RUSH: Here we are at what many people think is the most depressing day of the year, Blue Monday. And, no, it’s got nothing to do with Martin Luther King Day. By the way, I may be engaged in one of the greatest career risks ever taken. I mean, given all this controversy out in Hollywood, showing up here on Martin Luther King Day could be seen as an act of disrespect. What I’ll do is just fall back on the idea I had no idea, the staff didn’t tell me again that this was a celebrated Monday holiday, and I’ve got history on my side. I don’t take too many Monday holidays. Besides, Dr. King wanted everybody to work. That’s what separates him from the modern-day Democrat Party.
And Oprah, Oprah, Oprah — and, folks, it’s not Selma, you don’t say Selma. You have to listen to the way Al Sharpton says Selma. Selma is said with sadness and pain in your voice, as much as you can muster. It’s sort of like “Seeelma.” Yeah, Oprah Winfrey, she decided to go down and join the March in Selma. Snerdley came in today, “What in the world is Oprah Winfrey, billionaire black woman, doing replicating the march at Selma?” And of course I had an answer for him. It’s about promoting her movie.
Do you know the controversy over that, folks? Do you know that the head honcho of the Motion Picture Science of Academy Arts or whatever it’s called, she’s black, she’s a female, and they’ve kept that under the rug for a long time. During this whole controversy that bit of news only surfaced over the weekend or late on Friday. And they finally got to this babe and said, “Okay, so what’s up? How come it’s all white nominees out there?” She said (paraphrasing), “Well, it’s a problem, and Hollywood must recognize diversity,” and so forth. I thought, “Wait a minute, I thought Hollywood was about merit.”
The idea that that this racism. Does anybody remember In the Heat of the Night beating out The Graduate? Not In the Heat of the Night. It was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? It was the Sidney Poitier movie up against The Graduate in 1967 and it was about interracial dating, and it won the Best Picture. The idea that there’s racism out there, I mean, there is institutionalized racism and racism in the Democrat Party. I think what happened here is really no more complicated than the fact that whoever produced this movie, I just can’t remember the name of the studio, forgot to distribute the DVD screeners to members of the academy.
One of the best-kept secrets in all of Hollywood is that many of the voters for the Oscars never go to the theater. The studios produce DVDs around this time every year starting in December. They’re called screeners. They’re watermarked like crazy. I, as a powerful, influential member of the media, have seen and have had possession of my share. I’ve got one right now — got two. No, I’ve got three. I’ve got Gone Girl, which I haven’t watched yet. I have Unbroken, which I haven’t watched yet, like many of the academy voters, and I have American Sniper. That I have seen.
I get these, as I say, because I’m a powerful, influential member of the media. And they’re watermarked like crazy, meaning every five minutes or so you get a warning that you will die if you copy this or if you give it to anybody else or if you even say to anybody that you have one. So if I’m not here tomorrow now, you know why. Apparently the studio that did Selma didn’t distribute a bunch of these things. They didn’t get a bunch of screeners out. They had another movie that they thought had a much better chance of winning some awards and they spent some time promoting it. It may be no more complicated than the fact the guys and people that vote haven’t seen it.
They didn’t even get their screeners, and yet built-in case, built-in opportunity to once again demonstrate racism or to prove it or to establish it or what have you. But it’s a big stretch, I think, to try to say that Hollywood is racist. I don’t mind watching it. You know, liberal on liberal crime is kind of fun to watch. Libs going after libs is a fun thing to watch. Well, they probably look back at last year. Didn’t 12 Years a Slave, didn’t it win big? Okay, it cleaned up, okay. So it cleaned up last year, so they might think, “Okay, been there, done that. Let’s spread it around this year.” I mean, who knows.
This place is consumed with political correctness and liberalism, and they can’t have African-Americans winning everything every year. But the PC crowd said this year is more important than 12 Years a Slave, MLK and Selma. It’s LBJ, it’s the anniversary of all that, and how can it get shut out? And it got shut out, I’m pretty confident, because the voters haven’t even seen the thing. Most of them don’t go to the theater. They’ll never admit that, folks. They’ll never admit that, but that’s why they send out all these screeners. That’s why they produce them and why they distribute them to the voters. That’s how they watch them, on a TV set at home.
Now, some of them may have home theaters, but none of them have home theaters like a real theater you would go. Even if you have a 14-foot screen, that’s not like going to the theater and watching it on that size screen with an audience in the room and a crowd and all that.
Now, Snerdley came in, “What in the world is Oprah doing at Selma?” Well, she’s got a movie to promote. This movie, Snerdley, is not doing well, and the movie is taking it on the chin, a lot of criticism from the left over the way LBJ has been portrayed in this movie. An African-American director, and they had high hopes that this woman would be the first African-American woman to get nominated. She didn’t, because it is said she got LBJ all wrong in this thing.
But I want to go back to something I said last week. Why is Oprah at Selma? Selma wasn’t about Oprah. Why is she there? She’s there to promote a movie. But folks, it’s more than that. I’m gonna repeat this to you because I think it’s fundamentally important for people to understand. By the way, if the movie Selma didn’t get nominated because of the screener problem, there’s another reason for it. I guarantee you the fact that this movie is an attack on LBJ is enough to tick off some of the time-honored civil rights leftists that are in the academy. That would freeze it out anyway. That really ticked ’em off, the way LBJ was portrayed in this thing.
But Oprah, you know, last week when the nominations were announced, there were apparently two shocking surprises. One is that the Roger Ebert documentary got shut out, didn’t win anything. Everybody was stunned. Everybody was shocked. Roger Ebert, my God, what a great guy. He died of cancer, married a black woman, loved Hollywood, how in the world does he not get an Oscar? I explained it, and the same thing about Oprah. We’ve had The Color Purple. We’ve had any number of efforts Oprah has made. She never won, shut out, and now Selma with another fat zero in term of nominations. People don’t understand it and I said last week — and this is what it is — it’s Upstairs Downstairs, folks.
The public perception of celebrity and fame and stardom — do not doubt me on this — is so different than what it really is. The entertainment media’s presentation of celebrity and fame and stardom, among many other things, creates the impression that all the stars and all the celebrities love each other and it’s one giant good time. It is a very select and unique club where everybody respects everybody, and everybody loves everybody. Why, they marry each other. They party together. They hang out with each other. It looks like something you would desperately want to be a member of if you could. So you get a Facebook account and try to make yourself famous by vomiting everything about yourself you can. And then you start doing that on Twitter because that’s what you think they do.
He was not in the business. He was in a satellite business. He got to rub elbows now and then, but he never, ever was going to cross that moat and get in on the celebrity stardom side of it. And, shockingly, to many of you, neither will Oprah. Oprah is maybe — and this is my personal opinion, and I welcome anybody that wants to blow it to smithereens, but Oprah is perhaps the best illustration of the phony and plastic banana publicity and image making of celebrity and stardom that there is.
The popular conception is, okay, here’s Oprah, got a TV show. On that TV show, will show up Tom Cruz. He can make an absolute fool of himself bouncing up and down on the couch announcing he’s fallen in love again. And every other actress and every other actor will appear on that program, and the impression left is that they’re all buddies, and when the show’s over they all go out to dinner. They all go to Oprah’s house. They all get on Oprah’s plane. They all go to the same red carpet parties, and it’s not the way it is. When the show’s over, they go their own separate ways. Oprah is the media. She’s not an actress.
Do you remember — maybe not — the Country Music Awards one year. Gwyneth Paltrow sang a song. She starred in a country movie called Country Strong, and she showed up at one of the CMA awards in Nashville to sing the title song of her movie, and they hated her. They didn’t want any part of her. You could see it, Miranda Lambert, I mean, they’re shooting daggers at her while she’s up there on stage performing during this show. “She’s an actress. She’s not one of us. What is she doing jamming our business? Does she think it’s so easy that somebody that’s never done it can come in here and do it?” I understand this totally. (interruption) I don’t care. I don’t care if she sang good or not. She’s an actress. She’s not a country singer. She’s an interloper. She came in and she injected herself. She inserted herself. They’ve paid their dues. They have ridden the buses and her first appearance as a country star is on stage in a movie, screw that.
I’m telling you. It’s one of the reasons I was aced out on ESPN, folks, they were waiting for me. No matter what, that wasn’t gonna be permitted. Me in sports? No way. It’s enough I became successful in my own show on the radio, but they were just laying in wait for the first opportunity to make sure everybody knew that we don’t like Rush being here. It’s human nature. It’s a protective thing. The thing that’s gonna surprise most people is that this would impact Oprah, but I’m telling you, it does. So Oprah’s in Selma because Oprah has not yet overcome. Oprah’s still trying to get in that club, folks, and I know, if you run around and posit my theory, not a single person’s gonna tell you I’m right.
They’re all gonna tell you I’m nuts and Looney Tunes and crazy and so forth, but that’s your best evidence that I’ve nailed it. It’s not a big deal, but if you’re wondering why Oprah’s in Selma? She wants in that club. Oprah doesn’t want to have to be the one hosting a TV show to have these people come see her. She wants to be invited because she’s Oprah, not because she’s got a TV show, not because she’s got a vehicle they can promote their own stuff on. She wants to be with ’em just because they want her with them, not because she’s got a TV show. And she’s tried, The Color Purple, now Selma, and whatever else. Shut out, zero nominations. Why do you think that is? Do not doubt me on this.
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