RUSH: Yes, Snerdley, I know that journalists at the Journolist site wish me dead. I’m gonna get to that in due course. I heard from about five people today, there’s a story at the Daily Caller, which is Chatsworth Osborne, Jr.’s website, it’s an update on the Journolist and some woman who is a producer for a station that carries NPR programming said she would gladly stand by and watch me die instead of rescue me if I was having a heart attack. She said she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out. I never knew I had this much hate in me, but Limbaugh deserves [it],’ to die, and I’d be happy to watch him die.
Now, the headline of the story: ‘Liberal Journalists Suggest Government Shut Down Fox News.’ I had five people e-mail this to me, ‘Can you believe they want to do this to Fox News?’
I said, ‘What, it’s no big deal they want me to die? What am I, a potted plant here?’
‘Yeah, that’s right, Rush, who cares about you? Fox News, they want to shut down Fox News! Who could believe journalists don’t believe in the First Amendment.’
I said, ‘When did you think we have journalists? There is no media.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, let’s get back to the Journolist, Tucker Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller with a follow-up story today. Headline: ‘Liberal Journalists Suggest Government Shut Down Fox News.’ Here’s how it starts. ‘If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would. But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio (update: Spitz was a producer for NPR affiliate KCRW for the show Left, Right & Center), that isn’t what you’d do at all. In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would ‘Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out’ as Limbaugh writhed in torment.
‘In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. ‘I never knew I had this much hate in me,’ she wrote. ‘But he deserves it.’ Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow. In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became. On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.’
Now, Byron York from the DC Examiner and Noel Sheppard from NewsBusters sent me notes today, ‘You got any response to this?’ By the way, do you think Bob Schieffer has heard of the Algore story? I mean before today, do you think that Bob Schieffer has heard that a masseuse in Oregon has accused Algore of sexual come-ons? Do you think Schieffer’s heard of that? I doubt it, folks, I don’t think his staff has probably heard of it. I doubt it. So anyway, here’s what I told both of these guys in a series of e-mails, and I put my response at RushLimbaugh.com as well. I said I can only surmise, I think most people on the left live in a world where merit is irrelevant. You know, I’ve never fantasized about watching somebody die or hoping they die. I can’t relate to this, but I can only surmise. I think most people on the left live in a world where merit’s irrelevant. Theirs is a world in which connections, networking, butt kissing, obedient sameness are rewarded, and I’m the antithesis of all that. I’m a legitimate, achieved, accomplished number one. I’ve made it on my own, without them, without having followed their proscriptions. And I also threw in that I think they’re also jealous I just sold my New York condo at 125% profit while their houses are worthlessly underwater.
It’s not just that they hate how I became who I am. They literally hate who I am. They literally hate me. They hate me, these journalists, these so-called journalists hate me because I am the most prominent, effective, unrelenting voice of conservatism, and they haven’t been able to stop me. No matter what they’ve thrown at me, they haven’t been able to stop me. These people and their tactics are not new. We’ve seen it before in other countries, in other times. They want to destroy contrary and opposition voices and views. They will climb over the law and the people to achieve their aims. I mean earlier in this in this administration, the president, his hacks targeted me, his party targeted me, their groups targeted me, they’re all the same. They’re leftists disguised as lawyers, judges, scholars, professors, teachers, reporters, anchors, senators, representatives, legislative aide, congressional staff, federal bureaucrats, and on and on. There is no media. We know that now. There’s just an incestuous relationship among all these various groups and a revolving door connecting them all. And it doesn’t help that I have put a lot of them out of work.
Their networks are failing. Nobody is reading their newspapers unless they make me the story. Nobody is watching their cable broadcasts unless they make me the story. They don’t get rating bumps unless they make me the story. It’s totally understandable that they hate me. It’s a little silly for them to want me dead. What would happen to their ratings were I not around? So that was basically my reply to all this. But, folks, the story goes on to talk about how these journalists suggest that government shut down Fox News. I got a note today from a friend of mine, I don’t want to embarrass him, but I got a note today from a friend of mine in journalism: ‘Can you believe these journalists? I mean, they’ve really admitted it now that they don’t care about the First Amendment.’ And I’m going, ‘Duh.’ I mean, I must have gotten, folks — (laughing) I know how I rate with people today. I got five or six e-mails and not one of them said, ‘Do you see these people want you to die?’ They all said, ‘Do you see what these people want to do to Fox News? These people want to shut Fox News down.’ I wrote, ‘Hey, am I a potted plant here, do you not care they want to see me die?’ ‘Oh, of course that’s rancid, but can you believe they want to shut down Fox News? I can’t believe it, Rush, they want to shut down Fox News. These are journalists and they claim First Amendment, they’re admitting they don’t care for the –‘ I’m sitting there going, ‘Gee Whiz.’ I’m used to being ahead of people, but not by light years.
The First Amendment is an obstacle. They want to deny the First Amendment to everybody but them. They are the superiorists; they are the leftists. I don’t know why the story’s coming out now. The site was started by some obscure person, you know, half of the people or more on this list-serv I never heard of. It was started by some obscure Washington Post blogger named Ezra Klein, and it’s been shut down for a month or two because of what was on it, the first batch of stuff we learned. Tucker Carlson’s website, Daily Caller, just got a hold of this stuff. (interruption) Why is it coming out now? I couldn’t tell you. Your theory is there are no coincidences? So there’s a reason why this stuff is leaking now? Well, what’s your theory? If your theory is they hope to distract me, notice what hour I’m talking about this in. I don’t know what the purpose is. But it is out there. But the point is, to me it illustrates once and for all again and again that there is no media. I still feel like I’m not connecting with this. I think this is a really, really timely observation and maybe it’s too esoteric for a lot of people to get their arms around, ‘What do you mean there’s no media? Of course, Rush, ABC and CBS –‘ yeah, but there’s no journalism happening. These are not people who are just misguided, who have bias, this is not industry gone wrong, there is no industry. There is no industry called journalism.
There still are journalism schools. We know what they’re being taught and we know how they’re being raised. You got people from TIME Magazine, Michael Scherer: ‘Roger Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.’ I don’t even know what that means. These people are all party apparatchiks. They’re just flacks. They have various levels of power. There are various levels of status in the ruling class. These people think they’re high-ranking but they’re really just a bunch of butt kissers who are trying to advance. They’re very obedient, they’re all the same, they think the same, they speak the same, they have the same mannerisms, there’s nothing unique about them. In a merit-based world there would be no CNN right now. They would have failed and been out of business years ago. In a merit based world there would be no MSNBC, for what their objective is, a national network, they don’t have any audience. CNN doesn’t either. The test pattern of Walla Walla, Washington, has a bigger audience. The Radar at Portland Oregon has a bigger audience than CNN does. In a merit-based world these people wouldn’t exist, but merit based is irrelevant. They don’t have any concept of merit based.
It’s all networking, butt kissing, it’s all passing notes, it’s all being part of the big clique and you have to say the right things and have the right mannerisms and be beholden to the same people, worship the same people, and that’s how you climb the ladder. And then if you get really, really big, you leave journalism and you become a legislative aide or a spokesman or something for an elected official, then after you do that well you go back to media and do an even bigger job and all the while claiming to be an objective journalist. It’s a bunch of incestuous people. They’re all sleeping together, they’re all in the same bed, they all get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, it’s utter obedient sameness. And when anybody outside that group happens to make it, whoa, that offends them as well, and then the offense doubles when the content is something opposite what they believe.
‘Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. ‘I hate to open this can of worms,’ he wrote, ‘but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?” Here’s a law professor at UCLA, the FCC does not grant Fox a permit! Fox does not have a license. Cable is not regulated by the FCC. Local stations have licenses, but network — ABC doesn’t have a license, for crying out, CBS doesn’t. NBC doesn’t. Their stations do. We here at the EIB Network, we don’t have a license. Our network affiliates have licenses, but we don’t. We don’t have to have a license to operate here. The government could not, as these people want, yank us. There’s a law professor suggesting the government just yank Fox off the air. That in itself is pretty explanatory. And people say, ‘Rush, they don’t even believe in the First Amendment.’ Of course they don’t believe in the First Amendment. But they will use the layers of constitutional protection to insulate them from what they do, permitting them to lie, to fabricate, to character assassinate, whatever they wish to do.
Democrats and their front groups have wanted a race-based political battle for months now, starting with those congressmen who walked through the Tea Party rally and lied about the use of the N-word. They were hoping something would happen. When it didn’t they made it up. All the liberal propagandizes in the media who reported it as fact were lying through their teeth and they still are. The NAACP used the same lie about the Tea Party to unleash this latest round of hate. There’s one guy who could stop it, Thomas Sowell points it out, it’s Barack Obama. Barack Obama when he finishes office he’s going to have further divided this country at every level than any president or any other individual in the history of this country. And isn’t it interesting that the so-called media ignore all of this. Well, it’s not interesting, it’s factual. They ignore all this and advance the lies of the left.