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Understanding the New York Times

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 22,2007

RUSH: Don in Renton, Washington, you’re next on the EIB Network, sir, hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: It’s time to call those bastards at the New York Times to account. You should just sue the heck out of them. You know, that Harry Reid letter, the way they covered that? That’s deliberate, willful, malicious, and I think even though you’re a celebrity, you got a good case.

RUSH: Can’t do it — public figure.

CALLER: Well, I think when you do it deliberately and with malice, I think you can.

RUSH: Um, I looked into it. It’s not worth the trouble.

CALLER: Well, I think it is, because —

RUSH: This story has enough — the first paragraph, first sentence or two — out-and-out lies. Some have said, ‘Yeah, they skewed wrong in the first paragraph.’ This was an out-and-out lie in the first paragraph. But, for example, they have enough things factually correct in here, but they’re out of context. So you run around sue people for leaving things out of context. For example, they take a slam — they take a big, big aim — at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. They call Jim Kallstrom and they ask Kallstrom, ‘What are you going to do?’ He says, ‘Ah, this is great. We’re going to have a meeting on Monday to figure out what to do with all this,’ and then they end quoting him, ‘But we’re not a political organization.’ Now, the implication is that Kallstrom is not telling them the truth because I was involved in this, and I’m a political guy. So they are attempting to impugn the reputation of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, but this is who they are, folks.

CALLER: Yeah, but, Rush, let me just point out one more thing.

RUSH: Sure.

CALLER: That even though you — that maybe the lawsuit won’t go anywhere, it still is a means to get this information out to where more people will hear it. More people will see what a smear that was by Harry Reid, and maybe they’ll start to get a little educated, even though it’s kind of a waste of time to sue ’em.

RUSH: You know, I hear you. I understand the frustration. You’re upset that it’s not spread beyond where it has. But that’s the nature of the beast today. See, my impression is, folks, that it has spread way beyond just this audience, because I think this audience was growing exponentially last week, and as many of you — and Don, you’re one — who know the truth, and you run into people who read the New York Times or the Reuters story of this, you’re able to give them the facts right off the bat. The truth of this is far more widespread than you would think. And just because it doesn’t appear in the New York Times doesn’t mean that it isn’t. I checked e-mail all weekend long. You’re about the gazillionth person that see livid at the New York Times, about the gazillionth. You know, there’s a big New York Times front-page story today by Jim Rutenberg on the Drudge Report, a profile of the Drudge Report, and it basically is how the Drudge Report seems to be in the midst of a good relationship with the Clinton campaign and some of the Republican campaigns, and how the Clinton campaign is funneling stuff to Drudge and the others are and so forth, and when I heard this was coming, I thought, ‘Well, it’s going to be another in a long line of criticisms and smears of Drudge.’ I read this thing, and it’s the exact opposite.

It now praises Drudge for his reach. Without saying so, they almost admit that the Drudge Report has far more influence on journalists and other Americans than the New York Times does. They don’t actually say that. But here’s the real secret, and… (sighs) Well, I don’t want to let too much of the secret out, but this is my opinion. The reason the New York Times gave a positive, almost puff piece-type review of the Drudge Report is because they think that Drudge is in league with the Clintons in helping get her story out. They think the Clinton campaign’s got a line there. They can leak stuff to Drudge and Drudge will run it; it’s harmful to other Democrat candidates, harmful to other Republicans. So Drudge is now a good guy, as far as they’re concerned. So that’s how this stuff happens. Drudge has been trashed and tarnished like all of us have, over the course of his career. Now, all of a sudden, the New York Times likes him? The front page likes him? You cannot miss the Clinton connection here. Now, there’s a lot of things that the New York Times doesn’t understand about conservative media. I’m not saying… Drudge is not conservative media, don’t misunderstand, but the thing that the New York Times, especially reporters, don’t understand is the business angle of any enterprise. They don’t understand the business angle of their own paper. They don’t care about it!

The news reporters at CBS News when Larry Tish bought it and said (paraphrased exchange), ‘You know what? I’ve looked at the books here, you guys, and we gotta cut $200 million of the news budget. You guys are losing money,’ they went and had a cow. Dan Rather went out there and said, ‘We need to be exempt from the bottom line. We are too important! We’re doing a service to the world,’ and blah, blah, blah. They have no clue about the business function of their own organization, and they don’t care, because they’re not invested in the success per se. They all make salaries, and the only thing that’s going to happen is, if the enterprise they’re involved in goes south, they either get fired or a salary cut. But when to participate if the enterprise does really well? They don’t participate in the profits, most of them. They’re just salaried, and most reporters — it’s not a whole lot, particularly print reporters — they don’t care about the business side. As such, they don’t understand it. It’s like I’ve always told you: One of the most profound aspects of the success of this program is its business model. From the get-go, they don’t care about it. They don’t understand it and, even if we gave them the plan on paper, they wouldn’t comprehend it.

It wouldn’t make sense. These are not capitalists in that sense. They think that this program is simply successful for one reason, that it has a host who cannot tell the truth; that you are a bunch of mind-numbed robots who believe the falsehoods that I tell you, and that we are all a collective bunch of nincompoop idiots and it’s only your stupidity that allows this program to be as successful as it is. They haven’t the slightest idea. They think everything is agenda-driven. So when they look at the success of this program, they see a hidden, secret political agenda designed to poison and infiltrate your meager minds, and because you are dummkopfs, you have easily fallen for it. They have no interest in the business side — and I say when they examine Drudge, they couldn’t care less about the business. Because they see all these other things as potential enemies, to them, advancing their own agenda, so they just miss it. For people who are supposedly the brightest and best educated in journalism or politics or whatever, most of them are the most amazingly closed-minded, agenda-driven themselves, with their own narratives of story, after story, after story, and the worst thing that could happen this morning guys is to have their narrative or their template be contradicted by the truth. That just sends them into tizzies and what they ultimately decide is the truth isn’t the truth, and they stick with the narrative. The Duke rape case is one of many examples I could cite.