RUSH: I have here story from the New York Times, and I don’t know if this is a straight out news story or if it’s a review of something. Maybe it’s a… It’s a movie review. It is by somebody named Genzlinger, Neil Genzlinger. “Review: ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad’ Examines the Influence of Right-Wing News Media.” Now, wait ’til you hear this. It isn’t very long. Apparently somebody named Jen Senko, S-e-n-k-o has produced a documentary about how her dad was brainwashed by me and Fox News, and her documentary has been reviewed by this Genzlinger guy. It starts out this way:
“A lot of people, especially on the liberal side of the spectrum, will certainly identify with ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad,’ Jen Senko’s documentary about how right-wing news programs, talk shows and Internet sites turned her once reasonable father into a raging embodiment of intolerance and suspicion.” First, can I ask any of you: How many of you would produce a documentary slamming your own father? How many of you would attempt to get noticed and maybe earn some money by producing a document designed to humiliate and embarrass your own father?
Well, that is what we have here. Apparently Jen Senko felt she had no other choice. She had no other way of explaining what had happened to her father. Now, the reviewer, Neil Genzlinger says here, “The film, though, feels as if it’s arriving late to its discoveries and, given the current political climate, as if it’s only scratching the surface.” So the review processer says (paraphrased): Okay, fine, but where were you 20 years ago? Where were you 20 years ago, Jen Senko — and besides, you’re not really getting down to the depth that you really you need to get to here.
“Ms. Senko says that her father, Frank, was ‘a nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat’ until the 1980s…” There’s no such thing. Well, let me not take issue with it yet, here. “Ms. Senko says that her father, Frank, was ‘a nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat’ until the 1980s when he began listening to a lot of right-wing gum-flappers.” Mr. Genzlinger here says, “She spends too much of the film detailing what anyone who watched Jon Stewart … already knows…” So right here the reviewer says (paraphrased): We don’t need your documentary, Senko! All you need to do is watch Jon Stewart one time to understand what your documentary says.
So in Genzlinger’s point of view, Jon Stewart’s not political. Jon Stewart is not ideological! Jon Stewart isn’t… Jon Stewart is the embodiment of fairness and objectivity and he gets it right about everybody, and all you have to do to know everything you want to know is watch Jon Stewart one time. Now, in liberal circles, I imagine that’s quite a put-down. I imagine Ms. Senko thinks that she has a work of art here, and her work of art has been reduced to something totally unnecessary, if anybody’s ever watched Jon Stewart one time. But let me continue reading.
“Ms. Senko says that her father, Frank, was ‘a nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat’ until the 1980s when he began listening to a lot of right-wing gum-flappers. She spends too much of the film detailing what anyone who watched Jon Stewart even once on ‘The Daily Show’ already knows: that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the like fabricate and distort routinely…” Jon Stewart never did that. Jon Stewart never fabricated. Jon Stewart never distorted anything. Jon Stewart never made anything up, did he? No way! Why, Jon Stewart was biblical.
Jon Stewart was the left-wing Bible, and all anybody had to do to understand these right-wing crazies was to watch one episode of his show, and what did Jon Stewart properly point out about these “right-wing gum flappers”? Well, “that the right’s most incendiary figures are entertainers, not journalists or academic experts. The film has an interesting segment on the neurology of the phenomenon — how alarm is addictive, how repetition of the same messages transforms the brain — but the subject is left underexplored.”
You see, according to this reviewer, this woman’s documentary doesn’t get anywhere near there, ’cause she does explore how shows like this are addictive because we do nothing but alarm you all the time. This is so cockeyed. Who is it that has the whole crisis politics manner battened down? Who is it that owns that genre? Every day we are faced with multiple crises presented to us by the Drive-By Media, either our latest favorite phone is gonna give us cancer, our latest, greatest food is gonna cause us to gain weight and die of a heart attack.
Our latest, greatest beverage is going to give us diabetes. Our automobiles are gonna wipe us out! Fracking is going to destroy the planet. Miami Beach will be underwater in two years because we have done nothing about global warming! Every day, there are multiple crises, and yet we are being held responsible and accountable here for that. “In addition to telling her own family’s story, Ms. Senko invited video submissions from others who have had similar experiences with loved ones, and those provide the film’s most heartfelt moments.”
So apparently this documentary is not just to tell us about Ms. Senko’s dad becoming a pod person, but a number of other leftists have sent in similar horror stories included in her document about how once tolerant and open-minded and touchy-feely and nonpolitical fathers, parents, and other relatives had been co-opted to mean-spirited, extremist, racist, bigot, homophobes by right-wing media. “But the nastiness that has been brought out into the open by the current presidential campaign demonstrates that hatred and suspicion are more endemic than a collection of personal stories suggests.”
So this guy takes another swipe at this poor woman’s documentary.
Yeah, she had a documentary about her dad. Yeah, but it’s too late. Jon Stewart told us this 25 years ago, and, yeah… Well, no, 14 years ago, sorry. Jon Stewart told us this 14 years ago, and where was she 25 years ago? This is old news. In fact, the presidential campaign say greater testament to the insanity of the right-wing than anything Ms. Senko could do in her documentary. “Right-wing outlets may be exploiting humanity’s ugly side, but Ms. Senko’s frail-looking father (who died in January at 93) isn’t so much the face of the phenomenon as he is a small and not especially representative sample of it.”
This guy cuts her documentary and he agrees with everything in it. Can you believe…? He agrees with everything in her documentary. It was too little; it was too late. I guess there wasn’t enough homage paid to Jon Stewart in it. But this is who they are. Folks, this is why, from the first days of this program the focus here has been to try to inform people that the greatest destructive force in this country today is American liberalism as personified by the Democrat Party, and we all have our grievances, and we all have our problems.
Let me tell you what irritates me most about the Republican establishment. It’s everything we’ve mentioned, but it’s this: Not recognizing the enemy, not having the guts to recognize the enemy, the political enemy. Not having the guts to recognize it, not pushing back against them, for all the obvious reasons. There have been times I have felt like I’m in this all by myself. I mean, there are others that do what I do; don’t misunderstand. But in terms of the supposedly political party that’s supposed to be the repository of our set of values and beliefs, there hasn’t been any recognition whatsoever in the last ten years that liberalism is…
It used to be the Republicans had no problem using the word, and every time they did they won elections. Every time they successfully characterized their opponent as a raging, lunatic leftist, they won. Well, not every time, but, it was frequent. These people are sick. They are dangerous. They are closed-minded. They are not the tolerant, open-minded, loving, harmless people they want us to believe. They’re the architects of political correctness. They’re the architects of censorship. They are the ones that want to take your constitutional rights away from you.
They are the ones that want to make you an economic serf dependent on them for your day-to-day living. They are the ones who hold you in contempt. They’re the ones who think you do not have the capability, the competence, the ambition to succeed on your own without them. They’re the ones that call you racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes. They’re the ones that create race wars in this country. They are the ones that create economic division. They specialize in creating division. The American left, liberalism, the Democrat Party.
And I can’t get anybody in Washington to ever utter a syllable of that, much less act on it. That, to me, is the enemy, not Donald Trump, not Ted Cruz, not John Kasich, not John Carson — who just been named the dean of the Trump University medical school. Well, check to see if you can find a news site called NewsBusted. That’s where it is. NewsBusted quotes this babe at NewsBusted. The story’s posted at NewsBusted. But you want to know what animates me, what informs me, what energize me?
It’s beating these people, beating them politically, beating them culturally, which is why, you know, I probably bored you silly telling everybody how important it is for everybody to be taught to recognize liberalism everywhere they see it. It’s destroying us. Liberalism is tearing the country apart, and liberalism is found throughout the Democrat Party, so I guess they’re inseparable. That’s my enemy, folks. That’s my focus. That’s who I’m opposed to. Anybody can beat them. That’s their objective is to beat them. I realize people are mad at me thinking that I’m letting conservative principles waft by the wayside.
Hell’s bells on that.
No freaking way.
But it’s also not a suicide pact. You can talk about honor all you want, and I understand it, and I agree with it, and I applaud it. But it is whatever they call it… Nut-cracking time here. The Supreme Court nomination? This whole thing ought to be waking everybody up so what the future portends if we get this wrong. They have to be beaten. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, whoever. They have to be beaten — and then after they’re beaten, they have to be marginalized. And none of that can happen in one election. Not all of it.
You know what I told you I think’s gonna happen after this election, if a conservative Republican wins this election? Whoever the next president is, is going to be harassed and harangued every day by the usual leftist suspects. And if even element of the Obama agenda is attempted, if we try to get rid of it, Obama himself is gonna be on TV with his buddies in the media trying to defend it. It’s not going to be for the faint of heart. That’s why what’s happening in our campaign right now, this whole Republican primary, is tiddlywinks compared to what the future’s gonna be if we succeed in beating these people back.
It’s tiddlywinks, and people have got to know how serious this is. Okay, it’s a parody. Yes, NewsBusted is a parody site. I knew it was. That’s why I prefaced it that way. I always treated it as a joke. But see, at the same time there’s an element of truth in it. I can see Trump doing it. I can see me doing something like that as one of my famous bits, putting people on way back when in the early days of the program. Folks, to me there’s one objective here.
And it supersedes all the intramural skirmishes that are taking place here, which is why I said, when I was up there on Fox News Sunday two Sundays ago with Chris Wallace... He said, “What do you think’s gonna happen?” I told him what I thought, what I hoped is gonna happen, that when all this is all over we end up with a nominee everybody rallies behind, unifies behind. I love the idea. I have to tell you, I love the idea of the Republican Party growing. I love the idea of stealing Democrats from the Democrat Party, ’cause there’s a bunch of ’em that are fed up.
White working class and blue-collar people are fed up with the Democrat Party. I’m more than happy to welcome ’em in. Not as liberals, but as us, and I fully understand some of you think, “Well, that may be a good thing, Rush, but what about Republicans that might leave the party for the same reasons those blue-collar Democrats are joining the party?” I understand. I know what’s going on. I just don’t want you to be in any suspense or have any doubt about what my objective here is. It has never changed. And in fact, I am more… To me, it’s a greater sense of urgency in this election than it has ever been.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Look, folks, I meant it. What’s happening now in the Republican primary process is tiddlywinks compared to what is going to happen if the Republicans win the White House. You’re worried about riots right now? You haven’t seen riots until somebody tries to unwind Obamacare. You haven’t seen riots until the next Republican president takes dead aim at numerous Obama policies — illegal immigration, amnesty — until he takes dead aim at all of Obama’s executive orders. You haven’t seen riots. They’re already promising us that it’s gonna happen.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd, they’re already promising these things. They’re bragging about the biggest riots anybody’s ever seen in the summer to protest Trump. They’re gonna protest us no matter what, whoever on our side wins. And what worries me is that we do not have a Republican Party apparatus that is equipped and prepared for this. It’s a genuine concern of mine. I don’t like using the word “cave,” but it’s patently obvious they’re not much into conflict. It’s pretty clear that they are willing to compromise what they believe so that the media doesn’t call them names. Well, we don’t even know what name-calling is yet.
People are involved in this right now like it’s an academic exercise. “Conservatism has to triumph here, we need to be true to our principles there.” All of that’s right on the money. That’s all well and good. But it better also maintain and grow after the election is won. There are a whole lot of different competing objectives going on out there. You have a lot of people trying to show they can still have influence and power. A lot of people are still trying to show they can affect outcomes and events. You have a lot of people trying to claim they’re the real conservative standing up for conservatism, do what. Fine and dandy. But if it’s not focused and targeted on beating back the American left, what good is it?
That’s my point.