RUSH: Hey, look, I understand it, I understand it totally, and I’m fine with it. Don’t misunderstand. But, folks, I got my audio sound bite roster here sent to me by the estimable Cookie. How many sound bites do I have? I’ve got 24 sound bites in the roster today. The first 14 are about air pressure in footballs in the National Football League and whether or not Bill Belichick needs to be put in prison, needs to be suspended, the Patriots need to be kicked out of the league, all because of a possible rules violation regarding air pressure in footballs in games played by the Patriots.

Now, I’m all for the attention, don’t misunderstand here, and I addressed this in a way yesterday. I feel like I ought to develop it a little bit more. It’s a bit out of proportion. Look, I say this again. Do not misunderstand. It’s not sour grapes at all. Nobody is more fascinated than I am by this, and we’re gonna talk about it fully.

But, at the same time, wouldn’t it be great if there were even half the concern for the nation’s rule book being obeyed and being enforced. And when it’s violated people being outraged and action being taken against the perpetrator, and, of course, I’m talking about the Constitution, and I’m talking about the body of law that exists in this country. It’s funny, the scrutiny that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and the Patriots are getting, and the worry and the hand-wringing over the integrity of the game, the National Football League.

That’s all fine and dandy, but isn’t it funny how there isn’t anywhere near that kind of scrutiny, there isn’t anywhere near that kind of concern or worry about the integrity of the Constitution and our founding documents and so forth. It’s a striking comparison to me, folks, it really is. It’s funny how in sports there is an overwhelming concern for fairness. There’s an overwhelming amount of attention paid to obeying the rules and not cheating and not getting away with cheating. And if you get caught cheating, the proper punishment being handed down.

What’s all that rooted around? Fairness, is it not? Why do you have rules in a sports contest? Well, you have to have rules obviously. Look, I don’t want to be ridiculous here. But one of the reasons for the rules is so that the contest, the competition comes under some bailiwick known as fairness. Now, you know me, I have a problem with this whole concept of fairness anyway in the sense that life is unfair and a political party has turned fairness upside down into a perverted, convoluted political concept. But nevertheless in sports it’s what it’s all about.

In politics this notion of fairness is a moving target. What’s fair in politics is determined solely by whether or not it helps the Democrat Party or not. If something helps the Democrat Party, then it’s fair. No matter what they do, voter fraud, violating the Constitution, writing law from the Oval Office, writing law from any number of bureaucracies, infringing on the freedoms, the real human freedoms of the American people, lying to them left and right in order to impose on them things that they wouldn’t otherwise, if they knew, support. And ho-hum, oh well, we’ll just blame it on the Republicans not knowing how to play the game right. Yeah. There’s no love in politics, folks. The aggressor sets the rules. If the Republicans can’t fight the battle…

The problem is you have referees in sports, you got the league, the commissioner’s office. Where is that in politics? About the closest you can come to it is the Supreme Court when you get right down to it. I don’t want to sit here and tell you it bothers me. I don’t want to sound all Pollyannish and like a Miss America contestant or something. Not to insult Miss America, or contestants. I’m not trying to be trite here. I’m not trying to be naive.

This is, to me, as a student of society and keen observer of sociological, philosophical, psychological movements, it’s all fascinating to me. Because over here in the world of sports none of this really matters. Sports, for most people, is a getaway. Sports, for most people, is an escape from the humdrum. It’s Fantasy Island. It’s pretend and one of the great things about sports, and I’ll share this with you one more time — I was with the Kansas City Royals. After one season all the marketing representatives from all the teams get together at the winter meetings, annual marketing meetings.

We had a speaker come in one year. He was a sociology professor at Harvard. He looked the part: bald headed, glasses down on his nose, jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves, and a pipe. He’s standing up there lecturing us and he had brilliant thing to say. He said the one thing about sports that sets it apart from everything else — now, listen carefully to this, because it is profound. Sports is the one thing in which you can invest total passion without consequence. Meaning, you don’t have to worry about opening yourself up.

You don’t have to be guarded. You can root for your team, your favorite players, with everything you got. You don’t have to hold anything back. You don’t have to worry about being too honest and somebody taking advantage of you. You don’t have to worry about being too open and honest and being manipulated. You don’t have to worry about anything. And then he said, after saying, “Sports is the one thing in which you can invest total passion without consequence,” he paused and said, “Try that with your wife.” Your spouse, he meant, meaning nobody is totally open with anybody.

Everybody puts up some sort of boundaries to protect themselves. But in sports you can just forget all that and let it all go. And people do. And the evolution of media and celebrity and stardom and so forth, sports has always had a lofty position in our culture, but now it’s even higher. It’s up there with royalty. It’s up there with actors, actresses, and so forth and so on. But the attention, the concern, I’ve got audio sound bites here from people, ladies and gentlemen, who will do anything to look past anything Bill Clinton’s ever done, look past anything Barack Obama’s ever done, but are demanding that Belichick be suspended from the game.

The same liberals, hell, not just liberals. All kinds of people who object to any holding to account Barack Obama or Bill Clinton are the first people to demand that Belichick be sent to prison, exhibiting zero tolerance for the transgressions of Belichick, whatever they might be, or Brady in this case. But there are so many subplots in this story. I wish I had said this publicly yesterday. I have to rely on Mr. Snerdley to confirm for you that I said this. It was during a commercial break on the program yesterday, and we were talking about this Patriots thing, and I got on the IFB, the intercom to the staff on the other side of the glass and I said, “When this is all said and done, it isn’t gonna be about Belichick.”

And they said, “What do you mean?”

“Brady. Right now Brady is getting a pass. Brady’s the pretty boy. Brady is the guy everybody wishes he was. And Brady’s gonna get a pass.” But I said, “Before this is all said and done, who benefits from a deflated football? The quarterback. Who touches the ball all the time? The quarterback.” And then last night here comes John Madden. John Madden out of the woodwork (paraphrasing), “Hey, well, I mean, it’s clear that if anybody’s responsible for this, it would be the quarterback,” and that would be Tom Brady.

Now, there’s even subtexts and subplots to that. When’s the last time you heard John Madden call out a player? Madden doesn’t do it much, even when he was working regularly in the NFL on CBS and on Fox and then NBC with Al Michaels. You know, Madden’s a guy, an NFL guy, and he’s one of the greatest advocates, promoters, defenders of the league, the game there is. I was shocked when he called out Brady like that. Then I had to remember, Madden’s a Joe Montana guy. And you just never know, speculating idly, this is the beauty of sports, you can talk about whatever you want and it doesn’t matter to anything at the end of the day. And that’s precisely what kind of amazes me about this.

It really doesn’t matter to anything, and yet that Harvard professor is exactly right. Invest total passion without consequence. I mean, it’s all over the place. I don’t know, but I would bet that Matt Drudge is getting record numbers of hits right now on the Drudge Report, people trying to find out the latest on this. As I say, 14 out of 24 sound bites I have today are about this.

I’m here to tell you, there have been far greater damaging transgressions that have really, really, really hurt people and this country, that have come out of Washington, that don’t get any attention at all, and don’t seem to amount to anything that people have grave concerns over. And I just, you know, in one of my dreams and one of my fantasies, if the Constitution, and if the laws of our country were treated with the same reverence and respect as the rules governing, in this case, the NFL, do you realize how screwed the Democrat Party would be?

Do you realize, if there were this kind of attention from the fans, let’s say the Constitution has fans, like the Patriots have fans, and the NFL has fans, do you realize if the people of this country were as oriented toward fairness and adherence to the rules and angry at cheaters, upset with liars, the Democrat Party would be in heap big trouble right now.

You could play all kinds of games with this. Okay, let’s say liberal-conservative. The Patriots are the conservatives in this case, because everybody hates ’em, they want to get rid of them. So what are the Patriots to do? Well, if the Patriots follow the Republican playbook — (laughing) — I’ll tell you what I would do if I were Brady. Too late for Belichick. Already had a presser today.

But, if I were Brady, his press conference is normally on Friday, but they moved it up to four o’clock today, after this program, by the way. And, if I were Brady, I’d come out and I’d laugh, I’d be lighthearted about it, it’s just football, for crying out loud, we’re talking about air pressure in footballs? If he said, “Man, this is nothing. I finally know what it feels like, I finally know what President Obama feels like to have all these Tea Party people after him.” And that would end it. The media would immediately be on the side of Brady, Belichick, and the Patriots. It’s how it works.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I gotta grab a phone call here before we get to the Belichick sound bites ’cause I need to straighten something out here, and it’s from my adopted hometown of Sacramento. It’s Kevin. Glad you called, sir.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Good morning. I’m sure I’m hearing you wrong, but it sounds like you’re kind of giving a pass to Tom Brady and Belichick about their lack of integrity or perceived lack of integrity —

RUSH: Okay, Kevin, I need to ask you seriously. What in the world — seriously, now. I’m not argumentative. I’m not I’m trying to be contentious. I want to know, what did I say that makes you think I’m giving them a pass?

CALLER: Well, the kind of tongue-in-cheek advice to Tom Brady about, you know, doing a press conference or what to say. The only thing the quarterback needs to say is —

RUSH: I’m dead serious about that. You know, you’re making my point. You are more upset over the fact I’m not ticked off about this as much as you think I should be, and my point is, I’m mad about it. I’m intrigued by it. I’m interested in it. But at the end of the day it doesn’t have any impact on your life or mine. I wish people were as mad about being lied to by their president, as mad about vote fraud, as mad about what’s being done to this country via illegal immigration and that, I wish people were as mad at that as they are this.

I wish people really, really were concerned about the people involved and all these messes that have been made in this country being held accountable. And I’m dead serious. I’m trying to illustrate a point. If Tom Brady goes out there today and says, “You know, I finally understand what it’s like to be Obama being hounded by the Tea Party,” you watch what would happen. There would be an immediate outpouring of sympathy for the guy from some quarters. I’m not saying it would get him out of it, but you know it as well as I do that he would form a bond.

Look, when you’ve got a guy at ABC named Brian Ross and there’s a school shooting in Ohio and the first thing he does is try to find the name of the guy who did the shooting on a Tea Party roster? For crying out loud. And you tell me that I’m the one not taking things seriously here? I’m trying to tell you that this is all out of proportion. Bill Belichick is not Barack Obama. But he’s being portrayed as Darth Vader and who knows whatever else. In the meantime, we have a massively incompetent secretary of state running around making a mess of everything around the world. He followed a massively incompetent secretary of state named Hillary Clinton.

We’ve got an incompetent guy in the White House who’s still running around wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt as though it’s still his junior year in college with the choom gang and he’s making mincemeat of the Constitution. He is chipping away at liberty and freedom everywhere. He’s transferring wealth. He’s raising taxes. He’s creating more and more people in a state of dependence, unable to provide for themselves. There’s a genuine assault on the character and the makeup and the backbone of this country. It would be nice if just for a day there were the same kind of outrage and anger. I’m not kidding you.

I have the sound bites here of people who think that Bill Belichick ought to be banned from the game, and they are the same people who think Ken Starr was what was wrong with Monica Lewinskygate. The same people who think Obama should get a pass on everything, same people who think Bill Clinton didn’t do anything wrong, who think Belichick ought to be sent packing. Bunch of hypocrites.

All right, now to the sound bites. Here’s Belichick. I’ve met him a couple times. This is just full disclosure. I’ve run into him on the sideline a couple times. I’ve run into him at the AT&T Celebrity Pro-Am. He’s always been a nice guy, but he doesn’t suffer fools at all, much less gladly or well. He doesn’t like divulging secrets. Everything is a secret about his team. He doesn’t like answering questions, and he doesn’t. As such, the media thinks he’s surly and mean and distant and uncooperative. Then you add Spygate in there. Deflategate wouldn’t have anywhere near the weight that it has if it hadn’t been for Spygate back in 2007.