RUSH: I’ll tell, folks, the Drive-Bys are beside themselves. I, frankly, am not surprised by, this, but the Drive-Bys are. Nearly 90% of Americans say they don’t care about all of this going on in the NFL. “Nearly 90% of Americans say the recent outcry about domestic violence in the NFL hasnÂ’t changed how much professional football they watch,” or their enjoyment of it, “and less than a third of the nation believes NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should resign.”

Now, you have to understand. The Drive-Bys will look at this and they will chalk this up as total failure. The people that write the daily media narrative, that write the daily media soap opera measure their success by learning how much of the general population’s thinking on a subject they’re able to move or manipulate. And this is the second in a row that they’ve bombed out.

They tried to take what happened to the gentle giant in Ferguson, Missouri, and they tried to turn that into a national scandal of Republican Party proportions, and that bombed out on ’em. That didn’t work. They really thought that they were on the verge here of getting this commissioner forced to resign or be fired. They thought they were on the verge of getting the Redskins name changed.

They thought they were on the verge of major upheaval in the NFL. Much of journalism — and don’t doubt me on this. Much of journalism’s success is determined by how much upheaval they can cause in citadels of power. Now, it used to be that anybody who held power was a target of the Drive-By Media. That’s no longer the case when avowed politicians of the liberal Democrat stripe are in power.

Then there is no attempt to hold them employable. There is no attempt whatsoever to harm they happen. It’s just the exact opposite. They are propped up, until they’re no longer useful, and then they move on to a replacement left-wing liberal to prop up, which is why all the talk on Hillary right now.

How many times over the course of the many years of this highly popular broadcast have you heard me say that the way journalists climb their ladder of success is point to the resume when we were working in a smaller media market and say, “See, there was a guy that ran tire store, and the guy was corrupt, and I did the piece that took him out of business!”

“You did? Why, you may be on the fast track to the Washington Post.”

I mean, that’s what they saw happen on 60 Minutes: The powerful got destroyed, taken down a peg. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s always an agenda behind everything. There’s no news anymore. The NFL story quickly became an agenda. You had to know the politics of it to be able to correctly spot the agenda. The secondary aspect of this was the media measuring their power.

They wanted to see how much upheaval they could cause by taking on what they and everybody else thought — what they wanted you to believe — was a totally corrupt institution, a beloved corrupt institution. The NFL is the most popular sport in America. What better show of force and power than to take it down or to cause great upheaval? Lo and behold, this is exactly what happened.

Now, with this poll out — this is an NBC News/Marist poll — nearly 90% of Americans say that the recent outcry about domestic violence the NFL hasn’t mattered a whit in terms of how they like the game, watch the game, how much they’re gonna watch the game. The poll also “also finds that a majority of Americans — including nearly six in 10 self-described football fans — say they disapprove of the way the NFL has handled the domestic-violence allegations,” but it doesn’t matter.

So Americans can hold two thoughts in their head at one time. The media bulrush on the NFL and its commissioner are seen as overblown, yet a lot of people think the NFL and the Ravens mishandled the Ray Rice punishment. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Drive-Bys, fit to be tied. You know, folks, there’s also something else going on here. (sigh) I think I’d better keep this one close to the vest.

Given that the Democrats are out there waiting to just totally lie and take any number of words I say totally out of context and put ’em in a different order to mean something else, I’d better be very guarded on a certain aspect of it. But the Drive-Bys have realized… I mean, if you can figure it out on your own, fine and dandy. Most of you can. After a week to 10 days of calling attention to all of these domestic abusers and child abusers and all of these miscreants in the NFL, the Drive-Bys have realized something about all of the suspects.

And it’s counterintuitive. They’re saying, “Wait a minute, now. This isn’t… Uh, um… We need to find another example of this, and fast.” So I think… (interruption) I think… (interruption) Yeah, that doesn’t count. He doesn’t play. Doesn’t play. (interruption) Yeah, doesn’t play. That’d be big stretch. Big stretch. Has gotta play, has got to be a player. Got to be a player.

So they’ll I’m predicting you’re gonna see a little bit less intensity in reporting the actual number of incidents. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. F. Chuck Todd. So much instructional material here. This is the Today show today, and Matt Lauer is speaking with the brand-new host of Meet the Depressed, F. Chuck Todd, about the NFL’s recent troubles.

Matt Lauer said, “People have very strong feelings about what they’re seeing unfold with the NFL, and yet, Chuck, they don’t seem to be letting those feelings create a wide-scale indictment of the game itself.”

T
ODD: No, that’s what we’re seeing here. It was a whopping 85% of those we surveyed said they’re not gonna change how much football they watch, that it’s not gonna impact what they watch. In fact, only 11% overall said what’s been happening in the game and how the NFL has handled it makes them want to watch less football. So if you thought that fans would be providing the pressure in the NFL to do something more, this poll indicates that’s not the case.

RUSH: I’m telling you, the Drive-Bys are totally out of sync with the country, as they are on many things. They’re totally out of sync. I guarantee you — do not doubt me on this. The vast majority of them — be they website writers, magazine writers, newspaper writers, television, radio broadcast — they all thought, they all think that major upheaval in the corporate suite of the NFL is just around the corner.

They all they think major, major change is coming because they’re so self-focused and so self-centered, they assume it. What did I tell you the other day when the whole thing about the way the media reports the Redskins name controversy. They start with the premise that everybody agrees with them, right? As they report on it, they make it sound add attitudinally like everybody in the country agrees the Redskins are horrible.

“They need to change their name!”

Most people don’t care, and then they’re shocked when they learn most people don’t care. They’re shocked when they learn that most Americans don’t think like they do. And then they conclude, “That’s why most Americans are stupid and fools.” So after F. Chuck gave the statistics of the polls, Matt Lauer said, “Well, let’s go to these numbers. Do you agree with how the league is handling it? Fifty-three percent of America said, no, they don’t agree. When you ask that question of people who say they’re football fans, 57% say no, they don’t like the way the league is handling it. When they say ‘the league,’ they’re talking about the commissioner and some owners, right, Chuck?”

TODD: Clearly football fans wish they would handle it better. All that stuff, it’s not impacting what they say about the game. But when it comes to Roger Goodell, Matt, at this point they don’t think he should lose his job over it. So even though they disapprove of how the league’s handling it, 46% of football fans don’t believe he should lose his job, only 32% say he should. So he’s got room to move, and is it sort of explains, Matt, why we’re watching it and wondering, “Why isn’t the NFL watching sooner? Don’t they realize they have this PR crisis?” They’re probably doing some of their own surveying of fans, too.

RUSH: There you have it. There it is, wrapped in a nutshell right there. They’re watching the NFL, and they think you are, too, and wonder, “Why why why why isn’t the NFL doing something? Don’t they realize we are putting pressure on them? Don’t they realize that because we put pressure on them that everybody agrees with us and that they are reprobates? Don’t they understand they gotta do something fast?

“Don’t they understand they gotta send Goodell packing? Don’t the NFL people understand they gotta do something drastic right now?” And then, “Wait a minute. Well, why should they, when 90% the American people say this is not gonna impact their love for the game, watching the game or what have you?” What in fact is going the scenes of the NFL…

By the way, Commissioner Goodell has a news conference in the NFL, you know what time his news conference is? Three p.m. Eastern. Smart man. Commissioner Goodell, smart man. That proves that he’s still in touch, still aware, and they have been working — I shudder to think what they’re gonna come up with. They have been working behind the scenes to come up with a policy like Leigh Steinberg said yesterday.

They may do another month devoted to spouse abuse awareness. Who knows, but they’re coming up with a policy. They are going to have a full-fledged policy. That’s what they’ve been doing, and that is gonna be their response. Meanwhile, the Drive-Bys are sitting around thinking that two or three people should have been fired by now, maybe one of them beheaded. You know, whatever it takes to respond to the…

Only joking about that!

But, I mean, that’s how intense they’re getting and how they are totally caught up in their own power and influence, and they are shocked when their thinking isn’t reflected everywhere, and… (interruption) I haven’t seen anything in the polling about how the media handled it. Now, there’s one more aspect here, one more sound bite of F. Chuck in the segment here with Matt Lauer.

Matt Lauer finally says, “Now, there’s just an offshoot of this story, Chuck, and that’s the Adrian Peterson investigation. He’s charged with negative or reckless injury to a child and that prompted a question in our poll about corporal punishment, and the results there, Chuck, I think are gonna surprise a lot of people.”

TODD: Overall, it shouldn’t be surprising that a large majority, 60%, believe parents shouldn’t use belts, paddles, or switches to punish their child. But there is some cultural differences in our country. While 60% overall are against that, 51% in the South — Adrian Peterson a Texan, 51% in the South — say they believe that it is, uh, acceptable to use a switch, a belt, uh, to punish a child. So the cultural differences there, which is something that some players who have backed up Adrian Peterson in this situation have said, do show up in this poll.

RUSH: The Drive-Bys, once again, can’t believe it. They’re shocked. Make no mistake. Later today, maybe even right now, F. Chuck and his media buddies talking to each other off the record, making fun of the South. “Can you believe those hayseeds? Can you believe those backwards hicks? It’s Deliverance down there! They still believe it’s still okay to spank the kids. Can you believe it?” That’s what they’re saying.

Now, I have a reaction to this “it’s the culture” excuse. I don’t buy that. That’s a cop-out; it’s a scapegoat. And when I first heard, “Well, you better get used to it, ’cause that’s the culture in which we were raised…” When I first started objecting to hip-hop rap, gangster rap music lyrics, I heard, “Rush, you gotta understand: It’s the culture.”

Well, then something’s wrong with the culture. The culture shouldn’t be a blank check and a blank slate to behave that way. Just because your culture was that doesn’t make it right, and it certainly doesn’t excuse behavior that everybody knows is not exemplary or right. Yet it’s trotted out all the time. “Well, you know, it’s the culture down there.”