RUSH: Here’s Tom Teves. It’s T-e-v-e-s. He was on Anderson Cooper 360 last night on CNN. He’s the father of the late Alex Teves who lost his life in the Aurora theater.

This is what Tom Teves, father of a young man that died, said talking about the gunman on TV…

TEVES: I would like to see CNN come out with a policy that said, “Moving forward, we’re not gonna talk about the gunman.” You always say, “Why? Why? We never know why.” Well, we got enough data; let’s start figuring out why. And I’ll guarantee one of them is ’cause they want to be on television.

RUSH: Right!

TEVES: They want to be infamous.

RUSH: Exactly!

TEVES: We can stop it.

RUSH: Exactly!

TEVES: We can’t stop it. We can only get shot. CNN, Fox News, the major networks, why don’t you guys all come out with a policy that says, “We’re not gonna show this again. We realize we made a mistake. But just so this never happens again, here’s what we’re gonna do.” That would be my challenge to you and to every network.

RUSH: He’s exactly right. I remember on Sunday people asked me (I think I told you yesterday), “Rush, why would the guy do this, knowing he’s gonna get caught, knowing that he’s either gonna get put to death or spend the rest of his life in jail?” My first answer was, “Fame. He wants to be famous.” Our whole culture is about fame. Young people in this country are vomiting up everything about themselves trying to be famous. They think it’s cool, and cool rules. They think it’s cool. They think it’s unique. They think it’s glamorous. They think it leads to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous lifestyles.

It leads to being on television, great fashion, whatever these people associate with the Kardashians and other people who are famous just for being famous. They want it. They want a taste of it. They’ll make fools of themselves going on television to become famous. I remember I gave this answer to a couple of people. “Oh, come on. You really mean that?” Yes! I’m dead serious. I think that one of the reasons (I doubt that we’ll ever really know) this guy did this is for fame.

Even now he’s sitting there in his jail cell, and I will bet you that he is reveling in the fact that everybody’s talking about him and that everybody’s commenting on his red hair. He’s probably sitting there getting his jollies by being talked about. I’m telling you, folks, I am a student of culture. As I’ve told you: I have lived life by observing it, in many cases. I have a little bit of experience with fame, and I… Well, I can’t divulge too much. I see it every day. I see people who want to be famous every day.

It’s easy to spot (snapping fingers) just like that. I see people who live to get their picture in the paper. I’m not kidding. They get their picture in the paper and they talk about it for three days. They clip it out, put it on the refrigerator, and show people. I’m not kidding you. And it’s amplified and much worse with young people. You don’t paint your hair orange unless you want to get noticed. You don’t do this kind of stuff unless you want to get noticed. And what this man, Tom Teves, was saying is the media is feeding this by providing what everybody wants: Fame.

I’ll give you an example. I remember back in my days with the Kansas City Royals, every once in a while somebody would get drunk in the stands and run out on the field either between innings or during a game. For a while when that happened, if the game happened to be televised, the cameras would show it. And they’d show security chasing the guy down and catching the guy. And this created copycats. It started happening more frequently. The pinnacle in Kansas City was Morganna.

Do you remember Morganna, The Kissing Bandit? This was a woman who needed a couple of midgets to walk in front of her to keep her breasts propped up. Morganna The Kissing Bandit stormed out of the stands one day at Royals Stadium and tried to give George Brett a smacker kiss at third base, and televising these things beget copycats. So you know what happened? You don’t see it next time it happens. Now if somebody runs on the field at a football game or at a baseball game, the networks do not show it to you.

They’ll tell you why there’s a delay, they’ll tell you somebody ran on the field, and they’ll speak disparagingly of the idiot that does it. They’ll be very critical, but they will not show it. So they know. The network television people are very much aware that they can contribute to copycat behavior if they show it. So they’ve stopped televising much of that stuff. Not all the time. I mean, there are still examples of it when it gets televised, but for the most part they stopped it.

So they know.

This guy has a point: If the networks would stop making these people famous, instead of trying to figure out what made them do it… Like we’re already getting stories (we had one yesterday) about this guy could be a fallen, brilliant whatever ’cause he got a scientific grant. That’s not who the guy is! The guy is a mass-murdering shred of human debris. And if you characterize these people accurately, there aren’t gonna be a whole lot of people that want to be like them. So the guy here, Mr. Teves, has a point. He’s singing my song.