Sharpton Slurs Mormons and Romney, YetHe’s a Liberal So He’s Still a Moral Authority

RUSH: All right. Ladies and gentlemen, Mitt Romney is very upset. Romney said yesterday that comments by the Reverend Sharpton about Mr. Romney and his Republican presidential candidacy, was ‘proof that bigotry still exists’ in some corners. Romney is a Mormon campaigning in Iowa. When reporters asked his reaction to what the Reverend Sharpton said Monday during a debate on atheism and religious belief — what Sharpton said was ‘For the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway. So don’t worry about that. It’s a temporary situation.’ That comment, in an exchange with the atheist author Christopher Hitchens, drew some criticism. Sharpton refused to back down on the phone interview Wednesday, saying he did not imply that Mormons did not believe in God. You can judge for yourself what he said. ‘As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway.’ How can this be about anybody but Mitt Romney? How can it be about all Republicans, which is one of Sharpton’s defenses here.

‘In a statement released by his office, Mr. Sharpton said: ‘In response to him I predicted that believers (not atheists) would vote against the candidate, in this case, Mr. Romney for political not religious reasons. ‘In no way did I attack Mormons or the Mormon Church when I responded that other believers, not atheists, would vote against Mr. Romney for purely political reasons.’ In the phone interview with the New York Times, Sharpton said that unlike many conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics, he believes that Mormons are Christians, but he also said he Romney should be pressed about his church’s history and beliefs.’ Sharpton is going on offense here. ‘I believe if any religion preaches supremacy or unequalness, they are not true believers in God.’ That’s what he said. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, the Justice Brothers are clients of ours. They are sponsors. They were in a mad dash, they were in a hurry, and sent us this commercial to run during their purchase time today.

(Justice Brothers Parody on the Rapid Excuse Response Team)

RUSH: What a day! What a day this is shaping up to be. There you have it: the Justice Brothers’ official response to Sharpton’s controversy with Mitt Romney and Mormons. By the way, we checked, and those of you watching today on the Dittocam know full well that —

(Justice Brothers interruption)

RUSH: What was that? Something spit the cue there? The Justice Brothers’ commercial trying to run itself again? (Laughing). It has a mind of its own, the Justice Brothers commercial. Anyway, our Dittocam was not vandalized today as those of you who are watching the Dittocam can plainly see. No paint has been thrown on the bottom half of the screen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I didn’t order this.

(Justice Brothers interruption)

RUSH: What do you mean it won’t stop? What do you mean you can’t stop it? It’s playing itself? Are you telling me it’s playing itself?

(Justice Brothers interruption)

RUSH: I’ve never heard of this before!

(Justice Brothers interruption)

RUSH: We’re going to have to do something about this. It tried to play itself in the last segment and it did play it. I don’t believe this! Okay. Degauss the thing. Just degauss it. We have something in the computer system here that makes it fire on its own.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Alan in Richmond Virginia. Hi, Alan, great to have you with us today on the program

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Undergraduate of the EIB, and I’m going to need some Depends if you don’t stop playing all those clips — and I’m only 40. It’s just too funny. My question in regards to the Reverend Sharpton is, ‘If he’s the authority on God and who goes to Heaven, why can’t Imus be the authority on ‘nappy’?’ I mean, the double standard is just ridiculous. What’s it going to take to stop the nonsense?

RUSH: I really don’t know. I think it’s only going to get worse. The trends are that it’s definitely getting worse. I can tell you why it’s getting worse, but I don’t know what’s going to stop it other than people refusing to be bullied by it. Look at what has happened here. You can attack the president all you want. The Democrats can do everything in the world they can think of, and their allies and their buddies can go out and say the most outrageous, defamatory things about the president — and other Republicans for that matter. You can attack the president all you want, regardless of the threats made against him. Same with the vice president. Same with Clarence Thomas. The list is endless. Barack Obama makes a ridiculous mistake, saying 10,000 people were killed in Kansas, but that’s okay. He was simply tired. But Bush, the President of the United States — with all of the world’s problems on the shoulders, not just tired from a presidential campaign — makes a mistake and he’s an idiot. And, of course, they sweep Obama’s mistake under the rug. In fact, CBS, on one of their websites, has restricted all Obama comments. You can’t comment on Obama. It was getting too out of hand. It was after this 10,000 dead in Kansas. Of course, the 10,000 dead in Kansas is politicizing a tornado — and politicizing a tornado to advance a Democrat Party agenda — and the real scary thing about the video of Obama making that comment is the people in audience in Richmond, Virginia nodding their heads in agreement.

As for Sharpton, for decades he has been spewing racism, anti-Semetic venom. Now he’s out there smearing Mormons, and he’s treated as a civil rights leader! CBS executives meet with him. NBC execs listen with him. And he decides who lives and dies! He’s the chief of police of speech in this country, apparently. He’s the chief of police in this country, apparently. Now, you ask, ‘When is this going to end?’ One of two things is going to happen — and I don’t know which, but it may be both, actually. This is only going to get worse. You have to understand that this is being done by design and on purpose. The purpose of all of this is to squelch free speech on the right, and I’m going to tell you when this started. Well, it’s hard to peg when it started because liberals have always been this way. They’re the inventors, the creators of political correctness, multi-culturalism; they are single handedly responsible for the trepidation and fear that ordinary Americans feel when they simply want to open their mouths and say something anywhere about anything. Everybody is scared to death now for fear they’re going to be labeled and targeted, fired, what have you. So it’s working. It has a chilling effect. People tell jokes in their own homes, do whatever. But outside, you have to be very careful. You have all these camera phones out there, and you never know when somebody is going to take a picture of you doing something and where it’s going to end up.

I think the modern intensity of this can be traced to the Democrats losing the Congress in 1994. You have to remember — this is a psychological study — they owned Washington for 40 years. They were in and out of having the presidency. When have you the House of Representatives, you own the town. That’s where spending bills originate, regardless what the White House wants. For many of those 40 years they dominated the Senate as well. But regardless what the status was with their White House fortunes, the fact is when you run the House for 40 years, you become almost like royalty in your own mind. You think of yourselves as monarchs. All of a sudden they lost it. And, folks, I can’t emphasize enough the impact that had on them. That threw them for a whole bunch of loops, a whole bunch of 180-degree loops. Now they’ve got it back, and they are damned if they’re ever going to lose it again. It ain’t gonna happen. They are not going to let a 1994 happen again.

They’ve also lost their monopoly in the Drive-By Media, and they lost that a few years before the Democrats lost the House. So the media has now thrown it all away and they’ve chosen sides. The Drive-By Media is on the agenda page and they make no bones about it. They just won’t admit it, but they are. They make no attempt to cover their alliances. They make no attempt to cover their desired outcomes. They still claim objectivity, but they’re no longer trying to really hide the nuts and bolts of their work. All of this is because these two entities — the Democrat Party and the Drive-By Media — have lost dominance. They have lost these massive monopolies, and they are enraged, and you come forward to Florida 2000 and you throw that in the mix. They still think the election was stolen from them and they still think that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen in order to give him something serious to do in his presidency! Thirty five percent of Democrats think that. Scary, but they do.

They’ve always been intolerant. That’s why they invented political correctness. That’s why they invented feminism. That’s why they’ve done all of these ‘isms’ that are designed to get factions of Americans at war with one another: men versus women, black versus white, union versus non-union — you name it. The liberals are the architects of all this. They want constant chaos and tumult. Now, the situation we find ourselves in now is that, since they’ve won that election in November, they’re feeling newly empowered, flexing their muscles. They’re not going to put up with things they don’t want to hear, folks. They’re just not going to put up with it! They’re going to do everything they can to silence it. They don’t care to debate because as far as liberals are concerned, there is no debate! Liberalism is the one and only answer, and there’s no reason to debate. People who aren’t liberal, they’re just cockroaches. They’re idiots. They’re kooks! They’re freaks — and they don’t deign to grant any kind of authenticity or intelligence to anybody who’s not a liberal. So they become arrogant and condescending, and they’re treating everybody like they’ve treated average Americans all these years, and that is: look down on them and think they’re incompetent and incapable. But they know that what we say is a threat, because in their hearts they know what they’re doing. They are denying an alternative to what they think because their ideas can’t stand a test of a side-by-side comparison with ours. So they’re trying to silence anybody on the right who offers those ideas — particularly in an effective way — and they’re doing everything they can to discredit and to destroy the people who do articulate those ideas. They don’t want to put up with it.

So, ‘Where’s this going to stop? It’s getting absurd.’ My first reaction when the Sharpton thing happened and everybody again — everybody blowing up — was, ‘What’s happening to us?’ and then this billboard on Rush Street in Chicago happened. The tagline was, ‘Life’s too short. Get a divorce.’ There was hell to pay! All kinds of people were getting all bent out of shape about it because there was some scantily-clad woman. What’s happened to us? We’ve become so paranoid and so sensitive! Are our feelings exposed outside our skin? Can nobody deal with anything anymore?

Alan, you ask me, ‘When is this going to stop?’ when Sharpton made his comments to Christopher Hitchens in that debate. It seems like half the news these days is who’s offended by what somebody else said, and it’s either going to keep going and get worse to the point that the people who are offended feel empowered because they’re going to be able to shut down things they don’t want to hear, or it’s going to reach the point of utter absurdity and people are going to stand up and say, ‘Enough of this! That’s not offensive, and even if it is — grow up!’ We are not going to sit here and let the offended determine who can say and do what. But that’s where we’re headed. So you look at Sharpton and Obama. Sharpton, he’s going to get a total pass. He issues this statement and they say, ‘Okay, Al spoke.’ Joe Biden can call Obama ‘clean’ and ‘articulate,’ and the response is, ‘Ah, you know, that’s just Biden! Sometimes he loses control of his mouth. Ha, ha, ha, ha! Good ol’ Joe!’ Or you can have Biden once again talking about 7-Elevens in his state of Delaware, and how ‘you better learn how to speak an Indian dialect when you go in to one because that’s the only people that work there. ‘Oh, that’s just Joe! Ha, ha, ha, ha!’ You let a conservative Republican say anything like what Sharpton said or Obama said. If George Bush or somebody said, ‘Hey, did you see that death toll out there in Kansas? Ten thousand people died.’ It would still be the front page headline about what an idiot the Republican who said that was! But they sweep it under the rug for Obama because (and this is another factor), Obama and Sharpton and practically everybody else in the Democrat Party is a ‘minority.’ Women are minorities. African-Americans are minorities. Labor unions are minorities. The illegal immigrant coalition, that’s a minority — and on and on. So as minorities you have to understand that in the liberal worldview, they’re ‘powerless.’ So Sharpton can say all these outrageous things, but he doesn’t have any power to offend anybody. He’s just a preacher. He’s just an African-American trying to overcome such long odds with the civil rights struggle. We have to allow these people some headway.

Plus, in something that’s a stark difference between those guys and us, they will not eat their own. They will not throw their own down the river, overboard, or off the bus. They circle the wagons around them and they protect each other. Republicans, of course, will go out there and they’ll throw Gonzales overboard and they’ll throw Rumsfeld overboard and they’ll join the chorus to get rid of whoever the Democrats want us to get rid of — all because they think that’s virtuous, and in the process they do not understand the nature and terms of the literal war that we are in. I’ll tell you something, folks: it is a real war when these people have success in stifling speech. They’re having a lot of success and they’re doing it without a whole lot of speech cops. I’m not talking about speech uttered by people like me or others who have microphones and cameras. I’m talking about you! Ask yourselves how many times a day do you want to say something, and you stop and say, ‘Uh, I better not say that; somebody might misunderstand it. I might get in trouble.’ You are censoring yourselves because The Offended out there have the power over you — and especially if your boss happens to be one of The Offended, then you are really censoring yourselves. I don’t know where this is going to end. It doesn’t look good, as far as I’m concerned. But that’s what little part I play in this. That’s why I am not going to back down on any of this and I am not going to look the other way at it, and I’m not going to be silenced or shut up — and neither should you.

RUSH: To the audio sound bites. We’ll start with Mitt Romney. This is yesterday on the campaign trail, responding to Al Sharpton’s insensitive remark about Mormons.

MITT ROMNEY: His comment was a bigoted comment. It shows that bigotry still exists in some corners, and I thought it was a most unfortunate comment to make.

RUSH: Okay. So last night on Paula Zahn Now, the Reverend Sharpton went to do damage control, and she said to him, ‘So obviously Mr. Romney thinks you were making negative comments about his religion.’ Now, in this case, see, it’s like when Jesse Jackson went on the Today Show with Meredith Vieira and Vieira said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Reverend Jackson! Will you forgive me, Reverend Jackson but I’ve gotta mention that you did call New York ‘Hymietown.” You know, she had to beg forgiveness before reminding the Reverend Jackson of what he said. In this case, there was no assumption of guilt of Sharpton by Paula Zahn because they’re on the same side. They’re Democrats. They’re libs. So the idea here is: give Sharpton some wiggle room. ‘Obviously Mr. Romney thinks you were making negative comments about his religion.’ (Rush aside as Zahn: ‘We all knew you were but that’s what he ‘thinks,’ so…’) ‘Were you saying that Mormons aren’t real Christians?’

REVEREND SHARPTON: No. What I was responding to… It’s interesting he did not attack Mr. Hitchens who said this. He, Mr. Hitchens, had said that the Mormons had in fact had in their articles of faith that blacks were not to be part of an inclusiveness of God, and I said, ‘Don’t worry about that anyway. If that’s the case then real believers, not atheists…’ because the argument was over atheists. The argument was not about Mormons. ‘Real believers,’ not atheists, ‘is going to vote against him anyway,’ because I don’t think Romney will win.

RUSH: Uh, okay. (chuckles) Nice shift of gears. The Reverend Sharpton then continued.

REVEREND SHARPTON: I think now Mr. Romney — since I didn’t bring this up; Hitchens did — has opened the door for me to say, ‘Well, wait a minute! Is Hitchens is right? Is this the history of the Mormons, and were you part of that history? Were you a part of this church before they renounced this?’

RUSH: So you see what the Reverend Sharpton has done here? He’s gone on the offense! He’s turned it around. ‘You Mormons, do you have a part of this history of denying blacks equality in the Mormon religion?’ (laughing) and of course Paula Zahn is just sitting there like a zombie with a giant smile on her face, and she says, ‘So you deny what Hitchens is saying?’ WHAT? Hitchens? This isn’t about Hitchens! Sharpton is already blaming Hitchens for what he said! (Laughing.) You gotta marvel at this. Only in the Drive-By Media would a perp be allowed to get away with this kind of maneuvering. ‘So you deny what Hitchens is saying when he thinks that you were making distinctions and somehow suggesting that Mormons weren’t real Christians?’

REVEREND SHARPTON: I’m telling you what I meant, and I’m telling you what I said. I’m also telling you what Hitchens said. Hitchens, according to what you just played, attacked the Mormons! Hitchens did. It’s strange that Romney didn’t attack Hitchens. Hitchens is not attackin’ Romney. I’m the one that belongs to a race that couldn’t join the Mormons, and I’m the one that’s the bigot.

ZAHN: (laughing)

REVEREND SHARPTON: (laughing) You talk about trying to pass the buck!

ZAHN: Right!

RUSH: So… (laughing) After all this (laughing) we got an emergency delivery at our business offices today. It was a new commercial from the Justice Brothers demanding to be run in today’s schedule.

(Justice Brothers Parody: The Rapid Excuse Response System)

RUSH: You know what we have just witnessed here in these sound bites? We have just witnessed that Al Sharpton can play Three Card Monty with his mouth! That’s some of the slickest maneuvering… (laughing). I couldn’t keep up with it! First it was Hitchens, and then it was the Mormons denying blacks equality. (rubbing hands together). Then it was Sharpton wasn’t allowed to join the Mormons. (laughing). Wasn’t allowed to join them! (laughing) and it’s all Mitt Romney’s fault — and you’ve got this news reader on CNN just sitting there going guuuuuuuuh. (laughing) Ahem!