Snerdley, have you read the novel 50 Shades of Grey? (interruption) Well, let me tell you something. You need to get it. (interruption) Yeah, because… See, Snerdley thinks that he is the Dr. Ruth of men. (interruption) I’m getting there. I’m being asked questions here. I’m getting to the answers that you all want. I’d never heard of it ’til yesterday. So I’m reading Page Six in the New York Post, and I see that movie rights have been negotiated for this book.
They describe a little bit of the book. It’s a chick book, written by a woman. It’s about… (interruption) Well, they had these kind of books in the seventies. The Sensuous Woman by “J.” You remember that one? There were a couple of others back then. The Happy Hooker, this kind of thing. This one, apparently, tops all of those. It… (interruption) Well, it’s graphic. Yeah, it’s graphic. (interruption) Yeah. Yeah, I was compelled to buy the thing when I was reading about it. So I started reading a little bit last night.
Last night about 10:30 during a Breaking Bad commercial break, I turned to Kathryn and said, “Have you ever heard of this 50 Shades of Grey business?” She looked at me. (laughing) “Where did YOU hear about that!” She said, “Everybody’s telling me to read it. All my friends are telling me to read it, and I’m not reading it because everybody else is,” which is like me. Conventional wisdom goes one way; I go the other. Kathryn and I are both that way. Whatever the pack’s doing, we do the opposite. So she hasn’t read it.
I said, “You need to get it.” Her friends are describing this in detail. It’s typical. It’s a woman writing her own fantasies in the form of a novel. (interruption) That’s right, Snerdley. Snerdley is getting all excited in there. And I guarantee you what’s gonna happen. Every guy that reads this book is gonna say, “Yeah, that’s me! That’s me.” As she describes her fantasy, they’ll say, “That’s me.” Every guy that reads it says, “Yep, yep, yep. I already got this down pat. That’s me, that’s me.”
You’re gonna do that, Snerdley, when you read it. “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s commonplace. Oh, yeah, I do that all the time.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, folks, before you go buy this book, stop and listen to me. You need to know some things, because I am not recommending it. It’s totally up to you. But I want you to know that. I don’t want to have anybody get the wrong idea about what this book is. This book is about S&M. This book is anti-feminist porn. There is not a feminist in this world who will love this book. This is a book about totally domineering men. Well, “a” totally domineering man. He calls himself “The Dominant.”
The female object in the book is “The Submissive.” She signs a nondisclosure agreement. She promises not to tell a soul about anything. There are rules. The best description of this book that I’ve seen is “mommy porn.” It is aimed at bored housewives and mothers. The author of this book is making a million dollars a week on residuals. It came out in April. It’s part of a trilogy and 50 Shades of Grey is first. But this is all about how women want to be submissive. It defies everything feminism supposedly teaches.
It says that being submissive is the ultimate empowerment.
It started out as a self-published book developed on a fan fiction website, but the website pulled it ’cause it was too dirty. So she put it on her own website. You can get it as an e-book, but I don’t want anybody getting the wrong idea. It’s not The Sensuous Woman. It’s not a lighthearted romp. I don’t want anybody getting the idea here that I misled you into buying this thing, ’cause it’s… I mean, the fun for me is I would love to see Hillary Clinton reading this book, or I would love to see Molly Yard reading it.
It’d just send ’em into orbit.
But there’s no romance.
It isn’t a romance book.
It is not about love, nothing of the sort. So don’t anybody get the wrong idea and go out and buy this thing thinking, “Well, you know, if Rush talked about it…” (laughing) Would it make The Oprah Book Club? Uhhh, the jury’s still out on that question. If somebody could convince Oprah of the author’s premise that submission is ultimate empowerment, then Oprah would go for it. That’s what Oprah’s all about is “empowerment.” So it’s possible. But I don’t know that that’s the case, and if you’re using that to buy it, don’t.