RUSH: Here’s Gil in Philadelphia. Great to have you on the program, EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s good to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I have a very sincere question for you, Rush.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to you for a long time. I’m a devoted fan. We’ve spoken several times before. My question is, how do you do it? How do you sit there day after day — it’s one thing when the MoveOn.org or the media or someone else gets it wrong. I mean I understand their motive. I mean they’re a bunch of idiots anyway and they’re liars like you have so often taught us.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But how do you take it when we, your devoted listeners, those who really get it call you and accuse you of saying things you’ve never said, having innuendos you’ve never had and everybody seems to know better how to run your show than you do —
RUSH: Wait, what happened. What made you have this reaction?
CALLER: Well, I listen to it all the time. I mean last week you had that one woman — or is it two weeks ago — the woman called in and she’s telling you how you lost it and I forget what her issue was, you’ve gone soft or something, or you’re not — oh, I know what it was — you’re not taking Obama to the cleaners the way you should, remember?
RUSH: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: And now today. I love these people. These are my fellow Dittoheads.
RUSH: Oh, you’re talking about the guy who said I should stop the satire because stupid liberals don’t get it, they believe it.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I’ll explain this. She wants to know how I deal with it, how I take it, and I’ll easily explain this when we come back from the break. Thanks, Gil, very much. Appreciate the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, what was her question, how do I take it day after day? You know, I get this question in one form or another somewhat often. Usually the question comes in the form, “How do you deal with all of the baseless lying, misinterpreted criticism of you?” And her point was, “Look, it’s one thing when it comes from the left, MoveOn.org or the mainstream media, which is purposely trying to discredit you. But how do you take it when supposed loyal listeners take you to task?” One thing she didn’t say but she was going to say ’cause she told Snerdley she was gonna say it, that there’s nobody more clear and articulate about what I believe than I am. I mean from start to stop, when I tell you why I think something, you don’t have any questions left. You might disagree with me, but you don’t have any questions about why I think what I think, and few people even have that question.
That’s why sometimes I hold back, because when I say something about something, there’s not much left to be said about it, hence no reason for callers. It is frustrating at times, ladies and gentlemen, to be such a noted communicator, a heralded communicator. It is frustrating when some people don’t hear something that’s right in front of them, but I know why it happens. This has really been an educational thing for me, not just this program, but throughout the whole course of my life, how people talk across one another. Some people are totally emotionally invested in a subject. When I’m invested in it intellectually, I live in Realville. Most people don’t live in Realville, Literalville. Most people don’t really want to go there. She was reacting primarily to the first caller of the day who said, “You gotta stop the satire ’cause liberals are believing you. When you talk about how Obama ought to implement in the Middle East all these great policies here, of job loss, rampant inflation and so forth, you gotta stop that because these liberals think you’re agreeing with them.”
I do ask myself, how can somebody hear me — they know I don’t like Obama, they know I disagree with Obama, they hear me praising Obama policies which are destroying the country, and they think I’m advocating it? See, to me the problem is not with me. It’s not up to me to explain that. It’s up to the dunderheads who don’t get. They’re the ones that need to be questioned, and for me to be told I’ve gotta stop doing satire? I’m not gonna dumb down this program. One of the things I’ve always had and utilize every day on this microphone is a profound respect for this audience. I never talk down. I don’t assume that you don’t know anything. I don’t assume you can’t understand anything. If I can understand it, you certainly can as long as you’ve got me explaining it to you.
I know some people are never gonna get satire. That’s the point of it. Folks, the real fun in satire is the irritation that takes place. The real fun much satire is pulling it over on somebody. The parodies, the satire, I absolutely love it. We don’t dumb down here; we smarten up. But I don’t take any of this stuff personally anymore. You can’t. It used to bother me a long, long time ago. I say “talent on loan from God,” and people actually think I am telling other people that I think I am God.
Larry in Clearwater, Florida. Hi, and welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Major dittos, Rush. It’s a pleasure and an honor to finally be speaking with you. I’ve been a longtime listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: And before going on my comment on the president’s speech earlier, I’d just like to pretty much talk about what you just talked about right now, that people don’t understand the way you portray yourself. I listen to you a lot at work, I’ve got the radio on and people come in and they say, “Who you listening to?” “Rush Limbaugh,” and the first words out of their mouth, “He’s an idiot,” or something like that, and I always ask why, and they can never tell me. It’s always name-calling. They can’t articulate a stance —
RUSH: Right. Because they don’t listen. They just have heard me described and they take comfort in that. They don’t want to know. They really wouldn’t dare listen because they don’t want their little worldview shocked.
CALLER: Exactly. And they always accuse me of just being blind and following when in reality they’re the ones that are blind and mindlessly following —
RUSH: That’s exactly right.
CALLER: — and brainwashed.
RUSH: That’s entirely correct.
CALLER: It is the media. I can say that as a victim or kind of a victim myself for lack of a better description. As a child for the longest time I thought I was a Democrat because all the television I used to watch, shows like Family Ties which has strong liberal, you know, Republicans are just nothing but evil, money grubbing, you know, they like to kill baby seals and all that stuff and for the longest time I bought into that, until I took a government class and, you know, they give you little questions, you know, about issues, and I realized that I’m an evil Republican. And it’s amazing how much, the subliminal messages going through —
RUSH: Most people are sheep. Most people are not independent thinkers. This is why indoctrination in the school system works. You are probably somewhat unique in that you came to a realization on your own that what you thought you were, you weren’t. And you have the courage to admit it to yourself, which I’m sure kind of threw your world upside down for a while, because you had a lifetime belief that you now say to yourself, “Gosh, I’ve been wrong,” and nobody wants to be wrong. So you’re pretty rare in that regard.
The dirty little secret, folks, and you’re not gonna understand this. I don’t want everybody understanding me. That’s right. There wouldn’t be a lot of fun in that. Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood by a vast majority of people. But I don’t want everybody, ’cause there’s a lot of put-on here, Snerdley. You know, thank God there are people who get the parody and who are entertained by it. For example, one of the greatest lessons in this that I can offer happened within the last two weeks.
Barack Obama single-handedly killed Osama Bin Laden. I’m listening to the speech on that Sunday night where Obama, I, me, my 35 or 45 times. His plan. I’m watching the media reports, only Obama thought of every contingency. The military guys in the room were not smart enough to think of all the contingencies. Only Obama was able, only Obama knew the pitfalls of every choice. Only Obama knew we only had one shot at this. They wanted everybody to believe this. So I start the program the next day saying it pretty much just like I said it to you just now. To me it is self-evident that it’s ridiculous. It is self-evident that that is pure sophistry, that a guy who doesn’t know the butt end of a gun is the only guy in a room of five-star, four-star military people and top drawer intel people to know how to run an operation at a safe house in Pakistan.
But that’s what they were telling us to believe, so I decided to go right along with it, and I made sure that my voice was as wet with dripping sarcasm as I could make it, and then the cherry on the top, the icing on the cake, the hand-dipped chocolate on top, the Shari’s Berries, I said, “Thank God for President Obama.” And if you remember, everybody in the mainstream for about ten minutes believed it. “My God, even Limbaugh realizes, even Limbaugh said, ‘Thank God for Obama.'” They bought it. I was dripping wet with sarcasm. So the question is, “Okay, why did they believe it?” They have to know intellectually that I’m opposed to Obama on everything, but yet somehow… the reason is they wanted to. They want everybody to think of Obama the way they do. And so all I had to do was use the words. It didn’t matter my tone. It didn’t matter my attitude, just the words. Oh, yeah.
And when I really doubled down on gutsy, ’cause that was their chosen word to describe what Obama did, they bought it. They bought it because they wanted to. All these things I incorporate, I use when planning various ways to treat various discussions, subjects, and topics and so forth. And so, folks, it’s fun. When I say I don’t want everybody understanding me, like Snerdley cocked his head at me like a curious little puppy in there, “What do you mean by that?” I loved the fact that the media bought it for a half day. It’s fun.
In the third hour of the program the first people to get that they’d been had were people at TheHill.com. Took ’em two hours, and there was somebody else who called H.R., I forget, some other website. “You know, I’m reading here what Limbaugh said, but this doesn’t sound right. I need to hear this.” So we made the audio clip available to this reporter, and once he heard it, he got it, and he started chastising his brethren for falling for it. But they fell for it ’cause they wanted to. They wanted everybody to think the same way that they did.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.