RUSH: Brian, Lincoln, Nebraska, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was calling about Jim McDermott’s petulant use of your weight when he had his little argument there on the floor —
RUSH: Hey, I appreciate it, but they’ve been doing that ever since — well, 21 years.
CALLER: Yeah, I know, but I think it opens up a can of worms for them that they’re not willing to handle, and that is, are we gonna now be able to look at every welfare recipient’s weight to determine if they get food stamps for that?
RUSH: Well, you know, there’s some people now proposing that welfare recipients take drug tests.
CALLER: I would think so with the weight, too, if that’s the can of worms they want to open by petulantly going after you, that’s something we should be looking at as well.
RUSH: Well, of course, but you understand I am a target because I am, in their minds, a very powerful, influential member of the media and welfare recipients are powerless. And they’re only overweight because of rotten policies by our food companies who are producing processed foods with nothing but sugar and fat and they make it cheap and that’s what these poor people can afford and it’s these companies doing it to these people. They’re victims, they’re victims of America. They’re victims of capitalism. They’re victims of Wall Street. They’re victims of Walmart. They’re victims. And I, of course, am not a victim, I am a victimizer, and of course I have a new iPhone and McDermott probably doesn’t. And you can’t take that out of the equation, either.
Larry in Winchester, Kentucky. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos on everything you talk about, full common sense, and I can’t understand why these politicians don’t understand it. I wanted to also congratulate you on your marriage and all the happiness to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: The main thing I wanted to tell you was that my little five-year-old just got out of kindergarten, and I tell you, she got fat from that school food. She was a little bit obese from the school’s food, little kindergartener.
RUSH: Wait a minute. Was she obese when you sent her away to kindergarten?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: How long did it take for them to make her fat?
CALLER: Oh, I’d say probably six months.
RUSH: How did they do it?
CALLER: The food that they feed her, you know, junk food.
RUSH: Like what?
CALLER: Chicken nuggets, cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese. You know, I really didn’t pay attention. But as school went on, you know, she started getting fatter and fatter, and the wife and I, we had a little talk about that, you know, and it’s like, you know, but she’s getting down to —
RUSH: Really, you and your wife, your daughter would come home from kindergarten everyday, and you don’t notice this weight every day, but like every week, ‘You know, our daughter is getting fatter and fatter here.’
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And so you and your wife are not to blame for what you were feeding her, this is going on in kindergarten?
CALLER: No. Actually my daughter didn’t really eat when she came home. She really did not want to eat when she came home. When she got home, she didn’t have an appetite.
RUSH: Wow. Well, you know, it sounds like that kindergarten you sent her to just constantly fed the kids all day to keep ’em busy so they wouldn’t be disciplinary problems, except maybe throwing the mac and cheese at each other, but hell, other than that, not a problem.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I know, I know what you’re all thinking. The guy and his wife send the little girl to kindergarten and they notice she’s coming home fatter and fatter and fatter, and you’re saying, ‘What did you do about it?’ I ran out of time. I really didn’t get a chance to ask that question. I’ll admit I was kind of stuck here just listening to the facts of the story. Kid comes home from kindergarten fatter and fatter. I just haven’t heard a parent talk that way before. I kind of got stuck there.
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RUSH: Susan, Philadelphia, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I’m a registered nurse, and I was intrigued by your conversation with the children becoming obese from the school’s food.
RUSH: It was kindergarten, don’t forget, now. This guy was in kindergarten and was feeding his daughter. She’d come home and he saw her getting fatter.
CALLER: I’m so in awe by that call, I can’t even comment. It’s just profound to me that someone could actually think a child could eat enough calories in that window from a school and then not have any contribution elsewhere from home and what they’re eating when not at school. I’m just dumbfounded by the whole thing, but I go down with this with my own children who go to school and they’re not allowed to buy because we’re an educated society, and all of us are educated, we know the food there is poor. It’s nutritionally empty. I don’t understand. Why don’t we just eliminate the program? Can we save money for the schools?
RUSH: Because the kids would starve. There’s nobody else to feed ’em. That’s what we’re told.
CALLER: Yeah, here we go: Where are the parents?
RUSH: Well, exactly right. Where are the grandparents? You know, if today’s parents are worthless schlubs, at least the grandparents are old enough to remember certain values where the grandparents woulda let ’em starve.
CALLER: Well, it’s the easy way out. It’s just let somebody else do it. I mean, I pay a few bucks, somebody else feed them.
RUSH: I can’t relate to it. I wouldn’t let anybody else take care of my damn dog or my cat. I can’t relate, and those are animals. I can’t relate to having somebody else take care of the kids?
CALLER: That’s not what school’s for. School is supposed to be to educate, not feed.
RUSH: Well, they gotta eat. I mean, come on. They gotta eat when they’re there. These are young kids.
CALLER: Well, yeah. They should have a lunch with them.
RUSH: We had a very in-depth study last week that confirmed that teenaged boys eat a lot.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Remember that?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I don’t know how much they spent on this, but teenaged boys eat a lot. We took a study to confirm that. There’s nothing people can do about it. They eat a lot. And if they don’t get it at school, they’re going to get it somewhere.
CALLER: Well, that’s the thing, Rush. I don’t think it’s socially limited to a socioeconomic group. People with money… I mean, I work with physicians. They feed their children the same garbage, these chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese are all chemicals. There’s no nutrition. Whether… It’s cultural. It’s so much bigger than the school.
RUSH: Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. I ate all that stuff and I’m alive and healthy and fine and dandy and successful. But I didn’t eat Chicken McNuggets. They didn’t have chicken McNuggets. But I loved macaroni and cheese. My mother made it for me. She didn’t have to send me to school for it. Not every day but we had macaroni and cheese. Let me ask you a question.
CALLER: You can eat that, but that’s not the point. You’ve gotta eat a well-rounded diet, and that’s fine, but Chicken McNuggets or nuggets are just left over garbage chicken ground up, pressed, fried, frozen, and warmed. It’s not really even food. (chuckles)
RUSH: Now, come on. They say that about hot dogs, too, and sausage.
CALLER: Weeeeell, there’s some meat in sausage, some real meat.
RUSH: They say that bacon. They say it’s absolutely the worst stuff you can eat.
CALLER: Oh, no, no, no, no. Bacon actually comes. It actually…naturally how it occurs. It’s a meat that you butcher and you eat it. Some of these other things are just… I mean, I wouldn’t feed them to my kids. I don’t eat them. My husband doesn’t eat them.
RUSH: That’s fine. That’s wonderful, that’s fine. But it’s gotten so bad when they’re out of Chicken McNuggets in Port St. Lucie, Florida, residents there call 911.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: So they must be putting something addictive in them as well.
CALLER: Well, I think things that are laden with salt, sugar, and fat, all taste good. And I think anybody who’s trying to sell a food product uses those ingredients because they taste great, and that’s why people will eat them.
RUSH: There is no question.
CALLER: It tastes good.
RUSH: There’s no question, fat tastes great.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: There’s no question about it. No question whatsoever. Now, I maintain God gave us taste buds and with our taste buds we know what tastes good and we eat it. What’s the problem?
CALLER: Well, I don’t think so.
RUSH: We all can’t be Lance Armstrong! We all can’t be Michael Phelps. We all can’t be string beans. We are all individuals. Some of us are destined to be round. Round is a shape! Even round people are in shape ’cause it’s a shape. What is this quest for everybody being the same? I’m not shouting at you, Susan, ’cause I know exactly what you mean. I understand your point, and it’s a valid one. But this idea that everybody’s supposed to be the same. We’re supposed to eat the same things, have the same reaction to what we eat. We’re supposed to have the same concerns for nutrition and so forth and so on. The last time I looked, the life expectancy in this country is skyrocketing. We’re not dying, we’re not dying off, despite some people’s best efforts to make it happen.
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RUSH: I don’t think that I have had Chicken McNuggets. I don’t think I’ve ever had any Chicken McNuggets. I haven’t had any McDonald’s in years and years and years, but Dawn says they’re gross. I’ve never had any of them so I don’t know what — (interruption) Yeah, okay, if I’m outta touch, I’m proud to be outta touch. Fine, I’m outta touch, I haven’t had McNuggets. Let me make a little observation here as a highly trained broadcast specialist. Look at what we’ve had going on here today. We have had a major, major story involving national security; the oil gusher is full-fledged now because some robot down there ran into the cap, so we’re going full bore on the oil spill again now. We’ve had any number of domestic policy issues, the judge on the moratorium, and look at what got people fired up today was the Dumpster diving video comment by Baghdad Jim McDermott.
We’ve had our share of McChrystal calls, don’t misunderstand, and they’ve been good, but what people have been fired up today about is this diving business for food and how rotten the school food is and schools are turning their kids fat and you see the evidence of it every day when the kids come home. (laughing)