Pop Quiz: Which One is the Infamous Michael J. Fox Video?
Click the play buttons on silent video images above and see if you can tell which clip is Rush discussing Michael J. Fox. (*Answer at bottom of the page)
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hey, Koko? A personal message here to the webmaster. Koko, I want you to go back to the archives, and I want you to put up the explanation of the actual Michael J. Fox scenario from last October, since the Drive-Bys are going to be hitting that again and trying to rebuild that. They didn't make it stick last time. They're going to try to use it this time. I know they're coming after me, folks. You don't have to worry about this. They've been coming after me. They've tried everything they can think of. This Michael J. Fox business they continue to get wrong even though all they have to do is go to my website back then or listen to me talk about it on the radio. We spent two hours talking about it on the first day. What they've got is that video, that Dittocam video, and I had seen that commercial that Michael J. Fox ran, which was for Claire McCaskill at that time. I had never seen him this way. He was suffering the symptoms of the disease, Parkinson's disease. I was demonstrating to people what I had seen. I had never seen him this way anywhere, not in any movie, not in any television show, not in any personal appearance. I'd never seen him that way.
We radio broadcasters emulate. We're mimics and so forth, and I'm showing people what I had seen. That video, two or three seconds, got looped to 12 or 15 seconds. They admitted this at MSNBC. They sped it up and they then said I was "making fun of him," which wasn't the case at all. Here was a guy who had been thrust into the political process, and he was running a commercial for Democrat candidates accusing Republican candidates of not caring about people who have incurable diseases. He was saying that Republicans wanted to criminalize people who were working on cures via embryonic stem cells. I don't care who you are and I don't care what your malady, when you enter the political arena and you start -- I'm a Republican -- and you start lying about Republicans and my party, I am going to defend. If you are lying and not telling the truth, I'm going to point that out.
Now, the Democrats use people like this. They used Christopher Reeve and his family; they used Michael J. Fox, because they think they're above criticism. They've got these diseases that we all feel sorry about and we all think, you know, there but for the grace of God go all of us. The Democrats use that as a way of insulating them from any criticism. Therefore they can go on television and read the script that's written for them and lie, mischaracterizing, without criticism. Remember, liberals don't want debate. There is no alternative point of view. Now, all of this, I said. I said, you're going to go on television in a commercial -- and, by the way, the television commercial is videotaped. So they wanted it to appear that way. Whoever put this together, these producers, these directors, they wanted the Michael J. Fox commercials to look the way they did, for a purpose. I just didn't play along with the game of considering all that hands off and untouchable.
You go in the political arena, and you are going to be subject to analysis and criticism. That's what they can't believe that I did. "Why, that's heartless and cold and cruel." They were saying, "Doesn't he have hope?" He can exercise his hope all day. We all have hope. I'd love to get my hearing back. We all have hope. But you don't get to lie in the political arena and not have yourself called on it. That's my only point. So this whole thing was I was "making fun of him," which I wasn't. Michael J. Fox himself in his book [ video | excerpt ] admitted that he manipulated his meds before Senate committee hearings so as to demonstrate these symptoms, to make a connection and an impression on the senators, which I said I can understand. You're trying to get attention. You're trying to draw attention to the disease. You think you need federal funding and assistance for research into a cure. I can understand that. Well, then, if the man admits to having done this, it's not outside the realm of possibility that such things could have happened for the TV commercial, which is what I speculated on -- and when he said later on, "I overmedicated when I did the commercial," I apologized. He said he overmedicated. In other words, he used more medication than he normally does. For whatever reason, I don't know.
Now, this whole thing was blown up and used for a month. It was distorted. It was taken out of context. One of the reasons that I'm confident, folks, when I say I know they're coming after me, is you know the truth, and you and I both know that in order for them to try to make a case out of something I say or do, they have to lie or misrepresent or take it out of context. I'm not a voiceless individual. I have 15 hours a week, and I can respond to it. Many public figures can't. They gotta make the talk show circuit and so forth to explain their case when they are attacked. But I have the truth on my side on all this and I've got 22 million people a week who also know what the truth is. So they're not able to shake your faith in the program because you know exactly what they're doing. So Paula Zahn resurrects this thing as though it happened yesterday, with the same lies and the same distortion, and it is a purposeful -- and it's no accident this was CNN. It was done for the express purpose of putting me in the crosshairs next, while they have this thing going on with Imus.
So all of you are sitting there, "Rush, be on the lookout, man, we love you," folks, I'm never not in the crosshairs of these people. The reason for it is we're effective here. They don't like debate. There is no alternative to liberalism. Yet for 18 and a half years we have demonstrated that there is with facts. They can't deal with it. I don't care if they like me. I don't want to be in their clique. I'm not going to grovel or any of that sort of thing. When you've got the truth on your side and you've got 20 million friends that love you and understand the truth, it's power, folks. I appreciate the concern, but relax. Sit tight. It going to be fun.
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*Answer: The third frame, with Rush in blue shirt, is the Michael J. Fox video.
