RUSH: Burleson, Texas, Andy, you’re up first today. Great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I think we need to consider in this whole debate the fact that the Democrats are really sensitive to word usage. If you call their party anything other than what they want you to call it, Democrat, Democratic, whatever, it can bring ’em to tears. I think talk radio, if anything, is bringing down the likelihood of any violence in this country simply because we’re able to discuss and vent and somewhat give some control over our lives, or at least the feeling of that. On the other hand, in the health care debate for a whole year the public was telling this administration it did not want Obamacare, yet it was foisted on us —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — over all that objection, and consequently the public feels a loss of control over their lives, which might I would think increase the likelihood of violence, if anything —
RUSH: Well, that’s an excellent point, and I want to stress again that that is by design. Creating this kind of chaos and unsettledness, a lack of confidence about people’s lives and futures is exactly the purpose here. This is what the left seeks to do. This is one of the prime ingredients of the recipe to grow government: set government up as the solution to all these problems that government causes. Have you ever noticed that whenever government does something that’s wrong, big, big boondoggle, what’s the solution? Another government program to fix it. Big government’s always the solution to government excess, to government mistakes.
I remember when I started this program, I got a great piece of advice once back in Sacramento when I was hired to do essentially my first real talk show the way I wanted to do it. The consultant who found me and hired me said we don’t mind controversy, as long as it’s genuine. If you really believe something, can back it up, we’ll back you up. But if you’re just gotta get on the radio and say outrageous things designed solely to make people mad, things that you don’t believe, if your purpose is just to get noticed, just to say the most outrageous thing you can, sorry, we don’t want any part of that, and we’re not gonna back you up. It’s not that I had a tendency to do that; it’s just that this was a policy being explained to me. And it also turned out to be great advice because essentially it was just be honest, be passionate, be honest, and we’ll back you up. All points of view were heard on this station. I mean it had everything from carrot cake recipes to biased news in the morning presented by a bunch of liberals, to you name it. It had everything. Diversity was covered throughout the busy broadcast day. And I had never forgotten that.
When I started this program back in 1988, I knew what we were trying to do. We were trying to get radio stations all over the country to cover, to take, to broadcast the program. And I knew that there was gonna be resistance to it at many of the radio stations. Because back then in 1988 the mantra for radio was it’s gotta be local. Talk radio particularly has to be local with local issues and local phone numbers and local hosts ’cause people in the community didn’t care what was happening outside the community, couldn’t care less. And so I knew if I was impolite to callers, that I would have a short life span on stations because even after the program was accepted on some stations, I knew and I was told in some cases that people were laying in wait on the station for any excuse they could to cancel it, because they didn’t want it there in the first place. So being an insult guy, which some hosts had popularized back then and in previous years prior to it, I knew would not work. So be polite, be honest, don’t be controversial for the sake of it, and it’s always been my basic operating procedure.
I’ve always said that no radio program which, as this one’s been accused of, as you know, for 22 years, being built on hate — remember, now, hate speech is simply anything that disagrees with Democrats, anything that agrees with liberalism, they categorize it as hate speech. So I’ve always said that no radio show built on hate could ever survive. It could not be a business success, first and foremost. It would not attract and hold an audience. It certainly would not become large enough, long enough to become profitable. It was simply a losing proposition, the way I was trying to do this. And it turned out to be true. I’ve always countered the notion that there was hate on this program. It’s not possible. There has been a radio network pop up that tried the exact opposite, say whatever you have to say, outrageous as it can be, whether you believe it or not, filled with disgusting hate. It was called Air America, and look how long it lasted. I mean even liberals who share the same hateful points of view did not find it worth listening to because they weren’t hearing anything different than what they saw and experienced during their humdrum daily lives.
So the whole notion that conservative talk radio is filled with hate and so forth is baseless because it wouldn’t work. There was no way it could become profitable; no way it could become a business success. And, by the way, all the people accusing me and people who do what I do of being filled with hate, they know all of us. They know everything they’re saying about this program and me is a bunch of lies. They know it. Doesn’t matter. Their effort is not based in truth. It is their agenda that inspires and propels and motives them. And that agenda is simply get rid of any opposition. They’ve tried every which way they can think of to compete, to exist alongside, to beat, what have you, they can’t even come close. And the reasons are hilariously obvious. Yet they can’t figure them out. And the reasons that they are eminent failures is they have not one scintilla of understanding of how free markets work.
Air America, for example, started out as a bunch of hateful, angry people who had no experience in radio because the people who listen to this program think it’s not a radio show, this is a political show, somebody found me, I’m some great political entertainer, what have you, so they gotta combat me with their own campaign network. They thought this radio program exists as a campaign arm of conservatism or the Republican Party, so they thought that’s what they had to set up. Of course they couldn’t have been further from the truth, those people. But they understand that what they’re saying about conservative media is not true but it doesn’t matter. They’re still gonna try to convince as many people of it as possible. And the only people they can convince are the people who don’t listen. The people who do listen know how baseless these allegations are. So the effort of Media Matters and all these other so-called watchdogs is to try to keep people who don’t listen from listening because they think they already know what happens on this program without having to listen to it.
It’s amazing those people who do find this program or others, it’s amazing how lightbulbs go on in their heads, ‘This is not at all what I thought it was. This is not at all what they told me it was.’ And that’s the biggest threat that these people face, because everything they’ve said about us, conservatives, conservatives in the media, you name it, everything they have said about Republicans, conservatives for the most part is a lie to one degree or another. They live in the greatest fear that all that’s gonna be exposed as lies. So you have an event like this in Arizona. Okay, go to page whatever it is in the playbook, shows us what to do here. It’s no different than what happened in the Oklahoma City bombing, and that is politicize this and we’ve got templates here of saying these people are hateful, they inspire violence and so forth, so we got violence that took place out there, let’s go blame this on Palin, let’s go blame this on whoever we think are the most threatening conservatives of the moment, which is why after eight years of Bush being responsible for everything, he’s not a threat anymore, he’s gone, so he doesn’t exist in their minds. Now it’s Palin.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You may not remember this, the timeline. On Saturday afternoon, one of the first reports of the shooting in Arizona was by NPR. NPR misreported that Gabrielle Giffords had died. They were later corrected. Other news outlets ran stories and they mildly slapped NPR for reporting this, and then NPR backtracked. So yesterday in Washington at the Center for Internships and Seminars… (laughing) They actually have such a place: the Center for Internships and Seminars. I wonder what the lobby of this ‘Washington Center for Internships and Seminars’ looks like. ‘Former CBS News correspondent Marvin Kalb spoke about the differences in the current media environment versus those at other points in American history.’ He said this…
KALB: We have moved from a society that for the most part lived by the daily newspaper and radio into a society where we are absorbed with cable news and the Internet! We are also abso’bed with radio. There are, generally speaking, talk radio hosts who have enormous political power — the number one being Rush Limbaugh, who can attract 15 million people, 18 million people a week, and he is being paid an enormous amount of money to, uh, attract that kind of an audience. There is not a comparable, uh, liberal representative of the world on radio. Not a comparable one.
RUSH: Well, it’s not for lack of trying. (laughing) Is it my fault? Who are these planners that are not allowing ‘a comparable liberal representative of the world on radio’? By the way, does Bill Clinton know about this place, the Center for Internships? Whoa-ho! I wonder if it was invented just for him. Maybe his foundation, maybe the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor funds the Center for Internships. Maybe Clinton created it, in fact — absolutely — with unmarked bills from the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor. At any rate, here’s Marvin Kalb lamenting that I’m the number one radio host with 15 to 18 million (he’s about six million short) and ‘being paid an enormous amount of money to attract that kind of an audience. There is not a comparable liberal representative of the world on radio. Not a comparable one.’ Audience and quality, either one. Not for lack of trying. They’ve tried Jim Hightower. They’ve tried Gary Hart. They’ve tried Mario Cuomo. They have tried… Pshew! They have tried a whole network. They’ve tried liberal comedians. They’ve tried out-of-work liberal politician. They’ve tried. It isn’t my fault. At any rate, Marvin Kalb was not through. Here’s another point of his remarks.
KALB: NPR — which is reputed to be the finest radio news operation in existence in the United States, NPR — last Saturday, when Congresswoman Giffords was shot, went on the air an hour or so after the bulletins first ran saying that she was dead. NPR was sucked into the modern world of communications where so much information is out there. We’re not checking things very much anymore because there are so many ‘facts,’ quote, unquote, out there that it is difficult for us to discern the true fact from the made-up or the incomplete, quote, ‘fact.’
RUSH: What, is that my problem, too? So NPR — good, hardworking, honest, decent people — the system screwed ’em up. Here they are. They’re diligently working to get the facts, good bunch of liberals on radio. And they’re out there doing everything that they can. Do it right. And they get tricked. They reported, tried to do the best they could, Gabrielle Giffords had died — and it wasn’t because they screwed up. It wasn’t because they wanted to be first. It wasn’t because of any mistakes the human beings that work at NPR made. No, no, no, no! It’s because there’s too much information, and there’s not enough appreciation for facts. Now, Marvin Kalb says that there’s not a comparable liberal on radio.
Really? Barack Obama has access to radio and TV whenever he demands it. The president of the United States is a liberal. The president of the United States uses his office to attack people, to punish industry. He not only has a bigger audience than all of conservative radio combined, he has the power of government — and yet Marvin Kalb tells interns at the Center for Internships and Seminars that I am too powerful ’cause there not another liberal like me. The president doesn’t count. I, you see, am more powerful! Why? Now, obviously that’s not true. But why does Kalb say this? Kalb says this because, in his ideal world, there would not be anyone opposing what Obama is saying. There wouldn’t be anybody other than him and his ex-buddies at CBS, ABC, NBC, dutifully echoing what Obama was saying. But now that monopoly doesn’t exist, so it’s a problem. The problem is not that there’s not another liberal. The problem is that there’s a whole New Media that doesn’t swallow and doesn’t take stenography from a liberal Democrat administration.
Bill in Livonia, Michigan, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega conservative dittos —
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: — and a happy birthday from Michigan.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: My wife asked me to say that she also enjoyed you on The Haney Project last night.
RUSH: Well!
CALLER: And I said, ‘Should I tell him that you like his golf swing?’ and she said, ‘More like backfield in motion.’
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: I’ll take it.
CALLER: Great. Rush, I was struck this morning listening to the opening segments of the show, the Ashleigh Banfield interview with Loughner’s good friend and the description that he gave. I realize that it describes 99% of young people in America.
RUSH: Let’s grab that. Sound bite number three. This is what Bill’s talking about. This is Zach Osler speaking on Good Morning America today with Ashleigh Banfield. She asked, ‘What was his motivation? What about this speculation that he may have been fueled by partisan politics and rhetoric in the media?’
OSLER: He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left; he wasn’t on the right.
RUSH: You think that’s a description of 99% of the yutes of America?
CALLER: Absolutely, and I originally told your call screener that I referred to it as ‘his generation,’ but I realized it’s all generations. When I was young and entering the age when I was able to start voting, I was nonpolitical. Young people are caught up in pop culture, and they have no interest in politics — and one of the things that, as I thought this through, I realized that around election time, the people that are responsible for pop culture tried their darnedest to get young people to the polls, and the campaign from MTV is, of all things, ‘Vote or Die.’
RUSH: Right, yeah, Vote or Die.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Rock the Vote? Vote or Die. That was actually not MTV. I think that was Sean Diddy, P. Diddy, whatever he…
CALLER: (laughs) (sighs)
RUSH: Combs, had a T-shirt. He had a T-shirt on there: Vote or Die, yeah.
CALLER: Right. That’s why you’re the professor and I’m the student.
RUSH: No, you remembered it. I didn’t. Minor point. They’re all the same bunch, whether it’s MTV or Sean P. Diddy. They’re all the same left, the Hollywood left. It’s a great, great point. Every election the architects of the pop culture try to inspire their charges and motivate ’em to vote, and every year they tell us they’re going to be the difference. (laughs) They seldom are but that doesn’t stop the pipe dream from occurring. Bill, I appreciate the call. I really do. Thanks much.