying him to stay home and not play. If he’d have taken that, it would have given the Drive-Bys a chance to say, ‘Well, maybe he’s a little bit more mercenary than we thought. Maybe he doesn’t play for the love of the game.’ So I’m glad he didn’t take that. But, at any rate, at the end of the day, Deanna, all of this is just nothing but fun ’cause it’s sports, and sports is an escape from the humdrum of the Obamas and the McCains and the leftists and the oil price and so forth. Sports is there to get our minds off of it. It is a business, and people take it very seriously, analyze it as such. At the end of the day, these guys are just playing games. They’re the professionals, we’re all professionals here, they’re the best at what they do and it’s fun to watch ’em do it, but in terms of the impact it’s going to have, you know, it could have an impact on a town’s, city population’s, self-esteem, market the size of Green Bay or something, but it’s going to be hard to see Brett Favre on the bench if that’s the way this season starts with a guy who’s never started a game in the NFL winning the job. At the end of the day, it’s fun to talk about, but it’s not worth getting upset about. You agree?
CALLER: That’s a great perspective. That’s why we listen to you.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Deanna, thanks much.