RUSH: I want to remind you again: This had a profound impact on me over the weekend. I’m watching this British TV show about the BBC’s early days, TV’s early days, called The Hour. Many of you may have heard of it. It’s somewhat popular. It’s about, I guess, the forerunner to 60 Minutes; how this television show works and all the people involved and how they go about pursuing news and the usual stuff. But one of the lead male characters in the hiatus between the close of the first season and the episode premiere of season two. In the episode premiere of season two the guy comes back, he’s been on sabbatical. He traveled the world. He got married in Paris, whole bunch of stuff, but he also spent time in America.

He’s having a conversation with his main male competitor at this network, and he says (paraphrasing), “I was in America, and I really liked what I saw in America. I was a nobody in a country filled with people who think they can all be somebody, and that was infectious. So I’ve come back here to my home in Britain, I’ve come back to the BBC, and I want some of that. I want to be somebody.” This guy was being made in this series to play second fiddle. He was the writer. He was the real journalist. He was the real reporter that made this on-air presenter a star. The on-air presenter couldn’t put two sentences together if they weren’t written for him, like Obama. So this guy who’s been the underling, but really the force of the show, says America affected me, I was in a country filled with nobodies who think they can be somebody someday. And it was infectious, and I want that. In 1956 is when this show was set.

So the inference is clear. In 1956, the British population accepted their lot in life. Whatever they were born to, that was it. This guy saw that there were people around the world not living that way — it didn’t matter what they were born into, they were gonna be somebody — and that place was America. Let’s be honest. Isn’t one of the fears that you have, that that doesn’t seem to be an inspiring, infectious aspect of life in America anymore?

Many people don’t think they can ever be anything anymore for a whole host of reasons. A, they’re told that by a dominant liberal culture in the media. And then when you get down to what they do aspire to, it’s all cheap thrill pop culture fame for way too many people. And I thought, wow, how profound is this? I’m sitting here, I’m watching this show just to escape, like you would read a book. And here I am, I’m impacted, I’m hit between the eyes with a real — the line was kind of a throwaway, but I think the writer of this program intended it to be a profundity. I don’t know, it was with me. It was a huge profundity.