RUSH: To the audio sound bites, NPR, All Things Considered, during a report about the 2010 midterm elections in Ohio, the coanchors Robert Siegel and David Greene have this exchange about your host.
SIEGEL: Here’s an oddity that I heard about last week. Do you remember what Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos was?
GREENE: I do. How could I forget it? I was actually covering the Clinton campaign at that time, Robert, and that was when Rush Limbaugh was out there telling even Republican voters to get involved in the Democratic primary, go vote for Clinton so he could prolong that fight between Clinton and Barack Obama as long as possible.
SIEGEL: Well, it turns out in Ohio, if you vote in a primary you become registered as a voter in that party. So now, Democratic canvassers going door-to-door keep on turning up the odd Republican who’s registered as a Democrat.
RUSH: (laughing) The lingering effects of Operation Chaos still screwing up the pollsters in Ohio. They continued with this.
SIEGEL: In fact, one of the people who wanted to run as a Republican in that district, Kathy Eshelman, lost the nomination when it was pointed out that she was a registered Democrat. These are the Operation Chaos voters from two years ago. She told me today that she cast a vote to try to prevent Barack Obama’s election.
GREENE: Rush’s legacy lives on.
SIEGEL: Indeed. And that D next to her name stands a lot more for Dittohead than for Democrat.
GREENE: Interesting.
RUSH: (laughing) Well, they’re NPR people. I mean there’s no malice, just reasonable intelligent civil discourse. We are, after all, NPR. And at NPR we engage in pledge drives. Without your Pledge we cannot dust. NBC Nightly News Kelly O’Donnell reporting on Christine O’Donnell, Obama, and me.
KELLY O’DONNELL: Today, Rush Limbaugh said O’Donnell’s past is getting unfair scrutiny.
RUSH ARCHIVE: We know more about Christine O’Donnell right now than we know about Obama.
KELLY O’DONNELL: Today the president said the Tea Party should offer answers, not just anger.
OBAMA: The challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically what would you do.
RUSH: No. This is a straw dog. That’s not what the Tea Party movement has to do. It’s not incumbent upon the Tea Party movement to say what we’re going to do even though we have definitive ideas. The Tea Party movement is a protest against what is happening, pure and simple. On the basis of that it’s already known what the Tea Party wants to do. This is just an attempt to derail, ‘Okay, well, what do you stand for? What are you going to do?’ The exact opposite of what you’re doing, pal, pure and simple. We believe in the Constitution. ‘Well, give me some specific ideas.’ We’ll be glad to. The Tea Party has said what its intention is, and that’s to stop Obama. That’s the first thing that has to happen. You know, there’s a new show up coming up on CNN, replacing John King USA. It’s going to be called ‘Parker Spitzer.’ It’s Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist, with Eliot Spitzer, Client No. 9. I kid you not.
You know, I’m thinking of all of these young, ambitious anchors and reporters in television who are working in Oshkosh and Lincoln, Nebraska, St. Louis, Denver, Omaha, Columbia, Missouri, Oklahoma City, Sebastopol, California, San Luis Obispo, Chico, California, any number of media markets, and they’re following the tried-and-true recipe. They are honing their craft trying to get better, working in the smaller media markets, going out and reporting the news, covering the police blotter stuff, covering the blood-and-guts stories, anchoring on the weekends, and then hoping someday to be hired at one of the networks or at CNN, maybe MSNBC, and then realize that it all is for naught because the pathway to a show on CNN is to have an ongoing relationship with sluts, with prostitutes and whores, after you have tried to bring down the Republicans in your state with phony, false charges while you’re attorney general and governor. Then you run around, you become Client No. 9, a national joke, sex with your socks on, everybody learns about it, and who snaps you up but CNN.
And you in Chico and Omaha and Denver say, ‘God, what do I have to do in order to advance in this business? Do I have to go out and have a relationship with prostitutes?’ That’s how you get a gig now in primetime at CNN. And then they pair Spitzer with Kathleen Parker, who is a conservative columnist, approved conservative, rubber stamp Washington Post conservative because she attacks conservatives. So now they’re a new team and it’s time to preview this show. They put ’em on last night on John King’s America. Parker Spitzer is the name of the show, premieres October the 4th on CNN, and during a discussion about Obama, Parker and Spitzer have this exchange. This is what everybody’s waiting for to debut October 4th on CNN.
SPITZER: This is the issue of biting too many apples simultaneously. President Reagan, who was an amazing communicator, also had a very linear communication strategy, one issue at a moment. He was brilliant at it.
PARKER: Right.
SPITZER: And he didn’t deal with health care and then foreign policy and then the Middle East and then let’s get the Olympics and then a beer summit, all these other things, and health care. And so all these things that distract —
PARKER: And not to mention attacking people who aren’t even part of the Hill. I mean going after Rush Limbaugh. Yes, he is an influential radio host, but he’s not part of the Republican Party to the extent that the president has suggested he is.
SPITZER: Maybe the problem is that we, the public, need to cut him some slack.
RUSH: Who, me or Obama? That’s your new team on CNN. Those of you anchors and reporters in the smaller media markets in the country who just — I mean, they have their dreams. Their dreams include working at CNN, and now what must they all think? And that exchange, that is a promo. This is supposed to make everybody want to tune in on October 4th to watch ‘Parker Spitzer’ on CNN.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You want to hear something funny? Joy Behar on The View yesterday, about Christine O’Donnell.
BEHAR: Here’s a girl who says that, you know, she didn’t masturbate, she doesn’t believe in masturbating, either, and she wants to make public policy about other people’s sex lives. She’s a witch who doesn’t masturbate who has never had premarital sex. Why is she running for office?
RUSH: There you have your responsible, reasonable, tolerant, intelligent left, Joy Behar. They are just so jealous, they are just so jealous, they cannot stand it whatsoever.
(playing of Client No. 9)
RUSH: Coming next to CNN, October 4th.
(continued playing of song)
RUSH: You know if there’s ever somebody that was wrongly named it’s Joy Behar. There’s no joy there.
(continued playing of song)
RUSH: Coming soon to CNN, October 4th, eight p.m., CNN.