RUSH: This is Vernon in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Welcome, sir.
CALLER: This is quite an honor. Merry Christmas, Rush.
RUSH: Same to you, sir. Appreciate it.
CALLER: Thank you. Thank you. Rush, I’ve been listening to you for some 25 years, and I’m wondering if some of my perceptions of you are accurate or not. Not politically, but maybe more personally. For instance, you know, I think you’re very, very generous except for maybe with your time, that you don’t suffer fools well. Is that accurate?
RUSH: You need to be a little bit more specific when you say I’m not generous with my time. How would you know? In what context do you mean this? You mean with people on the phones?
CALLER: Well, just by listening to you and trying to gather who you are personally, you know, maybe little stories that you’ve told of interactions with people. I mean, you’re very generous with your time in giving your talents to us on the radio, but, you know, in your personal life, if, you know, if there are fools around, you don’t suffer them well.
RUSH: I think I know what you’re asking. I’m just not sure what I have said that would — you’re saying personally, not here on the radio. So you’re imagining me being somewhere in public and I encounter a fool, and you seem to think that I would do whatever I could to get away from that fool as quickly as I could. And I’m trying to figure out what I do, said, whatever, that’s made you reach that conclusion. I’m not mad. Don’t misunderstand.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I’m just trying to understand you. There has to be a reason you think that. I’m curious. What do I do, how do I do it, that makes you think when I encounter idiots that I turn around and walk away.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, because —
RUSH: Could it be the dinner party that I walked out of, my own dinner party when I had some people insulting Sarah Palin?
CALLER: Maybe, that might have been the story that you told.
RUSH: It took me two hours to leave. It took me two hours to have a fill of it.
CALLER: Well, then maybe my perception is inaccurate. Maybe you do suffer fools well.
RUSH: I tried to talk ’em out of it. It’s when I realized I was talking to blocks of wood I said, what’s the point, I gotta go to LA anyway so I got an early start.
CALLER: I mean, another example, it’s like I do think you’re kind of a big softy. Maybe not when it comes to politics, but when you talk about your pets and things like that, you kind of seem to be like a big softy. And, you know, does that mean, you know, do you ever cry at a movie? I don’t know.
RUSH: I’ll tell you this, I don’t cry, but I choke up. I choke up —
CALLER: I know that.
RUSH: — at certain scenes in TV shows or movies. Yeah, I get close to crying, but I don’t cry, I stop it in time. But I don’t cry. It’s interesting these perceptions you have. I think it all stems from the fact that there’s an image of me out there that I walk into a place and if there are any liberals, I walk over, “You’re full of it, get the hell away,” and leave. That I have no tolerance for liberals or whatever. And it’s just the opposite.
When I’m out in public I usually say very little at first. I listen, I absorb and all that. I’m probably much more patient with people you’re describing as fools, I don’t suffer fools, I’m probably more patient with them ’cause I see them as teachable opportunities, depending on the circumstance and so forth.
But, look, the bottom line is — and I don’t want you to repeat this to too many people — but I’m basically a nice guy, an average, ordinary, unremarkable if you are with me anywhere, nice guy. Harmless, lovable little fuzzball actually, but keep that between us.