BIDEN: I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.
RUSH: All right, now, for the longest time yesterday, nobody really did much on this. In fact, the Drive-By Media talked about everything Biden said but this. We focused on this for quite a while yesterday during the three-hour span that is the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and, who knows, we may have moved the subject off of the so-called new media and on to the unwilling and uneager tables and desks of the Drive-By Media, and all of a sudden Biden was being questioned about this. Now, via telephone interview, the first stab he made at this in getting out of this jam was to plagiarize his mother.
BIDEN: My mother has an expression, clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack. That’s the context — he’s crisp and clear.
RUSH: Well, his mother didn’t say clear. He can’t even plagiarize his mother correctly. If his mother was Neil Kinnock he could probably pull it off. My mother has an expression clean as a whistle sharp as a tack, that’s the context, this didn’t work. So, where do beleaguered liberals go when they are in trouble? They go to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Here’s a portion of Biden’s appearance with Jon Stewart.
BIDEN: I spoke to Barack today.
STEWART: I bet you did. (Audience laughter.)
BIDEN: I also spoke to Jesse and Al Sharpton and —
STEWART: And Michael Jordan and anybody you could get your hands on. (Audience laughter.) Like the Jackson Five. Who else?
BIDEN: Michael didn’t call me. Look, what I was attempting to be was, not very artfully, is complimentary. This is an incredible guy; this is a phenomenon. This guy is — and, look, the other part of this thing is, — the word that got me in trouble is using the word “clean.” I should have said “fresh.” What I meant is he’s got new ideas, he’s a new — new guy on the block.
RUSH: Stewart’s face was deadpan and Biden ended up concluding, “This isn’t working, is it?” And it’s not. Although he didn’t come in for harsh treatment. New York Times did put this on the front page at the fold, going through the motions of reporting this. But the Drive-Bys generally categorized his remarks as just indelicate. Barack slipped on this, even, too. He’s so used to getting attacked by the Clinton war room that he misspoke when he first addressed this.
OBAMA: I mean, you would have to ask Senator Clinton — Senator Biden what — what he was thinking. I don’t spend too much time worrying about what folks are talking about.
RUSH: I mean you’d have to ask Senator Clinton — uh, Senator Biden. He’s so used to being beat up by Senator Clinton in her war room, he forget it to say that it was Biden. Now, yesterday afternoon Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer answered questions on Capitol Hill. Listen to Schumer coach Obama as to what to say.
OBAMA: I’m not going to parse his words like that.
SCHUMER: Gee whiz.
OBAMA: I mean it was — he — he just did a —
SCHUMER: He didn’t mean it.
OBAMA: He didn’t mean it.
RUSH: So Schumer says, “He didn’t mean it,” and Obama follows with, “He didn’t mean it.” So Biden didn’t mean it. Last night ABC’s World News tonight, a montage of the report put together by ABC’s correspondent Jake Tapper.
TAPPER: Joe Biden had hoped launching his presidential campaign today would bring headlines about his experience and gravitas. But instead, he spent much of the day discussing these comments he made to a newspaper Stewart about Senator Barack Obama. Observers from both parties questioned what Biden meant, especially by the word “clean.”
JACKSON: They are loaded words. That’s why he should interpret what he meant by those loaded words.
LIMBAUGH: And, see, folks, this is the problem for the libs. Once they get off script, they expose their idiocy, they expose their prejudice.
TAPPER: Biden said he was praising Obama. Obama today refused to tell ABC News whether he thought Biden was complimenting him. This evening Biden issued a statement saying he regrets his remarks. On Capitol Hill he’s known for foreign policy expertise and for talking too much. He’s hoping the first quality will help him win the nomination. But it’s the second one that got him into trouble today.
RUSH: Yeah, it was the day of his official beginning of his presidential campaign. (Laughing.) Really, when they go off script, you see what fools they are. You heard Tapper allude to it here, He’s best known on Capitol Hill for foreign policy expertise and for talking too much. He really is the senator blow hard. He just loves the sound of his own voice. He got circles run around him by John Roberts and Sam Alito at these judicial confirmation hearings, and he wasn’t even listening to them, thought he’d already had them trapped. He just doesn’t shut up, and this is the kind of thing that people are asking, Did it destroy his presidential bid on the day he announced it, and has anybody else crashed and burned that soon in American politics?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
So let’s go to CNN’s Paula Zahn Now. She interviewed Stephen A. Smith, an analyst from both Philadelphia and ESPN and Debbie Schlussel, conservative columnist. Paula Zahn said, Jesse Jackson came out today. He says, “I personally don’t think that Biden’s a racist but it certainly raises questions by the kind of tone and the language he used.”
SCHLUSSEL: It’s interesting how everybody’s willing to forgive him and say he’s not bigoted, but yet when Rush Limbaugh, for example, says something on ESPN that was not racist about Donovan McNabb, he’s a racist and he’s kicked off ESPN, and he’s not running for president.
RUSH: That’s Debbie Schlussel. She has a website and she’s a columnist. She is responding to a Paula Zahn question.
RUSH: It’s not just the ESPN stuff. One of my problems is I sell in the Drive-By Media. Jake Tapper’s putting me in sound bites. I sell, folks. You know, if it weren’t for me being in the newspaper, think how bad the newspaper business would be, the New York Times would be reporting massive losses, LA Times, Chicago Tribune up for sale. If the Drive-Bys want to talk about the poor economy, focus on themselves, because if there is a market segment that is dragging the economy, it would have to be the Drive-By Media. At any rate, up next on the Paula Zahn show was Stephen A. Smith, noted columnist in Philadelphia and analyst on ESPN. Paula said, Is Biden getting a free pass?
SMITH: I don’t think he’s getting a free pass. It’s the difference between being a racist and being racially insensitive. When you talk about somebody being a racist, as a black man, I’ve seen individuals and I could point to a lot of things considerably more harsher than what we heard or what you may have witnessed from Joseph Biden that would fall under the category of being a racist. You can be racially insensitive because it comes from ignorance as well. That doesn’t necessarily make you a racist so that’s where I draw the line.
RUSH: Well, Stephen A. Smith makes Debbie Schlussel’s point. Biden is a liberal, he’s down for the struggle, and so he’s not a racist. He was just racially insensitive. Max Kellerman, Fox News Channel, used to work at ESPN, was on Hannity & Colmes back on March 29th of 2004. You realize this McNabb episode was in September-October of 2003? We’re into 2007 now and the Philadelphia papers are still writing about it as though it happened yesterday. There was a big piece by some columnist yesterday about it, because McNabb’s spoken now for the first time in three months, putting to rest all the rumors that have been circulating out there. Anyway, Max Kellerman said this about the whole incident at ESPN involving me and McNabb.
KELLERMAN: A lot of other people could have said exactly what Rush said, what he said I found kind of interesting, actually. But the real reason they reacted to him that way, the liberal media, if you will, is because they know Rush ain’t down for the struggle, so he’s not allowed to say that.
RUSH: Rush ain’t down for the struggle. Okay, Mr. Snerdley, help translate this. What does that mean? When Mr. Kellerman, who is on my side in this, when he says I ain’t down, does that mean they don’t think of me as a civil rights activist, or I’m not a liberal? What is it? Right. Okay, so I’m not a liberal, and I don’t sign on to the civil rights orthodoxy, and as such, I’m not down for the struggle, whereas Biden is, Biden is down for the struggle. If you listen to Stephen A. Smith, Biden is down for the struggle, and that means that he can get away with being racially incentive, not a racist. My comments were not even about McNabb, other than I thought he was being overrated at the time on the basis that the Drive-By Media, who is down for the struggle, was promoting him only because of their desire being that they are down for the struggle, to see a black quarterback in a leadership position do well.
Can you doubt that I was right? Look at the focus still now on Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith, the first two black head coaches to appear together in the Super Bowl. Look, folks, I understand. I talked to the Hutch about this, my buddy out in Seattle, and he said, Look, my man, you remember when I played — he played for the Cowboys, played for the Chargers, played for the Seahawks, ?–and when I played, the black guys were not allowed to play the thinking positions, like quarterback and this sort of thing. And, yeah, there’s been a lot of progress in this and I totally understand and relate to it. But it’s 2007 now, and there are seven black head coaches in the NFL. It’s not that unique, and when you focus on these two guys’ race, you’re doing them an injustice. They are great men. They happen to be best in their conferences this year. They beat who they had to beat to get to the Super Bowl. They are decent people. They’re just solid citizens. You should have heard Dungy this morning in his press conference. Both of these guys are clean and articulate, absolutely right.
Dungy was asked a question about his relationship with one of his assistant coaches, and he said, I think God put us together for a reason, and Lovie Smith says similar things. These are devout Christian men. You know, everywhere else in society, if you’re a devout Christian, well, you’re a kook, a wacko, an extremist, and, depending on which Democrat’s talking about you, you’re no different than a militant Islamist. That would be Rosie O’Donnell. But the fact is these two guys have a long history of working with each other. Dungy goes all the way back to Chuck Noll’s Steelers in 1978. He played in that Super Bowl game against the Cowboys that the Steelers won 35-31. When you listen to both of them talk, they are obviously confident, they’re very secure in themselves, and they’re great role models.
They are just great role models for the whole hard work ethic, believing in yourself, taking what you’ve learned from others, adapting it to your own philosophy — in their case, in football — and to just focus on their achievement as being highlighted by the virtue of the color of their skin is to diminish the other aspects of these guys. It’s just a shame. Now Biden’s come along and brought all this up. But he’s down for the struggle, and I apparently am not down for the struggle, and as such I am not only a racist, I am incentive to racial things, according to these critics.
END TRANSCRIPT