RUSH: When I watch CNN, when I watch MSNBC, we’re watching networks that no longer have any audience to speak of. I mean if you look at the country as a whole, the MSNBC audience could be put in a thimble, and CNN’s could be put on the head of a pin compared to the country at large. Newsweek was sold for a dollar, and all the big names at Newsweek are leaving. The only one left is Howard Fineman. The New York Times, circulation is down. Same thing at the Washington Post. USA Today, LA Times, they’re all down. When I watch these networks, or when I read Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s piece today on the panic that’s set in, both at the New York Times and at the White House over the numbers of people that think Obama’s a Muslim, it just struck me again, they have no connection with you or anybody else outside of their realm of media. The American people are not their audience.
When you turn on MSNBC and watch anything on that network, you get the sense that they’re doing that show not for an audience but for fellow journalists and for people in the White House and for elected Democrats in Congress. That’s their audience, that’s who they’re doing their shows for. Same thing for CNN; same thing for the New York Times. There is really a gulf. The media in this country really do look at the people of this country as an enemy. We’re not just a bunch of rubes, folks, we’re not just a bunch of unsophisticated Neanderthals. We are that to them, but we’re now actually the enemy. When they get this poll from Pew that says the number of people that believe Obama is a Christian is shrinking, the number of people that think he’s a Muslim is increasing, they do not look at the media themselves for maybe an explanation. They don’t look at the White House or Obama to try to find an explanation for this. They knee-jerk conclude that we are a bunch of imbeciles, or reactionaries or racists, bigots, or what have you.
I think the divide between media and public is as stark as it has ever been. Stop and think about this. The relationship that the media has with the people of this country is adversarial. It used to be that their relationship that was adversarial was with people in power. It used to be that people in power were those that had to be examined, had to be accountable. But now since they’re leftists, they’re not really media people, they’re leftists first, we know that, we are the enemy. We are a bigger enemy than Iranian nukes. We are a bigger enemy than Middle East peace. The American people, particularly American conservatives, but I think the American people at large. You read one of these newspapers, read Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s piece today. She’s not writing it for you. She’s not writing it to inform you. The New York Times is not concerned with informing you. Neither is MSNBC concerned with informing you. When F. Chuck Todd does his stand-up at the White House, F. Chuck Todd is talking to other White House reporters who he hopes are watching his work and making sure that they approve of what he’s saying. He’s also hoping they’re watching in the White House and approving what he’s saying. And when Chip Reid of CBS does the same thing, the same thing is happening. And whoever the ABC White House correspondent, whenever that guy does his stand-up at the White House he’s thinking of all the other correspondents at the other networks and the White House and making sure they approve of what he or she is saying, not us.
So we have these two issues, this mosque business, what is it, 68% of the American people oppose the mosque being built there. We have this ‘what religion is Obama’ story, and both of these the media profess not to understand the reasons we think what we think. And they thus assign the reasons, that we have bigotry or a lack of sophistication or ignorance or what have you. And it’s kind of striking me more profoundly than it ever has. I think the key word is ‘adversarial,’ because they’re just Democrats. They’re just leftists. And when they fail to persuade us; when they fail to control us; when they fail to properly affect our opinions; then they get mad at us. Not at themselves. MSNBC has one audience member they care about, and that’s Barack Obama. They exist to please him and to do his bidding. Everything else is a distraction. MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, ABC, doesn’t matter, the professional left, that Robert Gibbs thinks need to be drug tested. Everywhere it is a battle between them, the professional left, whether they’re professors or media people, politicians versus us, the amateur right, they’re the professionals. We are the rank amateurs.
The media used to claim that their job was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. It’s just the opposite now. The media exists to comfort the comfortable and to make them even more comfortable, to please them, to promote them. So when things aren’t going well for the regime, then of course there’s gotta be an explanation for it. It can’t be that the regime is bumbling around making all kinds of mistakes and doing stupid things. It has to be that we amateurs just don’t get it.