So I said, ‘We’re going to find our own Satanic message in Slim Whitman’s record grooves here.’ We recorded it backwards. Don put his voice through a disgronificator — or harmonizer — which can make it sound out-of-this-world, and he made it sound very low and deep and the message was very simple: ‘Beelzebub! Yes, it’s me, the old devil himself, right here in the Slim Whitman record grooves. Tell me, how did you find a turntable that plays the song backward like this? Me and my disciples like to spread them around.’ We played this thing three or four times.
I went on the air and I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m contemplating resigning. An Ohio minister has showed me the light. He told the story about the Mister Ed theme backwards and the Satanic messages in it, and I said, ‘If it’s in the Mister Ed theme, where else might this be?’ So we went through our high-tech equipment here in the KFBK production room, and I started listening to some of the update theme songs played backwards, and, sure enough, there is a Satanic message in Una Paloma Blanca! I have subjected this to you unbeknownst, which means I have been easily corrupted and co-opted by the devil, and I feel horrible. I didn’t know it, and you have been subjected to it. I don’t know that I can go on, because it happened once without my knowledge. Even though I’ve learned of it now, how can I prevent it from ever happening again? You deserve better than this. I want to think about it.’
This got the phones ringing. ‘What’s in the song? What’s the message?’
‘Ah, I’m not going to let you hear it. It’s bad enough I’ve subjected you to it without you or me knowing it was there. To knowingly play a Satanic message to you is something beneath my dignity. I will not do it.’ They started calling the station manager, Rick Atchison.
Atchison comes to me and said, ‘Look, what is going on here?’
I said, ‘Don’t sweat it, we got a week out of this, at least a week out of this.’ (laughter)
He said, ‘What, are you threatening to resign?’
‘No, no, no, no. Just ride with me on this. It’s going to be great.’
So, after a couple days, some local preachers started calling Atchison, asking, ‘What is the Satanic message? I’ve had people telling me your radio station plays Satanic messages.’
So the way it ended up was I went on four days later, and I said to the audience, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have been forced by ministers across the city have called our general manager and have insisted to know what this is about, that I play this song. I’m doing it in full protest, under duress. I have no desire to subject this to you, but at least I feel better. You are being warned in advance. And I still don’t know if I can continue as your host, again, because this happened so easily without my knowledge.’
So we start the song after this four-day buildup. We start the song, and after about 30 seconds of it going backwards (Slim Whitman’s voice sounds funnier that way than normal) here comes Don Wright’s ‘Beelzebub, yes, it’s me.’
And I’m thinking, ‘This is going to launch me to the Tonight Show. This is going to establish me as one of the great creative, humorous minds of the decade. This is a brilliant satirical bit and everybody is going to get it,’ and I’m laughing myself silly as this song plays. We go three minutes with the Satanic message going three times. I looked across the glass at Kitty and she has a look of horror on her face as she’s screening calls.
We went through the calls. The first caller: ‘I have every Slim Whitman album. What should I do?’ (laughter)
You have to be adaptable. I said, ‘Sir, I wouldn’t take a chance. I’d burn ’em.’ (laughter)
There were people calling me thanking me that I had been touched by the Lord, by God-d, and he was using me for good, and I should not quit because this is the kind of thing to illustrate how people, innocently, are subjected to these Satanic messages.’
I was just unbelieving: This can’t be my audience! (laughter)
The funniest call came when some guy called — he might have been from Rio Linda, I’m not sure — and said, ‘You can’t fool me. You’re putting everybody on with this. I think it’s a shameful act that you’ve been doing.’
I said, ‘What are you talking about, sir?’
‘I have that record. My turntable doesn’t play backwards, but I’ve been spinning it backwards by hand, and there is no Satanic message there!’ (laughter)
I said, ‘Sir, your turntable, what year was it made?’ (laughter)
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Well, what year was it made?’
‘May, 1980.’
I said, ‘Well, turntables made prior to 1985 do not have disgronificator circuitry.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’ve never heard of a disgronificator? Well, that’s what separates the highs and the lows, and amplifies the midrange where Satanic messages are.’ (laughter)
So he said, ‘If I get a Philco, and get a new turntable, I’ll hear the message?’
‘Yes, sir, you will, if it has disgronificator technology. Ask for it by name.’
I can’t describe for you all of the meaningfulness of flying in here with all of the memories that I have that can’t be replaced. It reminds me, flying in, what a profound love and appreciation I have for where I live, where I have lived all my life: the United States of America. I sometimes make a point of conversing with young liberals. And I always get grief from my friends, ‘Why are you wasting time?’ I’m not wasting time. I want to try to break through this cocoon that they’ve woven for themselves to live in. I want to try to persuade them of things. They’re there — you can’t avoid them — and I want a great country, and when I look out and I see 35%, according to the Zogby poll (maybe it was Rasmussen) of Democrats — I’m not bashing. Please, stick with me on this. When I see 35% of Democrats, which is not an insignificant number, believe that 9/11 was an inside job — that Bush knew about it, but didn’t stop it. What’s happening to us. Who in the world could intellectually believe this, and on the basis of what? Scam websites. So two weeks ago I was talking to a young woman who’s in her mid-thirties who loves the country. She’s a good liberal. She refuses to drive a car with more than four cylinders, takes her own canvas bags to the grocery store, and is doing her good for the environment.
I said to her, ‘Have you ever stopped to think about something? We are a nation of less than 300 million people. We’re a nation that’s been around less than 250 years. In less than 250 years, the United States of America is the power in the world. There is no civilization, no human populations, no countries, nations, civilizations have been around thousands of years, and are still behind us in every measurable way, economically, freedom, prosperity, power, you name it. How has this happened? How in the world,’ I said, ‘do you think it happens that in less than 250 years, that 300 million human beings living in the United States of America at one time, have become the most advanced, the most economically prosperous, the most powerful people — and for good — on the face of the earth? Have you ever thought about that?’
She said, ‘No.’
I said, ‘Why not?’
She said, ‘I don’t think this country is so great. Look at what we’re doing in Iraq.’
I said, ‘Forget about Iraq for a second. Would you please get Iraq off of your mind? I’m asking you about something much larger, something much greater in consequence. Iraq, I’ll explain it to you in a minute if you want, but please set it aside.’
‘I can’t. You say it’s a great country but this is no way to lead.’
I said, ‘Would you stop? You’re reacting in knee jerks. You’ve got this built-in belief system that your country sucks because we’re in Iraq, and you don’t like it. I’m going to stipulate something for you. I’ll stipulate we shouldn’t have gone.’
‘You will?’
‘Yeah, I’ll just stipulate. I’ve got a point I want to make. So, okay. We shouldn’t have gone. We got there. We botched it. It’s a civil war. It’s whatever you say it is. It’s gone to hell. I’ll agree with you.’
‘Really? You will?’
‘Just for the sake of asking you a question. Given all of that that I’ve stipulated, why do you want to quit? Why do you want the United States — why do you want your country — to lose? Don’t you realize we’re fighting the people over there that blew us up on 9/11? We’re fighting them there. What’s in it for our country to surrender, to wave the white flag, what’s in it for us?’
‘But it’s just been horrible, and the world hates us.’
I said, ‘Who cares when we’re talking about national security? Besides, the world doesn’t hate us. The world doesn’t hate us. Who’s filling you with this? If the world hated us, more than 20 million people in here and others wouldn’t be trying to get in here. The world doesn’t hate us. They envy us; they respect us.’ I said, ‘Look, in your personal life, do you care what people think about you? You can’t run around caring what everybody thinks about you. They don’t know you. You can’t be bogged down because you can’t please everybody. You can’t make everybody happy. What is this? Where do you get this business here that your country has lost its prestige in the world? This is the only country that can help any other country on the face of the world recover fully from a natural disaster, and we do it — and they ask us and they beg us for help, and they take it. You’ve gotta understand what it’s like to be number one. Everybody wants what you have when you’re number one.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand, but look at what we’ve done to become number one. We’ve stolen all the world’s resources.’
‘Please don’t tell me you believe this. Who have you been talking to Laurie David? Stolen the world’s resources? What do you think we do with the world’s resources? Do you know how economies work? What do you mean stolen the resources?’
‘Well, we’re only…’ I forget what their figure is. Two-percent of the population that uses 25% of the world’s resources, whatever it is.
‘Do you realize what we do with those resources? Let me take you back to my original question. Have you ever stopped to think why it is? You know, we’re no different than human beings that live in Italy. We’re no different than human beings that live anywhere on this planet. We’re no different than the human beings that live in the Soviet Union.’
Speaking of the Soviet Union, just to illustrate here, do you know what Vladimir Putin’s biggest problem is? His population is dying. The average male life expectancy in Russia is 57. It’s because of vodka, and alcoholism, and AIDS with needles. They’ve got 130 million or 140 million people in Russia today. In 30 years, their population will be 100 million. The biggest problem, Hu Jintao, the premiere of China, has is creating 25 million new jobs every year. New jobs every year. He’s gotta keep the people that live in the countryside in China in the countryside. If they get into the cities, he loses control of his population. ‘Hey, Hu, you’re already losing control of the population because we’re exporting capitalism to you,’ and this is the kind of thing that I wish people would stop to consider more.
So I asked her, ‘How in the world is it?’ I said, ‘Do you even understand how vastly superior [our country is]? Do you understand the miracle that is this country? We are no different than any human being anywhere. So what makes it possible for us to have accomplished everything that we have?’
And she still kept going on and on and on about the things about the country she didn’t like and that embarrassed her and so forth.
I said, ‘I’ll try this one more time. I really want you to stop. I’m not talking to you about Republicans and Democrats, here. I’m not attacking you. I’m not talking conservatives and liberals, here. I want to know what you think about my question. You obviously haven’t thought about it. I want you to start thinking about it.’
I wish everybody would think about it, because we are the greatest country ever. That’s not an ego statement. It’s fact. It is what it is. We want to preserve it for our children, grandchildren. Well, I don’t have any children, but you do. But we all want to preserve it. The argument we’re having in society today is, ‘Well, is it worth preserving?’ There’s a group of people that want to tear down the institutions and traditions that have made the country great and remake the country in their own image — and, sadly to say, they are today’s liberals and Democrats. This is Clinton on socialized medicine: taking away freedom, trying to control as much of life as possible, versus understanding what made this country possible — rugged individualism, entrepreneurism, freedom. I’m trying to get her to start thinking this way. I finally succeed, in a minor way. Forgot the politics of this, forgot Iraq.
She said, ‘You know, you’re right. We are no better as human beings than anybody else.’
I said, ‘Yes, that’s right. What’s special about us?’
‘Well, nothing is special.’
‘Yes, there is, not individually, but there’s something special about us. Let me give you a hint. Do you realize what happened in 1776 in Philadelphia was a miracle?’
‘Why was it a miracle?’
‘The United States was put together in a Constitutional Convention. It’s a miracle what they came up with. In that phrase,’ I said to her, ‘is the answer to my question: Why are we special’
‘Well, I will agree what happened in Philadelphia was pretty important,’ she said. ‘But, the principles that those Founders came up with are far more bigger and more important than the men who wrote them.’
I said, ‘So, we’re finally getting somewhere. So you understand there are things larger than yourself, ideas, and principles larger than yourself?’
‘No, that’s not what I mean. They were racists. They were slave owners.’
Oh, my God, here we were regressing. This took about two hours, folks. I’m giving you the condensed version.
I said, ‘They were not racists. They were not bigots and homophobes, and they didn’t bring environmental destruction and all that. Why do you say that?’
‘Well, I know that they were atheists.’
‘Have you ever read George Washington’s first Thanksgiving address?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever go to high school? They teach you about it.’
‘They didn’t teach us about George Washington.’
I said, ‘Have you ever looked George Washington’s first inaugural and his farewell address? How can anybody say they didn’t believe in God?’ Actually, forget politics here for a second, ladies and gentlemen. How anybody can intellectually deny — when we have people trying to take God out of our culture, when we have people trying to make sure that separation of church and state becomes an official policy far beyond what was ever intended it be, the truth about that is not taught, either. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, and guess who’s referenced? God. He’s called the Creator, and that we ‘are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.’ I happen to believe all three of those are under assault right now by those in our country I call the miserable and the unhappy. They want everybody to be as unhappy and miserable as they are. Certainly, we’re attacking life. We’re attacking it in the womb. Pursuit of happiness, liberty? Liberty is under assault. I’m not talking about constitutional liberty. I’m talking about just the day-to-day freedom [type of] liberty. Tell us what kind of cars we can and can’t drive, what we can and can’t smoke, what the hell we can and can’t eat. Trans-fats? Sue McDonald’s! Sue Big Fat? It’s just absurd, all under the guise of helping make a difference. Everybody wants to matter.
And, of course, nowhere more effectively is this issue than this global warming hoax, which is nothing more than a religion. It’s got every aspect every other major religion has. It has its Garden of Eden. It has its taking a bite of the apple, Western Society polluting the skies, raping the rain forest, destroying the environment. It has sin, all of those things. The ‘sin’ is pursuing our lifestyle as Americans, at the expense of the planet. ‘Why, we’re melting the glaciers! We’re going to cause the world to heat up so much and it’s going to be horrible.’ I made a bet on there one day with some of these wacko environmentalists. I said, ‘Look, I will bet my net worth against yours that you are wrong, that in 30 to 40 years you will not have to sell your home in Long Island on the beach, and I won’t have to sell mine in Florida in Palm Beach.’ They won’t take the bet, and I don’t see anybody abandoning beachfront property. That’s an aside. The point is that these people are assaulting people on the basis of creating guilt (hello, religion), fear (hello, religion), the sin (hello, religion), and then, salvation — and what’s the salvation? You accept the blame! So you start driving around little lawn mowers with seats on them thinking you are ‘making a difference.’
Adolf Hitler ‘made a difference,’ folks. This making-a-difference business is bogus. But see, people in our society — look at MySpace, YouTube — everybody wants to be famous, everybody wants to matter. Everybody wants everyone to know everything about them; they want to matter. So, I will take my canvas bags to the grocery store, and I will drive a car no more than four cylinders, and I will make sure that I don’t eat trans fats and all that sort of stuff. It doesn’t matter a hill of beans. We couldn’t destroy this planet if we wanted to. We couldn’t destroy the environment. It’s been a hundred years the temperature’s gone up one degree centigrade. Yippee! We don’t even know if that’s right, because the way we’ve been measuring temperatures for a hundred years is not that accurate. All this is the latest liberal scheme to control your life by making you feel guilty and accept responsibility for ‘saving the planet’ by accepting the blame and the tax increases, control over your life for things you can’t do anymore and the places you can’t do them in order to save the planet. And who wants to destroy the planet? One of the secrets of the environmental movement is they set themselves up as all they want is clean air and clean water. Well, right. Who wants dirty air and dirty water? So if you oppose them, you must. I’ve seen how seductive all this is, especially to young people.
So back to my little liberal. I went through all this with her, the global warming stuff. She really thinks she’s saving the planet. I said, ‘Well…’ I love doing this. ‘Please forgive me if you misunderstand this. You’re driving your little four-cylinder putt-putt around there. I just took eight guys on my airplane to Hawaii.’ I said, ‘Do you know that we measure the amount of fuel we burn in pounds, while you’re out there measuring your little miles per gallon?’
‘I am stunned that you are telling me that.’
‘Well don’t be, because it’s happening all over the world, every day — and guess what? I’m not destroying the planet, and neither are you. We are a growing economy. We need to keep growing. We need independence from foreign oil, all of these things. We need to be able to satisfy the demands and the needs of the people in this country who are Americans. They have expectations. We want to maintain the country the way it is. Back to: Why have we been able to do this? In less than 300 years, run rings around the rest of the world.’ I said, ‘Have you ever been to Italy and use the toilet? It works, or you wouldn’t have one in your house. Same thing in Great Britain. You want to drive these kind of cars on those roads over there that are no wider than what horse and buggies were? It’s quaint, it’s fun to go visit, but that ain’t how we live.’
‘And we should be!’
‘No we shouldn’t! What do you want somebody telling you how to live your lifestyle? Why, when what you’re doing is benefiting how many people you don’t even know? We’re clothing the world. We’re feeding the world. Please, would you tell me why we’ve been able to do this?’
She said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I think it’s great. I love my country. I just don’t think we should be in Iraq.’
In Iraq! They have it on the brain. Plus, they don’t understand the concept of victory. You can’t let ’em in power, folks. I said, ‘Here’s why. We are the one nation on earth that is founded on individual freedom. The reason for our existence and our founding documents, particularly the Declaration of Independence. Our Founding Fathers — do you remember back when you said that those men that wrote the documents stood for much more than they themselves were? You don’t know how right you are. Those are the things we’ve gotta preserve. We are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, in those words, we acknowledge where we come from. We acknowledge what our purpose in life is. We acknowledge our humility. We acknowledge our thanks. We acknowledge our grace, and we realize that the natural yearning of the human spirit — as we have been created — is freedom. Every one of us yearns to be free. Now, some people will give up freedom for security, or they feel more comfortable not having to take the risks associated with it, but, in general as human beings, I don’t care where we are around the world, we want freedom.’
I don’t know how many of you know this, but there’s an outfit — I can’t remember their name right now, but — they just came out two weeks ago with a report. There are fewer wars in the world today than ever before. There is more freedom in the world today than ever before. There is more prosperity in the world today than ever before, and there’s more happiness in the world today than ever before. Now, I don’t know how many of you heard that, or heard about it, or are hearing it for the first time — and, if you’re hearing about it for the first time, I wonder for how many of you it just doesn’t compute. I’ll tell you why it doesn’t get reported. If you watch ABC, CBS, NBC, PMSNBC,if you watch CNN, if you read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, any national news organ, you’re going to be miserable and depressed. You’re going to think the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, and that there’s a shortage of hand baskets. It is irresponsible what national news has become, and I’ll tell you why. It’s my fault, folks. In 1988, they had a monopoly: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the two newspapers, and the news magazines, and that was it. That’s where you got your news, that’s where you got your analysis, nothing else got through. My show starts in 1988, and now we’ve got Fox News. We have the conservative blogosphere. They don’t have their monopoly, and they are fit to be tied, and they are to this day doing everything they can to demonstrate their power, like all this negative news out of Iraq, ignoring the good news, trying to prove to us that they can get us out of the war just like they did with Vietnam, trying to prove that they can reflect or move and shape public opinion. How in the world do polls become news? There’s nothing newsworthy about a poll. ‘A poll today shows 33% of the American people today expect our house price to be lower in two years.’ Well, duh! I wonder why? The news is full of how the housing market is going to hell because we all hate Bush! See, hating Bush is the answer they want. Get this: Remember the Fed cut a couple of interest rates on Monday or Tuesday by a half point? It shocked ‘economic experts.’ Stock market zoomed 335 points the next day. I get up, and I know what I’m going to find when I go to the AP wire. I read the LA Times first. That’s even funnier. The LA Times headline: ‘Rate Cut Might Portend Bad News.’ Really? Would we have seen this headline if Bill Clinton were in the White House? (Clinton impression) ‘Hey, Limbaugh, leave me out of this. You talk about me enough.’ I’m sorry, I channel him sometimes. Remind me to tell you if I have time now how he hit on my date in a New York restaurant. (laughter) Ah, it’s a true story. So the LA Times, they went out and they found, get this… (interruption) Everything okay out there? My security guy is looking at me. My security guy looks like Josef Stalin. I do that on purpose to please the liberals. (laughter)
The LA Times went out and they found this 27-year-old guy, Yousef Sharif Yahoo, whatever, and Yousef Sharif Yahoo was $90,000 in depth, credit cards, whatever the hell, and he said, ‘I’m not paying the bills anymore. I’m not paying the bills.’ But guess what, folks? He is now threatened by the rate cut, because the rate cut might inspire him to get another credit card and start going in debt. An this is an example of journalistic malpractice. What the hell does Yousef Yahoo’s story have to do with the economy? How long did it take to find a single guy regarding Wall Street — have to do with the fact that the rate cut left the stock market to go nuts and it’s going to help maybe in the health of the economy? How long did it take to find this guy? I wonder if these guys just call the LA Times. ‘Hey, I have an angle for you that makes the economic news look bad. I know what you want is to make Bush bad.’ The AP did the same thing. They didn’t find Yousef Yahoo. They just found a couple of ‘experts’ to say this rate cut could portend doom, and inspire people to go buy houses they can’t afford to take on debt they can’t afford. It’s a fundamental belief in the Drive-By Media: You are stupid. You are contemptible. You don’t have the brains to drive the right car, to live your life the right way. So if you don’t believe all of this robust news that is happening not only in this country…
Why do you think my program is popular? It’s the most-listened-to radio talk show in the country. Despite all the new conservative talk shows — we haven’t cannibalized them — my program, my audience has only gotten bigger, revenues have only grown. We’ve expanded the pie. If the country is in such bad shape, how can this possibly be? Do you realize there’s a market among the American people for good news? I don’t mean trumped-up, made-up news, just optimism, just good cheer. For crying out loud, we’re the United States of America! (applause) Why do we want to run around (makes sounds of weeping)? (applause) We got sick and tired of, no matter what the news is, the predictable narratives. Look at the Duke rape case. That’s an example of what’s going on in the media. What do you have? Well, we have a poor black stripper with a little baby and all, working her way through school, and (like he’s weeping) she’s a single mother, and because America doesn’t like her race and America is so ruined, this poor woman was denied everything! This is how liberals and Drive-By Media picture America. So what happens? The woman is hired during her struggle to go strip for some lacrosse players at Duke, who happen to be white. ‘All right,’ the media says, ‘we’re getting somewhere: White, lacrosse players, Duke. It is rich, spoiled brat white kids. It is racist white. It doesn’t matter we know any facts about this. We’ve got a narrative, gang!’
This is how they see the United States of America. So bam! The woman’s word is accepted, the law enforcement guy, Nifong, said whatever he said, and the Drive-By Media accepts because law enforcement would never lie — and then the prosecutors would never lie. We now know that’s bogus. Nevertheless, the faculty at Duke makes a total idiot of themselves. The university fired the coach of the lacrosse team, and there was never, ever, a shred of evidence. The only thing that propelled that story was the liberal view of a poor black stripper and evil, rich white jocks. And it’s not me that said it. Evan Thomas, the muckety-muck editor at Newsweek when asked about this after the fact, said, ‘Well, the narrative was right, just the facts didn’t fit.’ (laughter) They run around and destroy people’s lives! At least Nifong’s been held accountable. The Drive-Bys aren’t because they’ve got constitutional protection. They have to police themselves, and they’re not. They’re circling the wagons. They are more obvious about their agenda than they have ever been. They’re not hiding it anymore because they’re fighting it for prominence and power. Sort of makes what Dan Rather is doing so ridiculous and silly.
Time is dwindling, I’ll tell you the Clinton story and I’ll close with something else. There’s a great new restaurant in New York. It was Jeffrey Chodorow’s place called the Kobe Club, and I met this woman who I no longer see, which is traditional for me, that’s why I’m taking applications for mistresses. I know some of you in this room know that mistress joke. But the ones that done, imagine this in your head: ‘He wants a mistress here!’ I met this woman two days before Mother’s Day. This is a bad time to meet women. I met her in Florida where I live, and I arranged to take her to dinner the next week at this place, this new Kobe steak club in New York. I’d been there once before, and it’s loud with music a lot of people, and I have a really big hearing problem in loud places, but I hear everything amplified much louder than it really is. I don’t hear the one voice I’m trying to hear unless I really hunch down and get close. So I’m in a horseshoe booth facing the front of the restaurant. I’m not at the front, but anybody walking in would see me and us sitting there. I guess we had been there about 45 minutes, and to me it’s noisy, and I’m just talking very loud; I’m leaning in really close; she didn’t talk very loud. And out of the blue, I just became aware of this looming presence, and she glanced away the same time I did, looked up, and there’s Bill Clinton standing at the table with a big charismatic grin on his face, and he’s talking to me, but I cannot hear a word he’s saying. So, I just stuck out my hand, ‘Mr. President, it’s a pleasure. It’s nice to meet you.’ He just smiled. I have no idea what he was telling (unintelligible). So he leaves, and I said, ‘What was he saying?’
‘He was talking about how good you look, how fit you are. He hasn’t seen you in a while. ‘You’re really looking good, Limbaugh,’ he said.’
I said, ‘Well!’
Ten minutes later he’s back. His table was behind us. He’s got this little Hispanic guy with him. This guy says, ‘Mr. Limbaugh,’ and I can hear him. ‘Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Clinton told me that you were here and I’ve wanted to meet you for the longest time.’ I thought he was a Secret Service agent. So he gives me his card: Mayor of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa. So I got out of the booth and I’m going to get to where I can hear. He goes on talking to me. I forget what he said, but about a minute and a half, two minutes, later I look left, and Clinton is hanging on my date! He’s just got his arm on top of that horseshoe booth, and his eyes are about this far away from hers, and I just laughed.
I said, ‘This is unbelievable.’ Villaraigosa left again. I said, ‘What were you talking about?’
‘People we both know.’
So I said, ‘Do you know people in common with President Clinton?’
And she said, ‘No.’
‘Have you ever met him before?’
‘No.’
‘Wow, that guy must have a hell of a line.’
Then he came back a third time with Ron Burkle, and they left. I guess they left. They came out. They left. Thirty minutes later, we leave, and I was not thinking. I did not stop to think that there might be photographers outside. This is 58th near 6th Avenue. The front door opens and these flashbulbs start going nuts. Smile on my face. My date says, ‘I don’t want to be part of this’ and made a mad dash to my car. I looked ten yards to my left on the sidewalk. There’s Clinton. He’s talking to somebody, an average citizen. So I walk up. I thought, ‘If I don’t go up there to say hello, good-bye, and these photographers are here, the news is going to be: ‘Limbaugh Snubs Ex-President.” So I walked up there, and admittedly, I interrupted. I just wanted a quick handshake. He looked at me like he had no clue who I was, like I was interrupting, and it hit me. That’s where the photographers were. There were no pictures of him coming and (unintelligible) three minutes in the restaurant — and the reason I know this is the case is because the next morning I got up and looked on the Drudge Report, and there’s this little headline: ‘Fireworks in New York City Restaurant Last Night: Limbaugh Versus Clinton.’
So, I sent Drudge an e-mail and I asked Drudge, ‘What is this?’
‘Well, I got a call from the Clinton people and they said you were all over him last night.’
So I gave Drudge the story, and I told the story the first thing on the air. These people are PR slick. They really are.
Now, folks, in closing here, I want to go back to this business of what makes America great. I think that it’s something that more people ought to think about. We take so much for granted in this country. We’re so subjected to negative news, even about good stories and good people, we have to get negative news. You know, optimism is an applied process. I think human beings are naturally pessimistic. Human beings naturally expect the worst, otherwise people that write how to think positive books wouldn’t be millionaires. You won’t go to the library and find a book on how to fail in life, or walk in the library and find books that say, ‘How to be Depressed for the Rest of Your Life,’ because we know how to do that. But positive thinking requires so many things, and it’s easy to slip away from it. It’s easy to think like this young liberal I was talking to, to run around embarrassed and think that the country is hated and Iraq is the biggest mistake. This is not new, by the way. There’s always been partisanship. It’s good. These arguments we have in America today are really oriented around pretty much the same things: liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, with exceptions, but they pretty much want education. It just depends how we define it. We want safety. We want economic opportunity and security. We want the best for our kids.
The arguments we have are over how to achieve them, and liberals happen to believe that the government should be in charge of all that because most people are incapable of accomplishing it on their own. We conservatives think that that’s exactly wrong, and we look at the history of the country to prove it. No government program made this country great. It’s people like you who labor away in relative anonymity — you don’t care for fame — but people who accept the understanding of where we came from, what it is that makes us unique, and understand the relationship to God, Creator, inculcates those values to as many people, her family, friends, the people that make the country work. They never get any credit for it, never become highly acclaimed. Celebrities are acclaimed. Celebrities, movie stars, are said to have all this influence and power. I understand that. But the people that make this country work are the people I think are under assault for making it work. Their freedom, their individuality, their ability to make decisions, follow their own instincts, I think are under assault and have been for a long time. I think that’s the essential argument of liberalism versus conservatism. Liberalism doesn’t believe in and trust in the abilities of most people, because it wants the power to do those things.
I think liberals want the power of making people dependent on them for whatever they get. Conservatives, they don’t care about government. Liberals are raised to go to Harvard and Yale, and they now won’t let their speakers speak. Is this crazy? We’re going to have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking. He’s spoken at Harvard and he’s going to speak at Columbia, but military recruiters are not allowed. Neither is Larry Summers. Nor is Larry Summers welcome at UC Davis. This is an absolute abomination. I know this results in outrageous editorials, but where are all the politicians? This is outrageous. These are the people telling us they’re the ones that are the tolerant, they’re the ones with compassion, they’re the ones with understanding? Political correctness is censorship and the left has given it to us. They don’t want to be offtended by what they don’t want to hear. (applause) It’s not just that they don’t want to be offended. They don’t want to be questioned. They live in this cocoon that they have woven to make themselves feel good. They don’t have this concept of something greater than themselves. They are the center of their universe.
And, if you’re not making them the center of the universe, you’re going to be a target, and if you know that there are things in life larger than yourselves — principles, God — you become a threat to these people, and bye-bye. A nativity scene doesn’t coerce anybody to pay homage to it, but it makes them uncomfortable. Well, screw them! (laughter) Do you realize how much freedom we will lose if every aggrieved group that claims to be offended gets us to shut up or stop behaving a certain way? It’s happening right now, and it’s a threat. I want you to be cognizant of this, to remember why we’re the greatest collection of human beings when we’re no different than any other human beings that have ever lived. The answer to that question is profound in helping people understand what today’s fight and argument is about. I’ve gone a little long here, but I know it’s not a problem for anybody. Well, look, I never get a chance to hear myself like you do. I’m always speaking. I’ve never heard my radio show. Do you realize it is the most powerful, most popular, radio show in the country, and I’ve never heard it. You people don’t know how lucky you are. Thank you so much. You have been a great audience, and it’s fabulous to be back, and it’s always a thrill.
(applause)
Thank you.
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