RUSH: To the phones! To Toledo, Ohio. Hi, Todd. You’re up first. It’s a big burden being first. You gotta set the stage and the pace for everybody who follows.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: You up to it?
CALLER: Yeah. Hey, Rush, I’m really nervous, and it’s good talking to you. I know you’ve been talking about the NFL this week, and I’m big NFL fan. Cleveland Browns is my team. But I was a little disturbed looking at all the stories coming out, and I realized that if you gave me a story, if you said this is what happened, I could tell you exactly how it would be written, and I know you’d feel the same way.
RUSH: (silence)
CALLER: Are you there?
RUSH: Yeah, I’m here. Yeah. What is your point?
CALLER: My point is that what I realized is there’s an old saying, which I think is true: If it doesn’t make any sense, there’s a dollar involved. I started looking at the all the columnists, particularly in sports, and I said, “These guys are all men, and they’re all white.” I’m a white male myself. But what I said was, “I think that you can see a root to where political correctness has bloomed out of what they are doing, and I think that they are writing this way in a feminized way. They’re not writing like men, and they’re doing this to protect their own jobs.”
RUSH: A-ha. Okay, now we get to the nub of it. So, basically even the sportswriter Drive-Bys have been co-opted by fear and political correctness and are writing their stories on what’s happening the NFL from —
CALLER: Oh, I think that they sit up in their ivory towers and look down on these poor, you know, barbarous, you know, peasants and, you know, have this… They don’t write like men. It’s just this limp-wristed writing. It’s astounding to me. And what I realized was if they were to write like men, there would be outcries for their jobs.
RUSH: Give me an example. Give me an example of writing like men, in any NFL story that you have in mind.
CALLER: Well, I just think that the mining for the story in and of itself is — is… You know, these things are not… I think that the Redskins stuff, I mean, this is stuff that should just be ignored. I mean, it’s ridiculous. You know, sticks and stones may break my bones but, names will never hurt me.
RUSH: Well, let me step in here, because I must disagree with you. I don’t think the sports Drive-Bys are writing in an artificial way out of fear of losing their jobs or anything else, and I don’t think that they’re unserious about the Redskins name. A, many sports journalists are groupies. Number one. They idolize the players. Becoming a sports journalist is a way to get close, to hanging around sports guys.
Athletes are among (with actors and other entertainers) the closest thing we have to royalty. Everybody wants to bask in the glow, everybody wants to be close to it. But while they may start out as groupies, they become overwhelmed and overtaken with their jobs as journalists — and believe me, there is no faux liberalism in sports journalism. It is real, it is thorough, it is unadvised, and it is undiluted. They are not pretend liberals.
They are all-in.
They’re not making anything up. They really believe the Redskins name is reprehensible. They think everybody should also think that it is reprehensible. They operate with an attitude that everybody already agrees with them, so that anybody who disagrees is a minority and a kook and an oddball and a weirdo and not worthy of respect — which is a big key. No, I think they’re thoroughly genuine in their politics.
There are many aspects of journalism. If they could do even some damage being to the NFL, damage that they would consider to be progress, they’d be happy. That would be a show of power. That would be a display of influence. If their not writing, as you say, like men — and I assume you’ve got some sportswriters in mind from days gone by that did — it’s because they’re not men in the way you think of it. They’ve been chickified or… It’s not chickified.
They’re liberals!
Political correctness is the Bible.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I want to build up on Todd from Toledo, our last caller. He said that sportswriters today are not writing “like men,” and he’s comparing it to sportswriters of days gone by. His basic point was that he believes that the sports media is as cowed as anybody else by political correctness and fear, and they’ve got to write a certain way to keep their jobs and so forth.
I just want to stress again that that is not the case. There’s a very good analogy to explain the sports media today, and I’ve said this in numerous ways in an attempt to have my opinion understood, ’cause that’s what I’m into. I’m a primo communicator here, and I keep sticking to it ’til I’m convinced people understand what I’m trying to say. What we’re looking here is the sports media flexing its muscles.
The sports media is attempting to demonstrate its power to change things, to move people, both people in a particular business (the NFL in this case) and public opinion. The sports Drive-Bys are trying to do to the National Football League what the news Drive-Bys did to Nixon. They are trying to demonstrate their power. They are trying to show that they can change the game and the attitudes that accompany the game.
Both by players, coaches, owners, and fans. The same way they think they changed the presidency and politics in general. Watergate for a journalist — sports, entertainment, food, you name it, Watergate — is the seminal moment. Before that it was Vietnam. Watergate. They took down a president, they think. It’s not me asserting it. They believe it. Woodward and Bernstein? Gods! 60 Minutes, a close second.
What did 60 Minutes do?
They destroyed people that they thought needed to be destroyed. I mean, that’s the ultimate demonstration of power. So they are doing he went they can to demonstrate their power, to change the game, and their desire to change the game is real. It’s rooted in what they truly believe, the way they’ve been educated, the way they’ve been raised, and the way they’ve been taught in journalism school specifically.
Watergate, profound change on politics and the presidency. Since Watergate, Republicans have been presumed guilt on everything. Since Watergate. And that’s what they’re attempting to do. Now, so get news today from an NBC News/Marist poll that the public is yawning, the public doesn’t care, the public knows full well what’s going on with all this but it’s not affecting their love for the game.
It’s not affecting their stated desire to watch games so forth, although the ratings for last night’s Thursday night game were not good. But it was also a blowout. It was an uncompetitive blowout. But again the pregame show last night? It took about 45 minutes to get to football. The rest of the time was on this domestic violence stuff, including interviewing coaches and players about it.
So there is no question what’s going on here. But on the other side of it — and this is only gonna steel ’em more. I mean, the media. It’s only gonna motivate ’em more. We know the NFL, the polling data is supported by the public, and it’s the politicians and the media who are despised by the people. For all the polls that the media shows you about the disgust people have with Congress and the president, whatever, they are also disliked.
They rank journalism very, very low on the integrity scale. For example, Roger Goodell’s ratings as commissioner of the NFL are higher than Obama’s as president. The NFL’s popularity is six times higher than Congress. The media are despised, distrusted, suspected by nearly everybody. That doesn’t mean they don’t have influence. But there is a constant quest to prove it.
That’s all I’m saying. There’s nothing fake or faux (f-a-u-x) about it.