RUSH: Grosse Pointe, Michigan. This is Janet. Janet, hi, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hello, Last Man Standing.
RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: You’re welcome. Let us reeducate the American people on Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan. If Carl Levin were a competent Senator, his comments today would not have been about a jet. It would have been about what his president did yesterday to the American carmakers, how our president gave the foreign automakers an unfair advantage. Our American car companies now have to hold to ridiculous CAFE standards that their foreign competition do not. That, after we just gave both GM and Chrysler how much in bailout money?
RUSH: Well, that’s precisely why Carl Levin can do it.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: Yeah. Carl Levin, Jennifer Granholm, they’re really doing a lot for Michigan, aren’t they?
CALLER: Rush, now, you have to get your people going, and you have to put the year that Carl Levin got into office and how well Michigan was doing, and chart Michigan’s growth against Carl Levin’s time in office, how he has fallen.
RUSH: Wait a second here. This is a serious question here, Janet.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: What good would my people doing a chart, what good would it do if the people living there with their own life experiences don’t understand what’s happening to them right in their daily lives each and every day? What good’s my chart going to do?
CALLER: You are a brilliant man. You are absolutely correct. People in America do not understand that the city of Detroit enjoys a 49% adult illiteracy rate. They can’t read the newspaper.
RUSH: Yeah, but they can all vote Democrat.
CALLER: Exactly. Exactly, Rush.
RUSH: They all know what the letter D looks like. Is that really an accurate stat, 49% are illiterate?
CALLER: Yes, it is.
RUSH: In the city of Detroit?
CALLER: Twenty-one percent of the kids graduate, that go into kindergarten, graduate, only 21% for the last 25 years.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, now, I’m confused, 21% don’t pass kindergarten?
CALLER: No, 21% of the children that enter kindergarten in the Detroit public school system have made it out of high school.
RUSH: Only 21% have graduated?
CALLER: For 25 years. Seventy percent of the college educated leave Michigan annually. Rush, this is what they want to do to America, what they’ve done to Michigan.
RUSH: But, Janet, all the tax increases were supposed to solve all these problems.
CALLER: Yes? Nothing’s going to help Detroit, nothing.
RUSH: I can’t believe these numbers. These numbers are unbelievable, 49%?
CALLER: Adult illiteracy.
RUSH: In the city limits of Detroit?
CALLER: Of Detroit, 800,000 residents, a little more.
RUSH: What’s the literacy rate in Grosse Pointe and Grosse Pointe Park?
CALLER: Oh. Well, probably 98.2. I mean, we have one of the best —
RUSH: What’s the literacy rate in Ann Arbor? There’s a university.
CALLER: Oh, well, probably 100.
RUSH: Yeah, right. What about Lansing?
CALLER: Lansing has issues, but it’s probably —
RUSH: So obviously you went to Michigan?
CALLER: No, no, no, I’m not from here, that’s why I’m not blind to it.
RUSH: Oh. Oh.
CALLER: I married a Michigander.
RUSH: These are still hard numbers, 49% of adults in Detroit cannot read?
CALLER: Yes. And then go back to the Detroit News before Christmas announcing their financial problems, and when you’ve got a city where a couple of hundred thousand people cannot read a paper, no wonder an institution like the Detroit News is suffering.
RUSH: That’s right. You know, the Detroit News and the Free Press are going to three days a week.
CALLER: Right!
RUSH: The funny papers are not enough to save them?
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Well, you still have to read the words in the balloons, yeah.
CALLER: This is what they want to do to Michigan. Rush, I don’t know if you know this but the City of Detroit does not run a Republican for mayor, has not run a Republican for almost 40 years. They’ve run two Democrats against each other. No one has been able to explain to me how they pulled that one off.
RUSH: And you want me to do a chart —
CALLER: With everything that has happened.
RUSH: You know, this is what I love about you people. The people living in Detroit have no clue until I do a chart what — (laughing)
CALLER: No, it’s America. We lost Detroit. We’re fighting for the soul of America, Rush.
RUSH: Well, where did you move from?
CALLER: Boston. (laughing)
RUSH: Okay, now, you’re married?
CALLER: Yes, I’m married. I married a man from here.
RUSH: Oh. Okay.
CALLER: (laughing) I came out here for a job in advertising, actually.
RUSH: Your husband did or you did?
CALLER: I did.
RUSH: Can your husband read?
CALLER: Yes. He went to Princeton.
RUSH: Well, then, look, you know, I’m sorry, I gotta talk to Mike Fezzey who is the general manager at WJR, I love Mike, I gotta ask this question, I’m sorry, please don’t hold it against me. He’s from Princeton and Boston.
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: I can’t ask the question.
CALLER: Oh, ask it. I won’t be embarrassed.
RUSH: How did you do end up —
CALLER: How did I end up where? In Michigan?
RUSH: In Michigan, yeah.
CALLER: Oh, I came out for a job and I fell in love.
RUSH: No, your husband went out there.
CALLER: Oh, he’s from here.
RUSH: I know, so that’s why you went back?
CALLER: No, no, no, no. I got married here. I came out single.
RUSH: Oh, this is worse than I thought.
CALLER: (laughing) I know it’s terrible, a terrible story.
RUSH: Actually, folks, let me tell you something. I want to use this as another teachable moment, because, Janet, I love you, this is a great opportunity here. For those of you who don’t know, Grosse Point is a wealthy suburb of Detroit.
CALLER: Was.
RUSH: All right, but it’s in better shape —
CALLER: Our housing values are at 1996 rate.
RUSH: I’m getting no help here.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: It’s still a beautiful place to live.
CALLER: It is. It’s incredible.
RUSH: All right. Now, most people think that people like you who live in a really, really nice place, you couldn’t care less what’s happening to Detroit, but listen, you do. You don’t live in Detroit, you live in Grosse Pointe.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: But you care deeply about what’s happening in Detroit.
CALLER: I got my dog out of a Dumpster a year ago today, a black pit bull puppy named the Reverend Sharpton.
RUSH: You grabbed a dog out of a Dumpster?
CALLER: In Detroit.
RUSH: And you named it Reverend Sharpton?
CALLER: After you.
RUSH: And it’s a pit bull?
CALLER: (laughing.)
RUSH: You know what? I want you to call your vet and say, ‘Hey, I need to bring Reverend Sharpton by and have him neutered.’ I gotta run, Janet. Thanks much. It’s great to have you on the program.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I couldn’t believe these numbers that she passed out in Detroit on literacy. I did a quick check. The Detroit Literacy Coalition. Now, the functional illiteracy rate in Michigan, according to the frequently asked questions from the Detroit Literacy Coalition website, the functional illiteracy rate in Michigan is 18%. The functional illiteracy rate in Detroit, 47%. So she was close. What did she say, 49? I just found that unbelievable! It’s 47%, functional illiteracy in Detroit. Now, I didn’t understand her stat on graduation, ’cause she got me confused on kindergarten there. But the Detroit Literacy Coalition says that the high school graduation rate in Detroit, no accurate data reported, but it hovers about 65 to 70%. Now, she used a figure of 21% kindergarten and so forth, but I mean some of those people probably leave town before they get to high school if they’re lucky.