RUSH: Jeff Zucker, as was expected, looks like he’s gonna get the CNN gig. Now, I’ve often believed that the best resume enhancement you can have as a liberal is to fail. They move you to the top. And they do it for a reason. They will never allow their ideology to be blamed for anything that goes wrong anywhere, in the country, within their party, or anything else. So Jeff Zucker basically — and I don’t know Jeff Zucker, I don’t dislike him, I don’t like him, I don’t know him. All I know is that when he ran NBC Universal, he ran them into the ground. You take a look at what once was the NBC primetime behemoth, and you have to go back to the past to find it. He’s now gonna run CNN.
They promote their failures in order to save their ideology. They are that proud of it, they’re that confident. We, on the other hand, can’t wait to get rid of our failures, in fact, even before they fail. I mentioned in the last hour, when I challenged Snerdley, “Name for me a proud, happy, cheerful, confident conservative who believes it and will say it and talk about it unashamedly, day in and day out.” Sarah Palin, and look what happened to her. Now, it’s natural that the left would despise her because they were afraid of her. The thing that I will go to my grave being angry about is what happened to her in her own party.
I can’t tell you how frustrated I got when I would run into average Republican voters, people not in politics, is what I mean by average voter, just citizens that vote Republican. “We gotta get rid of Palin.”
“Why?”
“Well, look what the media’s done to her.”
“Oh, so you just want to sit there and let the media destroy our people?”
“Yeah, well, that’s a test for me. If they can’t survive the media, they don’t deserve to be…”
“Oh, okay, so the media can determine our candidates, is that what you’re telling me?” And they essentially said, yeah. They weren’t willing to even speak up in defense of her because they thought it would make them sound stupid, too, since that’s what everybody thought of Palin, since that was the image that was created for her, that she was stupid, not bright, that anybody defending her would be tarred the same way, and they didn’t want that. So, okay, I’ll throw her overboard.
I’ve always been in a fight mode when it comes to the media. To not let them define us or determine who our champions are or any of that because their objective is to destroy all the quality people on our side, and to have our people acquiesce to it, I can’t tell you how it bummed me out. Dan Rather, a total career embarrassment with the George Bush National Guard story. What happened? Tom Brokaw and the late Peter Jennings created a brand-new award, some lifetime achievement in plagiarism award or whatever it was, and they gave it to Rather at a big dinner that got all kinds of publicity, after Rather embarrassed himself, because they had to save their industry. And they were willing to do it. They were willing to save the news business, as it exists, they were willing to save Rather to do it.
It didn’t matter if it looked like they were embarrassing themselves, they didn’t care. They were saving liberalism, their ideology, saving their business, the news business, and they were saving Rather. What do we do? We don’t try to save any of ours. Look at the consultants, the Republican consultants who want to throw every conservative media person overboard now. So Jeff Zucker, who did succeed with the Today show, but then they moved him into the presidency of NBC Universal, didn’t go well, and now he’s been hired to fix CNN, which is in the toilet. They protect their failures. They elevate them because they’ll do whatever is necessary to save liberalism or socialism or whatever you want to call it.
By the same token, look at Oprah. I have a story here from the New York Times: “Oprah at a Crossroads.” The Oprah is scared. ‘Cause you know what’s happened? The Oprah had her afternoon talk show, and it was thought that The Oprah owned America television. Nobody was close to The Oprah, her ratings, business, revenue, all of that. And then The Oprah decided, what was it, after 25 years that she’s gonna move on, and she retired from the show. She started her own cable network called the OWN network, and you need a magnifying glass — hell, you need a telescope to find it. They’re doing everything they can to save The Oprah.
“ItÂ’s not easy to find a fresh way to photograph Oprah Winfrey. ThatÂ’s why the editors of O, The Oprah Magazine, recently tried to create a shot that recalled the glory days of Ms. WinfreyÂ’s syndicated talk show. They arranged to photograph her for its April 2013 issue as she stepped onstage to speak to 5,000 attendees at the magazineÂ’s annual conference, a New Age slumber party of sorts for women held at the convention center here last month. When Ms. Winfrey confidently strode out dressed in a sea foam green V-neck dress –” Sea foam green. That’s a color I’ve always wanted to see people in “– and a pair of perilously tall ruby red stilettos, the audience collectively leapt to its feet and shrieked at the sight of her. ‘I love you, Oprah,’ some women shouted, while other fans brushed away tears. ‘I love you back,’ she responded in her signature commanding voice.
“Ms. Winfrey, who used to receive this kind of applause from fans five days a week, has had fewer such receptions since the talk show she hosted for 25 years ended 18 months ago. The cable network OWN, which she started with Discovery Communications, is emerging from low ratings and management shake-ups. And without a regular presence on daytime network television, she cannot steer traffic to her other products as easily as in the past. Her magazine, in particular, has experienced a decline in advertising revenue and newsstand sales since the talk show finished. ‘SheÂ’s still Oprah. But sheÂ’s still struggling,’ said Janice Peck, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado who wrote the 2008 book ‘The Age of Oprah.’ ‘I think sheÂ’s scared, even though sheÂ’s very, very rich and sheÂ’s always going to be very, very rich. The possibility of failure, itÂ’s quite scary.'”
So this whole New York Times piece is how The Oprah is not doing well in all of her ventures these days. But, because she is a liberal, a liberal woman of color, she is being saved. And she’s being hyped as the most wonderful that’s ever been. Folks, I’m telling you, the OWN network, when I say you need a telescope to find it, I am not exaggerating by much. They’re out doing everything they can to save The Oprah because in saving The Oprah, they save liberalism, and they save the movement and say —
(interruption)
What, Snerdley, what’s the question? How come Obama’s not stepping in?
(interruption)
(laughing) Are you kidding? Let me tell you something. The one thing about Barack Obama, he is not gonna save anybody. If they fall overboard, they are on their own. He’s not gonna risk being plunged down with people on the way down. He not gonna risk it at all. If you don’t understand that about The Obama. If The Oprah has slipped overboard, you know, he’s up there, “Hey, hey, Oprah, well, hope you get back up here. I’ll be here when you get back. We love you. Hey, Oprah, you didn’t build that. That’s what this means, you didn’t build that.” And there are countless other examples like this. Jimmy Carter may be the worst president in the history of the country — present company excluded, of course — top seat, Democrat convention. They do what they can to save Jimmy Carter ’cause they gotta save the party, they gotta save the movement, and yet you know as well as I do, look at how quickly the Republicans couldn’t wait to throw Sarah Palin overboard, or any number of other conservatives I could name for you.
As far as Obama, not only is he not helpful, he’s not grateful. You could say that The Oprah helped give us The Obama. In fact, you could say — and you wouldn’t be far wrong — that the beginning of the Oprah’s plunge was when she went political and endorsed Obama, because up until then all these women who watched The Oprah never thought of her in political terms. You and I thought they must be, but we were wrong. They did not think of her in political terms. That’s been another big secret of the left. They’ve been able do liberalism each and every day with people not thinking it’s politics. But Oprah was nothing but pure New Age liberalism every day. Her audience never realized that, until she endorsed Obama, then they said, “Whoa, wait a minute.” And that’s when the, shall we say, the decline of The Oprah began. It did, folks. The Oprah’s out there swimming in the ocean barely afloat, and Obama’s up on deck of the cruise ship looking down, “Hey, hey, Oprah, it’s nice knowing you. Watch out for that shark.”