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RUSH: Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Florida Marlins: Suspended for five games for praising Fidel Castro. The American left doesn’t understand how one can be penalized for that. (interruption) Well, Snerdley… Look, I too think we’re getting so far out of hand with what people say here and how we react and how we want to punish them. It’s long gone now. No matter where you turn, the speech police exist. They’re in the media. They’re in the corner grocery store. They’re in the bar. The speech police are everywhere. The speech police want to punish people more for the words they say than for the acts they commit, which may in fact be criminal in some cases.


But if you’re gonna praise Castro, the last thing you do is do it in Miami! When you manage the Florida Marlins, you got a brand-new ballpark and you need bodies in there — you need fans — the last thing you do is go praising Castro! The closest Ozzie got to being truthful is when he said, “Look, what I really admire about the guy is that everybody’s trying to get rid of him for 60 years and he’s still there.” You do have to admire that in a way. Guillen, in his own right, has been lopped — he’s been fired — a lot of times. And anybody who has been fired admires anybody who can hang in there for 60 years and out live the people who want to get rid of ’em. Totally understandable.

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RUSH: If you turn on the radio today, turn on the television, how many times in a day do you hear somebody say — who is an analyst or a guest on a show being asked a question — “I don’t believe somebody said that.” I was driving to work yesterday and I had a sports show on and they had some guest. I can’t hear so I don’t know who the guest was couldn’t understand the name could barely understand what the guy was saying, but the question was, “So what do you think about what Ozzie Guillen said?”

And the guest said, “I can’t believe it!” I said, “Who is this guy? Why does it matter what this guy thinks about what Ozzie Guillen said,” or Guil-len? Speech police are everywhere! You know, Fidel Castro (speak of Castro) would be pleased with the speech police in this country. Fidel’s gotta be looking at what happened here and saying, “You know what? It’s not all bad up there. My buddy Ozzie has to take the hit here, but the speech police, why, they’re doing a great job in the United States!”

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RUSH: Raul in Miami. Raul, great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Pleasure, Rush, what an honor.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I’m just calling to complain about you comparing us to Fidel, because we want Ozzie Guillen to leave the team. We don’t point nuclear missiles at the United States —

RUSH: Wait a second, Raul, I think you’re laboring under a misunderstanding. What did you say I did?

CALLER: You compared us to Fidel.

RUSH: How did I do that? I did not mean it. How did you hear that?

CALLER: Because you were saying that if we ask for Mr. Guillen’s firing, we are doing the same thing that Fidel does. All we’re doing, as the owners of the stadium, which the county imposed on us to the tune of $2 billion —

RUSH: Oh, I understand this. It was a dumb thing for Ozzie to say. Are you an Ozzie fan?

CALLER: Of course not.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: He’s been having these problems forever.

RUSH: I said Fidel would admire the speech police.

CALLER: But we’re not acting as speech police. We’re acting as the owners of the stadium. We don’t want our tenant —

RUSH: Yeah, but I wasn’t even thinking of you. I’m thinking of the management of the team. I mean, they had to suspend the guy. What I said was, the American left is scratching its head. They can’t figure out what Ozzie said that’s wrong. They love Castro. I was making —

CALLER: I know that, and in fact, we admire his love of Fidel so much, what we want him to do is to resign his ten million dollar salary and go to Cuba and play for Fidel. I think that would solve everything.

RUSH: I do, too. Send him down to Havana, let him manage, and then when he tries to defect, nobody take him.

CALLER: As an aside, Rush, I know you’re a Cards fan, but Mike Gonzalez, the famous Cuban coach of the Cards —

RUSH: I’m with you, man. That’s all you need to know.

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RUSH: Look, the only reason I keep pronouncing Ozzie’s name as “Gieshen” instead of Guillen is because I heard it pronounced that way back when he was the manager of the Chicago White Sox. It stuck with me, so occasionally, you know, I use that pronunciation, and it’s probably incorrect. Ozzie Guillen. Let’s not forget something. Ozzie Guillen, I think when he was the manager of the White Sox also attacked — and he’s Venezuelan. He loves Hugo Chavez. Ozzie Guillen loves dictators. He fashions himself as one. What he really admires about them is the same thing that Sean Penn admires about these guys. They’re jealous of the power they’ve got.

People ask me all the time, how come these liberal Hollywood types have such great admiration for Castro and Hugo Chavez? Is because nobody gets rid of ’em. They have all this power. They admire that, and Ozzie as much as admitted it in the run-up here to getting caught. (imitating Ozzie) “Well, what I really meant to say was, this guy, 50 years down there, admire this guy, he’s hung in there.” And Ozzie has been fired a bunch of times. Of course he admires this about Fidel Castro. But Ozzie Guillen has attacked Arizona any number of times for its immigration policies.


Now, I don’t remember any outrage about that. All Arizona is trying to do is enforce the country’s laws.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

We got two sound bites from Ozzie. This morning in Miami, Marlins Park. The Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, press conference to talk about his five-game suspension for saying he loved and respected Fidel Castro. Here is a portion of what he said, two sound bites.

GUILLEN: Very stupid comments, because when you a sportsman, you shouldn’t be involved with politics. And politics have nothing to do with sports, and I was very stupid, very naive about the comment. And that is the reason why I am here, because I wanna try to make this thing better and people know exactly what I feel.

RUSH: Which is what? Well, let’s listen to the second one because I don’t think he cleared anything up there. All he said was that when you’re a sportsman, you shouldn’t be involved with politics. That’s an entirely different subject about which I totally disagree, by the way. Being in sports I don’t think should mean you can’t talk about politics. I understand why they don’t want to, but that’s a whole other subject. In fact, that’s a real sore spot with me. What do you do call those things? Not bugaboo, there’s a word for it. That’s one of my pet peeves. Here’s the second Ozzie sound bite. Let’s see if this one makes some sense.

GUILLEN: I was making stupid comments. You learn from mistakes. You learn from mistakes and I hope this is the biggest mistake so far in my life, I make. And when you make a mistake this big, you can’t sleep. You constantly think about it for days. If I don’t learn from this, then I will call myself a dumb. But, not yet. I’m 48 years old, then we can sit back here and you can call me dumb. Because I will take that one. Right now I can’t take it because I am not dumb. You know what I mean. I know I did the wrong thing, but I don’t consider myself a dumb.

RUSH: Well, okay, I don’t know if this is helping him or not with the offended group in south Florida. He’s not dumb yet but he might be, depends on what he says next, after four days. He says he’s having trouble sleeping. I’m not dumb yet. I’m admitting my big mistake, but I might make it again, in which case you can call me dumb. That’s what I’m hearing here. I don’t think he’s got anything to worry about. There’s always ESPN. If this thing with the Marlins, if this gig doesn’t pan out, there’s always ESPN. I think Ozzie first claimed he was mistranslated from the Spanish. And that didn’t fly, obviously. How do you get mistranslated when you go over and over how much you love and respect Fidel Castro. But speaking of dumb, how smart are you to say this as the manager of the Miami Marlins in south Florida.

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