RUSH: Monica, Spring Hill, Florida. I’m glad you waited. Really appreciate your patience, and hello, Monica.
CALLER: Hello (kissing) big hug and kiss to you. (laughing).
RUSH: Ha-ha-ha. Thank you very much. I feel it, I really do.
CALLER: All right. So I need your help. We’re listening to you and my husband and I are talking about this Rachel chick and how, oh, she’s so crazy, she’s white and she thinks she’s black. And then I paused and I looked at my husband and I said, “Okay, I was born in Venezuela, I am technically Hispanic.”
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But I do not relate to the Hispanic culture. I think of myself as white. And I was telling him, when I have to fill out some paper that says what race are you, I kind of look at it and go, “Oh, yeah, I guess I am Hispanic,” but I completely embraced, I guess you could say, American white culture. I don’t think of myself as Hispanic because, if I say I’m Spanish, “Oh, well, you must like spicy food or I should dress a certain way and like certain music.”
RUSH: You are offering evidence of how people are getting swept up into this. The truth is you were born in Venezuela, it means you were a communist.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And now living in America, you become a capitalist. That is all that matters. And the rest of this stuff is just window dressing.
CALLER: Well, that’s just it. It’s like I have completely — I came to this country when I was nine so I have completely assimilated to this culture, and I don’t think of myself in a Hispanic way. And so I can kind of relate to —
RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. No. Serious. Monica, seriously —
CALLER: Help me! (Laughing).
RUSH: You can’t relate. Your story is not similar.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You’re just an American.
CALLER: So I’m not crazy, I don’t need to get some —
RUSH: No, you see what happens here? Now you’re out there thinking you’re crazy. You think you can relate to this woman because you were born in Venezuela, which makes you Hispanic. You’re normal. You’re a human being, you live in America, you like the country, and you’re trying to make the best of it.
CALLER: My husband is totally white, I mean, I just don’t relate to the Spanish culture, the music, all that stuff. People just assume things, like people think that because I’m Spanish —
RUSH: Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. Wait a second. Why, just because you were born in Venezuela, should you like having a pinata at Christmas? What in the world, there’s nothing that says that. You didn’t grow up there. You grew up in the United States.
CALLER: Well, I mean, I do like aspects about Hispanic culture, of course, but I just —
RUSH: So do I. Nachos. Anyway, look, I’m out of time here. It’s probably a good thing.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Mike in Alexandria, Louisiana. Great to have you on the program. Welcome.
CALLER: Yes, sir, Rush. How you doing today?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thanks much.
CALLER: Pleasure to be able to talk to you. Look, I just wanted to make a comment about this Rachel girl. When she was being interviewed, I don’t know who it was she was talking to, but in any case, what she said at the end caught me. It struck me when she said something about when the interviewer was asking her about being honest or true about who she was or whatever, I don’t remember the exact words. She said her truth or “my truth.” So now truth is whatever someone thinks it is or who they are. In this case she thinks she’s black, so it must be true because she thinks it, and you have truth under assault.
RUSH: This is exactly my point from the opening monologue today. There is no objective truth anymore. And, folks, we cannot hold together as a cohesive society for very long if there is no objective truth. If there are no objective facts. The woman is not black. No matter how you measure it, no matter how you calculate it, biologically, genealogically she isn’t black, and she knows it because she does not want to be called African-American. She knows that she’s not African-American, so black is a mind-set to her.
If I were African-American, civil rights, I’d be livid. She’s nuking everything these people have been trying to accomplish. I mean, the civil rights community — let me restate this. Sometimes you have to say things over and over for them to penetrate people’s minds. The fact is the civil rights community, as it is currently constituted and has been for the recent past, has one objective, and that is to continue to convince as many people as possible of the horrors of being born black in the United States. It’s the worst thing can happen to any human being, is to be born black. The oppression is worse than ever. It’s almost like slavery hasn’t ended.
That’s the message. It’s just never ending discrimination, racism, bigotry, all of those things thrown in, oppression, you name it. That is why all these white people are feeling guilty. They’ve been hearing this their whole lives. I mean, if there’s all this racism and oppression, who’s been doing it? White people. If the worst thing to happen to anybody is to be born black in the United States, somebody’s gotta be responsible. The white people.
So you get hold of these young white kids and you start pummeling ’em with this stuff, Saturday morning cartoon shows, kindergarten class, grade school, middle school, you name it, doesn’t take long before they’re walking around so burdened with guilt that they can’t live with themselves ’cause they think they’re responsible for all these people feeling so horrible and unsafe and put upon and discriminated against and can’t get jobs. There’s nothing fair for ’em out there, just horrible, and we’re responsible.
They think they are personally responsible. They probably never discriminated against anybody in their lives. Probably haven’t held anybody back in their lives, and they’re walking around with hundreds of years of guilt that’s been ladled on their shoulders. So here comes Dolezal flipping around here, scamming the NAALCP in Spokane. She feels so bad, they’ve done such a good job guilt-tripping her that she wants to be black. Well, the problem, on the other hand, is the civil rights community, how can anybody want to be black. That doesn’t really make sense. If it’s so bad, if the worst thing that can happen to you is to be born black in the United States, why would some white chick want to be black. It just destroys the whole meme.
You know, yesterday on this program I officially announced that I identify as skinny, to make a point. And I do. I identify as skinny and if you don’t see me the way I see myself, you are the bigot. So the next time you see me you better think skinny ’cause if you don’t, you’re the bigot, you’re the discriminator. So at Mediaite, they run this little story, the giant headline: “Rush Limbaugh Mocks Rachel Dolezal.” Mocks?
You see, it used to be called satire. It used to be called parody, and it still is if Jon Stewart does it. It still is if Jimmy Fallon does it. It still is if any leftist comedian, Bill Maher does it. I come along and do it, it’s mocking, it’s making fun of, it’s looking down on, it’s mean-spirited and extremist and so forth. Anyway, not to lose my train of thought. The caller is exactly right. There is no objective truth, except there is, see. That’s the little secret. There is truth. There are facts.
And if something… (interruption) What? (interruption) What … what … what … what … what? (interruption) All right. All right. All right. Snerdley has a question but it must… (interruption) You must have been worried that my answer might go on the air ’cause you are waiting to ask me the question during the commercial break. Are you disagreeing with me when I say that there is objective truth? (interruption) What do you mean, “Not quite?” (interruption) There is…? (interruption)
Mmm-hmm. (interruption) The question is, “What if black isn’t a race and instead is a culture?” Fine. That still doesn’t make her black. She’s not black! She’s telling people she’s black. She is not saying, “I’m more comfortable with black life and black culture.” She’s telling people she identifies as black, and she’s causing all these stories, genealogical traces trying to find any evidence of slave blood. Her parents, bless their hearts, are going crazy here.
And, by the way, it’s a potential giant pitfall to start talking about black culture, or any other culture, because you could invariably be accused of bigotry just the way you might describe it, any culture, by the people in it. But your question really is rooted in, “Is there a culture out there that is you call black culture that has nothing to do with race?” Is that your question? (interruption) Well, answer it yourself. You’re in a better position to know than I am. (interruption) Okay, is…? (interruption) Is there…? (interruption)
Is there a white culture independent of the white race? (interruption) Is there? (interruption) I don’t think this way, so I’m gonna need some help. All I could… Folks, let me further elucidate this. Let’s go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites.
But the low-information crowd out there, the skulls full of mush, what they think about that, what they think they know about that is 180 degrees wrong. “Barack the ‘Magic Negro'” was the end of a sordid news cycle in which this country was treated to a debate over who was authentically black and who wasn’t. At the time, 2007-2008, many in the civil rights community who were still aligned with Hillary were accusing Obama of being inauthentic.
That’s where the “Magic Negro” column in the LA Times came from. I mean, this is nothing new. It’s just getting worse and worse. It’s getting sicker and sicker. The “Magic Negro,” in lore, is exactly what Obama was. This is not my definition. It’s in the Urban Dictionary. I’d never heard of it, by the way, until the black guy wrote the column on it in the LA Times. I’d never heard the term “Magic Negro.” I didn’t know what it was, and it turns out that it’s an African-American that’s not threatening, that makes white people feel safe voting for them, in the political context.
It’s deeper than that, though. But the arguments about Obama’s authenticity were all on the left. They were all the Democrat Party. And it got pretty vicious out there on the Democrat Party side, on the side of the American left. It was vicious. You had people say Obama wasn’t authentic, wasn’t down for the struggle, didn’t really have “slave blood.” He didn’t know anything about it; he had to fake it. He goes to Selma. He didn’t know what Selma was about; he had never heard of Selma. He had to read about it. His dad was never in Selma, except dad was inspired by Selma, Obama said.
I don’t know.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I tell you what, the race industry had better be very careful here, folks, because let’s jump off here from Mr. Snerdley’s pregunta to me, “What if black isn’t race? What if it’s just culture?” Just a culture. Well, if black is not a race — if it’s just a social construct, if it’s just a distinct and unique culture — then there’s no reason for affirmative action, folks, because race is all made up. If black isn’t a race, and the only way you can welcome Rachel Dolezal to the tribe is to say, “Black isn’t a race, it’s a culture.”
She’s not black! She not African. She not African-American. She’s not South African. She’s no African. She’s zilch, zero, nada. Yet she identifies as black. Black culture. Well, if black culture isn’t race, then bye-bye affirmative action. They better be very care. That’s not gonna happen, but I mean could open up the argument. Now, the “Magic Negro” column, that was the LA Times. It was in 2007. It was by a guy named David Ehrenstein, who is…what now? He’s black or African-American? He’s both.
He’s a black guy who wrote the column. Here’s an excerpt: “He’s there…” Obama is. “He’s there to assuage white ‘guilt’ (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.” That’s how the “Magic Negro” was described in the LA Times. I didn’t make any of it up.
Of course, I got tarred and feathered for creating it, inventing it and all that, but I didn’t. The lyrics of the parody song even make that plain. If black isn’t a race, then you’re not born that way, ’cause your little two-month old baby doesn’t yet know what culture he’s gonna adopt, right? So if black’s not a race, then you aren’t born that way. These people… (sigh) I’ll tell you. John in Leavenworth, Washington, great to have you, sir. I’m glad you called. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush, for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Yeah, I just… I haven’t watched this super closely, the Rachel Dolezal thing. I have to maintain my sanity. But I haven’t heard anybody mention her teaching career that she’s actively involved in. Specifically, she’s a teacher at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, just outside Spokane. My daughter has one of her classes this last fall, and my daughter tried to describe some of the classes, and it’s a little beyond my understanding how far some of the stuff went, discussions in class. But I just thought I hadn’t heard anybody talk about that, about her being a teacher and educating young minds to go down her path.
RUSH: Well, people are. I mean, I’ve got the story in the Stack. The Dolezal Stack is pretty thick now. The sex tape, the mean ex-husband that forced her into the sex tape, all the photos of her posing as a black babe on the rocks somewhere on a beach, and the fact that she’s a professor or teacher. There’s no question that she’s been pummeling this stuff into younger minds. Well, you have evidence of it right there. (chuckles) His daughter comes home and describes what’s going on in class; the poor guy’s clueless. He can’t figure it out. Anyway, I’m glad you called, John. I really am. I’ve gotta go folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, I know, Rachel Dolezal is no longer a professor. She’s been fired from the university in Washington. And who knows, they may now end up being sued, given the garbage that was her — She may end up suing them for firing her, like Ward Churchill did when he was run out of Dodge. I think that was in Denver, somewhere in Colorado.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just remembered I promised everybody yesterday that we would go get some sound bites that I didn’t have time to get to yesterday about Rachel Dolezal, and one of them is Don Lemon. Don Lemon of CNN — who, remember, once asked a former transportation secretary if the missing Malaysian airliner could have been sucked up, swallowed up by a black hole. Well, given the way he thinks, it’d be interesting what he thinks of Rachel Dolezal, who identifies as black.
So this is on Erin Burnett OutFront on Monday night, CNN. She spoke with Don Lemon, who anchors his own show there. She said, “It’s one thing to want to identify with a culture and an ethnicity, but she took on everything but the burden.” Meaning: She wanted all the great things about being black, but she didn’t want the burden. “We heard about the burden of being African-American, the way people look you differently on the street. She always has the ability to walk away from that, Don.”
LEMON: We’ve been talking a lot about what’s trans-racial. It’s just one more thing that — y’know, that — white people can do that black people can’t. They say, “Hey, listen, I choose to be black, and so I’m gonna be black now.” Y’know, I don’t know of many African-Americans (chuckles) now who can say, “You know what? I’m gonna choose to be white and not have to deal with that burden.”
BURNETT: Isn’t that kind of a joke that you’re making…?
LEMON: Everybody’s doing it! Look at, uh, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s son. He says he identifies as African-American or as black and with hip-hop culture.
RUSH: All right, now, what is this, that black people can’t identify as white? Isn’t that what they accuse Clarence Thomas of doing? I mean, don’t they say Clarence Thomas cannot be black because he’s conservative? Do they not say that? Is that not the same thing as saying Clarence Thomas identifies as being white? Don Lemon’s running around here saying, “Well, it’s unfair.” Of all the ways to look at this, by the way, can you believe this?
Of all the possibilities you can see here, Don Lemon sees the unfairness, that this woman can run around and say she’s black and it’s cool, but he couldn’t run around and identify as white without being made fun of and laughed at? What a way to look at it. Erin Burnett said, “Isn’t that kind of a joke that you’re making…” But he wasn’t. He was being serious. Erin Burnett said, “She changed the way she looked so that she would look like what she was saying.”
LEMON: I see some people on television now, and I go, “You’re not white.” You know, there are many people I see on television. But those pictures, as someone who’s from Louisiana, those pictures of her as a kid say nothing to me. Many of us evolve as people. You don’t look the same as you looked when you were 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. We all change. So those pictures really say nothing to me. For me, if she wants to identify as black, come on in. But then you gotta take the burden that comes with it.
RUSH: See? See? You see? This is how they’re dealing with the fact, wait a minute, being black is a burden, it’s oppressive, being black, civil rights community, is the worst thing can happen to you in this country, being born black. So why does this woman want to be black? And now CNN’s discovered, well, you know what, she doesn’t want the burden. She wants to get all the goodies. So she wants to identify as a victim and get all the goodies and she wants to get the affirmative action, but she doesn’t want the burden.
“Well, come on in, but you better be willing to accept the burden.” And that is, Don? What is the burden? (interruption) He didn’t identify it. What is the burden that he’s talking about in being an African-American? What did Rachel Dolezal have to do in order to be burdened properly? Get a job at CNN? I mean, what is it? He doesn’t identify that. And Whoopi Goldberg, she was on ABC’s The View Monday morning, and this is her take.
GOLDBERG: Look, just like people say, “I feel like I’m a man. I feel like I’m a woman. I feel like I’m this.” She feels like a black woman. If she wants to be a black woman, fine. Everything that comes with that she is prepared for, okay? As far as I’m concerned, if she wants to be black, she can be black. She’s been passing as this woman for over five years. If this (bleep) don’t know by now what is black, she’s never gonna know, she’s never gonna know.
RUSH: Yeah, right, okay, I’m sure it made perfect sense to everybody.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah. In fact, that is right. That is right. Whoopi Goldberg said that Dolezal can self-identify with whatever she wants. But she also has said that Carly Fiorina is not fit to be president because she self-identifies as a Christian and pro-life, and as far as Whoopi’s concerned, that disqualifies her. People are just nuts, folks. We’re living in an age of no logic, no thought, no independent, critical thought, and certainly no objective truth. It’s just stunning.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Seth in Columbus, Ohio. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, how are you Rush?
RUSH: I’m good, I’m good. I’m glad you got through.
CALLER: Oh, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I wanted to thank you for coming out as skinny the other day and you’re an inspiration to me and you’re giving me the courage to come out today as a thin young black female lesbian who’s trapped in a fat middle-aged white heterosexual man’s body.
RUSH: Man, that’s gotta be a burden.
CALLER: Well, I identify as a transway-race-sexual individual.
RUSH: A transway — transwhat?
CALLER: Transway-race-sexual.
RUSH: Transway-race-sexual.
CALLER: And I have a cat whose name is Barry. He’s transcanine.
RUSH: You have a cat —
CALLER: A female cat who identifies himself as a male, and his name’s Bear.
RUSH: I think Caitlyn Jenner has a dog that he thinks is a cat. I think I saw that.
CALLER: Well, he’s giving me courage.
RUSH: Well, I’m happy to be an inspiration. All I did was tell people I identify as skinny yesterday. And look at you. You have been given the courage to identify as who you really think you are.
CALLER: And it’s uncomfortable as long as everyone recognizes me as that and —
RUSH: Well, of course, they have to now, that’s the point, they have to recognize you the way they identify. Otherwise they are the bigot. You’re not insane. You’re not crazy. You’re not Looney Tunes. You’re not in need of any kind of help whatsoever. You are the epitome of normalcy in America today, and anybody who doesn’t recognize you as the trans whatever you are, they’re the ones with the problem.
CALLER: That’s right. I’m the new normal.
RUSH: You’re the new normal, and that should give you confidence and inspiration even beyond what you got from me.
CALLER: I appreciate that.
RUSH: Well, you bet. I’m glad you called, Seth. I appreciate it.
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