RUSH: Nina in Dallas, nice to have you, Nina. The last Nina was sort of off the charts. I hope you’re better.
CALLER: Well, it’s Nina, it’s not Nina, I’m Nina. Okay, it’s been a pleasure waiting on you, and I want to talk about George Carlin. And my son and I think that — well, whatever it was, what was it, was it a skit?
RUSH: Well, it was from one of his comedy acts, there were three sound bites here from one of his — I think it was probably from an HBO special that he did, might have been a stage show, but it doesn’t matter. It was actually George Carlin on stage in performance.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, we think that you probably need to put that on every day.
RUSH: Really? Why, I’m not good enough?
CALLER: No. You need liberals to hear that crap. You know? They need to hear it.
RUSH: This isn’t crap.
CALLER: I know, I know that.
RUSH: Oh, you think because Carlin’s a liberal, that other liberals, if they hear Carlin, they might be more inclined to be persuaded than if they heard it from me?
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: Well, I see. I get it. That means I should be a liberal for half the show.
CALLER: Oh, no, no, you’re fine the way you are. But I was going to tell you that Tyler Cox up in Dallas and I, a bunch of people came up to see you, I don’t remember what year, but we really enjoyed it —
RUSH: You came up to see the TV show?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: So that would have been ’93 or ’94.
CALLER: Probably ’94.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That was the year that the Republicans took over the House of Representatives.
RUSH: Well, that’s exactly what it was, 1994, they were crowned and began their reign on January of 1995.
CALLER: I ran up and down the hall, every time they’d come on, you know, some Republican beat a Democrat, you know, and I’d run down the hall to tell my son, which he’s in bed with a stroke, and I’d run back, listen to the radio and all that stuff. And it was just wonderful. I just loved every second and then they just messed around and went back to liberal.
RUSH: Yeah, they got a little arrogant. They stopped teaching conservatism. They thought the whole country had gone conservative, and so they thought they’d stop teaching it. Fatal error. Let’s listen to the George Carlin bites that she’s talking about. We played them earlier in the week. As you know, he died, heart attack, heart failure, age 71. We have three. I think is it three sound bites? George Carlin on the environment. Here’s number one.
CARLIN: Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It’s arrogant meddling. It’s what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn’t anybody understand that? Interfering with nature. Over 90%, over, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They’re extinct. We didn’t kill them all. They just disappeared. That’s what nature does. We’re so self-important, so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all, save the planet. What?
RUSH: Exactly right. This next riff could have come right from behind this microphone.
CARLIN: I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths, people trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. There is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are (bleep) — difference, difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. It’s been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? Planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years.
RUSH: George Carlin on the environment. And another riff that could have come right from this program.
CARLIN: Two hundred years versus four and a half billion, and we have the conceit to think that somehow we’re a threat, that somehow we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floating around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us, been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are. We’re going away.