RUSH: Harry Reid wants it all to go away. We got the audio coming up of this. He’s out there in Apex, Nevada, says he’s not going to dwell on the Negro dialect and light-skinned comment anymore. That’s okay, Harry Reid, because we are. We are going to continue to dwell on this, 
Harry. In fact, a little bit of news here from TheHill.com: ‘The Senate’s embattled majority leader is moving ahead with –‘ get this, stand by, wait for it ‘– an ‘African-Americans for Harry Reid’ event this week as he seeks to weather a political firestorm sparked by his racially insensitive remarks about President Obama. The timing of the launch of the ‘African Americans for Harry Reid’ campaign group, which is scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, is coincidental. The luncheon had been scheduled for weeks.’
Harry Reid has apologized to virtually everybody that he thinks matters, except the people that he really offended, the American people. I mean his comment really says that the American voter is still a racist schlub. But anyway, he apologized for his ‘light-skinned, no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one’ comments, those comments in the new book titled Game Change.
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RUSH: They really are. By the way, I need to correct myself. There are now more than five fans on the African-Americans for Harry Reid Facebook page. Last night there were only five, four of them were white. Now there are 863 and probably more since I just mentioned it. There are 863 fans on the African-Americans for Harry Reid Facebook page, 860 of them are white. It just goes to show how many union people there are when you need ’em. (laughing) They’re available.
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RUSH: Snerdley, you didn’t hear this because Snerdley was flying back from his vacation. But yesterday I was ruminating here on a potential movie: When Harry Met Robert. I went through various scenarios that could take place in this movie about when Harry meets Robert Byrd and so forth, and we’ve actually come up here with a storyline presentation that might provide here a jumping-off point to actually produce this thing.
(playing of When Harry Met Bobby parody)
RUSH: Reverend Sharpton with the bullhorn wherever he happens to be.
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RUSH: Fort Collins, Colorado. Ed, great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Maybe it’s afternoon where you are. So Harry Reid probably has a lot of black friends. In my life I’ve had lots of black friends and I presume you have to. In a previous city in which we lived we discussed these race issues openly. And my black friends were telling me that high yellow blacks did better, they got better dates, they got married to better companions, they got better jobs, they got quicker promotions and they used Colin Powell as an example of that. And so —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait just a second. What’s the term, high yellow?
CALLER: High yellow. Yeah. And I’ve been blessed with a lot of black friends that we can talk openly about race without it being racial or racist, and that’s the term they used to describe light-skinned blacks.
RUSH: Ah.
CALLER: So, Rush, Harry surrounds himself with people like this who are talking like this, I presume, I don’t think it’s a secret code, it certainly wasn’t in my experience with my black friends, so he’s heard that term, he’s felt that term in his associations. So he stupidly used it in his book without some kind of footnote or explanation —
RUSH: No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He didn’t write the book. He said it on deep background to some friends who then told it to the reporters and so forth. We can argue over whether it’s racist or not. Look, I’m not going to let the double standard survive here. It’s racist, pure and simple.
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RUSH: Shouldn’t this group, ‘African-Americans for Harry Reid,’ shouldn’t they call that group ‘Light-Skinned Negroes Without Accents for Harry Reid?’ Let’s be accurate here. Donna Brazile, by the way, is the featured speaker at the Light-Skinned Negroes Without Accents for Harry Reid dinner on Thursday.
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RUSH: So this group, ‘African-Americans for Harry Reid,’ big deal, dinner or something on Thursday. I actually think that they should change the name of this group. Shouldn’t it be called ‘Light-Skinned Negroes Without Dialects for Harry Reid’? The lead spokesman is Donna Brazile at the Light-Skinned Negroes Without Dialects for Harry Reid event. Now, this is same Donna Brazile who, when she was Algore’s campaign manager in 2000, called the Republican Party the party of the white boys. She did, ‘white boy attitude,’ explained Brazile is, ‘I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind. They don’t see it or think about it. It’s a culture.’ She later said of J.C. Watts and Secretary of State Colin Powell, ‘They’d rather take pictures with black children than feed them.’ Both Powell and Watts called her comments racist.
Now, this is Donna Brazile who is the main speaker at the Light-Skinned Negroes Without Dialects for Harry Reid event on Thursday. They’ll be serving coffee at this thing. It’s in Las Vegas on Thursday. Of course they’re going to be serving coffee. You know, folks, I don’t know if she speaks the Negro dialect or not. I’m so confused about all this now that we just have to wait for Harry Reid to clarify all this for us. Here’s Obama, let’s see, I guess next Monday TV One’s Living the Dream and interview with Obama, I guess they pretaped it, but it’s going to run on Monday, maybe it did — I’m not sure if it ran last Monday, yesterday, or if it’s going to run next Monday, but this is what Obama said about Dingy Harry.
OBAMA: Harry Reid is a friend of mine. He has been a stalwart champion of voting rights, civil rights. He’s spending a lot of his political capital in the middle of an election to provide health care to every American.
RUSH: You lie.
OBAMA: And that’s going to have a great impact on African-Americans and Latinos around the country. This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history. For him to have used some in-artful language in trying to praise me and for people to try to make hay out of that makes absolutely no sense.
RUSH: Well, yes, it makes total sense. Spending a lot of his political can’t in the middle of an election to provide health care to every American? That’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. Everybody, by the way, in the political class, the pundits class, think Harry Reid’s toast. They say it’s a foregone conclusion the guy is going to lose in November. So they say Harry Reid is always on the right side of history. Let’s go back to April 19th of 2000.
REID: This war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything.
RUSH: This war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing — yeah, right side of history, Dingy Harry Reid. Here is a montage. A talking point went out yesterday that Harry Reid’s record shows that he’s not racist, and how do you get a stellar record like Harry Reid? There’s only one way you can have a stellar record like Harry Reid and that’s to have a D next to your name. So we put together a montage here of liberals praising Harry Reid’s record on race.
ROLAND MARTIN: Senator Harry Reid has an A record from the NAACP.
JEFF JOHNSON: …the legislative record in working with African-Americans and for African-Americans that Harry Reid has.
RACHEL MADDOW: …his very positive public policy record on civil rights.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: The majority leader has a positive record in the area of civil rights.
SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: Look at his record.
JOE TRIPPI: …the kind of record that Reid has on civil rights.
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Harry Reid’s got a pretty clean record.
MARC LAMONT HILL: He has a deep record of supporting black causes, black people, civil rights.
ED SCHULTZ: …Harry Reid’s record.
JIM CLYBURN: When it comes to Senator Reid’s record with the NAACP, there’s nothing racial (sic) about this.
MIKE ERIC DYSON: Harry Reid’s record suggests that he’s been quite supportive of the interests of African-American people.
CHUCK ROBERTS: Harry Reid had a pretty impressive civil rights record.
DONNA BRAZILE: Harry Reid has record, and this is a person who has stood for equal justice.
JACK CAFFERTY: I don’t think Harry Reid’s a racist. There’s nothing in his record to indicate that.
RUSH: All right. So the memo went out and the talking points went out, and it was Harry Reid’s record. Now, you know, when people are accused of being racist or when they are accused of racism one of the worst things that you can do is say, ‘Look at all of my black friends,’ that’s one of the worst things you can do. We’ve always been told that’s one of the worst things you could do, yet yesterday afternoon in Apex, Nevada, a montage of remarks, Harry Reid naming all of his black friends.
REID: Julian Bond. Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. A wonderful editorial in the LA Times today, a number of things on the Huffington Post. The highest ranking African-American in Congress, Jim Clyburn, Merv Dymally, he and I were lieutenant governors together. I’m very aware of the fact that the first African-American to serve on the federal court in the state of Nevada was a direct work I did. I recommended Johnnie Rawlinson to President Clinton. I had a call last night — it was late. I was surprised he was up this late — from Secretary Salazar. Joe Neal who served in the Senate longer than any other African-American. The majority leader of the Senate here in Nevada, Steven Horsford, he’s one of my proteges.
RUSH: Man, oh, man, oh, man, folks, I guarantee you there’s nobody else that can get away with this. (interruption) Well, I don’t know, Julian Bond, is he high yellow? Yeah. Now what’s the difference, is it light-skinned or high yellow? I’ve never heard this term. Interchangeable? I never heard the term high yellow. All right. All right. Julian Bond, Eric Holder, light-skinned Negro. Editorial writer at the LA Times, we have to assume light-skinned Negro. Highest ranking African-American in Congress, Jim Clyburn, not light-skinned? Merv Dymally, you gotta assume with the name Merv he’s light-skinned. Let’s see. Johnnie Rawlinson. Sounds light-skinned, too. Yeah. And Secretary Salazar. He’s a light-skinned Hispanic. Joe Neal served in the Nevada Senate longer than any other African-American. Majority leader Joe Neal. I mean that sounds light-skinned to me. I assume, by the way, all these people do not have Negro dialects if they’re light-skinned. Don’t those two things go hand in hand? See what Harry Reid’s teaching us here? Eric Holder said we’re afraid to discuss race in this country. No, not here. We’re not afraid of it. Harry Reid’s leading a most wonderful discussion on the subject now. And, you know, allowing everybody here to benefit from his wisdom, his knowledge, his clean and pure as the white wind-driven snow record, ladies — (laughing) — all right, Harry choked up yesterday afternoon, Apex, Nevada, seems to choke up as he talks about endorsing Obama and says he’s not going to dwell on this.
REID: I am very proud of the fact, I can still remember the meeting that took place in my office with Senator Barack Obama.
RUSH: Light-skinned.
REID: Telling him that I think he’ll be elected president, and I’m sure there were others, but he was kind of surprised that the Democratic leader was calling this new Senator over to suggest that he could be elected president. I’ve apologized to the president, I’ve apologized to everyone that — in the sound of my voice that I could have used a better choice of words. I’m not going to dwell on this anymore. It’s in the book. I’ve made all the statements I’m going to.
RUSH: Okay. He’s not going to dwell on it. But of course we are. You know, we could say, ladies and gentlemen, that Harry’s statements here and Harry’s record, deep and wide. I know somebody gets it. Snerdley (laughing) — where’s my coffee, by the way? I asked for it an hour ago. (laughing) Oh, folks, do you remember this? July the 9th, 2008, the Reverend Jackson, on a live mic that he didn’t know was live said that he wanted to castrate Barack Obama. Remember this? US civil rights leader, the Reverend Jackson, ‘complained on Tuesday that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama can seem to be ‘talking down to black people’ at times and should broaden his message. But Jackson apologized for a crude and disparaging remark about Obama on the weekend while he was speaking into an open microphone that he thought had been turned off. Jackson, talking to CNN on Wednesday, said Obama has given what amounts to ‘lectures’ at African-American churches. ‘I said it can come off as speaking down to black people. The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. There is a range of issues on the menu,’ said Jackson. … ‘And then I said something I felt regret for — it was crude. It was very private, and very much a sound bite — and a live mic. I find no comfort in it, I find no joy in it.” And that is I wanted to cut his nuts off.
He even gave a little hand gesture there to indicate how that would happen. (interruption) Oh, yes, that’s right, the Reverend Jackson did indeed use the N-word. What was the context of that? He was talking about Obama. Oh, that’s right, he used the N-word when he said I want to cut that N-word’s nuts off. That’s what it was. Exactly right. You know, Snerdley and I were discussing this at the top of the hour. It seems like most of President Obama’s black friends are light-skinned, high yellow. You’ve got Jeremiah Wright, you have Valerie Jarrett, you have Eric Holder, and Calypso Louie, Colin Powell. Do you know the UK Telegraph is doing their 100 most-influential conservatives and liberals and they start at number 100 and they publish 20 of them a day and they’ll get to the top 20 on Friday. So I looked at the hot 100 list of liberals today and I think at number 81 is Obama’s dog, Bo Obama. (laughing) Number 78 out of 100 most influential liberals list is Colin Powell. The most influential liberal list, which the media in our country tell us of course he’s the quintessential Republican.
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RUSH: And lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, December 10th of 2007, Andrew Young (who was then a supporter of Hillary Clinton). Now, this used to be on CNN, but they’ve taken it down and YouTube’s taken it down as well, but Andrew Young was for Hillary, and he said… What show was this on? Situation Room. Andrew Young said, ‘I want Barack Obama to be president 2016.’ He was for Hillary. ‘I want Barack Obama to be president in 2016. Barack Obama does not have the support network yet to get to be president. The Clintons, the Clintons have. He’s smart, he’s brilliant, but you can’t be president alone. Hillary Clinton first of all has Bill behind her, and Bill is every bit as black as Barack. In fact, he’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.’ Remember that? Andrew Young, that’s December 10th of 2007.
If you read about the Clintons, when Clinton decided to run, Hillary set up a ‘defense committee.’ That’s what they called it. You know what it was? It was go around and neutralize all the women he’d ever been involved with. She got her friends to be the defense committee to protect him from the attacks. But Bill’s ‘probably been with more black women than Barack has,’ and then you have Jesse Jackson out there. So the notion here that these people are just innocent and have no racial thoughts or motivations; their records are clean and so forth, is all a big sham. Here’s Jim Clyburn, who is the head honcho, the grand pooh-bah, the Congressional Black Caucus. And he was on MSNBC last night. He was asked: ‘Do you think Republicans are really concerned about racial insensitivity?’
CLYBURN: I don’t know why people are making such a fuss about this. What is the big fuss about the word ‘Negro’? Uh, I support the United Negro College Fund. Uh, I support the National Council of Negro Women. We still use those two terms, uh, because they have been a part of our history for a long time. And so I don’t know what all this fuss is about. Harry Reid is one of the most stand-up guys I’ve ever met, uh, in my life. You look at his record. He has a record, uh, that I think all of us, uh, in the African-American community can be proud of and can support. What Trent Lott said, uh, was not deserving of his resignation. I said it then, and I still believe that.
RUSH: Okay. So I’m, uh… I’m just confused. I’m confused, because Mr. Clyburn here says what’s all the fuss over the word ‘Negro’? But then, as I mentioned, fill-in host Lawrence O’Donnell on Mess-NBC last night talking to Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:
O’DONNELL: I’m trying to remember all the Republicans who rushed to the microphone to condemn Rush Limbaugh for calling Barack Obama ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.” I’m trying to remember if Senator Cornyn from Texas rushed up to the microphone to condemn Rush. Can you think of any Republican senators who condemned Rush Limbaugh for that?
ROBINSON: You know, they’re not springing to mind.
O’DONNELL: (haughty scoffing)
ROBINSON: Now, I’m not going to say that there weren’t any. I’d have to go back and look at the clips and see, uh, but — but I don’t recall a similar outpouring in that occasion, uh, Lawrence.
RUSH: Unbelievable. This is why I said top of the show: ‘Before this week is out, I will be the one who uttered the words ‘light-skinned’ and ‘doesn’t speak a Negro dialect.” I’ll be the one that said it before the week is out. I’ll be the one that said it, not Harry Reid, and they’ll be asking, ‘Why have you not condemned Rush Limbaugh for what he said in repeating what Harry Reid said?’ and Harry Reid will condemn me from the floor. I did not make up the term ‘Magic Negro.’ It was a column headline and the subject of a column by black columnist in the LA Times. You people all know this. It was talking about what Harry Reid just said! The whole point of the ‘Magic Negro’ column was it’s a Negro that doesn’t make one nervous. The ‘Magic Negro.’ We just put all ingredients together into a terrific parody tune sung by the Reverend Sharpton. There’s a reason we had Sharpton sing it, ’cause he was upset that Obama was getting all this praise. Biden had gone out there and said, ‘Finally we got a clean, articulate black guy in our party running for president,’ and Sharpton was offended by that. (interruption) Well, I don’t know if he uses Negro dialect. That’s for Harry Reid to determine. I wouldn’t know. Don’t pin that on me. Russ Feingold. This is a guy… You gotta hear this. He is wrestling with himself over whether or not Harry Reid should resign. He can’t figure this out. He doesn’t know what he ought to believe. He was on WTMJ Channel 4 in Milwaukee. An unidentified reporter said, ‘What about Harry Reid’s racially charged comments?’
FEINGOLD: Very unfortunate. Should never have been said. I really am, uh, disappointed.
REPORTER: Will you call for his censure?
FEINGOLD: I’m going to go meet with Senator Reid and my Democratic colleagues and talk about what should be done.
RUSH: (laughing) He keeps going. He wasn’t through.
FEINGOLD: I’m thinking about that, and we’re going to be getting together as a caucus next week, and that topic will come up. I have not decided whether these comments merit that or not. They’re very unfortunate, should have never been said. Uh, so I need to think about it.
RUSH: He was asked if Reid needs to resign. Can you really be struggling with this? (laughing) He’s struggling to be the good liberal. You’ve got to be the good liberal. He’s gotta be open-minded. He’s gotta recognize how horrible this was. He’s gotta recognize it. It was very unfortunate. He’s really disappointed, buuuuut he doesn’t know what ought to be done about it. ‘Cause he’s gotta portray himself as open-minded and thoughtful. Now, in Albany, New York: ‘After a speech to family planning advocates,’ meaning pro-abort people, ‘New York governor David Paterson said this about Dingy Harry.’
PATERSON: I thought the comments were reprehensible, but it’s amazing that they could print a whole book. So many people saw it and nobody noticed that this ill-chosen remark was in the book?
RUSH: What? Everybody’s noticed it. Everybody! What is he talking about? Nobody noticed it? ‘They printed a whole book that so many people saw and nobody noticed this ill-chosen remark was in the book?’ You know what I think he meant to say? What I said yesterday: How do these guys sit on all this stuff? All this stuff, these are two journalists? They had all of this dirt on the Democrats, and they sit on it all through the campaign. They bury it for the sake of what? (interruption) No. Winning an election, yes, but they saved it for the sake of profit. They saved the information for a book which is being sold for cash money. They saved it, they withheld the news for profit. They don’t like their own news organizations earning a profit. They don’t like Big Oil earning a profit. They don’t like Big Pharmaceutical earning a profit. They don’t like Walmart earning a profit. But when it comes to them, they gotta make a profit. So, yeah, it was about steering an election. But it was also about saving the dynamite for the sale of a book. Doug Wilder — who, by the way, has an effect named for him: The Wilder Effect. Doug Wilder, the former governor of Virginia, was on Your World With Neil Cavuto, and Cavuto said, ‘Enough Republicans say that Harry Reid should resign. You say no, but you draw some distinction. What do you mean?’
WILDER: I think his remarks were reprehensible, uncalled for, and they were not a spur of the moment thing, Neil. There wasn’t anything that somebody said, ‘Oops! I’m sorry I said that.’ This is in a book. (laughs)
CAVUTO: Right.
WILDER: Which means that you had a chance to correct it, edit it, do whatever you will with it. But for Reid to suggest that there is a difference so prevalent in the African-American community that it should be spilled over otherwise for people to see in terms of skin color — that if you’re dark-skinned and if you have a thick dialect, that it makes you less acceptable or less attractive. To say that and to say that it’s okay to say it, is wrong.
RUSH: Well. So there is a wide, divergent pattern here on the opinions of Dingy Harry. We should point out that Governor Wilder is light-skinned and does not have the obvious Negro dialect.
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RUSH: Here, by the way, the audio sound bites of Andrew Young from 2007, former UN ambassador, governor of Georgia, and he’s on CNN. Audience member says, ‘Two words: Barack Obama. Would you care to comment?’
YOUNG: I want Barack Obama to be president… (applause) in 2016. (laughter and shouts of, ‘No! No!’) Barack Obama does not have the support network yet to get to be president. The Clintons have — he’s smart, he’s brilliant, but you cannot be president alone. Hillary Clinton, first of all, has Bill behind her, and Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack. (laughter)
RUSH: All right. So there you have it. Andrew Young, again, would you say light-skinned? Definitely light-skinned? I’m turning, in case you’re wondering, I’m asking the Official Obama Criticizer to determine for me whether these are light-skinned Negroes that we’re talking about here. And the Official Obama Criticizer is not light-skinned. Would you agree with that? Okay. Okay.
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RUSH: Here’s Tony Blankley. Tony Blankley nails it. Yesterday afternoon on CNN’s Newsroom, he was asked this question: ‘Tony, what about the use of the word ‘Negro’? A term that my parents might use but usually people of our generation don’t and the fact that he went on to say ‘when he wants to’ about saying when he wants to use black dialect, Obama could maybe talk jive, what about this, Tony?’
BLANKLEY: The lesson that we learn from this is not that the Senator said anything particularly remarkable but that when conservatives say something equally unremarkable, that the feigned outrage drives them out of office. Whether it’s Rush Limbaugh saying that a black quarterback got better press than if he’d been white or whether it was Senator Allen who used the word Macaca, whatever that means, that got six stories on the front page of the Washington Post. The point is they’re not sincere when they’re outraged. They’re just trying to drive out a political opponent.
RUSH: Exactly right. It’s a political tactic, a point which was made yesterday on this program. Another black candidate has been dissed by the Democrat Party establishment. That would be Harold Ford. Harold Ford is toying around with running for the Senate in New York, the seat currently occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand. They don’t want to get rid of Gillibrand because she’s a sock puppet for Chuck-U Schumer. She votes however Chuck-U Schumer tells her to vote and Harold Ford is an independent thinker and he lives in New York, he pays New York taxes, heard him say that and he’s thinking about running and they don’t want him to. So yesterday an unidentified reporter asked the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, ‘What’s the White House position on having a candidate like Harold Ford run for that Senate seat?’
GIBBS: Look, I think the White House is quite happy with the leadership and the representation of Senator Gillibrand in New York, and we’re supporting her reelection.
RUSH: Gillibrand. Okay. I never heard her name pronounced. Sorry. Gillibrand. I always thought it was Gillibrand, unless Gibbs got it wrong which is entirely possible. But nevertheless, Harold Ford — Mr. Snerdley, light-skinned? Very light-skinned and does not, in the words of Harry Reid, use the black dialect, unless he wants to. We played Hillary: ‘I ain’t no ways tired.’ We played her yesterday. In fact, Mike, grab that. That’s good for a laugh any day of the week. Let me know when you have it, we have it from yesterday. ‘I ain’t no ways tired.’ Crowd goes jumping, it was in Selma. Okay, so you have according to Mr. Snerdley a light-skinned Negro, and according to Harry Reid, one who doesn’t use the black dialect when he doesn’t have to, thrown overboard, under the bus by the White House in favor of a blonde white woman, Kirsten Gillibrand. Here, here’s Hillary from Selma, Alabama, this is 2007, sometime in March.
HILLARY: Let us say with one voice the words of James Cleveland’s great freedom hymn: ‘I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me.’
RUSH: It’s embarrassing. I know. It’s embarrassing. (imitating Bubba) ‘Hey, Ted, come on, man, that guy would be fetching us coffee a couple years ago. What are you doing, Ted?’
Barry in University Heights, Ohio. Hi, Barry, great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Happy birthday.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Rush, isn’t Dingy Harry Reid actually right in asserting that there’s a racial hierarchy in America? Isn’t that the point that George Will made over the weekend? No matter how smart you are, if you sound Ebonic, you’re not going to be accepted, you’re not going to be taken seriously by the white establishment. Isn’t that true?
RUSH: Did George Will say that?
CALLER: Sure did. He implied it.
RUSH: I had the George Will sound bites yesterday and I didn’t get to them. I read the transcript. I know he totally exonerated Harry Reid. He said there was nothing racist about what Harry Reid had said, but I didn’t know he’s said that about the black dialect or Ebonics.
CALLER: The point is that Reid is only calling attention to a reality that I think what should alarm people is not the clumsy comments that Reid made but the reality that he was calling attention to, namely that there is a racial hierarchy and that you are judged according to how Ebonic you speak. And it goes for color as well. Think of Halle Berry, think of Colin Powell. Can you picture Colin Powell being as presidential material if he was much blacker? Or if Halle Berry was much darker, would she be considered as sexy as she is by society?
RUSH: You know, you’re asking the wrong guy because I don’t think this way, and that’s why Harry Reid’s comments here kind of — you know —
CALLER: But I’m saying that is in the subconsciousness of our society, it’s a relic of 200 years of slavery.
RUSH: I don’t know. Since you bring this up, are you a Democrat?
CALLER: I’m an independent.
RUSH: Democrat, okay. I’m thinking if what you say is true, how in the world is it that any American rap star is a multimillionaire? There aren’t enough black customers to make these guys as wealthy —
CALLER: Well, because white people want to flatter themselves that they really are interested in the authentic black experience.
RUSH: But then why wouldn’t they vote for a rapper running for president if they agree with his policies?
CALLER: Well, they will vote for —
RUSH: You say they wouldn’t because he doesn’t sound white.
CALLER: Voting for someone and listening to someone’s music are two very different things. Because remember that historically we saw African-Americans as entertainers, not as politicians. We saw them as athletes —
RUSH: Wait a minute, what is this ‘we’ business? You. You know, don’t tar all the rest of us with this. You’re basically saying that the country is still racist. That’s what Harry Reid wants you to say.
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RUSH: This is March 8th of 2008, an interview with the Torrance, California, Daily Breeze newspaper, the former vice presidential candidate Democrat Geraldine Ferraro.
FERRARO: If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this as a potential real problem for — for Hillary? If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position? Absolutely not.
RUSH: Now, the libs are out there saying that Reid’s comments aren’t racist because they’re true. Well, what Ferraro said was also true. She didn’t use the word Negro, and yet Democrats, including Obama, denounced her for this. What she was saying was, ‘Look, if he wasn’t a black guy he wouldn’t be anywhere near this race, he wouldn’t be anywhere close.’ And she was speaking on behalf of a woman, Hillary. Remember, there was a big rift here between special interest groups. The women, the feminazis were fit to be tied because they had it figured that Hillary was their man. She was going to be president, she was in there. And then out of nowhere comes this guy who Bill Clinton says a few years ago would have been serving them coffee. He upstaged her and he’s getting much better press and all these women who thought they had paid their dues, who thought they had slaved and gone through the wringer, they put up with all of this stuff, and it was theirs, it was finally their time, and now all of a sudden everybody was turning on Hillary, including the media, and they were discombobulated. So the whole thing kind of blew up and that’s what Geraldine Ferraro was discussing there.
Kevin in Monroeville, Ohio, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, real honor. I can’t believe I got through.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: Hey, you know, I’m glad you corrected your previous caller about not including everybody in his outlook.
RUSH: Yeah, that was a good gobsmacking. I like giving those now and then.
CALLER: Yeah, right. Hey, you know, something else that I think plays into this, and you talk about all the time, is Harry Reid’s not only racist but elitist attitude towards Barack Obama.
RUSH: Hm-hm.
CALLER: And I think what makes it kind of ironic is, you know, here’s Barack and Michelle, you know, they start out in life, and their only goal in life, as I can see it, is to be one, to be joined in the elitist crowd, to be accepted. And they go through their whole life, and they finally get to the White House, and they think they have arrived. And then one of the elitists like Harry Reid comes out and basically says I don’t care how high you go and I don’t care where you are, us elitists still look at you as just another black couple.
RUSH: Whoa. That’s what you think Harry was saying?
CALLER: Yes, I think Harry is pure elitist. He said basically, in my opinion, that Barack Obama may be just white enough to be accepted by us, not by the American people, but with his elitist attitude, he’s thinking maybe we can get by and —
RUSH: Why, this is a very, very, very interesting take on this. This is one of those stroke-the-chin kind of thoughts that I hadn’t considered before. I’ll have to ponder this beyond the length of time of your phone call here.
CALLER: And you also can maybe put Bill Clinton in that category. And I mean to take the black factor out of it, I really believe the elitists in Washington thought, ‘Well, you know, Bill Clinton can do what he wants, say what he wants, rise as high as he wants in the American people’s mind, but to us he’s just a guy from Arkansas, a good old boy from Arkansas.’
RUSH: Well, I don’t know. Clinton and Hillary were certainly treated as elitists and accepted as elitists by that group. But I think there’s some lingering dislike for the Clintons throughout that whole period of time because they did have this machine. The Clintons were brutal on people. But, anyway, that’s an interesting thought, and I appreciate it.