So a lot of us rallied, and he decided to write a book about it as a means of therapy, a means of reliving his experiences with the dog, and also sort of purging the pain and getting it out. He wrote the book, and during the whole process he’s talking to friends about it and we’re all offering input. I can’t describe for you the whole process of writing the book, those of us that were involved — we didn’t write it, he did — but the emotional pain that he was going through is on every page. There’s nothing about politics in this book. It is as much from the heart from anyone that I’ve ever read about anything. I have not read a whole lot of animal books, but it’s not a big book, and it’s just recently out, but it’s just a tremendous body of work on the affection that a human being can have for another living entity, human being, dog, a pet, or what have you.
Mark was on Hannity & Colmes earlier in the week, and Cookie watched, gave me a couple sound bites here. Naturally, the sound bites that Cookie gave me are about me, about Levin speaking about me, and I don’t talk about myself that much, as you know, and I’m not really comfortable doing it, but I want to play these two sound bites for you. By the way, the full title of the book is: Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish. Hannity said: ‘You describe the hours and you go into detail waiting for that clock ticking, that day 12 noon the vet was due to come to your house to put the dog to sleep. How did you get through it?’
LEVIN: Rush was very supportive, and other people who are my friends and I reached to, and, you know, it got so upsetting to me, frankly, I almost quit my profession. I just said, you know, what good is it to be behind a microphone talking all the time or to be a lawyer? You’ve got people out there, you’ve got doctors and nurses and vets and people who work at shelters, like his wife, they’re saving lives, you know, they’ve committed their lives to others lives’, and I got to thinking, what the heck am I doing? I’m just talking on the radio.
RUSH: Yeah, well, he did mention that to me, a bunch of e-mails and so forth, and I fired back. I’m not going to tell you what I said. Some of it’s in his book, but that’s for him to divulge. He’s going to be here, by the way, on the 16th. He’s in town, the Restoration Weekend, and he’s going to be here in the studio for an interview. We rarely do it, but this book is — I know there have been a lot of animal books — maybe I think it’s so unique because I know and love Mark so much. I know that he was not kidding here when he said he thought about giving it all up, that what he was doing was meaningless and worthless compared to the people that were trying to save his dog and to save other human beings and so forth. Alan Colmes then got in on the act, and said, ‘But to reevaluate what you write in your book, quote, ‘I didn’t want to go on the radio anymore, maybe I don’t want to do my career anymore, maybe I want to give it all up.”
LEVIN: Well, I was talked out of it by Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and a big chunk of the money I get from this book is going to go to these shelters and these animal welfare places.
COLMES: Very interesting exchange in the book with Rush.
LEVIN: Yeah.
COLMES: An instant-message exchange.
LEVIN: I think people will be fascinated by that, yeah.
COLMES: And he showed you, as Sean did, a great deal of support.
RUSH: Right. A lot of people did. All during the book, the process of writing the book, Mark was fretting, ‘Nobody’s going to care about this. Nobody’s going to have any interest in this.’ I said, ‘You wait. This thing is going to be huge. Your publisher is going to tell you that they’re not going to print that many copies because it’s just another dog book. They’re going to misread the market, you watch, this thing is going to go ballistic. It’s going to skyrocket because this book is going to have word-of-mouth, once people start reading it, which they have. They’re going to talk about it to other people, and it’s going to explode,’ and it is in the process of exploding now. They’ve already had to reprint from their original printing. So I just wanted to let you know about it. Mark will be here a week from Friday to talk about the book. I don’t want to talk too much about it because I want him to do it, but he will be here then. Again, the name of the book is Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I mentioned Levin’s book. One thing here before we go to the break and get to the Hillary story all over. I got this e-mail yesterday: ‘Dear Rush, It may not be your cup of tea, but we would like to send you a real live pet tarantula. We strive to be the top captive-bred tarantula dealer in the USA someday. We have about 3,000 tarantulas at the moment. If you allow us, my wife and I would like to send you a nice, large display-type tarantula, enclosure lighting and care instructions. Punkin will probably not care a whit about the tarantula.’ Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. There are no pictures, so I don’t know what the display looks like, but if Punkin sees it moving and can get to it, pfft! It’s history. ‘These tarantulas are very quiet. They don’t smell. They don’t demand attention. They’re nicer than most all liberals that you’ve ever met. Please let me know if you are interested.’ Tarantulas? Isn’t that what one of the…? Ernst Stavro Blofeld tried to kill James Bond with one of those!