Chickified Olympic Coverage Geared to the Female Audience

RUSH: Now, I mentioned at the top of the program, there’s a lot of stuff on the table today. One of the things is the Olympics, and in my opening monologue, I focused primarily on the opening ceremony, which was dazzling. There’s no question about it. It was amazing. It was visually unparalleled, nothing like it. But I tell you what I saw in addition to all that. I saw sameness. I saw communism on display. I saw 15,000 human robots under orders who had been trained for years to act in synchronicity, and they pulled it off. But they were interchangeable parts. We saw their faces, some of them, they all looked the same. We saw their actions, all looked the same. And you know what the message was? The message was imagine if these 15,000 trained human robots had guns and were following military orders. I mean, there were a lot hidden messages, and I mentioned this to some people over the weekend, ‘Boy, you’re just so cynical, you’re just so jaundiced.’ No, I’m not cynical or jaundiced. I know communists. I know communists like I know liberals, and I know liberals like every glorious square inch of my naked body, my friends, and that’s the first thing that I saw was sameness, after the dazzling visuals, I saw faceless, nameless sameness. And then we learn of all the fakery. And then of course we learn that the ChiCom leaders send out a lip-syncer, the little girl who sang the hymn to the motherland. I’ll betcha when Obama was watching he did put his hand over his heart then when the ChiCom little girl sang hymn to the motherland.

The girl who actually sang the song was not allowed to go out there on camera because ChiCom leaders determined her buckteeth made her ugly. So they found the pig-tailed little girl who was pretty, and she went out and lip-synced it. They finally admitted this, just like they admitted some of the graphics in the big fireworks display were faked and inserted in the coverage graphically with computers. This is funny because have you ever seen a ChiCom leader that you think should be on TV? They all look like the back end of a goat, and for these people to sit there and start talking about how ugly this little girl was with buckteeth, it just goes to show you who these people really are. But there are other things that I’ve noticed. Of course the competition, the American team is fabulous, didn’t take long for the Drive-Bys to start speculating about doping with our swim team, how about Jason Lezak, overcoming the French guy. That was unbelievable, Jason Lezak overcoming the French guy, Bernard or whatever. The French guy is out there talking smack before that all happened. Now there are doubters questioning whether or not these new swimsuits made by Speedo are actually fair, because they’re not sewn, they are welded. It takes a half hour to put those things on, do you know that? It takes a half hour to squeeze into those swimsuits and one of the theories is they add buoyancy, they help the swimmers float.

Now, swimmers, professional swimmers, amateur swimmers, Olympic swimmers, no body fat, zilch, zero, nada and if you have no body fat, you sink. Fat people happen to be a little bit more buoyant in the water. Fat floats. By the way, speaking of that, there’s a great story out about half the people who are obese have really great heart health. I’ve told you people, all this conventional wisdom about all this health stuff and exercise, I told you, don’t buy into it. But there’s what I think. There’s a guy, big lib, Andy Borowitz, the humorist, he used to appear on CNN’s morning show when it had even fewer viewers than the one now has, and he wrote a piece, and he said they finally found an Olympic athlete who did not have a compelling, heartbreaking personal story of destruction to tell, and they kicked him out of the Olympics because he was unqualified because he did not have one of these heartbreaking tales of survived the chainsaws in his old mother country. And it got me to thinking, I’m watching all, and it’s absolutely right, at every Olympics it seems like every Olympic athlete just barely, barely made it through some amazing, impossible difficulty, every one of them. They were either laughed at and made fun of by their friends, or else their mother disowned them, or what have you. And I think what we see in Olympic coverage is the ultimate illustration of the chickification of news.

The Olympics, ladies and gentlemen, I believe are tailored for a female audience. Now, how does the female audience for the Olympics differ from female audiences in other sports? Well, let me ask you just how big is the female audience for football? I mean it’s there. But it’s nothing like the female audience for the Olympics. Oh, and you know something else, I’m going to expand on this when we come back. I’ll tell you something else. The parade of nations, we had our own little dose of communist style sameness. Did you see the US team come out there? Every damn one of them dressed alike, in unisex outfits designed by Ralph Lauren. The ugliest white hats I have seen. White slacks, blue blazers, and whatever else. (interruption) They might have looked European. No, they looked Palm Beach, that’s official Palm Beach yacht uniform, including the stupid hat. But they could have at least put skirts on the women. They could have put dresses on the women. They could have done something to differentiate ’em. They could have made them not wear the hats so we could see their hair. What have I done? I’m standing up for differences in the sexes when it comes to fashion. What is this unisex business? ‘But Rush, but Rush it’s a team, it’s a team.’ Yeah, but those were not uniforms.

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RUSH: Now, back to this Olympic business. The Olympics, unlike any other sport, draws legions of females to watch it. I’m not… (interruption) Dawn, stop laughing in there, because this is factually factual. I’m not trying to be funny. There’s no sexual, sexist comment here, it’s a fact. You know, women don’t watch baseball as much as they watch the Olympics. They don’t watch football, basketball. They get out of the house. I mean, there are exceptions. There are some women that like football, but it’s not like women sitting down watching the Olympics. Now, why is this? There’s a reason, folks, and it is left to me to explain it to you. With traditional sports in this country, you know, you got men who follow teams, they follow statistics from the time player was born to 14 minutes ago. They follow trades. They follow free agency, all of these things. They get caught up in all that sort of thing.

Women couldn’t care less about any of that. It’s just, ‘Who won, and when’s it going to be over so we can go to dinner?’ Men are invested in these sports because men, most men, would really rather love to be able to do that than their daily humdrum jobs. But women couldn’t be bothered with these kind of mundane things: free agency, trades, fantasy football and baseball leagues and all this. They couldn’t be bothered with it. But, you’ve got the Olympics every two years, summer Olympics every four years, you don’t need a scorecard. It’s real simple: Who won and who lost? You don’t even really need to keep track of the medal count because it’s not about that, other than the patriotic aspect of it. It’s very emotional. It’s very patriotic, and it all makes sense. While you’re watching — and this is the best part.

While women are watching the Olympics, you get all these literally heart-wrenching stories about the competitors, how they almost died but they’re now on the swim team. How their baby almost died but was saved because the mother could be on the gymnastic team from Germany. How they were ridiculed in grade school, how they had attention deficit disorder but found a cure in the swimming pool. The stories are legion, and they go on and on and on. You know, you laugh, but you’ll have an Eastern European athlete, you know, whose goat farm was run over by some mad perpetrator, and the family was destitute and poor for years and years and years — and finally, finally the javelin throw brought this man and his family out of destitution! We get long dissertations on how important the javelin is and what all it might mean.

Of course, everybody in these stories is a victim overcoming some form of oppression, but never communist oppression and never overcoming a government that has tried to keep them down. It is so clickified. It’s just made for women. In fact, women cry more than they cheer, watching the Olympics. Now, there are exceptions. There are some women who actually, you know, really get into athletics and sport and they cheer the victory, but you sit there and you cry. Women cry more than they cheer over this stuff. You know, since the Russians — well, the Russians are there, but there’s no Soviet Union. There’s really no bad guys anymore, so we men don’t care as much. In fact, one of the things that was so great for all the men about the swim team beating the French is that the French were talking smack.

The women loved it because look how muscular those swimmers looked when they came out of the pool in those tight fitting little swimsuits, and the courageous heroism of it all — and they’re cheering for the country and patriotism, and the men are saying, ‘Screw you, French! Screw you, frogs!’ ‘Cause they were talking smack. Let’s face it: It’s hard to muster any venom against the Chinese. I mean, they’re just little people running around out there, and the ones that we’ve seen on TV are all the same, good-looking. I mean, they’re assembly line human beings, mass produced by the ChiComs. At any rate, I think it’s interesting. The Olympics has done a very good marketing job, and so have the networks here in attracting the female. If they didn’t get women watching these games, the audiences wouldn’t be half of what they are, obviously.

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RUSH: I’ll tell you something else about the Olympics. I forgot to mention this when I was going through the whole business about how the whole thing’s been chickified, what with all these stories of strife and turmoil. Every athlete, for crying out loud. It’s probably taken them three years to do all these profiles on these athletes, all the horrible things they’ve had to overcome, every one of them. There was something else about these games that’s different than the past, the chickification and all this. I am convinced, ladies and gentlemen, that they’ve got a bunch of female directors and camera people now at NBC. Because during the events featuring female competitors, we’re not getting the same camera angles that we used to always get. We’re getting boring, uninteresting camera angles, and when there is an interesting shot that you might say, ‘Ooooh,’ they pull away from it or they widen the shot or whatever, take it away from you. Who really wants to watch female-on-female competition? The only exception to this is the beach volleyball, where the competitors are out there barely dressed. There’s nothing the chick directors can do. They probably don’t even put the chick directors on that event, otherwise there would be camera problems and we wouldn’t see it at all.

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Here’s Sandy on I-35 in Dallas, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Actually, I’m coming from greater Tishomingo, Oklahoma, just south of the Red River. I wanted to tell you that Roone Arledge doesn’t do the Olympics anymore so that’s why you’re not getting any great female shots, but you probably know that.

RUSH: Who doesn’t do the Olympics anymore?

CALLER: Roone Arledge.

RUSH: Roone Arledge, yes, exactly, exactly right, Roone Arledge. Well, but Roone Arledge hasn’t done the Olympics in a long time —

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: — and I remember, the NBC Olympics back — where were they, Greece?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: There was a lot more to look at then than there is this year, I guarantee.

CALLER: Right. But also that’s why you’re not getting great female shots back when Roone used to do all the sports.

RUSH: Yeah, there’s no question about that.

CALLER: But also where’s all the boxing promotion? What happened to the great boxing promotion we used to have?

RUSH: What do you mean, boxing —

CALLER: There’s no boxing promotion. Are we going to see any boxing this summer?

RUSH: You mean at the Olympics?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, what do you mean boxing promotion? Do you mean advertising it’s coming up, we’re not even seeing the boxing matches, is that what you’re saying?

CALLER: You know, it used to be when the summer Olympics were coming on we saw boxing promotion right and left through the years with —

RUSH: What, are you a big boxing fan?

CALLER: Yes, I am. I used to listen to Friday night Cavalcade of Sports with my dad on a little pink radio back when, and saw the George Foremen and Cassius Clay.

RUSH: This is cool.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: This is really cool.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Look, you know, you can see boxing, but I’ve been checking out all of their various channels — at least I have DirecTV — and they’ve got a high definition Channel, NBC Universal, which is Channel 74 on DirecTV and that’s where a lot of the boxing has been. It hasn’t been on NBC, and they’re putting the dinky stuff on MSNBC. Might be reruns, I’m not sure, but I did read in the New York Post today that one of our great hopes from the Bronx had his clock cleaned 20-5 in like the first round or two, just a little paragraph. There may not be much of a story to tell out there, Sandy. And I have to run because we’re out of busy broadcast time for this segment.