RUSH: So did you follow through last night, Mr. Snerdley, and not watch the Oscars? Well, I watched ’em, and I have never been more bored. I’m not trying to say this as a put-down. I don’t know why I stuck with it. There was nothing else on and I was physically worn out. I’d had a grueling, I mean, brutal, excruciating weekend. By the time Sunday night came around, I was just dog tired, cat tired, whatever. So, I mean, I didn’t even have the energy to have my finger on the remote to change channels.

So I sat there and watched. I think the reason I stuck with it, ’cause I didn’t think American Sniper was gonna win anything. I did not buy all the hype. They won one award for best costume making in a short story having to do with promotional schemes for a movie or some such category. I don’t know what it was. I wanted to see what did win, and I wanted to see if there was an the intuition of politics. Donald Trump had a great take. Grab sound bite number eight. This is the Trumpster this morning on Fox & Friends.

TRUMP: It was a great night for Mexico as usual. You know, this country, the whole thing is ridiculous, but it was a great night and very unexpected, a great night for Mexico. This guy kept getting up and up and up. I said, you know, what’s he doing, he’s walking away with all the gold. Was it that good? I don’t hear that, but it was certainly a big night for them.

RUSH: A big night for Mexico. Even Sean Penn, when giving the award to the director for the Oscar, the best picture, said, “Who gave this son-of-a-gun his green card?” Only he didn’t say son-of-a-gun. He said b-i-itch. Now, supposedly they’re good friends and they’re good buddies and tell insulting jokes to each other all the time when Rudy Giuliani isn’t around to hear it, and there was no offense taken or any of that.

There were disguised political moments throughout the night. I thought Rudy would get hit a couple times last night, but he didn’t, and we’ll have more on that as the program unfolds before your very eyes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, the other big political item of the night — and I kind of perked up at it ’cause I thought it’s a little bit out of place. I thought, been there, done that. I said, “What’s with this?” There’s an actress out there, and her name is Patricia Arquette. She won the best supporting female actress for her role in the movie Boyhood. Okay, now I have seen Patricia Arquette in Boardwalk, and Patricia Arquette, she’s got a great voice.

You know, I, El Rushbo, am a student of voices, and hers is a really unique voice. I mean, everybody’s voice is unique, but she knows how to use it. She uses it as a weapon, as ammunition, as a tool. And she’s starring in an upcoming TV series called CSI: Cyber. Now, they’ve spun off another one of the CSI shows, and this one is about cyber, and therefore computer fraud and this kind of thing. The pilot for this was an actual episode of CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, whatever the thing that’s set in Las Vegas.

And I liked it. I liked the show, CSI: Cyber. It debuts March 4th. And then I saw this thing last night and said, “Aw, darn it, why did she have to do this?” Now I don’t know that I want to watch CSI: Cyber. And I was looking forward to watching CSI: Cyber. Well, she went up there and she started just shouting about women’s rights. She just started shouting about equal rights and made it look like women are the most discriminated against. Now, in Hollywood it’s true. She had a point about Hollywood. Women are underpaid in Hollywood compared to men, and she had a point on Hillary.

You know Hillary, when she was a senator, the women on Hillary’s staff did indeed make 72 cents for every dollar that a man made. So here’s the relevant sound bite from Patricia Arquette. It goes by in 20 seconds. She’s yelling and screaming out there and if you didn’t see this, this whole sound bite has been hijacked by Meryl Streep. ‘Cause what happened, did you see it, Dawn? Did you watch it? Did you see it, Brian? Ah, you’ve got a kid. No way. So she says what she says, yells and screams, not quite Hillary screeching, but she got close. And she read it, she had it all typed out and written, she put her glasses on and read the thing and was nervous and out of breath.

But when she got to the pay off, the camera cut to Meryl Streep, who is always in the front row — did you know what? I was shocked when I found out Meryl Streep’s only won three Oscars. I thought she won 73. I thought Meryl Streep got an Oscar every year, sometimes five. I was shocked she only has three. Three? She’s up there every year it seems like.

Anyway, as soon as Patricia Arquette delivered the money line, Meryl Streep just popped up like she was a jack-in-the-box, started applauding and high-fiving and fist bumping, and as far as the low-information voters today are concerned it’s Meryl Streep who said it. Patricia Arquette’s comments have been totally hijacked, if you saw it, by Meryl Streep. Here’s the sound bite.

ARQUETTE: To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.

RUSH: Bam. Cut to Meryl Streep, she is outta her chair. Jennifer Lopez is right next to her going nuts, but Streep took over the screen at that point and just starts fist bumping and high-fiving and shouting, and everybody forgot about Patricia Arquette. By the way, that voice, that’s not her professional voice. I mean, I complimented her voice, it’s unique. That, she was just shouting, and you heard her out of breath. I’m out of breath listening to that. (breathing hard) Man, gotta take a breath here. (interruption) What were you gonna say, Snerdley? What was it?

Oh, it had everything in the world to do with — you remember Amy Pascal who got canned at Sony? (interruption) Well, yeah, but she found out that she was making much less than her co-CEO, and there was some other in those e-mails, in that hack, who was it? Some other female actress, I can’t remember who it was, but it was also documented that the women, at least being paid by Sony, are being paid much less than the men.

Patricia Arquette was really talking about women in Hollywood and women on Hillary Clinton’s staff, as I found out. In the rest of the culture and society, I don’t think it’s as big a problem as it used to be, equal pay, but this felt like a throwback. This is something I felt like I could have heard in the seventies, and here it is 2015.

This is in the Washington Free Beacon: “Hillary Clinton portrays herself as a champion of women in the workforce, but women working for her in the U.S. Senate were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of her Senate yearsÂ’ salary data. During those years, the median annual salary for a woman working in ClintonÂ’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man, according to the analysis of data compiled from official Senate expenditure reports. The analysis compiled the annual salaries paid to staffers –”

See, this is what I love. It’s always the left’s up there standing up, yelling, whining, moaning, bellyaching, and when you find out who it is they’re mad at, it’s themselves. Sony was underpaying women. Now here’s Hillary underpaying women. But there’s Patricia Arquette, the poor woman got her whole moment hijacked by Meryl Streep. It was amazing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Warning. I’m gonna stick with the subject of the Oscars here for a minute, but it’s not about that, it’s about economics. It’s a lesson. It’s a teachable moment. I’m not delving into pop culture discussion of movies and stuff like that.

Patricia Arquette was in the movie Boyhood where she played a single mom raising a kid, and that is what makes her an expert on income inequality. Don’t forget that. Actresses who play farmer wives, for example, become experts on problems on the farm. So Patricia Arquette playing a single mom raising a kid in the movie Boyhood now makes her an expert on income equality. Listen to this bite again. There’s something in here that I found somewhat curious.

ARQUETTE: To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights.

RUSH: All right, stop the tape. To every woman (panting) to every woman (panting) who gave birth. Did she just diss women who’ve had abortions? You don’t hear this. That’s a mistake, it’s a faux pas. I’m sure she didn’t intend it, but you don’t hear this kind of reference in Hollywood, particularly at the Oscars, honoring women who’ve given birth. That’s kind of the opposite of what happens there. What Meryl Streep did, Meryl Streep literally hijacked Patricia Arquette’s moment. And she knew it. Do not think that that was unbridled enthusiasm.

Look, Meryl Streep’s in the front row. She knows a camera when she sees it, obviously. She knows when the red light on the camera is on. She knows it. There’s a body watch camera on Meryl Streep. She knows this. I mean, she popped up at the right moment, and the director cut right to her reaction. In the movie business, that is called stealing focus. There is an actual term for it. Stealing focus. And it’s taboo. It’s considered bush league. Now, you won’t hear that said about Meryl Streep because Meryl Streep has won 73 Oscars and speaks 115 languages with 1,400 different accents, not to mention the dialects, so you just don’t attack her.

Now, here’s the economics lesson. Sean Penn last night said, when he presented the best movie (imitating Penn), “It’s about the movies. It’s not about the money they make. It’s not about this,” and he might have been talking about in terms of the awards, but it is about the money they make. That’s why they do this. It’s all about the money they just like any other business is. And there’s a reason women are paid less than men in Hollywood. There’s a reason for this, a market reason for it. It has nothing to do with discrimination. It has nothing to do with sexism or anything else. Do you know what it is?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Do you know the reason? Do you know why women in Hollywood, actresses, are paid less than men? Do you know why they make less than men? It’s not sexism. It isn’t bigotry. It isn’t the casting couch. It’s box office. And don’t get mad at me for saying it. I’m just telling you the way it is. Women in Hollywood don’t make as much as men because they are not equal in draw.

Folks, these are market research numbers. I mean, it’s their business to know this. They focus group this stuff, they research this stuff. It is all about the money. When Sean Penn goes out there and says (imitating Penn), “Hey, you know what? It’s just about the movies. At the end of the day it’s about the movies. It’s not about how much money they make. It’s not about how over budget they are.” He may be talking about in terms of the awards show. But for the people that run the business, it is all about the movie, and they’re not gonna overpay for people that don’t — and they don’t get it right all the time. They overpay all kinds of people in Hollywood. They probably underpay people in Hollywood, but they try to get it as close as they can, and it’s box office, and it’s who draws and who doesn’t, and it’s just the way it is.

Male stars are bigger box office than female stars. Now, if you want to condemn American culture for that, then you have at it. If you want to say we’re a racist country because moviegoers are more attracted to movies with male stars than they are female star, have at it, you’re on your own. I’m making no comment on that. I’m just telling you this is what Hollywood market research indicates. It’s just the way it is.

Now, obviously people are gonna try to make it out to be sexism and racism, but these are all liberals, how in the world can this be? I mean, the liberals are the ones that are running around raising all hell about this. The liberals are the ones running around accusing us and everybody else of income inequality, and it’s their own house that’s guilty. It’s their own industry.

Look at Hillary. Hillary paid the women on her staff, these are official numbers. It’s not somebody’s wild guess. The women on her staff made 72% of what men made. And yet these liberals are running around — this is the point of all of last week when I spent a lot of time telling you why it mattered that all of these federal agencies wanted to be in charge of what you eat and take every control of your life as possible. They’re the ones that think you’re imperfect. They’re the ones that think you don’t know what to do in decision making. You’re the ones that don’t have the smarts to take care of yourselves. You don’t have the judgment, you don’t spend your money right. They’re the ones that have all the answers.

They’re the only ones, by the way, that can ever get us to this perfect utopia. That’s what they believe. They run around, they make all these allegations, and you find out that all of this injustice is happening right inside their own homes, right inside their own businesses, while they point fingers at us and everybody else for being imperfect, for being racist, for being sexist, for being prejudicial. Whenever the spotlight turns inward and shines the light of truth on these people, we find out what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

And as liberals, I have a question. Since we now know and it’s documented that male stars in Hollywood make more than female stars, that equals what? Why, that’s income inequality. Why, that’s the unequal and unfair redistribution of resources. I mean, there are X-amount of dollars coming into Hollywood every year based on the production, based on the movies and everything that goes along with it, and men are getting a greater percentage of it than women. Why don’t the men give it back?

Why don’t the men, as good liberals, why don’t the male actors, to show that they’re good liberals and that they’re all about fairness and that they are devoted to equality, why don’t male stars say, “I am not going to do this movie unless my female co-star earns as much as I do, even if that means I will reduce my demand.” Why don’t they do that? They’re the leaders. They’re the ones with all the answers. They’re the big critics. They’re the ones that recognize racism all over the place, these libs. They’re the ones that recognize sexism all over the place. They’re the ones that are launching constant, never-ending allegations at us, against us, for all this.

So why don’t they take the lead? Now that we know that women are underpaid in Hollywood, at least as compared to men, why don’t these sensitive, aware, devoted-to-equality male actors take the lead on this? Patricia Arquette showed the way. Meryl Streep popped up and shouted her agreement. Male stars need to actively say to the studios and producers, “I’m not gonna do this unless my female co-star earns as much as I do. And if I have to give back 20% of what you’ve offered me so that my female co-star could make as much as I do in this movie, then that’s what I will do.”

Until they do that, shut up. Until Hollywood fixes its own house, until Hollywood can make itself the exemplar of perfection, as it’s demanding from everybody else, and Lord knows they tout themselves, oh, they’re great storytellers, they’re great influencers, they inspire, you hear ’em all during the award show. The art and how much it inspires. What I saw last night was nothing more than an endless parade of misery, yet again receiving awards for it, endless misery here, triumphing over misery, being mired in misery, everybody’s miserable. The constant liberal state. Everybody’s miserable, everybody’s unhappy, everybody’s agitated, and here’s who portrayed it the best. Here’s who inspired us to be miserable better than anybody else did tonight.

But I still think that the men have a long way to go. If they’re that much overpaid, give it back in the name of equality, in the name of sameness, and, by all means, in the name of fairness.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I know there are exceptions to everything. Like look, Hollywood will make a chick flick now and then. Fifty Shades of Grey. Chick flick. But what did they do? They went and found a relatively unknown actor. By “relatively,” I mean, it’s not Meryl Streep in there. Not that it would be, but it’s a relatively unknown actress who did not command big bucks and a relatively unknown actor from Northern Ireland in Jamie Dornan. It’s all about the money, Sean.

Anyway, to the phones we go, folks, kicking off brand-new week broadcast excellence. Rush Limbaugh, to Macon, Georgia. This is Bill. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you doing?

RUSH: Very well, sir. I’m glad you called. Thank you.

CALLER: Thank you. Amy Pascal is paid what she’s paid not because she’s a woman. She’s paid what she’s paid because of what she or whoever negotiated for her negotiated. She is an executive. The people at that level and a lot of nonexecutive jobs are paid that way. The companies will not pay you what you’re worth. They’re gonna hire the best talent at the lowest price, and if you under-negotiate yourself and you take what they offer you, you’re gonna get paid at a lower rate. I’m finding that out after 32 years in the military. I’m considered an executive. I’m 49, I’m getting ready to retire next week, and I’m learning all kinds of things. One of the things that they’re telling us in our transition is, like I said, companies are gonna hire the best talent they can at the lowest price. So if Amy Pascal’s paid more than her male colleagues, it’s her responsibility.

RUSH: As a generic rule, that’s true, but there are exceptions to everything. Depending on cycles that we find ourselves in, certain employees can name their price, depending on the need the business has for whatever a particular employee does and whether or not the employee’s the best and how many other options employee or potential employee has. But as a general rule, you’re right.

Labor costs are the biggest item in any business’s balance sheet, and they want to pay ’em as little as they can get away with. It’s just standard operating procedure. Compensation, what people get paid is one of the most misunderstood elements of American life, I think. Now, look at what Bill just said here. Amy Pascal, she just got blown out of Sony. It was her account, mainly, that was hacked. Although everybody’s was, her account was, I mean, really, really hacked.

Virtually every embarrassing e-mail that she hoped never to be seen was seen. But one of the things there is, she was the co-CEO. There was a male CEO that ran the business side. She ran the studio and production side, and she was making considerably less than Michael Lyndon, the co-CEO. Now, Bill’s point is that it’s not innate discrimination. It is whoever her agent was, or whoever negotiated for her did not get the best deal that could have been gotten, obviously, if another guy, co-CEO, got more.

You never know. That could be true.

It could be the employee left money on the table. It could be the employee didn’t care as much, wanted the job, wanted the day-to-day more. The money was not as important as it was to others. It’s different, unless you’re in a union. This is the point. Compensation is different from person to person to person, and that’s one of the most misunderstood subjects, I think, in American economics. There are a lot of misunderstood things in economics.

I don’t believe, for example, in… Now, on the surface of this, you’re gonna disagree with me probably. But the concept of “overpaid,” I’m not really sure it exists. It may be you think of an athlete, say an Alex Rodriguez, “There’s no way he’s worth $25 million when you compare it to a teacher who barely makes $60,000!” You’d sit there, and you’re gonna make a judgment on which is more important. Well, that’s a dangerous game to play. More important to who?

Whoever’s paying Alex Rodriguez $25 million is, A, either stupid, or, B, really thinks that’s what Rodriguez is worth, or was at the time the deal was made. As far as the Yankees are concerned or the Rangers or whatever team pays it, they have made a decision that that money is gonna come back to them once, twice, maybe three times. Then it’s going to be worth it. Very few employers actually throw money away.

As I said, there are exceptions to everything. Not every employer is brilliant. Not every manager makes every compensation decision correctly. But you are worth what you can get somebody to pay you. That’s what it boils down to. You are worth as much as you can convince somebody to pay you. So when you start talking about somebody being overpaid at whatever dollar amount? Well, not to whoever’s paying it.

For some reason, whoever’s paying it thinks he’s got value there. To me, it’s a real fascinating subject, revolving around the employer-employee relationship and the fact that most employees many never even fully understand the value they really have. Because it’s largely a defensive relationship, and sometimes… (interruption) What? Meaning the boss has all the power. The employee is always on defense. If you get too aggressive, you’re gonna get canned. It’s a defensive position, because it’s not the position of power, and I think a lot of employees totally misunderstand the power they have. It’s ingrained in us, though. We’re raised that way. But it doesn’t have to be the case.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Okay, here’s Jim in southeast Missouri. Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Twenty-one-year-listener from the Sikeston/Cape Girardeau area, and I’d be remiss in my duties as a listener if I didn’t tell you how much my five- and 10-year-old children have enjoyed listening to the first-through-third parts of the Rush Revere series. It’s been fantastic.

RUSH: Thank you very much, Jim. I really appreciate that.

CALLER: I kind of want to, I guess, dovetail into the Oscars now. I haven’t watched it in years. You know, it’s the same old point, people who like the smell of their own flesh wounds, I guess, so I don’t watch anymore, but I picked up on Ms. Arquette’s comments about equality for women. It’s a thing that’s bothered me for years. It’s a part of the hypocritical game. They talk about equality, we all know it means same pay or some of the same jobs as men, but why not extend this out to true, real equality where women who maybe want to be in the front lines of combat, we can have all women apply — or register with Selective Service. Perhaps we could have women be treated in divorce custody cases the same as a man, no preferential treatment. Maybe they get the same punishment for cocaine sentencing, and, furthermore, let’s say Mary Kay Letourneau, when she got probation for having sex with a 13-year-old student years ago, why not treat her like a man? I mean, that’s what true equality ought to be about, shouldn’t it?

RUSH: Yes, but, you see, women, as minorities forever, are allowed more latitude and leeway in doing things that are not kosher, unconventional, or in violation of the law. And there’s a little bit more compassion and understanding. You talk about the front lines in combat. Of course they had to change standards for women to qualify. I mean the physical differences alone are what they are, can’t deny ’em. Same thing for women firefighters, they had to change the standards.

The point is when you start making these concessions, it never ends. I remember back in the seventies when I actually took my first stab at doing a talk show at a radio station in Kansas City. I played music so it wasn’t a full-fledged talk show. It was a brand-new FM station and it was a totally experimental format. But I remember that affirmative action was one of the big deals then, and I remember having on some affirmative action aficionado who was explaining the whys and wherefores of it. It was to make amends for past transgressions, among other things. It was to level the playing field.

I said, “Okay, well, when does that end? At what point are you gonna say that we’ve made amends? At what point are the past transgressions going to have been equalized?”

He said, “Oh, never.”

I said, “What?”

“Oh, never.” He was very honest. This was back when people were willing to be open and honest and up front. Political awareness back then in terms of things like talk radio just didn’t exist. So this guy was totally at ease telling me there wasn’t gonna be any end to it. So I said, “You mean to tell me the purpose of affirmative action is not to make amends and it’s not to address grievances, that’s just your selling point?”

He said, “For all intents and purposes, yeah.” It was to forever make the playing field unlevel, because this was the price America had to pay for the way it was founded. America had to pay this price, and it was always for the rest of its days going to pay the price. So all of these concessions that are made to the grievance industry never, ever get anywhere near solving the supposed so-called problem.

You can find examples of male-female inequality everywhere you want to go, and you can find many examples where it is men on the short end of the stick. One area would be child custody. Another area would be divorce court. There’s any number of places where you can make the case that the advantages are with women. And you’d have just as many people shrieking that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that. But this whole notion of equality, that’s what’s bogus; it’s not possible. There’s no such thing.

Just like fairness. Fairness is ephemeral. (interruption) Women are victims when they get divorced? Well, women are victims, period. I mean, that’s the whole point. That’s the justification for all of this. Hell, pregnancy makes women a victim. It makes ’em sick, gives them a disease, if you listen to the right people. Jim, I appreciate the call.

This is Greg in Raleigh, North Carolina. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Good.

CALLER: Long-term listener, second-time caller. I’m a business owner and I’d like to give you my perspective as to why the income inequality is nonsense. Now, I own a small company and I employ between 20 and 40 people depending on the time of year it is, and 80% of ’em are men. Now, currently I pay all my staff exactly the same based on the job that they do. But if I could pay women 72 cents on the dollar for what I pay men, I would fire all of my male employees and hire all women. And guess who would get a raise as a result? Me. I’m just a small employer. Again, I only employ 20, 40 people. Can you imagine the savings in a big company like Sass or Blacks or IBM? So if they’re paying men a hundred thousand a year and they could pay women $72,000 a year, well, Good Lord, that’s a $28,000 savings per employee. I’d fire all the men and hire women.

RUSH: There you go, folks. Straight up and down, 100% economic common sense. If you can get women for $28,000 a year less than men, fire the men, give yourself, the business owner, a raise. But no, see, they want to tell you they exist because it’s discrimination, because you, Greg, you are part of the group conducting the War on Women and you’re purposely underpaying them because you know they’ll accept it, and you are favoring the men.

So what they’re really telling you is that you enjoy overpaying the men. If somebody will do the job for $72,000 a year, you’re an idiot to pay somebody a hundred thousand to do it. That’s the rule of thumb, folks. Look, you may not like hearing it that way, but if somebody will do the job for $72,000, it’s the same job from person to person, you’re an idiot if you’re paying somebody a hundred. This whole thing is hogwash anyway. These stats, once again, don’t mean as much as they could because they’re static stats. They don’t explain the dynamics of any of this.

But I also like my idea, and let me rephrase it, as it particularly relates to Hollywood. If the men in Hollywood, male leads, are being paid that much more than women, and Hollywood is the citadel of liberalism, where there is utopia, or we’re soon to have it, where there’s equality and fairness and equity and all this, then isn’t it incumbent on the men to give back and to refuse that much more money than the women are being paid? Not only would that be good feminism, that would be chivalrous.

So here you have the studio executive casting the movie, and he offers the male lead a million dollars. And the female lead is gonna get $720,000. Well, that’s unfair. That’s unequal. That’s bias. It’s discrimination. It’s sexism. It’s bigotry. The male lead should go to the studio honcho and say, I’m not gonna let you get away with this unfairness. I demand that you only pay me $720,000 a year so that what the female lead and I make are equal.

Isn’t it incumbent on the male liberals of Hollywood to fix this themselves? I mean, what business do they have standing up bellyaching at us, pointing a finger at us for? We’re supposedly committing all these grievances and atrocities against women, where right in Hollywood we know that men are paid much more than women. There are market reasons for it, as we discussed.