RUSH: Here’s John in Chicago. John, great to have you. Glad you called, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, sir. Thank you so much for taking my call.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to talk to you again.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I wanted to respond to your comments about the congressman making out with a woman who wasn’t his wife at a Christmas party.
RUSH: Vance McAllister. He’s gotta go. He’s gotta go.
CALLER: You seem incredulous at that suggestion, and I think that I have never considered marital infidelity to be a partisan political issue. I think one gets himself in trouble when they try to treat it that way. I think that we all know that good family values, conservative Republicans like Mark Sanford and David Vitter and John Ensign and Larry Craig got a pass from Republicans for their infidelity. I wonder if you could be honest enough to compare the call for Mr. McAllister to resign to the reaction on the part of Republicans to Anthony Weiner, who never actually laid a hand on a woman, at a Christmas party or otherwise. I mean, do you see any disparity there, sir?
RUSH: Well, yeah. Let me go at this a different way. See, the elephant in the room that you can’t comment or you don’t want to —
CALLER: The elephant.
RUSH: Pardon?
CALLER: I said, “the elephant.” It was kind of a pun. I thought you were making a Republican joke there. But okay, go ahead.
RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I’m not. That’s too easy. Elephant equals Republican? No, no, no. The elephant in the room is Bill Clinton, and you can’t deny it. This is more than Mr. Infidelity. I mean, this is just beyond the pale, and there were all of these cover-ups. There was every effort in the world made to facilitate his lying about it. And then when he finally had to come clean, they did their best to say, “Ah, it’s just sex. Ah, it’s not his fault. Ah, it’s nothing. It doesn’t affect the way he did his job. Come on, it’s just sex!” Hollywood got going and so forth. Now, you mentioned Weiner.
CALLER: That seems to me the real comparison. I know you want to talk about Bill Clinton. But Anthony Weiner, that seems like the real comparison. Everybody said he had to resign, and now people are saying McAllister needs to resign and you somehow think that’s unfair. Why is it okay to call for Anthony Weiner to resign?
RUSH: I’m not talking about unfairness at all. If you listen here regularly, you know that “fairness” to me is like “equality.” It’s ephemeral. You can’t quantify it; it’s silly to demand it. This is not about fairness, to me.
CALLER: And I thought it was hypocrisy. (snickers)
RUSH: This is about the lack of professionalism and consistency about bias in the media, pure and simple. Now, you wonder why Weiner was sacrificed. He wasn’t likable even in his own party. They didn’t like the guy.
CALLER: Ohhhh.
RUSH: So they had no problem getting rid of him. There was no value in holding on to Anthony Weiner. He was a creep.
CALLER: So if you like a guy, it’s okay if they cheat on their wife?
RUSH: Damn right, if you’re the Democrats! If you like hum, you’re gonna find a way to keep him in power.
CALLER: David Vitter is really likable, and John Ensign was, and Mark Sanford, really likable.
RUSH: They all lost their jobs. Wait a second. They all lost their jobs.
CALLER: Every one of them stayed in office and finished their term. Every one of them. Mark Sanford has now been reelected to public office in South Carolina.
RUSH: ‘Cause he’s paid the price. He paid his price.
CALLER: Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
RUSH: It was real love, it turned out, in Sanford’s case.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: You have to admit it, it was real love. There’s only one thing that could explain that kind of erratic behavior and that’s real love.
CALLER: You know, you’re being a hypocrite, Rush. I’m sorry.
RUSH: No, I’m not. I’m not the hypocrite.
CALLER: Sir, you’re the one defending all these Republicans.
RUSH: I’m not the hypocrite. You call here and say that infidelity is not a partisan issue, and you don’t even talk about Mr. Infidelity. You leave him out. You leave him out completely.
CALLER: You want to talk about Bill Clinton, I get that. But the real comparison and the one that reveals your hypocrisy is Anthony Weiner.
RUSH: No. Why? Why is it not Clinton?
CALLER: Well, first of all —
RUSH: By your own admission, Weiner didn’t do anything but disrobe on the Internet.
CALLER: Anthony Weiner never even laid a hand on a woman.
RUSH: Exactly. So he doesn’t qualify.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: Clinton does.
CALLER: Really? Because I think the comparison that makes… The reason it’s a more apt comparison is he’s also a congressman.
RUSH: No, look, you’re working —
CALLER: He had to resign.
RUSH: You’re working too hard to spin this. Everybody knows the point that you’re trying to make. But you’re working too hard at it here when you will not throw Clinton in and acknowledge that he gets not just a total pass, but he actually gets praised. The fact is, you know, Lewinskys are now okay.
CALLER: He got pass? You say he got a pass. He got impeached, sir. He went an impeachment trial. Do you not recall that?
RUSH: He has suffered no shame, no disgrace. He is the most popular Democrat in the country. He didn’t pay any kind of real price for that whatsoever.
CALLER: What about Gary Hart? What about Eliot Spitzer? Did they pay any kind of a price?
RUSH: Again —
CALLER: You call for… You only want there to be a price if it’s a Democrat.
RUSH: Gary Hart? Gary Hart brought that on himself by demanding that the media follow him around.
CALLER: Oh, so McAllister, since he didn’t ask for the scrutiny, he gets a pass?
RUSH: Am I telling you that McAllister deserves a pass?
CALLER: I don’t know, sir. You seem to be totally incredulous that people would call for him to resign.
RUSH: Do you have no sense of proportion?
CALLER: Where was your incredulity when people called for Weiner to resign?
RUSH: This is the problem, John. Your sense of humor is just dormant. Parody, satire. I’m not incredulous. I know how the game works. I know the guy’s gone. I know he’s history. I never called for any of these people to resign. I never do that. I don’t look at it that way. My effort here is totally on informing the public and have them looking at things the way I do and have fun with all of this. That’s what you don’t see. You heard me open the program, and you think I’m really mad about this? I’m simply having fun. You guys gotta lighten up. You just have to lighten up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, I got people saying, “The Democrats threw John Edwards overboard.” They did not throw John Edwards overboard. They stuck with Edwards. They ignored the story. The Enquirer was the only source, and it wasn’t until Edwards’ wife died that the women of the Democrat Party demanded that he be dealt with.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We had our last caller who we finally figured out did not understand my sense of humor. I’m not gonna accuse this guy of it, but remember yesterday we were talking about this? I’ll tell you something. I really enjoyed yesterday’s program.
You know, some days I walk outta here thinking it could have been better. Yesterday I walked outta here pretty fulfilled. I walked outta here and I said, “I got it done. I finally was able to express this, explain this, whatever, in the exact way I’ve intended to.” It’s because a couple of brand-new lights went off in my head over the weekend about this.
This is such a glaring disparity, the automatic assumption of our motives, the automatic assumption of our intentions by these people who claim to own all the good intentions. And yesterday in discussing all that, I happened to mention that when Media Matters first came into existence, their first ever home page for all intents and purposes was me, ’cause they’re looking for clicks.
Everybody wants hits. So they felt, well, I’m an instant click. I’m an instant hit. So they put the top 25 things I’ve said about feminism, and they were all uproariously funny. But not to them. They were genuinely insulting and wrath incurring. They were things like, “I love the women’s movement, especially when walking behind it.” That just sent ’em into orbit.
They had Undeniable Truth of Life No. Four: “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” It’s undeniably true. That made ’em mad. Every one of them made ’em mad! This guy that called and said, “Rush, I’m surprised at you. You can’t say that infidelity is a partisan issue. It most certainly isn’t,” and then people started talking to me about John Edwards.
John Edwards? The Enquirer had the goods on Edwards for two years before the Drive-Bys got anywhere near it. They were hoping it could be suppressed, because everybody had a lot of hope invested in Edwards and his “two Americas” campaign theme and his hair and his supposed good looks and his relative youth.
So they thought it was the future shining star of our party, and they did everything they could to suppress what the guy did. There wasn’t a story about the first time they found out he’d kissed that Rielle Hunter babe like there is with Vance McAllister. There was two years of silence. It wasn’t until his poor wife died that the women of the Democrat Party, “Okay, he’s gotta go now.
“His poor wife is gone. She can’t be humiliated any further. Get rid of him.” The women of the Democrat Party finally forced him out, like they should have Ted Kennedy, but they didn’t. There’s another one. Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and so forth? Who can ever forget Eliot Spitzer, for crying out loud! I mean, Eliot Spitzer tried to hang on. They did everything they could, but he wasn’t liked, either.
(Love Client No. 9 parody song)
RUSH: In his socks, don’t forget.
(song continues)
RUSH: You are tuned to the Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB Network. I am only speaking to prevent competitors from recording our parody tune.
(song continues)
RUSH: And using it as their own.
(song continues)
RUSH: That’s right. “White comedian Paul Shanklin” with the vocal portrayal there of Bill Clinton and Love Client No. 9. Let’s not forget somebody else in all of this just to make the point. Remember Mark Foley? He was a member of Congress from here, from south Florida. The Democrats rode Mark Foley right to control of Congress in 2006, and Mark Foley didn’t do anything.
Mark Foley sent e-mails to pages. Mark Foley is gay. That didn’t help him, ’cause he’s a Republican. (He must not really mean to be gay, right?) Didn’t help. It didn’t do any good. He was writing e-mails to pages, and, ah, he might have had some suggestive things, but nothing ever happened.
The FBI said they never found any evidence of any untoward behavior toward his former pages, but it was the old “appearance of impropriety.” It was the old “seriousness of the charge” business. That’s another example of how this disparity works. Clarence Thomas? There was no evidence, ever, of sexual harassment on Anita Hill, and the left knew it. They said it didn’t matter.
“It’s the seriousness of the charge.”
“What, evidence doesn’t matter?”
“No, it doesn’t. Not when we’re talking about a traitorous Uncle Tom black. The seriousness of the charge is all that matters.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t have any evidence he actually did it other than Anita Hill said so?”
“That’s right. That’s a serious charge.”
In Mark Foley’s case, the appearance of impropriety was enough. It was enough to get him hounded from office by the media on a daily basis. By the way, the media and the Democrats sat on that scandal until it would be too late for the Republicans to remove his name from the ballot. The e-mails that he was sending to the pages had been around for months. They knew about, but they waited until September/October of 2006.
Classic.
Just classic.