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RUSH: Tammy in Shawnee, Kansas, nice to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s a pleasure to speak with you. I’d like to let you know that we’re generational listeners here in Shawnee, Kansas. My folks listen, I listen, and now my 18-year-old son listens to your show.

RUSH: A Rush Baby.

CALLER: That’s exactly right. Hey, listen, I just feel like, as Americans, we need to put this through the filter of these people who are interviewing for the presidential seat of the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, and this Barack Obama is not qualified. He’s handed us a blank piece of paper for a résumé, and our finest companies here in the United States wouldn’t even consider this guy. He has no qualifications.

RUSH: Well, but see, that’s the thing. You’re exactly right, but it doesn’t matter, does it, to his supporters. See, he’s not the educated choice, he’s the liberal choice.

CALLER: Well, he’s gotta be stopped. You’re doing the right thing. But people need to wake up and understand he is not qualified.

RUSH: Doesn’t matter. This is what I’m trying to say. Look, I’m telling you, Obama, you’re talking about the future, and the Clintons could be talking about the past. I stand up for the right-now.

CALLER: Exactly right.

RUSH: I’m big on the right-now. Somebody’s gotta be for right-now, and that’s me.

CALLER: Hey, listen, my 12-year-old daughter, her statement last week was who cares what the guy’s middle name is, he looks like Curious George.

RUSH: Don’t make me laugh. I can’t laugh. The point I was going to make to you is, you’re going to have to be very careful. You don’t have to disabuse Republicans of Obama, Tammy. Everybody’s on the same page with you about Obama. There may be some so-called Republicans. But trust me, the people that are going to have to be separated from Obama are the people you see at his rallies and the people in these polls and those people are not attached to him because of intelligence; they’re not attached to him because of his experience; not attached to him because of anything to do with his record. They’re attached to him like the faithful are attached to a religion.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I never heard of Curious George until that caller. I don’t care how old Curious George is. I never heard of Curious George. I had no idea what she was talking about. Now they tell me Curious George is a monkey. Well whoop-de-do, that’s what you get coming in sick.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I need to apologize to both Senator Obama and to Senator McCain. We had a caller, the last caller of the hour, her name was Tammy, is that right? We were talking about Hillary and Obama and that race with her, right? Obama’s qualifications. And she told me what her 12 year old’s reaction to Obama was. The little 12 year old thought Obama looked like Curious George, and I chuckled and we went to a break. I’d never heard of Curious George. Only now have staffers sent me little pictures of Curious George. Folks, when I was a kid, the last cartoon I ever watched — (interruption) no, I didn’t watch Mighty Mouse, this is the whole point. What were the cartoons I watched? I watched Yogi Bear, Jellystone Park. I watched the Flintstones, the Wacky Races, which was hilarious. I don’t know about this Curious George character. I had no idea Curious George was a monkey. I didn’t like the Jetsons. This is the whole point. I didn’t read comic books. I did not watch cartoons. Well, I did like El Kabong, Quick Draw McGraw.

I never read Batman, never read Superman, never read Flash. I didn’t read comic books. There was one time my mother was going to have to be gone, so she made me heat up a Swanson’s fried chicken TV dinner. I wanted to read something while I was eating, it was some cartoon, I can’t even tell you what the comic book was. Oh, I also watched Clutch Cargo, but I have no idea who this Curious George guy was. Now I do. I’ve seen the pictures of Curious George, everybody is telling me about Curious George. So I wish to apologize to both Senator Obama and Senator McCain. It was not my intent to bring dishonor and guttural utterances into this campaign. It happened, I laughed about it, was a 12-year-old kid’s reaction to Obama, it was told by his mother. I was laughing because I was being polite, but I’d never heard of Curious George. I still don’t know what the deal is. I see the pictures of Curious George now, but I have no clue what Curious George does. I don’t know. And Dawn, stunned me, ‘Curious George was around when you were growing up.’ Well, this is the first I have heard. In fact, I can tell you, I have never seen a cartoon starring a monkey, unless there was one on the Flintstones, but I think those were dinosaurs and alligators.

So, at any rate, we have fired the caller, Tammy. We’re not going to put up with this on this program. We’re not going to tolerate this kind of stuff on the program, and I do officially apologize to both Senator Obama and to Senator McCain. Why aren’t you apologizing to Hillary? Well, she’s probably happy it happened. I guess I better apologize for saying that. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I’m doing this as an illustration for you of how really uptight and tense everybody is going to be with any kind of criticism of Barack Obama on the Republican side. I think we may set a record in this upcoming campaign. If Obama is the nominee, we may set a record for the number of apologies to him and his campaign by various Republicans and so forth. So that’s that. I regret that it happened. I can’t use the McCain excuse that I wasn’t here, because I was here. I know, I’m here, but I’m not really here. It was coming up on a hard break, and — ha-ha, being polite to the caller. (interruption) I have never once watched a Snoopy television show. I have never read a Snoopy book. I have seen Snoopy on the blimp covering golf tournaments.

I was into the cerebral pursuits. I’m telling you, when I was a kid all I wanted to do is be older. I didn’t want to be identified as doing anything that kids did. So, no. (interruption) Well, fine, adults watched Snoopy, I didn’t. I did watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at Christmastime, thought that was cool. I really got into Christmas stuff. I still do, as you all know. I know the Snoopy story. You got the Linus character; you got what’s-her-name always denying Charlie Brown the ball, Lucy. Charlie Brown’s the nerd; he’s the brunt of all the jokes. I don’t know what Snoopy does in that cartoon. Snoopy sits on top of the doghouse, I don’t know what he does, I just know the character Snoopy. Was Snoopy in the newspapers? Okay, were there comic books with Snoopy? The Charlie Brown strip. Okay. I never read the comic pages in the newspaper. I did not read the comic pages in the newspaper. I didn’t do the crossword puzzle. I didn’t read classified ads. I went to the editorial page, I went to the sports page, that was my extent, sometimes the news section and so forth, but I did not read the comics. That’s why I never heard of this loco weed crazy George or Curious George, whatever his name is. Curious George.

I have never watched an episode of The Simpsons. I have seen The Simpsons when it’s been on other people’s TVs, I have kept walking. I’m not big into animation. I keep telling you, I’m into what’s real, the right-now. Animated stuff leaves me cold. I did watch — I got roped into this — I did watch Finding Nemo. The funniest part of that movie was the sharks, they’re having a 12-step meeting to get over their addiction of eating little fish like Nemo. When I first heard about Finding Nemo, I thought it was Captain Nemo of the Nautilus, you know, some little goldfish swimming around but there was a funny line in that movie, what is it, oh, they called seagulls sea rats. That’s exactly what they are. You ever wondered why there aren’t as many eagles as there are seagulls? Wouldn’t the world be a greater place if there were more pelicans than there were seagulls? I understand why, but we can all dream, we can all have hope for the future, that the pelican population might someday overwhelm the seagull population.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Tanisha in Chicago. Hi, Tanisha. It’s nice to have you on the program.

CALLER: Hi. You know what, Rush? I just wanted to say, um, first of all, I think you are lying. There is no way you have never heard of Curious George. No way possible! It’s people like you that’s making this whole election something that it’s really not supposed to be. And you’re digging deep just like Hillary and her camp, digging deep, and so you gonna get real down and dirty — and that’s what this is all about right now, and it’s really a shame. It’s sad, and it really shows that you have no class.

RUSH: Uh, I have no class. Well, sorry you think that, Tanisha. By the way, Tanisha is one of my all-time, top-ten favorite female names. Honest-to-goodness, I never heard of Curious George until today. I’m still getting people sending me e-mails. ‘Hey, it wasn’t a cartoon. It was children’s books.’

CALLER: Every one that you named, Rush, you have seen before. Every one that you named.

RUSH: What do you mean, every one?

CALLER: Every person. You said, Superman, Batman, Jetsons, all this stuff.

RUSH: I did not. Where do we go with this?

CALLER: You never went to the library, Rush? You never had family members?

RUSH: For books, Tanisha. For books.

CALLER: No family members that would have possibly had a Curious George book?

RUSH: Tanisha, all I can tell you is, I never heard of Curious George until today. I never saw Curious George until today. I didn’t know Curious George was a monkey until my North Carolina mistress sends me an e-mail after that segment.

CALLER: Okay. Well, I really don’t believe that, and I just think that that’s really a shame.

RUSH: The real shame here is that you have such prejudice.

CALLER: The shame is that you laughed! You chuckled. Not being polite, but being yourself.

RUSH: I was being polite to a caller. The shame is that you —

CALLER: You are being polite. What is polite about that?

RUSH: You are being prejudiced and biased, and that’s the shame because you are unwilling to accept the truth.

CALLER: That’s you. What’s the truth?

RUSH: How often do you listen to this program out there, Tanisha?

CALLER: Every day.

RUSH: Really? Well, what else am I lying about?

CALLER: All the time!

RUSH: Yeah, I figured.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: So I lie about everything, huh?

CALLER: Okay. Have a good day, Rush.

RUSH: Thanks, Tanisha. Really cool. Really, really cool. I had to ask these guys, ‘Did I laugh after she said that?’ Because when I got the note from the North Carolina mistress, I said, ‘Oh, Lord. Did I laugh?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ Brian started laughing. ‘Yes, you did.’

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Sandy in Dayton, Ohio. Great to have you here on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s great to talk to you. I listen to you every chance I get when I’m in the car, and I just wanted to make a comment about Tanisha calling in and saying how you were lying, that you’d never heard of Curious George. I am also close to your age. I had never heard of Curious George, either, and I just can’t understand what the big issue is. You know, there a lot of books and a lot of cartoons or whatever that people never heard of.

RUSH: That’s not the point.

CALLER: Exactly! It’s not the point.

RUSH: The point is that there are Obama supporters out there waiting, monitoring for anything that they can start accusing people of that’s racist.

CALLER: Exactly. Exactly.

RUSH: Or bigoted or what have you. This is why the Republican National Committee is working on this memorandum to everybody: ‘Don’t criticize Obama.’

CALLER: Well, they need to stand up and I can’t say what they need to grow. (laughs) Sorry. They just need to… It’s not racist. He’s a candidate for president.

RUSH: Have you ever heard of Howard Cosell?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, you know, Howard Cosell was raked over the coals for describing a Washington Redskins running back. Maybe it was a Baltimore Colts running back. I don’t remember. He referred to a Washington Redskins running back as a monkey, and he survived because he’s a big lib, whereas Jimmy ‘The Greek’ was sent packing.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: But the Obama people are going to be out there and this is one of the examples that I could use. I know Cosell called his grandchildren ‘little monkeys,’ but that didn’t fly, at first.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: That didn’t fly at first.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: So there is a big sensitivity to this. This is why I say the race business is only going to get bigger with Obama’s election.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: It’s not going to go away. People are not going to conclude, ‘All right! We’ve shed our racist past.’ It’s going to get worse. I appreciate the call, Sandy, so much.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Gerald in Little Rock, Arkansas. Hi, Gerald. I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s great to finally talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’ve been listening for about, hmm, two or three years now.

RUSH: Appreciate that.

CALLER: I just felt that I had to call in because I’m a black male from Little Rock, Arkansas, 25 years old, and certified black enough to criticize Tanisha. Anybody who listens to your show long enough and hard enough is going to realize that you spit too much truth out of your mouth in order for us to pull it in and use it and do our own research from what you say, for anybody who’s an actual listener of this show to say, ‘Well, he lies all day long, and he knew what he was doing and he was laughing about the fact that she said he looked like a monkey.’ That’s ridiculous. And I know where she’s coming from, because I argue with people like her every single day. They feel like the race card can still be played, and, to me, it’s frankly ridiculous, because I’m a single father, I don’t have a college degree, but I’ve got a great job, been in the military for eight years, and it is on me how well or how horrible my family does, not President Bush, not President Obama or Clinton or McCain. It is on me and my family. And that’s what conservatism is all about.

RUSH: Amen. You are exactly right. Well, as far as Tanisha is concerned, I think you nailed it. There are people just waiting for this kind of thing to happen. It’s an excuse for them not advancing. It’s an excuse, everybody needs somebody else to blame for their shortcomings or their failures or what have you, and if women can blame sexism for it, certain minorities can say it’s bigotry or racism, you have the Democrat Party come along and they want to promote all that and make as many people victims of all these isms as they possibly can. But as far as I’m concerned, I think Tanisha should be the one on the hot seat. If somebody’s going to call up and say, ‘You lie about everything —

CALLER: Prove it.

RUSH: — I don’t believe you never read Superman, I don’t believe you never read Batman,’ all those things. There are probably a lot of people who haven’t. We make these universal assumptions. See, even my own staff is thinking that I’m wrong about this in terms of who has and who hasn’t seen these — (interruption) what are you saying? Boys read Batman? Yeah? I never read a Spider-Man, either, by the way, until I saw one of these movies. I still haven’t read a Spider-Man. I did not go to comic book stores. My parents did not read me stories, that I can remember, my parents did not do this. (interruption) I was not deprived. By the way, Gerald, thanks for the call. I appreciate it, and thank you for eight years in the military. God bless you. So now I’m deprived. Deprived because I didn’t read these worthless, specious little things. (interruption) Okay, I take it back, life lessons, yeah, they’re life lessons, okay, fine and dandy. I’m sure that’s true, life lessons in The Simpsons, life lessons in the King of the Hill, life lessons in all these — yeah, I’m sure that’s true. Mighty Mouse, life lessons. Oh, I’ll tell you one of my favorite cartoons, Boris Badenov and Natasha — Bullwinkle. Now, there was a sophisticated, genuinely funny cartoon. I hated being a kid. I hated it. I wanted to be older. I still want to be older, because I’ve always believed that the older I got, the better life would get, and it has been true with the passing of every year.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mark in Redding, California, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello?

RUSH: Yeah. Hi, Mark.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Great to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’ll get right to the point — and let me give a quick shot out to my fellow Dittoheads Tim and Susie out there on their routes. I wanted to back you up on this Tanisha thing. I know for a fact, even though she ‘knows’ that you’re lying, I know that you’re not, because you don’t have any kids, right?

RUSH: I do not have any kids. No, I do not have any kids.

CALLER: You’re not going to know who that is.

RUSH: I don’t have any kids’ books in my house. I’ve never had a kids’ book in my house.

CALLER: And you’re not going to know who Curious George is. I have kids, and I barely know who he is. So I just wanted to back you up on that — and, plus, I think Tanisha needs to get off of her whining. You know, I am an ethnic person also, but before that, I’m an American. I’m an American, with an ethnic background — and you gotta quit whining about your ethnicity. Be proud of it, be who you are, but don’t let anybody put you down because of it. Not only that… Well, there’s other things I’d like to say, but…

RUSH: This is not going to end, this is only going to get worse. There’s a whole race industry in this country, a cottage industry to keep this kind of stuff alive and —

CALLER: And I hate it.

RUSH: — growing, and it’s a business and there are people earning a pretty good living, you know, running around promoting the concept of never ending (and worsening, in fact) American racism.

CALLER: I hate that, Rush, because, you know, that’s what keeps people down. I don’t care if you’re polka dot or whatever.

RUSH: I dislike it, too, but there’s a way here. All of this stuff gets wrapped up in political correctness and people end up afraid to say things about which there’s nothing wrong whatsoever.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: (sigh) I don’t know.

CALLER: I do all the time.

RUSH: I’m sitting here, and I’m suffering the cold. I’m delirious with the fever here, and I’m having trouble putting a cogent thought here together, so I’m repeating what I’ve said earlier because I remember that. This is political war, and too many on our side are not willing to engage it and fight it.

CALLER: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m ready to engage it and fight it. I’m doing my part.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it, either.

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