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RUSH: Did it again. Did it again, everybody. Blamed me. Blames me and Fox News. Obama does. Blames me and Fox News for the Balkanization of media. The thing about it, he’s right, in a certain way. These guys are just missing their old monopoly days. They’re just missing the days when they controlled every narrative, when they controlled every story. They don’t control it. They haven’t controlled it since 1988, when their monopoly went south, and they haven’t been able to deal with it. So Obama’s out there again, this time talking to the — there’s this new publication that was started up by Ezra Klein, the former wunderkid at the Washington Post, and I guess the Post was just too small to contain this young man’s brilliance.


He was the guy that started the JournoList thing if you recall, which was a listserv, which means you couldn’t get on it, of journalists, big, small, thousands of them every day, including inside-the-Beltway corps. What they did was discuss the narrative every day. It’s what everybody’s always thought, journalists getting together and deciding with a consensus how the news was gonna be covered each and every day. And they shared their problems and they wrung their hands and they worried with each other about their futures, both personally and professionally. Then it was discovered and the whole thing blew up. Nothing happened to them. They just went back to their respective news organizations, and they might have set something up new since this. But the point is Ezra is the guy that set that up and he’s got this piece called Vox out there, his new website, kind of like Nate Silver left the New York Times, went over to ESPN with his FiveThirtyEight blog.

At any rate, they scored an interview with Obama. By the way, greetings, folks, great to have you here. Rush Limbaugh, never, never beating a dead horse on this program. Do you realize how important that is? Snerdley, do you think you know what I mean when I tell the audience we never beat a dead horse here? Okay, tell me, what do you think it means? I want to see. I want to make sure that people understand what I mean here, and if you don’t, then nobody else will. (interruption) That’s pretty much it. We don’t get on one or two things and stick with ’em for the rest of time. We’re adaptive. Everything’s current. Whatever’s happening in the news, whateverÂ’s happening in the narrative is what we react to and discuss. We don’t beat things — no topics — in other words you’re not gonna get bored here, folks, and despite what you may think, it isn’t predictable, and that’s why we continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

Anyway, great to have you. Here’s the phone number. It’s 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.


So in this wide-ranging interview with Vox, V-o-x as in vox populi, “President Barack Obama discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics.” It’s not politics that’s polarized politics. No, no, no, my friends, it’s the way certain people are talking about politics that has polarized it. It’s the way certain people are reporting it, analyzing it, opining on it, pontificating about it, that has polarized politics. It’s not the people in politics, you understand. It’s not an elected official here or there, or all of them combined, that are corrupting or polarizing. It’s me and Fox News, basically. That’s what he said. “In a wide-ranging interview with Vox, President Barack Obama discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics — although much of the information is simply giving audiences what they want.”

This is a news story, by the way, from CBS in Washington. So CBS agrees with Obama. Much of the information on the polarized networks like me and Fox News, that’s just me giving you what you want. That’s not me telling you what I really think. And that’s not me really having an interest in all this. That’s me figuring out what you want to hear me say every day and then saying it.

Now, I’ve been doing this — I get confused. I don’t know if we’re into our 26th year or into our 27th. Whatever, for these people to still not know what happens on this program after a quarter of a century, and for these people to have no interest in finding out what goes on — if they had any interest, they might be able to grow their own audiences instead of seeing them dwindle. Twenty-six, 27 years, and they still do not understand how I do what I do, nor do they understand why you are here. It still boils down to you’re mind-numbed robots and I’m the pied piper Svengali, and you’re out there brain-dead each and every day ’til I tell you not only what’s going on but what to think about it. And all of that’s encapsulated here in the first sentence of this story.

IÂ’ll read it to you again. “In a wide-ranging interview with Vox, President Barack Obama discussed how the changing face of media has polarized politics.” Not him. Not Hillary, not Bill Clinton, not Boehner, no, no. And then CBS adds, “Although much of the information” — meaning what you hear here — “is simply giving audiences what they want,” as opposed to the news, which of course tells you the truth. Yes. The Drive-Bys, they don’t care what you want. And that’s pretty true, by the way. They don’t think you’re smart enough to understand what they do.

In other words, Brian Williams, great example, youÂ’re just not capable of the nuance. By the way, that’s what they’re now saying about Obama and the Crusades comment. He’s so far ahead of us that we just can’t keep up. We just don’t appreciate the nuance of what he was trying to say. He’s so light years ahead of us intellectually, and we are proving the almost elementary state that we are in by getting all agitated. He couldn’t get down to our level if he tried and we couldn’t get up to his level if we want to.

“Vox notes that Obama was first interviewed by The New York Times 25 years ago for a Feb. 1990 article entitled, ‘First Black Elected To Head Harvard’s Law Review.’ Obama said data showing he is ‘the most polarizing president’ is misleading, but one major factor is with media. Americans ‘just don’t have a common place where we go to get common facts and a common worldview the way we did 20,30 years ago. And that just keeps accelerating, you know, and I’m not the first to observe this, but you’ve got the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh folks and then you’ve got the MSNBC folks. … But the point is that technology which brings the world to us also allows us to narrow our point of view. That’s contributed to it.’”

So all of the countless new sources of information you have have narrowed your worldview, folks. Your worldview has not been opened, it has not been expanded, and now that there’s not a monopoly in the news that controls the narrative every day, the left doesn’t quite know how to deal with it, other than to try to control it. Hello net neutrality, as one example. Other attempts to regulate cable the same way they regulate over-the-air broadcasts, but they just can’t find a way. And they can’t leave a lingering part out there unattended to. If there is one element that disagrees with the conventional wisdom of the day as defined by the left it’s got to be destroyed or it has to be incorporated, changed, and brought into the fold. And if it can’t be incorporated or changed or brought into the fold then it’s gotta be marginalized, isolated, and destroyed, i.e., Alinsky Rules for Radicals, and that’s what Obama is really doing here.


So I don’t know how many times this makes it now, from 1992, Bill Clinton, ’93 when he was inaugurated, so 1992 campaign, ’93, all the way to 2015, I don’t know how many times it is now that I have been held up as the primary, and in some cases singular reason, why America is polarized. One guy. Now, let me offer you evidence that they don’t really believe that, that this is just an attempt, as they all are, to discredit me and discredit Fox and anybody that’s not on their train. If I have this kind of power, if I and I alone — Fox didn’t come along ’til 1996, so I had it all to myself for nine or 10 years. If I am that powerful, mean, up until 1988, there was a singular news worldview. What’d Obama call it? Common place, common facts, common worldview. One guy came along, i.e., me, and blew that up. That’s pretty powerful, right?

Okay, if they really believed that, then why do none of them attempt to harness me and my power in their benefit? Why don’t they? I don’t mean try to convert me to become a liberal. I don’t think they even think that would be possible, because the truth is they know that what I am not doing here is just giving you what you want to hear. They know that I am who I am in my heart and in my mind. That’s what constitutes the big threat. But nevertheless why not try to harness that in some way? They’re not disposed in that regard. Their predisposition is to destroy or to discredit people like me or Fox News. But if there’s that kind of power, why not try some way, shape, manner, or form to incorporate it to at least build their audience in their chosen network or at their chosen place, and there’s none of that.

So all of this is bogus. They may be afraid of the power and they may really consider it, but all I’m saying is they know that this isn’t where the polarization in this country’s taking place. This program is not the source of the polarization. This program and Fox News represent the last best hope of providing a counter to the common narrative of the day that the left used to be able to choose and to determine. We got the audio sound bites on this. Got two of them here. This is posted this morning on the Vox.com website, editor-in-chief and wunderkid Ezra Klein interviewing Obama, and Ezra Klein said, “Look, according to the polls, you’re the most polarizing president really since we began polling. But before you, the record was set by George W. Bush.”

See, he’s even more polarizing than W. and that’s not supposed to have happened folks. Remember, Obama was gonna unify and make everybody love one another. None of this was supposed to be happening right now. So Ezra says, “Polling data, you’re the most polarizing president since we began polling, and before Bush the record was set by Bill Clinton. It seems that there’s something structural happening there in terms of party polarization, the way it affects approval ratings and cooperation with presidents.”


OBAMA: A lot of it has to do with the fact that, A, the Balkanization of the media means that we just don’t have a common place where we get common facts and a common worldview the way we did 20, 30 years ago. And that just keeps on accelerating. I’m not the first to observe this, but, you know, you got the Fox News, Rush Limbaugh folks, and then you got the MSNBC folks. Technology, which brings the world to us, also allows us to narrow our point of view. That’s contributed to it.

RUSH: This is just stunning to me. These guys know this isn’t the case, or do they? They may not know. They may actually be so invested in this lie that it’s become like a Brian Williams lie, that they actually believe it. But did you notice his question here? He says, “It seems that there’s something structural happening there in terms of party polarization and the way it affects approval ratings and cooperation with presidents.” Meaning, all of the gridlock in Congress as though this is the first time this has ever happened. But stop and really dwell on what Obama’s saying here: There used to be a common worldview. There used to be a common source of facts and a common set of facts that everybody believed.

We have documented on this program that so much of what they say is untrue. One of the biggest is the hoax of global warming, which the UK Telegraph, as another story yesterday exposes it, may be the biggest hoax in all of science ever, the global warming hysteria. Here’s the next Obama bite. He continued on saying this.


OBAMA: I would love to see some constitutional process that would allow us to actually regulate campaign spending the way we used to and maybe even improve it. I’d love to see changes at the state level that reduce political gerrymandering. So there are all kinds of structural things I’d like to see that I think would improve this. But, you know, there have been periods in the past where we’ve been pretty polarized. I think there just wasn’t polling around. As I recall there was a whole Civil War, that was a pretty good example of polarization that took place.

RUSH: Holy cow, ladies and gentlemen, he’s comparing the times today to the polarization in the Civil War. Now, how many of you think we’re about to break out into another Civil War in this country because of this polarization? I tell you what, they are stunned, the blowing up of the liberal media monopoly is one of the biggest shocks that’s ever hit them, and it’s obvious that they still have not come to grips with it. They still haven’t figured out what to do about it. In the midst here’s the first of ’em, he’s a constitutional lawyer, freedom of the press and combined with freedom of speech, and here he is asking to see some constitutional process and protections that would allow them to regulate, he says campaign spending the way we used to. That means get rid of Citizens United. Believe me, they know what happened these last two elections, the last two midterms. They do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Let me tell you one other thing Obama means here. You have to go back in time. Do you remember the name Bob Michel? Bob Michel used to be the Republican leader in the House when they had 120, 130 members. Bob Michel’s objective every day was to find a Democrat to play golf with. The Republicans had no power to stop anything, and it was like that for 30, 40 years, and everybody was cool with it.

There was nobody back then — and this is another thing that Obama means — there was nobody back then to get on the Republicans for caving with Democrats. There was nobody to rip Bob Michel. There was nobody in the media because the common point in the media was what it is now, Democrat Party narrative each and every day. So Bob Michel and any Republican ranking member on a committee, hell, half the time weren’t even allowed in the committee hearing room by the Democrats. They were just totally frozen out. There was nothing anybody could do and Bob Michel and the Republicans, they were hunky-dory with it.

The difference now is that there’s me and there’s Fox News and who knows who else. If the Republicans ever get into Bob Michel mode, they hear about it now. It’s not as easy for the Republicans to cave to the media and to the Democrats, not that they don’t, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. It used to be easy as hell to cave and get your tee time on time. ItÂ’s a little bit harder now. At any rate, that’s just to set the table. ItÂ’s just amazing how often Obama goes back to this, trying to blame others.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I thought these people all loved diversity. They preach diversity all the time. Did you watch the Grammys last night? You didn’t? Snerdley, you used to be a musician. You still are a musician. What, did Suge Knight ruin it for you or something? Well, I don’t care, it was fascinating to watch this show. They did the requisite anti-rape, abuse thing. Once again they’re preaching to the wrong audience. They need to be preaching to themselves, not us.

They had a requisite Obama video on that. And then somebody introduced somebody else who had a big hit and the reason for the big hit was that the message from the big hit artist was love and diversity and getting along with everybody. They brought somebody out singing in Spanish. (laughing) I don’t know half these artists ’cause of my hearing. I can’t translate new music. It’s just noise to me, but I watched it for the cultural aspects. I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I watched some of it. And so the great contributor to diversity and getting along and loving each other and the reason why the guy had this big hit was ’cause he knows that everybody is love and love is everybody and we gotta love each other and get along and be diversified and all that. He came out and started singing in Spanish, I about — anyway, they don’t want any diversity in the news. They don’t want any diversity. Hillary and Obama, they think Al Jazeera is great. They got a problem with the EIB Network and with Fox News.

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