RUSH: This is Sharon in Port Angeles, Washington. Nice to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you so much for taking my call. There’s so many things that I would love to say but this month I believe marks my one-year anniversary of listening to your show, and the reason I started, and like I said I believe it was a year ago this month that Barack Obama, that our president got on national TV and pointed his finger at us, you and me, and said, ‘Do not listen to people like Rush Limbaugh.’ And my husband and I have been listening to you ever since.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: And I guess I’m reminded of it because it was, what, just a few weeks ago that he got on TV again and said don’t listen to Fox and et cetera and so forth.
RUSH: So you hadn’t listened to this program before he said that and you said, ‘Well, I wonder why a president says don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh.’
CALLER: It’s not that I hadn’t heard of you. My husband and I were both working parents. Now we are involved grandparents and just never had time for radio.
RUSH: Yeah, I understand. I mean I’m very famous. I knew you’d heard it from me. You just hadn’t had the time to listen.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Obviously because of my incredible fame you had an opinion of me before you listened, what was that?
CALLER: It wasn’t good or bad. I had just heard of you, and to be honest, we had been so involved, we’re just normal, middle class Americans, I’m a nurse, my husband is now retired military, and we’d just been busy and did not become — in fact, to be honest with you, I started listening to Fox News, because we’re both independents, it was just before Bush was being reelected like a year before or so, there was so much Bush bashing on the mainstream media that I thought, there is no way one man can be responsible for the ills of the entire world, and that’s when I started to listen to Fox so I could get both sides of the story. And then since then I’ve become more involved listening and reading and this kind of thing.
RUSH: Well, do you watch Hannity and Bill O’Reilly?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Let’s pretend that you’re talking to Bill O’Reilly. I’ll be Bill O’Reilly.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: All right. What do you think of me? Where have I gone wrong today?
CALLER: Oh, you’re asking me what I think of Bill O’Reilly?
RUSH: No. I am Bill O’Reilly. What do you think of me? Tell me where I’ve gone wrong today.
CALLER: Oh, he does say that a lot.
RUSH: Look, all I’m telling you is that we’ve gotta give socialism a fair shake for the folks, I’m not going to sit here and condemn it like these right-wingers are. We’ve gotta give socialism a fair shake, and we hear at The Factor are going to give socialism, even communism, a fair shake. We’ll do an in-depth investigation, and we’ll report back because we’re not knee-jerking, and we are looking out for you, the folks.
CALLER: I hear what you’re saying, and when it comes to getting actual news, I don’t get that from Bill O’Reilly, I get that from, well, it used to be Brit Hume, now Bret Baier —
RUSH: Well, we just don’t like all this Obama bashing here at The Factor, that’s for these extreme right-wingers, this Obama bashing, it’s not productive, the Bush-bashing wasn’t productive. We’re going to give socialism and the destruction of the country a fair examination, and if we determine that Obama’s destroying the country, we’ll report it fairly.
CALLER: What I would have to say — Bill O’Reilly, sir, with all due respect, I think Barack Obama is the most arrogant, egotistical man that I have ever known.
RUSH: I don’t care about that. What do you think of me? Am I arrogant, too? If Obama’s arrogant, nobody can be more arrogant than I am, what do you think of me, where have I gone wrong here?
CALLER: (laughing) Bill O’Reilly. Oh, my goodness.
RUSH: Anyway, Sharon, it’s great to have you here in the EIB Network family. It really is. I’m thrilled to hear how this happened. I really am.
CALLER: I’ve learned so much since I’ve listened to you, and I appreciate that you are on the air, I’m sorry I missed all of those years, but I caught up pretty quick.
RUSH: Thank you. Well, you can if… do you use computers?
CALLER: Well, I have to at work but I’m not a computer person. My husband is, though, he is a computer person. In fact, it is so hard to get a hold of you because I tried —
RUSH: All right, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make you a complimentary member of my premium service.
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: Yeah, premium member subscriber side at RushLimbaugh.com, because it is an encyclopedia of all 20-plus years of this program. Now, I’m going to put you on hold here and the next person you speak to will be Mr. Snerdley and he’ll get all the information necessary from you.
CALLER: Oh, my God. I get to talk to the infamous Mr. Snerdley?
RUSH: For the second time. He’s the one that you —
CALLER: That was the first person I spoke with? Wow.
RUSH: Yeah, and we’re also going to make you a complimentary subscriber of my newsletter, The Limbaugh Letter, the most widely read political newsletter in the country.
CALLER: I so appreciate that.
RUSH: And we have a page in every issue where every reader can write back and tell them what they think of me.