RUSH: We’ve got John Kerry join this debate now over the Fairness Doctrine — who served in Vietnam, by the way, John Kerry. Dick Durbin from Illinois has joined the Fairness Doctrine debate, urging that this be reinstituted and so forth. I keep getting e-mails from people, ‘I can’t believe you’re not worried about this.’ Folks, I don’t worry about anything. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t worry about it. We’ll deal with this like we have to deal with everything else that comes along in life. You spend time worrying about things, you waste time. Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not going to sit here and tell myself all kinds of negative stories, ‘Oh, gee my career is over. Oh, this is horrible. Oh, what am I going to do, oh, no, no, no.’ Not the way I deal with things.
This is par for the course. This Hush Rush stuff has been going on for the last 14 or 15 years, maybe longer than that. So Congressman Mike Pence, from Indiana, in the House, a former radio talk show host himself, a big, big, big — how should I say this? Well, I was his idol when he was a young talk show host, and he took that experience and got elected to the House of Representatives. He’s offered legislation that would prevent the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine without certain congressional action in the sunlight and so forth.
Now, this could be overturned by another Congress if it passes. You never know where it’s going to go, but there are people fighting this. Republicans are gearing up for this, at least in the House. The problem will be in the Senate. There are some Republicans in the Senate that probably would love for me to be shut up about now, and I take that as a badge of honor, too. But don’t worry about it, folks, it is what it is. But, look, we’re dealing with a whole different environment than we were throughout the eighties. Back then talk radio didn’t have nearly the kind of audience it has today. We’ve got an army of millions of American voters that won’t put up with it. We’ve got 2,000 radio talk show stations, or radio stations doing talk in this country. There’s more divergent opinion in this country than ever, with the Internet. The idea that radio needs to be singled out is not going to fly. I don’t doubt they’re going to try, and any time powerful elected officials of the United States government get into gear, yeah, you have to take it seriously and deal with it, as we will. But I appreciate all your concerns about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned the first part of the program that people have said they can’t believe that I don’t sound worried about the Fairness Doctrine threats being mounted all over the left. I said, ‘Folks, I don’t worry. It is what it is, and there’s no sense in worrying about it.’ People writing the e-mails, ‘I just can’t believe you don’t worry.’ Well, I used to. Let me try to explain it to you. Worry is basically doing what? Worrying is telling yourself a negative outcome of a future event. And you can’t possibly know if the outcome of a future event is going to be negative. So what does that lead to? Well, it leads to distraction, it leads to suffering, self-imposed suffering. It leads to paralyzation in some cases and you end up causing yourself all kinds of grief. Then you get depressed, get miserable and so forth and become self-consuming, or all consuming. Now, I don’t succeed at it all the time, and clearly there are things that upset me, but in terms of sitting around worrying about something way down the road that I can’t possibly know the outcome of — and, by the way, something I’m going to have a lot of input in, it’s not as though I’m wandering around aimlessly in the forest here with no chance to impact whatever this effort against all of us on talk radio is going to end up being. I’ve got the ability to say, ‘All right, fine, you going to come after me?’
I’m not going to sit and worry I’m going to lose. I’m not going to sit here and worry that they’re going to succeed, because it just leads to paralysis and suffering and so forth. But the most important thing is that worry equals the telling yourself of negative events, negative outcomes. I know it’s natural. We human beings are predisposed to pessimism. Optimism is hard to achieve. It takes effort, just the way we’re built and so forth. I learned this over a whole number of years. I’m not lying to you about it when I say that I’m not worried about it. Besides I know I have plenty of you worrying for me. I’m only kidding. I just want to explain this. I’m not superhuman, and I’m not trying to sound that way, and I’m not trying to belittle anybody else who does. It takes effort to not get trapped in these kinds of emotional down-spirals. But worrying creates angst, it creates drama. If you don’t keep it to yourself, it affects everybody else that you’re around, and when the subject you’re worrying about is something about which you can’t possibly know the outcome, it’s an absolutely waste of time. I don’t like to waste time. It’s too valuable.