RUSH: Jeff in Vacaville, California, you’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: I’d like to say California military spouse dittos to you.
RUSH: Appreciate that.
CALLER: So my wife is in Afghanistan right now. I’m waiting for her to come back. But my comment for you is earlier you mentioned about exercise, and I know why you dislike exercise.
RUSH: Tell me.
CALLER: Well, go back to your childhood junior high or high school —
RUSH: Oh, no, no, no, no. Psychoanalysis here? Are you a psychologist?
CALLER: I am not. I am an exercise specialist, but at some point in your phys ed —
RUSH: Wait a minute. You’re an exercise specialist?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: And at sometime in your life, as I mentioned, either on a sports team or phys ed class, exercise was used as a punishment, that would be my guess. And because of that, every time exercise is mentioned, you subconsciously think that, boom, exercise is a negative thing.
RUSH: Well, since you have called to — you should call CNN, by the way, because they use people who are not psychologists to psychoanalyze people.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And they use psychologists who have never treated people to analyze those people they have never treated. They might put you on cause they’re going to lose Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay Gupta is going to be Obama’s surgeon general. Some guy at Slate.com wrote — and I’m going to have to paraphrase this, you know, one of the previous surgeon generals was Joycelyn Elders, and Joycelyn Elders — we have the sound bites from way back when — Joycelyn Elders, surgeon general, was promoting self-love, masturbation, as a prevention for AIDS and sexually transmitted disease, said this needs to be taught. This guy at Slate recalls that and says, ‘But Sanjay Gupta drips, just oozes self-love. He doesn’t have to say it, he is it.’ I thought, man, man, they’re taking a shot at him. Sanjay Gupta, People magazine named him one of the 50 sexiest men in the country. He is a practicing neurosurgeon. He also does stories on global warming, even though he’s a doctor, for CNN. But he’s going to take the big pay cut and move the family out of Atlanta up to Washington to be surgeon general for The Messiah. Now, back to you, exercise specialist. I never heard of one of those. I guess they’re called coaches.
CALLER: I have coached. I have been a fitness director, manager of a fitness center. I’ve done a lot of different things in that area.
RUSH: Right. Well, my distaste for exercise, I did play Little League baseball, loved it. I played Babe Ruth league baseball up to age 15, loved it. I played one year of high school football, didn’t really like it. I remember one instance, and I was an offensive tackle, and the two-a-days in August, they were just brutal, and one day after practice, the tackles and guards ran sprints and the linebackers with their group and the offensive, defensive linemen and so forth, the quarterbacks and the wide receivers, different weight groups, and I was in the offensive line group, and the coaches had a tendency after 10 or 12 60-yard sprints or gassers they’d all of a sudden say, ‘Okay, first four tackles take it in.’ So I would pace myself during the first 8 or 10, making sure I never finished first and I would save myself up for when the coaches said ‘first four tackles take it in’ I always won and after two times the coach came to me, said, ‘Son, we’ve been noticing here that you’re finishing in the middle of the pack until we say ‘first four tackles take it in, then you’re always blowing by everybody. What’s happening here?’ And I said, ‘I’m pacing myself, coach.’ His name was Norm Dawkins. He said, ‘Son, we don’t pace ourselves in football, and we don’t pace ourselves in life. We go all out, all the time.’ And I had to spend 30 minutes running more gassers and so forth after everybody else went in.
CALLER: See, that’s the punishment aspect.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: If you were punished in a different way you would have, I think, a better attitude about exercise, you know, whether you do push-ups or extra laps —
RUSH: No, see, I liked the football stuff because there was a purpose. I was playing a game, I was getting better at something. There were other people out there. When I worked for the Kansas City Royals in the late seventies, early eighties, every Thursday afternoon after the baseball season ended we always played a touch football game with the front office of the Kansas City Chiefs and I couldn’t wait. We played on Saturdays, too, once we got to December, and rain, shine, mud, snow, didn’t matter, I loved that, I loved playing football. I loved doing all that stuff. What I hate is exercise for the sake of it. ‘Okay, people, you need to go for a walk.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Well, you’ll end up back at home.’ Well, I say, ‘Why leave?’ If I’m going to end up where I started, why leave? I’d rather just stay here, because I frankly hate things that have no purpose. ‘But it’s good for you.’ No, it’s not. From the first step when I start exercising for no purpose, from the first step my mind is preoccupied with, ‘When is this gonna end?’ ‘Why don’t you go walking on the beach?’ Sometimes I do. That can be fun. But get on a treadmill? Treadmill’s even worse ’cause you never end up going anywhere. You start and stop at the same place, and then you still have to walk to get back to the house. It’s just a pain. I don’t like it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to College Station, Texas. Brian, great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, it’s Counsel in Bryan-College Station, Texas.
RUSH: Oh, that’s what it said, but it didn’t make any sense, and I know Snerdley is having a bad day in there.
CALLER: No, no, no, no.
RUSH: Counsel is your name?
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: Bryan-College —
CALLER: Bryan-College Station. You know, it’s where Texas A&M is.
RUSH: Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes total sense to me now.
CALLER: All right. Well, I just called to tell you that as a physician, I recommend to all my patients they exercise four to five times a week because you live longer and you stay out of the hospital. I just wanted to let you know that.
RUSH: I have not disputed the benefits of exercise except I dispute the notion that you can lose weight doing exercise, but I read the health benefits of exercise earlier in the program today. I’m not trying to advise people against it. I just hate it.
CALLER: Well, I understand that. I hate it, too, and I walk three miles a day.
RUSH: Well, see, that, to me, is suffering, and I am totally opposed to self-imposed suffering. I just don’t do it. I used to do it, but I don’t do it.
CALLER: No, no. While I’m walking, I’m thinking about what I’m planning to do, I’m working in that hour. It takes me an hour to walk three miles.
RUSH: See, that’s my problem.
CALLER: I’m thinking about what I’m going to do. I’m accomplishing.
RUSH: I can’t overcome that. When I’m walking all I’m thinking about is, ‘When is this going to end?’ I’ve even tried getting on a treadmill and watching ’24.’ ’24’ is the fastest paced TV show I watch. I don’t get past the first commercial before I want to get off the treadmill.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: I cannot get past how unhappy, how miserable, how much I detest what I’m doing is.
CALLER: Well, Rush, we want you to be happy, ’cause we love you.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, and, Doctor, I want you to understand here, I know full well that you’re right about the things you’re talking about regarding the benefits of exercise. I’m not trying to talk anybody out of it.
CALLER: There you go.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Have a good day.
RUSH: Thank you, Counsel. I’ve wanted to stave off some of you home-school parents, too, because I know you’re going to think your kids are going to stop exercising because they’re listening to me because you home-school ’em, and that’s, ladies and gentlemen, something that you — what’s the old Charles Barkley line, ‘I’m not a role model.’