RUSH: My two children’s books were dissed on C-SPAN2 last night. Here are the audio sound bites. It’s C-SPAN2. BookTV is what it is, and there was a discussion event. This was taped on June the 9th. It’s for a book entitled Brazil’s Dance With the Devil. It’s about the impact of the World Cup on Brazil.
Before that discussion started, the host, a woman named Deborah Menkart who is Teaching for Change’s executive director, was speaking about the Busboys and Poets bookstore. Now, the Busboys and Poets bookstore is where this event C-SPAN2 was televising from was held. The Busboys and Poets bookstore.
The store is run by Teaching for Change, which is a nonprofit organization that says it “provides teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into centers of justice.” Transform schools into centers of justice. So here’s the setup. A book is being discussed, Brazil’s Dance With the Devil. Teaching for Change’s executive director Deborah Menkart is speaking about this not-for-profit bookstore that’s out trying to turn schools into “centers for justice.”
MENKART: Only one out of 10 books being published currently are by or about people of color. These are also not the books that are on the best-seller lists. In fact, one of the books on the best-seller list for children right now is by Rush Limbaugh.
AUDIENCE: (angry grumbling)
MENKART: You will not find that book in our bookstore. It’s also getting lots of awards. To flip the trend, flip the script, 90% of the books that we sell at the bookstore — the independent, progressive, nonprofit bookstore here — are by or about people of color. Those are the books that we find and we feature. So we prove there is a market for them.
RUSH: All right, now, listen carefully to that. This is a lousy PA system. The point here is really not that my books got dissed. I’m just taking the occasion of that here to make another point. (Well, my books did get dissed.) This woman would be stunned to find out that my books have people of color in them, and she would likewise be shocked and stunned to learn that the “people of color,” as she talks of them, in my books are heroes.
(interruption) Who looks at the world this way? Barack Obama on down looks at the world this way! Wait until I get to this Peter Beinart piece. I’m telling you, this is gonna be the piece de resistance today. Peter Beinart of Newsweek, New Republic and so forth. “Fearful Republicans Hoping to Reverse History’s Course Make 2016 GOP Loss More Likely.” This is just… Wait until I get to this. (interruption)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. “Nonprofit.” Do not say, “Who runs a business this way?” This is a nonprofit. If you’ll just calm down in there, there’s another sound bite to come which kind of nails the coffin shut here. Let me review this. “They’re also not the books that are on the best-seller list. In fact, one of the books on the best-seller list for children right now is by Rush Limbaugh, and you will not find that book in our bookstore,” and she’s very proud of that.
Because I’m not a person of color, and they only publish books by or about people of color. And I’m telling you, she’d be stunned to learn that there are people of color in the Rush Revere time-travel adventures books and that they are heroes, the people of color in the books, ’cause we do the truth of American history. Next she says… This is where it gets important. “To flip the trend, flip the script, 90% of the books that we sell at the bookstore — the independent, progressive, nonprofit bookstore here — are by or about people of color.
Those are the books that we find and we feature. So we prove there is a market for them.” Nonprofit bookstore. They are trying. She asserts to prove by only selling… That’s all you can buy in this store, and the name of this store… What is it? Busboys and Poets bookstore. The only books you can buy in there are books by or about people of color, and she’s trying to say that because we’re doing that, we are proving there’s a market for them. But then listen to this…
Menkart: We need your help to continue operation of the bookstore. We’re not breaking even and we can’t take funds from our programs that are parent-organizing or promote people’s history. So please make sure that you and your friends purchase your books at our store and on our web store and consider making a donation.
RUSH: So in the next breath she tells us that her nonprofit bookstore doesn’t even break even. I wonder why. The first bite she makes this big deal about saying how important it is that their store show that a profit can be made selling books only by people of color. That’s right. Those are the books that we find and we feature, so we prove there’s a market for them. But then she goes on to say there’s not a market for ’em because her nonprofit bookstore isn’t making a profit.
Well, I didn’t think it was supposed to. She said, “We’re not breaking even.” Maybe that’s their objective. That’s right. Nonprofit means they don’t dare show a profit. They can’t show a profit. Profit’s evil. But they’re not even breaking even. And so you say who runs a business this way? Nobody with any brains runs a business this way. This is exclusionary, it’s racist, it’s bigoted, and it’s the opposite of everything they claim to be. And it’s exactly what they accuse us of being. They claim that they’re tolerant. They claim they’re open-minded. They claim that they are colorblind and all that. They are the most bigoted, racist people. They exclude here and exclude there and then they don’t make any money and they can’t figure out why.
My two books are in the top five on the New York Times best-seller list, and here’s a woman at a bookstore who wants to sell books, is begging people to buy ’em, proudly says that two of the books in the top five are not even available at her store, and she wants accolades for that. These people are loony. They simply are dumb. They don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing. And they happen to be running the country. And I don’t just mean in Washington. People like this are in charge of the public school system. People like this are teaching your kids. People like this are running day care. People like this show up at Obama’s fundraisers.
Obama didn’t sound all that different at times during his fundraising appearances over the weekend and his commencement speech. My books have people of color in them. I’m not a person of color ’cause white’s not considered a color. I’m not a person of color but people of color are in my books. They’re heroes. They’re stars. They are lovable, adorable characters because we deal with the truth of American history in the Adventures of Rush Revere, Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans. And this woman wants applause and accolades for not selling those books in her store and then complains and whines that they’re not even breaking even. She begs people to buy the books they do offer, which apparently, if left alone, do not sell.
But yet here’s a woman running this bookstore who thinks, “I’m only putting authors of people of color.” And she thinks that that’s going to result in miles and miles of lines of people showing up to buy books? Honestly, she does think that. They think that’s how the world works. And it is what the Democrat Party is becoming, and it is this demographic, the way the left or a Democrat looks at the country and sees it versus the way a conservative Republican looks and sees it, those two disparate views of the country are getting wider and wider and further and further apart.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to tell you a little bit about this woman, Deborah Menkart, the woman that was quoted from the Busboys and Poets bookstore. She’s with Teaching for Change. She’s executive director. She’s very, very proud to say that she’s not selling my books in her store ’cause they only sell books by people of color. That, they were going to do to prove that there is a market for them.
And then in the next sound bite she begs people to buy and donate and give them money because they’re not even breaking even with their brilliant sales technique. Now, this woman who supports this Teaching for Change group? This organization supports the Zinn Education Project. Now, the Zinn, that’s Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn is the author of the primary history tract or textbook in the American public school system.
It’s called A People’s History of the United States. His book “describes America as a predatory and repressive capitalist state that serves only the interests of wealthy white men who exploit workers, American Indians, slaves, women, blacks, and populists,” and she is a subscriber to that belief. This is who C-SPAN2 featured on Sunday night. That is what she believes. By the way, I’m telling you:
When we get to Obama’s commencement speech and some of the other things he said out in California over the weekend, you don’t find a whole lot of difference in the way he views the country. In fact, he looks at it the same way. I know it’s tough to believe. It’s hard to imagine that somebody elected president actually sees the US as that corrupt and that guilty, but he does. He once again apologized for the country.
It really is… (sigh) I don’t know. It’s frustrating that it exists, number one, and it’s frustrating that so few people are willing to believe it and accept it. (interruption) What would happen if it was another group be excluded? Okay, look. You know what would happen. Snerdley is asking me… Frankly, you know the answer. He’s saying, “What happens if somebody opens a bookstore and says, ‘We’re only going to publish white, straight writers’?
“Do you think they’d be on C-SPAN?” No. They would have the full force of the federal government at their front door padlocking it and shutting them down, on the basis that they’re racists and they’re bigots and so forth. So the question is, “Well, how come it’s okay for this essential Marxist to open a not-for-profit and proudly say, ‘We are only going to publish books written by people of color,'” and she gets applause and so forth?
The answer is, she has every right to because, in the current construct, people of color are perpetual victims. They are a perpetual minority, they are perpetual victims — and, as such, they shall get never-ending special treatment and sympathy, and that’s just the way it is. And if you doubt me, don’t. That is the belief system that forms the foundation that permits that kind of bigotry and that kind of racism to exist.
Because they’ll tell you that they’re not racists; they can’t be racist. The Reverend Jackson said, “Look, I can’t be racist. I don’t have the power to do anything with my racism.” So… (interruption) No, it’s not “the power to exclude.” That’s called the power to get even. See, the white publishers and the white authors have had an unfair advantage in their numbers for all these years, ever since the country was founded.
All this is is trying to level the playing field. All this is is trying to make up for 200 years of discrimination. So we need quotas and we need affirmative action and we need never ending redress and so forth, and that’s the belief system that permits this. (interruption) Mmm-hmm. (interruption) Right. (sigh) I don’t know. I assume if a kid walked into the Poets and Barmaids bookstore… What is the name of the store?
Poets and Busboys. If a kid walked into the Poets and Busboys bookstore and said (child impression), “Hi. I want to buy Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, do you have it?” they’d say, “No, kid! We only selling books here written by people of color, and that’s a white author. That’s bad! Get outta here!” I don’t know what they would tell him. (interruption) That’s why I say, if it’s a white kid that shows up…
I guarantee if a white kid walked in and said, “Hi. Is this the Poets and Busboys bookstore?”
“Yes, young man.”
“I want buy Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.”
“Sorry, kid. We don’t sell trash like that in this bookstore.”
That’s what they would say, something like, “I’m sorry, we don’t sell that.” They’d be very snooty. They’d probably get mad at the kid for wanting it and try to give him an on-the-spot lesson of why he shouldn’t be interested in bigotry and racism and all that garbage. I guarantee that’s what would happen. You know it as well as I do! (interruption) She… (interruption) They full-well understand intellectually what they’re doing.
They damn well understand everything they’re doing! You’re looking at this woman through the prism of a lousy businesswoman. (interruption) Wrong. (interruption) No. You may also be looking at it through the prism of a racist bigot, but that’s not how she sees herself. She sees herself as a freedom fighter! She is here representing the oppressed that have been essentially imprisoned by this country since its founding.
She is standing for their empowerment. That’s what she thinks she’s doing. She… (interruption) It’s… (interruption) It is… (interruption) It is a nonprofit. The take-away is they can’t… She goes on C-SPAN to complain that they don’t have enough business to even break even — and, of course, that’s not her fault. It’s not the fault of her business model. It’s not the fault of any thing she does. You ask me these questions.
“What happened,” Mr. Snerdley asks, “if a baker says, ‘You know what? I don’t believe in gay marriage, so I’m not gonna bake a cake for your wedding.'” What happened is that that baker ends up in federal court and, for all intents and purposes, gets shut down. The baker has decided to close up shop, or one of them has. You know full well how this works. This is what’s happening all across the country.
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RUSH: Here’s a question for. Do you think Dr. Benjamin Carson’s book is available at the Busboys and Poets bookstore? I’ll bet you no way is Dr. Carson’s book available in there, even though he’s a person of color, because it’s not about that. That’s just the insulation. That gives them cover for doing Marxism, whatever you want to call it in the bookstore.
They’re hiding behind — well, they’re not really hiding behind it because they believe it, but they’re hiding behind the unfairness and the injustice of the white oppressors ever since the founding of country and therefore we’re entitled to do whatever we want to do, including deny other people freedom. If that’s what it takes to bring fairness, then we’ll do it. That’s their view. In fact, if the only way to make things fair is to deny some people, i.e., the oppressors, fairness and then freedom, then they’ll do it.
So Dr. Carson’s book, I venture to say, is not there. If they know what’s in it. Now, if they just look at the cover and say, “Ooh, a person of color wrote this book, let’s put it in there.” I doubt that happens. I think they know who he is. And if they do, I guarantee you they don’t want his message coming out of the Busboys and Poets bookstore.