RUSH: While we’re on the subject, have you heard about this thing that happened at the Missouri state fair? “Missouri State Fair officials and politicians on Sunday condemned the performance of a rodeo clown who donned a mask resembling President Barack Obama during SaturdayÂ’s bull riding competition.” Apparently the clown’s name, Perry Beam, rodeo clown, wore an Obama mask during the bull riding at the Missouri state fair, which is in Sedalia. “A tempest over the incident erupted after a website reported a Facebook account of it. The Facebook writer said he had taken a Taiwanese student –” (laughing) — it’s sad, funny, it’s a whole bunch of things. The way we’re grouping ourselves. So yeah, yeah, yeah, a Facebook writer had taken a Taiwanese student to the rodeo in Sedalia Saturday night and during the bull riding segment a rodeo clown appeared wearing an Obama mask.
That wasn’t all the. “The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull.” This was what was posted on Facebook. And it is also reported on Facebook that the crowd went wild. So the announcer asked it again and again, louder every time, whipping the audience into a lather, “Anybody like to see Obama run down by a bull?” This caused the governor of Missouri and the lieutenant governor of Missouri and Senator Claire McCaskill to express outrage and shock and sadness and venom over how this could possibly happen.
Who would do this? Why was the crowd going nuts? This is absolutely embarrassing. This is intolerable. This is unacceptable. Who do these people think they are? Why would anybody put on an Obama mask as a clown, and why would the announcer ask if anybody wanted the Obama clown run over by a bunch of bulls, and why would the audience cheer this?
And it was just last week on this program where I — with some weight and seriousness — and it’s not an Oprah comment on the weight. I mean, it was heavy — talked about Obama going on a comedy show to tell us something very serious about foreign policy, and I said this is diminishing the office of the presidency, the way Obama’s handling this, just totally diminishing it. He is reducing the office to the lowest common denominator, and I would suggest to you that whatever the truth of this thing is in Missouri, the clown putting on the Obama mask, is representative of the fact that there is a declining overall respect for the office of the presidency.
When the president of the United States more often than not connects with the American people on late-night comedy shows, what else can happen, other than the diminishing of the office, which takes me to audio sound bite number one. This is yesterday on CNN, Fareed Zakaria: GPS. He interviewed former newspaper publisher Conrad Black, who, by the way, is the interviewee in the current issue of the Limbaugh Letter. Well, I know. If these Missouri politicians ever find out what the Egyptian protesters are doing to Obama’s image, I mean, he’s being burned in effigy over there. Wait ’til the governor and lieutenant governor of Missouri find out what’s happening to Obama in Egypt, they’re gonna really be mad.
(interruption)
Well, yeah, Arab Spring, I mean, Obama claimed that as his own, and of course it’s not working out for the Egyptian people at all. Anyway, Fareed Zakaria: GPS. Does that mean he does the show from his car? I don’t understand the name of that show, Fareed Zakaria: GPS. Does he do it on his phone? Do they go to the map app and plan the route of the interview? What is that? Oh, you need a GPS to find Fareed’s show. That’s what it is, that’s what it is. You need a GPS to find Fareed Zakaria: GPS. Okay.
So Conrad Black, who’s the current interviewee in the Limbaugh Letter, he has a great book, Flight of the Eagle, about the birth of this country and how and why it became what it is, in some people’s minds was. And Fareed Zakaria accused Conrad Black of dismissing in this book President Obama. And Conrad Black, who is a brilliant — I mean, if you’ve ever wondered what an intellectual is, I mean, somebody that has not soiled the term, it would be Conrad. Conrad is a genuine, likable, affectionate, if you will, intellectual. He’s not a stuffed shirt, hoity-toity elitist type. He’s a good guy.
He was righteously indignity and offended that Fareed Zakaria would accuse him of dismissing Obama. He said, “I haven’t dismissed Obama. I don’t dismiss any US president. It’s a serious office, Fareed, and I’m shocked that you would say this about me.” And then Fareed Zakaria said, “So you have a few pages on Obama in the book, though, even though you say you don’t dismiss him, you have a few pages on Obama in the book, and they’re quite dismissive,” and Conrad says, “No, Fareed, I can’t believe you would say that. I am not dismissive of this office. I have never been dismissive of anybody who’s held it.” But then he went on to say this.
BLACK: I think there is a leadership problem in the US that has been going on for most of the time since Reagan retired. I think that there is a very large number of Americans that felt instinctively that the national media and the political establishment had unjustly destroyed a distinguished administration, which Mr. Nixon had in his first term, and had scuttled the effort in Vietnam and had never ceased to congratulate themselves for doing it, and the country is uneasy about that. I think that’s why Rush Limbaugh has 30 million listeners, and the network newscasts have declined.
RUSH: Now, I didn’t play that because of his reference to me. The point is a clown puts on an Obama face mask at a state fair and everybody goes nuts at how offensive it is and how dismissive it is. Well, when you go on late-night comedy shows and you make a joke of the office of president, what do you expect people to do? When you’re shredding the Constitution, when you’re taking steps that tear this country apart in ways that people don’t want it transformed, what do you expect people to do? Conrad Black was saying here, “I think there’s a leadership problem in this country, been going on for most of the time since Reagan retired.” And he’s right about that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And we’re back, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Now, I want to close the loop here on this clown thing in Missouri. Look at the knee-jerk reaction. “Oh, this is outrageous, oh, this is unacceptable.” I think there is a very logical understandable explanation for it. And that is that the office of the president — what did I see last week? It was a Drudge headline on Friday. Obama’s approval number in one poll is now down to 41. Now, you won’t see it anywhere. It was on Drudge for a couple hours and had vanished there, I don’t know where it went, but his approval numbers are plummeting.
Now, remember, if it’s Bush’s approval numbers plummeting, CNN devotes the whole day to it. Obama’s approval numbers are plummeting and presidential masks, I mean, you used to be able to buy an Obama mask on Amazon. There have been George W. Bush masks all over the place, used on Halloween. All of this reactionary knee-jerk political correctness is a bit phony, if you ask me, because this has a logical explanation behind it.