RUSH: During the break Mr. Snerdley showed me a website that a friend of his had alerted him to. Apparently it has taken hold out there that when discussing Obama’s America as it relates to the school bus incident — where was that? That was in Belleville, right? Belleville, Illinois — playing off the Newsweek story of, you know, all white kids are born racists. I did a whole routine here on, ‘Well, maybe we need to segregate the buses and so forth,’ in a joking fashion. And this guy at the Southern Poverty Law Center, this Mark Plotkin… Is that his name? What…? Mark Potok. Mark Potok says that I want to segregate buses! We’re going to get to what he said and what I said but I want to preface it or precede it with Howard Dean last night on MSNBC. He was asked if he shares Pelosi’s concerns over the wave of violence we all know is just waiting to break out.
DEAN: There’s a lot of money to be made in passing out hate of the kind that Rush Limbaugh is just doing. Rush Limbaugh, look, he’s always an entertainer, but he’s way over the line. And this is a long — there’s a long, unfortunate American tradition of this, going back to Father Coughlin and people before that. Just in… They appeal to the very worst in people. They appeal to the — to, uhh, the side of all of us that is about anger and fear and hatred, and they empower it, and it is an evil thing to do, and it’s very, very bad for the country. But for a long time these people have put themselves and their wallets way ahead of America. They pretend to be patriots, but they’re not patriotic at all.
RUSH: There you have it. (laughing) Dr. Howard Dean, the former leader of the Democrat National Committee. See, they’re setting this up. They’ve been desiring to write this story for 18 or 19 years now. They do it. Even when it’s not true, they write it. ‘Limbaugh! Limbaugh inspires violence, angry white men.’ Yeah, to oppose health care, not only is it racist now, it’s unpatriotic to oppose socialized medicine. (laughing) These people are kooks. They’re nuts. Now let’s go to this Potok kook. This guy is a genuine, off-the-wall lunatic. He’s at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was on Hardboiled last night with Chris Matthews. And this guy Potok is an embarrassment of a human being. He’s claiming that I actually want segregation on buses. (laughing) Matthews said, ‘What is it in the atmosphere allows a person to feel comfortable showing up at a political event carrying a gun? Maybe two guns, letting people know they’re armed? What is it in the atmosphere that let’s a person bring a sign that compares the president to an animal or to a Nazi?’ Chris, Pelosi got the Nazi thing going, dude! ‘What is it that makes them feel comfortable doing that kind of crap in public, Mark? I wonder if it isn’t the atmosphere of language that’s being used today. Your thoughts, sir, Mark Potok?’
POTOK: Yesterday Rush Limbaugh was on the air talking about an incident in which black kids attacked a white kid on a school bus, an incident the police said was not racially motivated and saying that what we need are segregated buses — that this is the only way, I suppose, that white people can be protected from black people. I think when we have characters like Limbaugh saying that on the air to millions of Americans, many of whom actually revere the man, you know, it’s not surprising that people feel that, uh, you know, the race wars around the corner and that, uh, we’re allowed to say these kinds of things.
RUSH: It’s incredible. (laughing) This whole race tumult is being orchestrated and run out of the White House straight out of Rahm Emanuel and Axelrod’s office. They are promoting it; they are encouraging it. Isn’t it amazing? You have black kids who beat up a white kid on a school bus. That’s not racism. You have half the country criticizing a socialist health care plan, and that is racism. Okay, so you there heard this despicable embarrassment of a human being, Mark Potok, from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. Now, here’s the comment I made in context, in response to a caller, obviously not a call for segregation.
BEGIN RUSH ARCHIVE CLIP
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I just was commenting on the Belleville incident with the kids on the bus. You’re right. They did report that last night as being racially motivated, but I just heard the news before your show started and the police chief over — I think he was a police chief, some law enforcement — there said that after further investigation of it would be not racially motivated. He said he should have been more professional before he commented on it and investigated it more before he decided and stated that it was racially motivated.
RUSH: Well, did he say why, in Obama’s America, that incident with the white kid getting beat up on the black school bus was not racially motivated?
CALLER: I didn’t hear him comment about that. No, sir.
RUSH: Because we’ve seen the videotape. Have you seen the videotape?
CALLER: Oh, yeah, sure.
RUSH: We can’t hear what’s being said.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: So we don’t know what obvious taunts this lone white student was dishing out to the whole bus.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: We don’t know what obvious taunts.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Worse than the obvious verbal taunts, we all know the racism that was in the kid’s mind. I mean Newsweek magazine says he was born a racist. So you know the white kid is sitting there thinking N-word and all kinds of things being surrounded by these black students. They knew that. They knew that and so they just descended on the kid and beat him up. We’ve seen the videotape. What did the police chief investigate?
CALLER: He did not comment on anything other than he said more investigations shows that it was not racially motivated.
RUSH: I think the guy is wrong. I think not only was it racism, it’s justifiable racism.
CALLER: True.
RUSH: I mean, that’s the lesson that we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: We need segregated buses. It was invading of space and so forth. This is Obama’s America.
END RUSH ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: So I’m doing a total parodic rant. I mean, the sarcasm is dripping — And this bottom feeder at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mark Potok, is putting it out there that I made a call for segregated buses. you know what this is like? Some of you people new to the show may not have ever heard this story. Cookie, go to the archives and grab Patsy Schroeder. Back in mid-nineties I was asked to go make a speech on a Sunday afternoon at GOPAC in Washington. I was very upset because there was a big football game that day. The 49ers and Cowboys were playing, but I’d agreed to do this thing. So I was not in the best of humor, not in the best mood.
And at that time we were in the middle of the budget debate, the school lunch cuts and the Democrats were calling around saying that Republicans were engaging in their usual stuff of cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and they run around saying that food stamps and senior citizens were soon going to have to make the choice of eating dog food and being able to buy medicine or eating real food and not buying medicine. So all this is banging around Washington the whole week before I get there. So I open up the speech by thanking the GOPAC people for inviting me. ‘It’s really great to be here and, I’ll tell you what, I’m so happy the Democrats are doing what they’re doing because I have heard them and I want you people to know: I love my mother and I love old people.
‘And since the Democrats have told me what’s going to happen, what I have done is I went out and I bought my mom a new can opener so that she can get the dog food easier when she has to eat it,’ and the place busted up laughing. Well, now, this was televised on C-SPAN. Pat Schroeder went to the floor of the House the next day and said, ‘This is what it’s come to! This is it! Rush Limbaugh actually said he’s going to buy his mother a can opener so she can have dog food. Wow!’ I could not believe it. These people are humorless. This guy Potok, in addition to being ugly, has no humor whatsoever. How could you listen to that bite and not get the sarcasm? On purpose. You have to purposely miss my whole point in order to put that rotgut stuff out there. And now you’ve got all worked up that I call for segregated buses. It’s spreading around the Internet. I know. Snerdley showed me some of the stuff spread around the Internet here. This is how these people work. But, of course, ladies and gentlemen, you know the truth. The Internet didn’t make me; the Internet can’t break me. The media didn’t make me; they can’t break me. The Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t make me. Mark Potok and anybody else down there can’t break me. Only you can do that, and you won’t.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’re back. It’s Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday. Friend of mine just went to Google and did a search for ‘Limbaugh and segregation,’ and it turned back 79,800 English pages for ‘Limbaugh and segregation.’ And they talk about the right-wing echo chamber and a radical noise machine, 79,800 pages on results for ‘Limbaugh and segregation.’ The point of that school bus riff, do I have to play this again? I was saying the black kids were justified beating up the one white kid because he was obviously racist, they knew that he was sitting there thinking N-word; they knew that he was sitting there thinking all kinds of rotten things about them; they just know this because Newsweek magazine said the kid was born a racist so they were entitled to beat the kid up because they knew he was a racist because our society and Obama, it’s Obama’s America, white people are racists. I said jokingly segregate the busses to protect the black students so they wouldn’t be taunted. These guys literally have no sense of humor.
Here’s Patsy Schroeder. This is 1995 on the floor of the House of Representatives.
SCHROEDER: And they had the Big Kahuna of GOPAC come speak, none other than Rush Limbaugh himself, who stood there and said to all these people who paid all this money to keep GOPAC rich, he was hailing the GOP budget! He said according to the paper and according to the C-SPAN tape, he thought it was wonderful because it would starve the poor and it would drive Medicare recipients, including his mother, to eat dog food, but not to worry, Mom, he says, I’m sending you a new can opener. Wow. That tells you what today’s about.
RUSH: It’s incredible. I still laugh myself silly when I hear this. This is 14 years ago. And so now they just got somebody besides Patsy Schroeder, this Mark Potok guy from the Southern Poverty Law Center out doing the same — (laughing) — wow. Just think. She’s so dense. Patsy Schroeder is so dense she could absorb light. How dense do you have to be to think somebody would actually stand up and be serious, ‘Hey, Mom, don’t worry about it, I’m going to send you a new can opener’? Wow.
Christine in Loomis, California, we go back to the phones on Open Line Friday. Great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Salami salomi baloney dittos great Maha Rushie.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: You’re welcome. I just called to tell you I saw you on the website and you are looking so great, you look so cute in those Loudmouth whatever shorts, they’re really cute, and I’m so proud of you for getting fit. It’s just the best news.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much, I appreciate that. A lot of people are expressing similar sentiments in the e-mail about me being fit and healthy and so forth, happy to hear it.
CALLER: Yes. We need you around, forever.
RUSH: Well, it’s important, because as I’ve often said, I’m not retiring ’til every American agrees with me, and the task seemingly gets harder each day because more and more people in this country are going insane.
CALLER: Insane. And that Patsy Schroeder, talk about a pea brain, that thing was unbelievable. I mean just the way she said it, you’d think she was reading a joke. I mean why didn’t everybody crack up?
RUSH: She bought it. But, of course, somebody got to her.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: She didn’t say it again. She dropped it like a hot potato. She knew she had made a fool of herself.
CALLER: Yeah. She had to. No, I just think you look great. And I’m so happy and proud of you, Rush.
RUSH: Well, thank you.
CALLER: So just keep it up.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: We all love you, and I know you don’t like to talk about yourself, but I just had to call.
RUSH: It does embarrass me to talk about myself.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: It embarrasses me to listen to you talk about me, but I’m trying to get better at that.
CALLER: Oh, well, good.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Love you.
RUSH: You bet. Love you. By the way, where’s Mike Nifong when you need him? I mean this country is descending, we need Mike Nifong. How can they misinterpret this? We need Nifong back. Where’s Mike Nifong when we need him? I mean what seminal character could best symbolize the fall into total racism that half the country — bring Nifong and make him attorney general, get rid of Holder, put him somewhere else, make Nike Nifong attorney general. That’s what Obama ought to do.
Here’s Joe in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos. It’s an honor and a privilege to speak to you on this the largest talk show station in the world.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Rush, I just want to talk to you about voting out all sitting incumbents in both the House and Senate, be they Republican or Democrat, getting rid of all career politicians over the next two election cycles. Rush, as you know — well, I’m not saying that we should vote out all two-party form of government, but rather, to re-command the voice of the people by way of exercising our power. We have an absolute power problem, 320 million people are being held hostage by 535 people. The new hires, if this were successful, should know that we expect term limits, two six-year terms max.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I know that it is nearly impossible to get the left and the right to agree on anything, but we can agree on one thing. We are being poorly represented. As you know, Rush, we fled the tyranny of taxation without representation, but it was not just about taxation. It was equally about setting up a form of government separate from a monarchy that would have equality of representation that’s close to equal to that of the will of the people.
RUSH: Well, you know, I think you got a great idea here, you ought to lead this movement. You ought to get out there and just get rid of everybody. I mean I kind of dig it. Get rid of everybody. Yeah. Go for it!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Wait ’til the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (laughing), wait ’til they hear that I’ve suggested that Obama make Nike Nifong the new attorney general. (laughing) I’m not going to read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial because it’s just a rehash of what Mark Potok said and everybody taking this whole thing out of context. They even publish it in context and get it wrong. They even publish it in context and didn’t understand. I don’t think they heard it. I think they read it, said, ‘This is outrageous, keep the trash talker from Cape Girardeau and his ilk away from our kids.’ (laughing) What a day. What a day.