RUSH: A little audio to set up the monologue. Interesting from Matt Lauer today on the Today Show, commenting about me and the Michael J. Fox ad.
LAUER: Rush Limbaugh started a lot of controversy when he said perhaps Michael J. Fox was exaggerating or faking these effects of Parkinson’s disease in that ad promoting stem cell research. Didn’t Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking? If Michael Fox goes out there politically and puts himself into the fray, he has to expect to be, you know, taken to account, correct?
RUSH: Whoa! What’s happened here? That is a stand-alone comment. That is the only comment in the Drive-By Media of this type that I have been made aware of. I don’t watch all these people all the time, as you know, I have a life and seek happiness and contentment through most of it and I don’t find it when I expose myself to these people on a regular basis. But there it is again, exaggerating or faking. Never once did I use the word
The neurons in my fertile brain start firing, and I say, you know, he is either exaggerating the symptoms or he hasn’t taken his medication, either/or. That has become: He’s faking it and I was making fun of it. Since then, later that program in the next sound bite, after consulting a bunch of research, found out that he’d written in his own book that he indeed goes off or manipulates his medication when he does public appearances, which I’ve said countless times this week is fine with me. He’s trying to raise consciousness before members of Congress to get funding for research into the disease. I understand how powerful that is. Now it shows up in a political ad for a series of Democrat candidates around the country two weeks before the election. Sorry, folks, I’m a political animal, and red flags raised immediately. A little more media sound bite action, and then I’m going to explain to you what this is really, really all about.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, here’s a little sound bite montage, PMSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell and Joe Scarborough last night.
O’DONNELL: It is the most powerful political advertisement I have ever seen. What Rush Limbaugh has done is raise it about a hundred times more powerful than what it was already.
SCARBOROUGH: Democrats could quite possibly, will most likely win Missouri, and very well could win their control of the United States Senate, and it could all go back to this ad.
RUSH: All right, I’m confident here that we’re going to win this. These guys are both wrong. Lawrence O’Donnell has a history of being wrong. How many indictments in some case did he predict? He’s wrong. Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the writers on the West Wing is wrong. The real perspective on this, when he says I have raised about 100 times more powerful this ad what it was already. That’s good. That’s good! That’s exactly right! That’s what they are upset about. These ads were designed to be little sneakers. These ads were designed long ago. They were conceived long ago. This didn’t just pop up. They just didn’t happen. 
Somebody just didn’t get the idea two weeks ago, “Hey, we need to do something on stem cell research in these states where it’s on the ballot, or is an issue.” They wanted to run these little ads once or twice in these districts and in these states, St. Louis, Missouri, and Kansas City, in Maryland and in other states, and what happened is I blew it up and have made this an entire national issue now on the way they are misleading and lying about what embryonic stem cell research promises. This is not what they wanted to happen.
In addition, what they don’t like about what has happened is that Mark Foley isn’t on the front page and they’re having a little trouble keeping Iraq on the front page because of this flap over this series of ads which were designed to be snuck in there, ladies and gentlemen. They were designed to be little quick hit pieces, get in, get it, and get out and move on to the next state. And this is what I mean, they don’t like it when people fight back against what they do. This ad, the more I think about it is unconscionable, and not because of Michael J. Fox being in it and not because of the way he appears. That is irrelevant to what’s wrong with this ad.
As I say, all of this will be explained to you in great detail in mere moments. Here’s Whoopi Goldberg last night on CNN’s Headline News. The anchor, A. J. Hammer says Whoopi, “Rush Limbaugh just went on his radio show saying he believes Michael J. Fox was exaggerating the symptoms of Parkinson’s for a political ad,” and this continues the purposeful misrepresentation of what I said. He’s either exaggerating or he is off his medications, or he’s acting. They can’t believe that this would ever be said!
So they’ve gotta focus in on the faking, which I never said, exaggerating, all of this, in an attempt to make me the issue. And again, why? They need to discredit me. They don’t have the strength of the facts on their side when it comes to the issue at hand here, embryonic stem cell research. Anyway, you keep in mind Whoopi Goldberg has appeared for John Kerry on stage at Radio City Music Hall uttering some of the biggest filth that the political season has ever seen, in 2004 and in previous campaigns. Here’s what she said about this.
GOLDBERG: I find that quite offensive, even for Rush it is low because the bottom line is this. If you don’t agree with someone’s politics, that’s fine, that is the American way. When you go on these kind of crude personal attacks in the name of politics, you lessen yourself and you lessen us.
RUSH: Stop the tape. There were no personal attacks. There was comment on the substance of what was said in the ad, and every time I hear somebody characterize it this way, it just reminds me that the Democrats have this practiced technique: bring forth victims. They are beyond reproach. They’re infallible. You cannot criticize them or anything they say. They are protected. Now, we’re not playing by those rules anymore, and they can’t stand it. So rather than defend the position that they’re putting forth in these ads they have to go out and attack the people who are questioning that which they are doing. That’s not allowed. We’re not allowed to question liberals. We’re not allowed to put them and their techniques under the microscope. Here’s the rest of what Whoopi said.
GOLDBERG: People who live in glass houses should never, ever throw stones, no matter what side of the political question you’re on, whether you’re in the middle or the right or the left, should all flood him with e-mails and letters saying, “You know what, that goes too far, that is un-American.” Let us not disparage people who are actually ill. There’s a basic line of responsibility and a basic line of civility, period.
RUSH: I don’t think she knows what was said on this program. I did not disparage people who are ill. I did not disparage Michael J. Fox’s illness, and I did not make fun of his illness. I did not exaggerate his symptoms and what they’re showing in tape from the Dittocam here. All of this is a purposeful, irresponsible distortion of what has been said on the program, but let’s go back and examine what Whoopi Goldberg said just on one occasion, shall we? She’s asking for all this civility and talking about a basic line of responsibility and civility and so forth. We don’t have the audio of this, but we reported it when it happened.
July 8th, 2004 at a fund-raiser for Kerry and Edwards at Radio City Music Hall in New York where she compared the president to a part of the female anatomy. Remember this? This is a woman lecturing us here on good manners. She said: “I love bush, but someone’s giving bush a bad name. Someone has tarnished the name bush. Someone’s waged war, someone’s deliberately mislead the country, someone’s attempted to amend the Constitution, all in the name of bush. The bush I know and cherish would never do such things. My bush is smarter than that, and if my bush is smarter than that, you can understand just how dumb I think that other bush is, and anyone who would ever wave to Stevie Wonder < a target=new href=”http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bushwave.htm”>[sic]</a> is not fully there. I will do whatever it takes to restore bush to its rightful place, and that ain’t in the White House. Vote your heart and mind and keep bush where it belongs.”
She’s talking about… Well, you people in Rio Linda know. This is an example of the “civil discourse” that we get from these people and from them, we are preached to about how we must comport ourselves and how much we must behave and so forth. Just sit tight. After the next break, the monologue, blowing all this to smithereens, will commence. In fact, let’s do play #5, Mike. We’ll go to five, then #7. This is during a Senate debate Wednesday night, last night. Maryland US Senate candidate Ben Cardin said this about my remarks in the Fox ad.
CARDIN: Rush Limbaugh was outrageous, what he said, and I believe he’s backed off of it. It was a horrible comment that he made about Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox has every right to speak out on what he believes in, and to talk about the hope that he has in regards to embryonic stem cell research. There are millions of people that are involved, Michael Fox puts a face on this. Every person who is suffering from diseases in which embryonic stem cell research holds out hope is an individual with family, and Michael Fox wanted to make that point and he was right to do it.
RUSH: And he can! He could make all the points he wants. He could say all he wants. He can be wrong every time he opened his mouth, too. Anybody has the right to be wrong. Somebody ought to ask, “Is it the case that anybody in the political arena, some people cannot be responded to?” That’s what the Democrats want. That’s what this all about. They don’t want their issues to be challenged, and they bring up and exploit victims, and then they put words in their mouth that are not true. There is nothing on the horizon in embryonic stem cell research. You go out and say it and you can believe it all you want and you can have hope in it all day long. You can also hope that the sun never sets tomorrow, and you can go out and say that all you want. You can also get up and say the sky is not blue, it is green, but people have the right to challenge whether you’re right about it when you say it. And that is what has happened here, and they’re trying to distract everybody from that. Here’s Michael J. Fox himself last night on Access Hollywood. Now, this is interesting to me.
FOX: The symptoms that I had in the ad that I did, that’s called dyskinesia and that’s actually from too much medication.
RUSH: Okay. Not enough medication, off the medication, too much medication. You figure this out yourselves, folks. We’re talking about the manipulation of medication here. Too much medication?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You may not remember this. This happened around the middle of January of 2003: “In receiving a special filmmaking achievement award from the National Board of Reviews, actor George Clooney joked that ‘Charlton Heston announced again today that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s.’ Clooney still had a chance to apologize for the bad humor day. When questioned about the remark by New York Newsday, Clooney sputtered: ‘[I don’t care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.'”
So you pontificating, pompous, arrogant leftists who think you have a morality on all virtue and a monopoly on all virtue, if you want, I’ll take all the time it takes to dig up all of the mean-spirited, extremist, hurtful things that you have said about conservatives or anybody, I will dig up all of the examples I can find of you actually making fun of people. George Clooney, who can do no wrong on the American left: “Charlton Heston announced again today he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s.” Clooney had a chance to apologize and said, “I don’t care. Heston is the head of the NRA, he deserves whatever anyone says about him.”
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.
