×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: I got some e-mails during the break, “Hey, Rush, don’t get distracted by this catcall whistle video here. Stick to the issues on the election.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is about issues and the election. This is about the women’s vote. You think this is coincidental? (interruption) Let me try to put this in perspective. And I’m talking about the catcall video that’s got 12 million, probably more than that, it’s gone viral, 12 million views, of a woman walking the streets of New York being mistreated, spoken to rudely by men.

By the way, a little addition to the story. If Twitter is to be believed — and that is dicey — but if Twitter is to be believed, the organization behind this video is an outfit called Hollaback, H-o-l-l-a-b-a-c-k, as in holler back. Hollaback is the name of the company, and they supposedly, according to Twitter, are e-mailing people to apologize for the overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in the video harassing this woman.

Leave that aside. Let me tell you what amazes me about this. For those of you who are under 30, maybe even under 40. We’ve been there and done that on this. This was a huge issue when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. Miller Lite did beer commercials about this. I’m pretty sure it was Miller Lite. If it wasn’t Miller Lite, it was some beer company. There were commercials about really beautiful women, scantily clad, walking through a construction site being wolf whistled at by men. This is not new, is the point.


Now, to certain aged people, it is new, and to certain aged people, it’s brand-new, it’s uncalled for. But we’ve been there, done that. And we also had something come along to deal with it. We had something come along to fix it. This was never, ever supposed to happen again, folks. This was fixed back in the sixties and seventies. And what was supposedly going to fix this, we have a name for it. It’s called feminism. The early feminists, the feminazis of the modern era, led the charge against this wolf whistle, catcall business.

This is an exact replay. Those of you who are 50 and over, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This is not new. In fact, it was not new in the sixties. It’s been happening since there were men and women. There’s nothing new in this. What is new is that feminism in the sixties and seventies was supposed to wipe this out. Feminism was going to take care of this.

It was going to stop the objectifying of women. It was going to stop the brutish behavior and the predatory behavior of men. It was going to promote the quality of women. It was going to make it so that men were never, ever going to feel comfortable doing this again. They would be shamed. They would be shunned. Society would want nothing to do with them. It was never, ever going to happen again.

So what we are living here in the middle of is the failure, a massive failure of modern day feminism. Modern day feminism was gonna protect women from this kind of mean-spirited, extremist, boorish, predatory behavior. And it hasn’t. Because now a video of a woman walking the streets of New York, getting catcalls and so forth, has gone viral.

Now, people misunderstand me on the women’s movement. I love the women’s movement, especially when walking behind it. People think that I am biased against it, but I’m not. You put me in the right place, I’m all for the women’s movement. But it has failed in this instance.

Do you think this is accidental? With a War on Women going on, and we are a week out from an election, we got a budding actress, the woman that did this is a budding actress, and she’s got a website where she has a bio, and on her bio she proudly announces that she has a bust size of 34 DD. This woman puts it out there. So she’s walking the streets — and, by the way, she’s not walking the business district of Midtown. She is walking neighborhoods that, in some cases, many people wouldn’t go if they didn’t have to.

She apparently is walking alone, but even some of the things represented as catcalls are not catcalls. Some of the things represented are just “Hi, have a nice day.” It’s nothing more than men speaking to her. She doesn’t acknowledge any of them. She doesn’t give ’em the time of day, just keeps walking, doesn’t stop. But what strikes me about this is the cyclical, repetitive nature of things. To a certain age-group, this is a brand-new offense, it’s a brand-new problem. Well, maybe not brand-new, but it’s a problem that finally has to be addressed.

They’re so young, they have no idea we’ve been there done that on this. They have no idea that the modern era of feminism staked out exactly this kind of boorish behavior on the part of men, that they were gonna stamp out and forever forbid. And it hasn’t worked. I would venture to say that most of modern era feminism has been an abject failure in terms of its objectives, of its own stated objectives.

Did you hear the last caller we had on this? She’s 62 years old. She said it happened to her in New York all the time, and it happens to every woman, every day in New York. And I said, “Every woman?” “Yes,” she insisted, every woman. Well, it doesn’t happen to every woman.

Then she said she found herself in Paris one day, and it happened in Paris, but it was okay then ’cause you know what happened? Because a nice guy with a French accent. She didn’t say that, but, you know, Jean-Paul Belmondo crosses street and says, “I’m sorry,” and then complimented her legs, and that was cool, that was fine.

But I, ladies and gentlemen, remember when I lived in Pittsburgh, 1972 or 1973 — I’m telling you, do not doubt me — doing something like that, even with an apology in front of it made women mad. Complimenting or commenting, period, on a woman’s appearance was an insult in the early days of this modern era of feminism. Because at that time, that was strictly noticing the physical, and that was objectifying women, and that was not realizing their full value and their full worth.

That was ignoring their brain, their minds, their personality. If all you saw in a woman was her appearance and her beauty and that’s all you cared to comment on, it was an insult. And you didn’t open car doors for women then. Not the women who bought into this. You didn’t open doors, car doors or otherwise. You didn’t let them go first. You didn’t do anything that was chivalry oriented because it was considered to be a put-down.

Look, I’m not making any of this stuff up. The men of that era got totally confused about what they should do. Everybody was behaving according to traditional societal norms. And I’m talking about in terms of chivalry. You’re walking down the street, you take the street side, if you’re the man. You open a door first. You open the car door. You let the woman go first. All of that stuff of rejected because modern feminism in its early days. I mean, it was really, really radical stuff, and so men didn’t know what to do in the mating dance.

They didn’t know how to go about it with the traditional way of complimenting a woman. Letting her know that she was attractive to you was an insult, what do you do with that? So what you have to do, you have to go out and buy books about rape and find out what women are interested in and be able to talk to them about this kind of stuff, whatever it was. If not rape, whatever the modern feminists were promoting back in the era. (interruption) What I did do? Tell you what I did. I went and got a bunch of women’s magazines and books, and I turned to the chapters on where meet men, find out where I was supposed to be, and I went there.

I remember those days like they were yesterday. They were confusing as hell because traditional behavioral norms, good, old-fashioned human nature was being thrown upside down, and we are feeling the effects of it today. So here we are one week from an election, we got a viral video on what? Men.

Now, there’s no Republican Party mentioned in the video. All of this is supposed to be associated or absorbed by the subconscious. But we do have this War on Women. Everybody paying attention knows that we supposedly have a War on Women. The Republicans are conducting it.

Now we’ve got another example here of, “Men are mean, men are evil, men are uncivilized, men are brutes, men are whatever. They will attack you verbally. They will attack you physically. They do not respect you,” and we’ve got a viral YouTube video here to demonstrate this. And it’s all been done before. And the only reason that it’s happening now is because feminism failed to stamp it out.

Now, why? It’s not for lack of effort. Feminists had the full power and support of the Democrat Party. So how come men are still catcalling and wolf-whistling at women they find attractive? But… (interruption) That’s the point. Feminism was gonna take care of “Boys will be boys will be boys no matter what.” That’s what feminism set out to do was to change that, because “boys being boys” was not right.

“Boys being boys” was bad for women, and feminism was gonna stamp that out. Feminism was gonna take care of it. Feminism was gonna fix all of these injustices or whatever you want to call them. The point is, here we are. By the way, again, when it was new to me the first time society went through this, I was 18 or 19, but that was not the first time. This happened in the forties.

You can watch old forties World War II movies with this kind of incident portrayed in it and with women either liking it or not liking it or whatever. None of this is new. The newest… I’m gonna tell you what the newest characteristic of this is, is women getting mad at it en masse. That’s what’s new about it. At any rate — and that’s not quite the proper way to say what I really mean here.

The fact that men have noticed pretty women is not new. The fact that they have let women know they think they’re pretty is not new. Women walking by and being whistled at? As I say, Miller Lite did a whole series of beer commercials about this, and the incident was not a put-down. They were not making fun of the men. It was a positive thing in the Miller Lite commercials.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I was just informed of something I did not know. Cookie tells me that she was screening this today and perhaps going to send me samples of it for the program but that it didn’t work, just audio wise. It just didn’t. It’s a bunch of men. You need to see her walking and the men reacting. But apparently Shoshana Roberts is her name, and she says that she has had multiple experiences of sexual assault, which is why she wanted to be involved in the project.

So I did not know that — and, by the way, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying this has anything to do with the Democrat Party. I’m just saying, the timing. It’s a week before the election, War on Women, Democrats in trouble. Here comes a viral video on what a bumbling of brutes the men are. Now, admittedly, the men in this video are African-American and Hispanic.

Not your typical Republican voters. Not your typical Republican supporters. They are apologizing, the people that did the video, Hollaback! (if you can believe Twitter) are apologizing for featuring so many African-Americans and Hispanics, in the video, ’cause they culled what was 10 hours down to four minutes for this. But don’t anybody misunderstand.

I’m not saying the Democrat Party had anything to do with this. I’m saying if there is any political impact, it’d be subliminal. But my real point here is that it isn’t new in any way, shape, manner, or form. What I think people need to be reminded of is, in our modern era — late sixties, early seventies — when women said they were fed up with this, feminism came along and said they were going to deal with it and fix it and wipe it out.

And here we are some 40 years later, and it’s still happening.

Not a good day for feminism. They did not succeed in stamping this out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Mark in Pittsburgh as we stay on the phones today. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello Rush. How are you? This video that they filmed was in New York City, which is an overwhelmingly Democrat city.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: I mean, statistically speaking, most cities, men who are behaving this way, are Democrat voters. These are your typical examples of non-metrosexual male Democrat voters, low-information voters. These guys are carbon copies of Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy with his waitress sandwich. You know, we saw their bad behavior when it came to women, and everybody pooh-poohed it, and where was the National Organization of Women and the feminists on them?

RUSH: Well, it is another thing, too. I mean it’s one thing to be walking down the street singing, “Doo wah ditty ditty dum ditty doo. There she is, walking down the street.” Roy Orbison even sang, you remember that great song Roy Orbison did, Pretty Woman?

CALLER: Yeah.


RUSH: I mean, this is in our culture; this is inbred. But how about James Carville? (imitating Carville) “Hey, you know what? I got a dollar bill. I could walk through a trailer park and you know what I’m gonna get? Paula Jones, that’s right, I’m gonna get Paula Jones and a bowl of gumbo. I just wave a dollar bill.” You are exactly right. We’re living in a test tube of New York City. This is all happening where we supposedly have enlightened, elite liberals who behave according to the latest proper standards, as dictated by other elite liberals, and yet this kind of boorish behavior is taking place. This didn’t happen in the great Midwest. This didn’t happen in the heartland.

CALLER: No.

RUSH: This didn’t even happen in New Jersey.

CALLER: When men in the Midwest and flyover country see a woman walk by, they tip their hat. They don’t make catcalls.

RUSH: Well, some do, you’re right. (laughing) I’m shocked, folks, not shocked. I’m just amazed. I’m just amazed. It’s one of the benefits of having a lot of years under your belt while you’ve been paying attention that you are able to keep things in perspective and have a historical context. And it’s fascinating to me, having been through this exact thing at least three times, three different controversial periods in my lifetime so far. This is the fourth time this has come up now. And to the people to whom it’s new, it’s outrageous, it’s shocking, it’s unacceptable, and we’ve got to do something about it. I’m not putting up with this anymore.

It’s not new. It’s common. And feminism was supposed to fix it. Now I know why sometimes when I’d go talk to my grandfather he would just smile and look bored when I was complaining about something. Been there, done that. You’ll see someday, Son, that this is all part of life. It’s happened to countless other people before it happened to you. (interruption) No, I’m not saying anything like that. Men will never change. I’m just saying you can’t, as hard as you try, if you’re gonna let people stay free, you cannot erase human nature.

Now, if you want to imprison them, if you want to take away their freedom somehow in order to get their conformity, then that’s what you have to do, but if you’re gonna let people remain free, human nature is what it is, and there’s no political movement that is ever going to erase it. Feminism tried.


Look, I hate to bring it up again, TIME Magazine, 1995, cover story, shock and dismay when they learned that boys and girls are different. What must they have thought before they found out boys and girls were different? And it was proved to them scientifically. They must have thought that we were able to change boys and girls simply by changing the conditioning, the circumstances in which they’re raised.

In other words, these liberals believe that people turn out based on their environment — and I don’t mean the air and the water, I mean the circumstances in which they grow up. So they really believed that little boys wanted to go to war because they got GI Joe toys and that little girls wanted to bake cakes ’cause they got Betty Crocker stuff and little miniature stoves and ovens. So they gave little boys miniature stoves and ovens and the girls GI Joe.

And what the boys did was build forts out of the Betty Crocker cake and start having war with a knife and fork on one side, and some another utensil, and the girls started dressing GI Joe in different kinds of attire. And these parents, these liberal parents who hoped to be able to prove that they could raise a little girl to be just like a little boy with the proper conditioning and influence found out, no.

That’s what I mean, human nature is what it is. We are as we are created, and there’s no political movement that can come along and change it. There’s no legislation. There’s no president. There’s nothing like that that can erase or alter basic human nature, which is what feminism tried to do. If you want to get down to brass tacks, feminism — it’s Undeniable Truth of Life Number 24 — was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the so-called mainstream.

Life was unfair, if they weren’t attractive. That was not fair, had to change that. They had to go about changing it. And so what they were tackling was changing human nature. And they can’t. Nobody’s ever gonna be able, via politics, to change human nature. All you can do is suppress it by penalizing it, putting it in jail. But you can’t, you cannot legislate human nature. It is what it is. And you’re gonna have, in all avenues of human nature, you’re gonna have the bad, the good, the evil, the incompetent, the extremely talented, you’re gonna get it all.

Human nature is what it is. No two of us are alike, and the left can’t stand that. I’m not just talking physically. No two people are alike, and you can’t legislate them. You can try to legislate their outcomes but you have to penalize people in order to for that to be made possible. The only way you can legislate outcomes is to make sure that the superior performing people have it taken away from ’em at the end of the day. At least that’s what the left does.

The left never does try to equalize by elevating people at the bottom. The left always tries to equalize us by stripping the people at the top from what they have, and then they call that fairness and equality. But what they’re really trying to do in this instance is change human nature because they don’t like it. But you can’t. Now, the left is never gonna give up trying to change it ’cause they refuse to accept that it’s impossible, but that’s why these things are gonna keep repeating.

That’s why every effort to change it’s gonna fail and somebody new is gonna come along somewhere down the pike, “I got a new idea. I know how to stop this. We’ll put a video up to YouTube. We’ll go viral with it. We’ll humiliate these guys,” and it works for a while, but then after a while, human nature resurfaces, ’cause it never really ever goes away, because it’s all part of our creation.

Or, to cover all the bases, it’s all part of our evolution. (gasping) It is what it is. The good with the bad. The evil with the superior. It’s all part of the mix. It’s always been, and it always will be. The idea that basic human nature can be altered and changed by a punch of people in Washington, DC, is over half the reason this country’s in the mess that it’s in.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go back to the phones, Angela in northern Virginia. I’m glad you waited, and it’s your turn. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush, and Rush 24/7 dittos.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: You know, about the New York City YouTube video, I think men are being cowards on this issue, and I’m really tired of men backin’ down. You know, it is okay for a woman to be all the woman that she want to be, especially in the workplace. They can dress any way they care to or dare to, and the men have to behave unnaturally walking around with downcast eyes or be punished, and I just think that if women don’t want men to… If they don’t want to catch fish, then they need to stop wearing fishing clothes. I’m so tired of men having to behave unnaturally, out of fear of being penalized by a feminized society. It’s just ridiculous. Men need to stop being cowards and stand up to it.

RUSH: Well, that’s a good point: Men being cowards. Who has the ability to turn men into cowards?

CALLER: Well, I just think that the way that the video is being displayed, the way that men have to ignore the fact that it’s a nice-looking woman or even a woman that’s trying to get attention. The way they dress, you know they’re trying to get attention. Come on. Why would you put those things on?

RUSH: Wait. Okay. Now, this woman? I don’t know. She’s clad head to toe. There’s nothing exposed.

CALLER: Uh-huh.

RUSH: She’s wearing all black. A T-shirt, snug-fitting jeans, and it looks like combat boots. Typical New York female attire.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: And she’s just strolling along. She does have 34 DDs. I mean, there’s some guys, it’s over. That’s all they have to see. It’s over, and they can’t control it.

CALLER: Well, then, if she had an overcoat on, what would have been the response, do you think?

RUSH: (sigh) Well, now, you know, that’s interesting, too. Because this woman, she’s making a video, so she wants to get a reaction. Otherwise there’s no video, right?

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: So she’s —

CALLER: Exactly right.

RUSH: So attitudinally she wants to get some action, and she did. She got some.

CALLER: I don’t think men need to apologize for acknowledging a woman that looks attractive to them. I think that men are being cowards about it, and I just simply disagree with this whole feminized —

RUSH: Okay, so if you’re walking down the street anywhere, and you’re minding your own business — and, by the way, let’s say you’re dressed nicely because your job requires it or you like dressing nicely for yourself — and some bunch of men comment to you on that as they walk by you. They don’t stop. They just say, “Hey, you look nice today. Hey!” That doesn’t bother you?

CALLER: No. That happens all the time. Well, I’m 50 years old now, but whenever — let’s say 10 years ago, 20 years ago — whenever I worked, I had to cross the street and go to the store, whatever, and go back to the office, and the cars on the street and they were driving past. They’d blow their horns. They’d honk. I was, you know, pretty much used it.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I’m a nice-looking lady, and I think that — and maybe some women who are attractive women, once you get a little older and you’re not noticed as much, you kind of miss it a little bit. I think that a lot of women would agree with that.

RUSH: Yeah. Some old-school women would, yeah.

CALLER: (giggles) Yeah. So I just don’t think men need to apologize for being men. I’m just sick and tired of men being feminized.

RUSH: This is my whole point. The modern era of feminism has tried to erase men from men. By that I mean they tried to erase human nature. Men do not understand women. That is without question.

CALLER: You don’t need to understand a woman to say that she looks pretty.

RUSH: No, that’s only… But by the same token… No, men really don’t. But women don’t, either, understand men.

CALLER: Right. Exactly.

RUSH: That’s what makes the world go round.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: This is not a criticism. The point is, I don’t know. I’ve wondered myself if women actually are aware of what happens to a man who genuinely finds her beautiful. If a man is looking at a woman and really thinks she is just it, there’s a chemical change that occurs in the guy that he can’t help. Now, that’s where morals and manners come in, as to how he deals with that.

That’s why those things are important. But there are certain things — and by the same token, a woman who gets her sights set on a man, wild horses can’t stop her. This is human nature, and it’s this kind of stuff that makes the world go round and a lyric from one of my favorite songs — well, used to be — “a boy chases a girl ’til she catches him.”

For some reason, that lyric line has always fascinated me, ’cause it’s true in many cases, and this is what people are trying to erase. They’re trying to take the mystique, the mystery, the pursuit — all of this — out of what is a pursuit, and without it you wouldn’t have babies. You wouldn’t have a population. And that’s even getting harder to accomplish now.

Anyway, I know what you’re talking about, Angela. It’s a generational thing. I’ve gotta go. I appreciate your call, though, very much.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This