RUSH: You know who the most trusted man in America is today? What do you think, Brian? Who’s the most trusted man in America today? (interruption) I am! Exactly right. Who told us that Walter Klondike was ‘the most trusted man in America’? Was it not CBS itself who told us that? I, El Rushbo, am the most trusted man in America. I am America’s Real Anchorman. We do. We do the job the mainstream media ostensibly used to do. There’s not even any pretense anymore that the mainstream media is the media or is even doing a job. They are not working. Richard Cohen in the Washington Post today: ‘What has come to be called the Obama Paradox is not a paradox at all.
‘Voters lack faith in him making the right economic decisions because, as far as they’re concerned, he hasn’t. He went for health care reform, not jobs. He supported the public option, then he didn’t. He’s been cold to Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu and then all over him like a cheap suit. Americans know Obama’s smart. But we still don’t know him. Before Americans can give him credit for what he’s done they have to know who he is. We’re waiting.’ Well, now, who’s ‘we’? What is Mr. Cohen ostensibly? He’s a journalist. He’s a columnist for the Washington Post. We have somebody who professes to be a journalist writing a piece telling us he doesn’t know who Obama is, when we do. We know who Obama is. We know what Obama is. We know the fraud. We know the contempt he has for the country.
We know everything there is to know about Obama. Mr. Cohen still doesn’t? Does he really not know or does he just not want to say what he knows? Or is he not interested? Or is he really just upset that Obama’s not doing a good enough job fooling everybody? Is that what his piece is really all about? ‘What has come to be called the Obama Paradox is not a paradox at all. Voters lack faith in him making the right economic decisions because, as far as they’re concerned, he hasn’t.’ I thought we were the rubes. I thought we were the idiots. I thought we’re the ones that don’t know what’s going on, we were the ones too stupid to make up our own minds about anything.
We need the Richard Cohens of the world to have it all explained for us and, in fact, to do the explaining. And then here is a journalist — a giant, a columnist at the Washington Post — but we still don’t know Obama. Well, Mr. Cohen, find out! That’s your job. I know who he is. I know more about him than you do. Maybe you’re not interested in who he really is or maybe your real concern is to cover up who he really is. ‘Before Americans can give him credit for what he’s done they have to know who he is. We’re waiting.’ Oh, it’s up to Obama to define himself for you, Mr. Cohen? And then once he does that to your satisfaction, case closed? This is not the first time we’ve heard this. Let’s go back. October 29th, 2008. This is prior to the election in November that year. It’s the Charlie Rose Show and he’s talking to Tom Brokaw of Meet the Press.
ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.
BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.
ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.
BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?
BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.
ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.
BROKAW: Two of them! I don’t know what books he’s read.
ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know.
RUSH: Find out, Tom. You’re the anchor of NBC’s Nightly News. ‘There’s a lot about Obama we don’t know.’ I know a lot about him, and the majority of Americans now know a lot about Obama. A majority of Americans knew more about him than they ever were informed of by the so-called mainstream media. So now Richard Cohen joins the refrain. ‘Who is he? Come on, man, tell us. Tell us who you are.’ You guys are journalists. That’s what you tell us. Your job is to find out who these people are. It’s called ‘accountability.’ It’s called ‘telling truth to power.’ It’s called ‘investigative reporting.’ It’s called being curious who the guy is, but you’re not curious about who the guy is ’cause until he gets in trouble, you really don’t care who he is. He’s just the next one to represent what you want, to finally get everything done.
Now he’s run into trouble, now run a little cover action here, ‘Well, who is he? Well, we’re waiting.’ Well, as usual, the ruling class is a bunch of abject dunces. There’s a song out there. Who sang it? Harold Melvin the Blue Notes would be Teddy Pendergast: ‘If you don’t know me by now you’ll never, never, never, never, ever know me.’ Well, Obama ought to be laughing that and singing that to every damn reporter in the White House pressroom: ‘If you don’t know me by now, you will never, never know me.’ It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. Wrong. Because there is no journalism. Today what we have is the first revision. Every day is a revision of fact. Every day is a cover-up of the truth. Every day is an attempt to confuse, obfuscate, and distract people from the truth.
Not only of who Obama is, but of his policies — and not just Obama, but Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s and Barney Frank’s and Chris Dodd’s and you name it. Now on the off chance the media really doesn’t know who Obama is, maybe it’s ’cause he’s nothing. Maybe it’s because he’s nothing that he claims to be. Maybe there is some disappointment. I have no doubt that Cohen and some of these people are a little disappointed. I mean, there was supposed to be a panacea out there about now. There was supposed to be a utopia. This guy was supposed to be universally loved and adored. He was supposed to be messiah times two by now, and it isn’t happening. So who is this guy? They still feel the need to circle the wagons, but what they’re doing is protecting themselves.
Because when they protect themselves, they’re protecting each other, and they are by definition protecting Obama and the agenda. So, my friends, there is no journalism. ‘You might want to say,’ Ed Morrissey opines today at his blog at HotAir.com, ‘the entire American media sold us the Obama bill of goods.’ Well, I’m going to tell you something. There are a whole lot of people on our side who bought the bill of goods. It didn’t take a whole lot of effort to sell a lot of people the bill of goods because a lot of people are into surface, meaningless, ridiculous things. Like the color of his skin, or like his history, or he went to Harvard, or his ability to speak, or his supposed intelligence. Or they were eager to buy the bill of goods because it was the path of least resistance. It was the path of cowards. Here we had inarguably the most radical leftist ever to seek the presidency. People on our side knew it, and they caved. The left, that’s not a surprise. To sell out the country? Not a surprise. For people on our side to do it, that’s a wake-up call.
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RUSH: Now, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Rose, let’s be honest, shall we? This notion that you don’t know who he is is pure pap. You know exactly who Obama is, which is why you are slavishly supporting him, and why you always have and why you always will. You know exactly who Barack Obama is. You know who he’s always been. Your challenge, your fear is that the rest of the population will find out who he is. That’s what you’re trying to prevent. But it’s too late.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mesa, Arizona, this is Carmen. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: Fine and dandy. Thank you.
CALLER: Good. Congratulations on your wedding.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am a housewife, mother of three from Mesa, Arizona. My husband and I own our own business, self-employed out of our home. And in reference to what you were saying the first hour to these journalists who now say they don’t know who Obama is? We knew. We have been yelling that at our television sets, saying, ‘How can anybody believe this man?’ Just by listening to him speak, we knew who he was. We knew how radical he was. Now, we’re not the smartest people in the world —
RUSH: And they did, too.
CALLER: — and they are supposed to be.
RUSH: No, no, no. Carmen, they did, too. They know who he is.
CALLER: It makes me angry!
RUSH: All this pap from Richard Cohen, ‘Gee, Obama, who are you?’ What they’re afraid of is their job is trying to keep us from finding out who he is. They know who he is. Here losing in that endeavor.
CALLER: It’s amazing to me. It’s just totally amazing. We have friends and family who really supposed to be very smart who voted Democrat for the first time in their lives. My husband and I are sitting here watching each other saying, ‘How could they do this? They’re supposed to be smart people!’ (laughing)
RUSH: Well, we need to redefine smart.
CALLER: Yeaaaah.
RUSH: They probably thought they were doing the right thing. This was, after all, presented to them as something historic, and they wanted to be part of it. And believe me — you know, don’t discount this. There are a lot of people who thought electing ‘the first black president’ would be the end of racial strife in America. Smart people. There were smart people who actually thought that. But such is not the case.