RUSH: Now, about Gisele Bundchen. Folks, Kathryn tells me I “drop the ball” all the time. I didn’t see anything really different or unique in this. When you’re like me and you’re told every day you’re dropping the ball on things, so what? It happens. But people want to know my thoughts on this. I’ve had a number of e-mails and I’ll share them with you as the program unfolds. I do think this Brady thing, what’s happening to Tom Brady is a great illustration to what happens when you…
Well, not “let,” but when the media has a role in defining your personality. When the media has a role in defining your image, then the media can shatter it, then the media can tear it apart.
This is, I think, a great illustration of the old saying: “If the media can make you, the media can break you.” That is why, in my case, the media has had nothing to do with establishing any aspect of my persona. I don’t have a PR agent. I don’t massage the media. I don’t do anything like that. And so the media, try as they might, cannot break me. They’ve tried, and they continue to try. But celebrities, mainly Hollywood people, mainly from the entertainment field, who are totally… Everything you know about them is not because you know them, not because of a connection that they have with you. It’s because of what you read about them or what you see about them.
Those celebrities and athletes are vulnerable as they can be. You hear about… I’ll illustrate it this way. One of the criticisms of Mitt Romney is that he “doesn’t connect with people.” Now, what’s that? What is “connecting” with voters? It means that voters have no personal relationship with him. He hasn’t revealed himself personally. He hasn’t found a way to get beyond just being a face and a voice on television. So it’s left to the media to define him for people. Now, some say that this ability to connect is innate and that you either have it or you don’t have it. Let me illustrate it this way. This is where I first learned about it, by the way.
And you know I don’t like talking about myself. You know, I’m very uncomfortable with that. But I must in this instance. In 1992, coming home from Houston, the Republican Convention, I happened to be on a flight with Peter Jennings (ABC World News Tonight) and, I think, Ed Bradley. We get into whatever airport we came into, JFK or Newark, I don’t remember. Might have been LaGuardia. Anyway, we’re all at baggage claim to get the bags. And I was shocked at the number of people who came up to me and just said hi and started talking to me as though they knew me — and they did. They were listeners, and they started talking.
They all wanted to tell me how long they’d be listening. It still happens to this day. Throughout the weekend in Indianapolis, I ran into all kinds of people. The first thing they say is, “Yeah, I’ve been listening to you since 1989,” or 1992, etc. Everybody at baggage claim knew who Peter Jennings was but nobody went up to talk to him. They stared; they pointed. (whispering) “A bzz, bzz, bzz. Ooh, there’s Peter Jennings! Ooh, there’s Ed Bradley,” but nobody went up to say hi. It was almost like he was distant or maybe above, but there wasn’t a connection there. He was a news reader. A guy everybody recognized. Read the news on TV. But nobody knew anything about him. And of course why would they? Peter Jennings never talked about himself.
He never shared any of himself with anybody on the news. That’s not what his job was. But of course me, on this radio program, that’s largely what this is. And I think it’s the same thing with athletes. We all see them on television. We all know who they are. We know them and have our thoughts of them based on their performance, and their talents and their abilities. And of course those are quite rare — and, as such, there’s awe for that. But we don’t really know who they are in most cases. The media fills that in. So when the media fills it in, it’s up to whether they like the guy, whether they don’t like the guy. Whether they like the guy’s wife or don’t like the guy’s wife. Then when something goes wrong and the media turns, there’s nothing to counter it. That’s why I say, “The media can’t break you if they haven’t made you.”
I think that’s a little bit of what Tom Brady is experiencing right now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Snerdley will not leave me alone on this Tom Brady stuff. I’m gonna tell you something. His teammates don’t have a problem with what his wife said. His teammates know him. His teammates know the kind of guy he is. They know of his obsession with winning. They know that nobody is more focused or passionate, and not to say that they slack in that area, his teammates. There is nobody more competitive than Tom Brady.
I was within feet of where that happened after the Super Bowl. She was being heckled by a Giants fan, “Hey, hey, your husband just got out-played by Eli.” She was being a loyal wife. “My husband can’t catch and throw the ball at the same time.” Supposedly some cardinal rule has been violated where you don’t sell each other out in public. He didn’t sell ’em out, and it’s not that they believe that she is echoing what he’s thinking. I mean she said that before she had even spoken to him after the game. She was on her way down to the locker room area. The teammates don’t have any problem with Brady over that. They’re married. They understand this stuff. They see a loyal wife. (interruption) The ones that are married, that have wives, yeah, that would stand to reason, Snerdley. And they understand that he’s not the one who said it.
They know they wouldn’t even be in the game if it weren’t for him. That’s not to put them down or for them to put themselves down. This is the media trying to make a big deal. It’s no different than when Brady, a week before the Super Bowl, they have a pep rally at their stadium and Brady says, “Let’s hope the party is a little bigger next Sunday after we win.” The New York media tried to do make that out as a Joe Namath guarantee. Some babe from some Newark newspaper stood up. Brady was stunned, couldn’t believe it. He’s looking at a genuine idiot in the press corps, and he looked at her and he said, “That’s a pep rally.” And the New York media tried to make a big thing out of that, and it fizzled, and they’re trying to do that again now.
If you want to know what bothers Brady, it’s that they lost. He’s beating himself up. He doesn’t need his teammates to beat him up. He’s beating himself up. He’s not beating them up. This guy’s in agony. He’s in agony over this because they lost. That’s why he’s beating himself up. He’s the epitome of a professional. He expected to win. He’s just disappointed over that. Nothing more.
Snerdley is asking me if Eli is that good. During the game I told Kathryn a couple times I have never seen Eli Manning in this much control. I’ve never seen him this poised or confident. Eli Manning looked like he was in total charge. (interruption) Snerdley, why would the media try to make a story out of a super model, you ever figure that out? Here you’ve got a super model married to the quarterback. So she opens her mouth, they can’t help themselves in the media. They can’t help themselves. Tom Brady’s beating himself up over this, just like he did four years ago when they had that 17-0 season or 18-0 season and they lost to the Giants again in that Super Bowl. Look, that’s it.
I think I predicted this outcome on Friday with the Hutch. Hutch is in there taking a — you know, if somebody’s close in the fourth quarter they’ll win, anybody can say that. And of course then the Hutch sends me a note over the weekend, “I told you, bro, I told you if they were close…” He’s all excited — the Hutch thinks he called the game.