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RUSH: Switching gears for a second. Eric Holder, the former attorney general — when he was either being confirmed or his confirmation hearings in 2009 or shortly after he had been confirmed — made a statement. You remember? He said that the United States was cowardly when it comes to the subject of race; that we need to have a real discussion of race, but the American people are afraid to do it. Do you remember the reaction to that?


The reaction to that was quite spontaneous and vociferous. The reaction on this program: “What do you mean, afraid to talk about? That’s all we do in our country anymore! Everything that happens is reported on one way or another from a racial standpoint. What do you mean, afraid to talk about it? That’s all people do!” The problem with talking about it is that you’d better say the right thing or Eric Holder and his representatives are gonna come along and try to destroy you.

They will love to have conversations about race, but only in ways they permit. Well, I took and take the attorney general at his word, and I do not fear discussing race on this program. I don’t run from talking about it, and I do not do so in an incendiary way. And each time I do, I get raked across the coals. I get ripped to shreds in the Drive-By Media. I am purposely misunderstood, purposely misreported upon. Yet I continue to talk about it.

The comments I made to you following Michelle Obama’s little remarks at the Whitney Museum — which I found sad and disappointing and depressing, much as I found her remarks at the graduation ceremony at Tuskegee University — well, CNN spent a lot of time raking me over the coals yesterday and last night, and it got ridiculous. Do you know why the Obamas are permitted to talk about race? Because it’s their expertise. Wait ’til you hear these sound bites.

“Well, why shouldn’t they talk about it? It’s their expertise.”

(interruption) Well… (interruption) Well, everybody… (interruption) Everybody has a race, then, and everybody has racial expertise. Don Lemon suggested that race is Obama’s particular “expertise,” as though it’s a talent, or a developed skill! It isn’t! So, anyway, when you do try to talk about it honestly — when anybody does, not just me — and it varies from what the Drive-Bys or the Democrat Party wants to hear, then they come for you.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post remarks on it, his headline today: “Michelle Obama Criticized For the Sin of Being Black.” No, she wasn’t! I didn’t criticize her for being black, and I didn’t say being black is a sin. I didn’t get anywhere near saying that. These people don’t even listen. The problem with the conversation on race, whenever you engage in it, is that liberals don’t listen to what you say.

They knee-jerk react, as we all know.

You know, I’m torn even talking about this because I don’t want to give these people any amplification what they said, ’cause right now they’re sitting there in their small universe of CNN and small universe of Washington Post.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s a modified version of the point I was making about what happens when you speak about something that the left claims people want to talk about. It happened last night on The O’Reilly Factor with Juan Williams. They were talking about Pam Geller and the cartoon contest and freedom of speech and who is permitted to have freedom of speech and who isn’t, and O’Reilly said to Juan Williams, “The liberal fallback position is, ‘Ah, the right does it too! The right does not have access to the New York Times or the LA Times or Yahoo or Google,'” O’Reilly said. “They don’t. It’s the left that pours this crap in.”


WILLIAMS: What we’re going through here in the country is it’s difficult to have an honest discussion where people listen to each other. If people get on Rush Limbaugh, if they’re on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, if they are on a lot of these blogs and right-wing sites, they are all talking to each other, and guess what? They are making fun of the left and mocking the left.

RUSH: Now, I not quite sure what Juan’s point is here. Because what O’Reilly is saying is there’s all kinds of hypocrisy and the left can get away with all kinds of things the right can’t, and Williams starts off by saying, “Well, you know, it’s difficult to have an honest discussion where people listen to each other,” and then he starts lambasting me and the Wall Street Journal as basically preaching to the choir and that all we do is mock and make fun of the left.

Has he never heard of Jon Stewart? Has he never heard of Saturday Night Live? Has he never heard of the Colbert Report, never heard of Letterman, never heard of take your pick of any left-wing broadcast, NBC, CBS, CNN? Mock? Make fun of? If that’s where the left stopped, it might be okay, but they don’t even stop at that. Anyway, O’Reilly’s reaction to this coming up after the break. Sadly, I didn’t get it in before then.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I gotta play this Juan Williams sound bite again. I don’t even know what he’s saying here. ‘Cause I’m really not sure what the question is. I didn’t see the show, so let me see if I can put this together, ’cause I think it dovetails with what I talked about moments ago about, you know, everybody wants us to have these conversations. The attorney general calls us cowards if we don’t. Then when we engage in conversations about things they want us to talk about, i.e., race, the minute that happens they shut it down, call you a racist or a bigot or whatever, if you don’t say what they want to hear.

So with that in mind, O’Reilly, in talking about the Pam Geller cartoon contest shooting says to his guest, Juan Williams, “The liberal fallback position is, ‘Oh, the right does it, too.’ The right does not have access to the New York Times, or the LA Times, or Yahoo or Google,” O’Reilly points out. They don’t. It’s the left that pours this crap in. Now, here’s Williams’ response.

WILLIAMS: What we’re going through here in the country is it’s difficult to have an honest discussion where people listen to each other. If people get on Rush Limbaugh, if they’re on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, if they are on a lot of these blogs and right-wing sites, they are all talking to each other, and guess what? They are making fun of the left and mocking the left.

RUSH: Okay, now, look, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that answer has to do with O’Reilly’s question, but it doesn’t matter because it serves its purpose as a standalone. Juan Williams starts out by worrying that we don’t listen to each other. We don’t listen to each other. So if a caller like one of you in this audience, if you get on this program or somebody writes an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, they end up just saying what everybody else in the group thinks, there’s no difference, there’s no variance, and they start making fun of liberals, and they start mocking the left.

You know, I sit here in amused wonderment over this. You know, liberalism is nothing more than comedy today. Liberals’ most respected public figures are comedians. Did you know that? According to a recent Reuters online poll, the most respected liberal public figures are comedians and actors. Other than Obama, of course. He’s at the top there ’cause he’s president. The president always wins in these things.

People like Letterman and Colbert and Stewart and these guys, they’re all at the top of the most respected, most admired, most trusted list. They’re comedians. And what do they do, mock, make fun of, laugh, distort, lie about, you name it. And O’Reilly, “What do you mean, the right wing? They don’t have any elements here.” The New York Times makes fun of and mocks the right wing, Yahoo News, you name it, the right doesn’t have access to any of these mainstream media monoliths. Anyway, O’Reilly responded to it curiously. Said this.

O’REILLY: Limbaugh is the least of it. Limbaugh puts out his case in a pretty persuasive way, ’cause I’ve been listening to him lately. He does, and he doesn’t do a lot of personal attacks, anymore. I don’t think he ever did a lot of them.

WILLIAMS: Well, I’m saying look, I enjoy him too. I think he’s humorous, but you’re saying —

O’REILLY: He’s not what I’ll talking about. (crosstalk)

WILLIAMS: — top talk radio show in the country, feminazis.

O’REILLY: He’s not doing that as much anymore, all right?

WILLIAMS: Okay.

O’REILLY: He’s putting forth his point of view in a very streamlined way.

RUSH: (laughing) So you see what bothers Juan? Feminazi, that goes back to the first day of this program, 1988, and even further back and I think they’re worried about it because it works. You know, it perfectly nails them and identifies who they are and how they act, you know, in one word. I don’t know when the last time Juan Williams listened to this show.

But that’s my point. They don’t listen. And Richard Cohen obviously doesn’t listen, and CNN, they don’t listen. They get clips. They get excerpts based on the left-wing watchdog websites they monitor. They don’t go to my show. They don’t go to my website. They don’t read my transcripts. They read the interpretation of what happened here, and then they run to town with it. And I know why. I equal ratings. I equal clicks. I equal hits. All CNN has to do is put a picture of me up there next to Obama and they think their audience is gonna be riveted because they’re gonna think that I once again am behaving in the typical way CNN portrays me.

The same thing with Richard Cohen, although Richard Cohen may not remember this, but we could search this probably in the Washington Post database or LexisNexis. Richard Cohen’s first column on me way back in the late eighties or early nineties — you’re smiling like you remember this — Richard Cohen’s first column on me, this is not verbatim, it’s paraphrased. But he compared me to Reagan, and he alluded to the possibility that the left should not be surprised if one day I come out of nowhere and run for president. It was halfway adulatory, not all the way, but this piece of his today, it’s simpleton, it is shortsighted, it misses the point almost on purpose.

So when they tell you they want to have a conversation, they really don’t. They certainly don’t want to have a debate. That’s the last thing the left wants to have with anybody. They really don’t want there to be any opposition. The objective they have is to clear the playing field of any opposition. I still don’t know whether I’m gonna get into this in detail. I’ve gotten more into this than I thought I would before the program started, but I’m back to the same old dilemma that I have.

You people know the truth, and you are whom I care about. You in this audience know exactly what happens on this program and what doesn’t, and you know what I am and what I’m not, despite what the Drive-Bys say. So tackling this simply will amplify the baseless, mean-spirited, totally over-the-top mindless criticism that right now is just sitting in the small, little universe of the Washington Post and CNN. There’s no persuading them, Richard Cohen or Don Lemon or Marc Lamont Hill, there’s no persuading them that they’re wrong. It’s pointless to even really engage them. The only reason I would do it would be for your benefit, I mean, those of you in the audience. I would not be trying to reach them. Wouldn’t happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Every time I tell anybody on the staff that I want to do this, they say, “Don’t do it. You can’t. You can’t win. They’re gonna distort whatever you say. If you broach the subject at all, they’re gonna cream you. You shouldn’t go there.” All except Snerdley. Snerdley encourages me to go there. I’m talking about the subject of race.

Greetings. Welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.


Where to start with this. Let me start again with Eric Holder. Shortly after becoming attorney general, maybe during his confirmation hearings, Eric Holder said the United States is a nation of cowards on the subject of race, that we desperately need to have a huge national conversation about it, but that people are afraid to, people will not engage in it. And that’s not true. We never stop talking about race.

We’ve been talking about race in this country every day, a most recent illustration of it since Ferguson, Missouri, last August. There hasn’t been a day, there has not been a day, certainly not a week that’s gone by. You can go be back before that, Trayvon Martin, if you want. In fact, with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the news every day, we never stop talking about it. So I didn’t quite understand the comment. I mean on its surface. I know what he’s trying to say. The effort actually is one of intimidation.

When you get down to it, the left does not want to have a conversation on race. That’s code language, saying that we need a national conversation on race. It means we need to stop opposing the objectives of the civil rights coalitions in this country. And what is meant by “we need to have a conversation about it,” what that really means is that the people who disagree with us on this need to be silenced.

That’s how you finish the conversation is just by eliminating opposition to the agenda of the civil rights coalition, which you might think, civil rights, what could be wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with it, but that’s not what civil rights coalitions are about. Well, anyway, I’ve never shied away from it. Because I frankly think it’s something we do need to overcome. I think we do need to get past it. I think it is weighing our culture down. It’s weighing our society down unnecessarily. And the biggest damage that’s being done is to African-Americans themselves in this whole thing.

This is where I’ve gotta start being very careful, because it’s undeniably true, and I could give you illustrations of what I mean, which, easily taken out of context, could be plastered all over the nation’s newspapers and cable news networks in an effort once again to portray me as something that I’m not. In fact, quite the opposite.

The bottom line for me is that it depresses me. You know, I’m an American. I love this country. I know what is possible in this country for everybody. I see immigrants from various parts of the world coming into this country and just doing gangbusters. I see people natively born in this country doing gangbusters. I know it’s still possible. I know that it’s likely if certain steps are taken. I know that the American dream is alive and well. It’s sad that so many people have given up on it, but it’s because of the way they’ve been conditioned. It’s the way they’re influenced. It’s the way they’re taught.

The sad thing about all this is there’s a beneficiary to this, a beneficiary to economic stagnation among our minority communities, and that beneficiary is the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party benefits from people being unable to provide for themselves. Democrat Party benefits from people believing that the rest of the country’s out to get ’em. The Democrat Party benefits from all of this strife. The Democrat Party benefits from economic stagnation. The Democrat Party benefits from the fear and the bullying.

And it breaks my heart, folks, because it’s so unnecessary. It’s not cliched to refer to the US as a land of opportunity. Always has been, still is. There are steps one needs to take in order to access it. It just doesn’t come knocking. Well, maybe once in your life it will. You have to know to open the door when that happens, but for the most part the recipe is pretty much the same: hard work, dedication, desire, preparation, study, passion, those things are still required, and if they’re present, you can write your ticket.

Not to say it’s easy. Not to say there won’t be setbacks. We all suffer them. We all suffer some form of discrimination. We all have obstacles out there in our way. Many of them we put in our way ourselves. Many of the obstacles that we face are self-imposed. But others aren’t. You go back to the campaign of 2007 and 2008, I’m convinced that a huge number of Americans voted for Barack Obama hoping that in so doing his victory would be a giant step at progress, a giant forward step in demonstrating the folly that this is still a racist, slave based nation, which, sadly, young people are still taught in some of our worst public schools.

People had a lot of hope. The hope and change, the hope in hope and change was that. There was no other reason to vote for Obama. Nobody knew who he was. The press hadn’t really vetted him. He was young. He was articulate. He was an open canvas. People hated the current Regime, Bush, Iraq. Anybody saying they’re gonna do things different would have benefited from it. You had the added benefit of Obama being African-American. Man, what would that say about America, the American people elect a black president, that has to say, that has to mean we’re not a racist country, not like they tell us we are.

So many people were desperately hoping that that would have been the outcome. And it would have been had it not been for the people that do not benefit from that. There are people that do not benefit from the country moving forward on race. There are people who profit on the basis of the country never improving, or never changing. And those are the people that largely hold us back.


So to step forward a couple of years, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama are now into their sixth year as president and first lady. Being elected president of this country is not an accident. It requires certain steps. it means a lot of specific good things. It’s not something you happenstance into. It’s not something that happens to you when you look the other way. You have to go out and ask people to vote for you, and they have to do it. And that’s what Obama did, and he won. And how you cannot look at that as a positive, if you’re the Obamas, is beyond me. That’s the first thing I don’t understand.

I understand roots, history, and all that. What I don’t understand is an apparent desire not to escape it. We all have a past. I mean, you’ll hear some sound bites or excerpts coming up shortly that the Obamas’ expertise is race, and you’ve got to let them be black. You’ve got to. That’s their expertise, and that’s their experience. You can’t relate to it. Your great-great-great-grandmother wasn’t a slave. Well, obviously true. But neither were they slaves.

I don’t know how far back they can trace it, but at what point do you acknowledge progress? I mean, that would be like saying that nobody in Germany who has genealogical traces to members of the Nazi party back in the 1940s can ever be thought of as anything but that. Why would you forever want those people to be attached to that past instead of escaping it, when they weren’t alive, had nothing to do with it, whatever was going on in the 1940s, they’re just descendants of people who were.

So Michelle Obama goes to the opening of the Whitney Museum in the meatpacking district of New York, and takes the occasion to talk about how people that look like her are not welcome in museums. Well, wait a minute. She’s the first lady of the United States. She can go anywhere she wants with a phone call. And she will be welcomed wherever she wants to go. People will grovel. They will pave a way. The will bow down. She’s the first lady. That’s a tremendous overcoming. She’s done it. She and her husband have overcome it.

She and her husband have escaped whatever shackles there were that link them to their past. They’ve overcome it. They’ve shown it can be done. Why is that it is not an inspiration? Why is there no desire to inspire? What purpose is served? Now, people who disagree with me think a great purpose is served by continuing to acknowledge the sin. But I don’t get the apparent supporting notion that you can’t escape it, that it forever defines you and that you might want it to.

Richard Cohen. By the way, people tell me not to discuss this because no matter what you say… You could make more sense on this than anything and it’s gonna be distorted. In fact, the more right you are, the bigger threat you’re gonna be and the more they’re gonna distort and lie about what you’ve said. So be it, folks. I’m sorry. I just can’t choose not to discuss things because of that. I do this program for you. You in this audience know the truth of what happens here and who I am and what I’m not.

You know what kind of lies and distortions are written about me and other conservatives as well in the Drive-By Media. But here is Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. “Michelle Obama Criticized for the Sin of Being Black.” Sorry, but that’s not what I did. Didn’t criticize her for that! I haven’t criticized anybody for ever being black, haven’t criticized anybody for being anything they’re born. He begins, “Sometimes I think that Rush Limbaugh’s the dumbest man in America.

“This happens whenever I take him at face value and forget that he’s basically an entertainer with contempt for his audience.” No greater misunderstanding could Cohen write than that sentence. If there’s one thing you people in this audience know is that I hold you on a pedestal. I put you on a pedestal. I do not… I’m the one media person in this country that doesn’t look down on his or her audience or hold them in contempt.

If you want to talk about holding people in contempt, that’s how the Democrat Party looks at the vast majority of the American people, as incompetent, as incapable, unable to make daily decisions in life that are helpful and correct. They need government. They need a regulatory agency. They need somebody looking out for them, protecting them, because they can’t do it on their own. The Democrat Party is the home of the soft bigotry of low expectations. I have high expectations of everybody, and I know that you have them of me.

When I say that I come here every day hoping to meet and surpass audience expectations it’s damn well true and it’s because I know your expectations are high because it’s what you’ve come to expect here. No way I hold you in contempt. On days where I think I’ve not done a good show, I go home and worry about it for two hours, on the pretext that I’ve let you down for the time you invested here and maybe I didn’t do it as good as I should or as well. I do. I worry about it.

So the idea that I’m just an “entertainer” holding you in contempt is just another sign of the lack of understanding and the total ignorance Mr. Cohen has of me and the program. Then he writes, “He will tell them anything,” meaning I will lie to you. Doesn’t matter. I don’t care enough. I’ll lie to you no matter what. “Last week, as if to validate my opinion of him, he went after Michelle Obama for playing the ‘race card’ at the dedication of a museum in New York City.

“He described her as angry and complaining. The word he should have used was ‘right.'” Eric Holder said that we don’t have the courage to have a conversation about race. Every time I attempt to join this conversation, this is what happens. This defamatory, 180-degrees-out-of phase, totally incorrect analysis of what I’ve said appears in a major, mainstream media publication or television network.

Cohen says, “I would even have settled for ‘interesting,'” if not right.

“After all, when the first lady of the United States suggests that something’s wrong when black and other minority children feel alienated from an institution like the Whitney Museum of American Art, maybe she has reason for saying so. In fact, she was talking out of experience. ‘I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum,’ she said.

“‘And growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself.'” She grew up in a fairly middle class, upper-middle class family in Chicago, and I don’t think that she was shut out. If she wanted to go to a museum, she probably did. Field trips or what have you. This is my point here. What I don’t understand is, here you are, you’re the first lady. It’s not an abstract thing. The first lady has been invited to dedicate a museum, and your focal point is on who’s not allowed to show up?

Who says they’re not allowed?

Who defines that they’re not welcome?

How does anybody know they’re not welcome?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. So Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, after quoting me talking about Michelle Obama — after I quoted her complaining about how people looking like her are not welcome in these museums — Cohen writes, “Limbaugh was hearing none of it. The way he looks at it, Obama is not entitled to her experiences, certainly not to talk about it,” and then he quotes me: “‘I mean, even if you’re a committed liberal, you don’t want to hear this stuff all the time,’ he said.

“‘You’re here at a museum dedication and you want to hear an angry first lady stand up and start complaining about stuff like this?’ Well, yes, Rush, I do.” You really do, Richard? That’s what the museum dedication is to you? And then he starts complaining about Sarah Palin. “This is hardly the first time Michelle Obama has come under attack from white critics who infer … that she has no right being black.” What do you mean, “no right being black”? Who has ever gotten anywhere near that?

This is how they shut down conversation that they desperately say they want to have. They assign words I’ve never uttered (probably Sarah Palin hasn’t, either) and then they impugn meanings to various words that were not said. And at the end of it, it all ends up, “Another racist has decided to attack Michelle Obama!” He doesn’t even mention the primary point I made: Why not take the occasion to inspire instead of complain?

When I was brought up, my parents got sick and tired of me whining after a while and told me to shut up and get over it and move on. I know. “Rush, you were never a slave.” Well, I don’t think Michelle Obama ever was either. But the point is there are people out there who need to be inspired and uplifted, and told why you should want to go see what’s in that museum, what’s great about it!

And if there are efforts to keep ’em out, undertake efforts to fix that, rather than lament the way things are. What’s the purpose of you being first lady, if there isn’t gonna be any improvement in this? Why do you liberals want to sit around and constantly hear about how bad it was and how it hasn’t gotten any better? What purpose does that serve? I look at any neighborhood in the country and I ask, “How is it helping anybody?” Which is really what I’m interested in, is helping people!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What I don’t get is what is the value, what is the benefit in telling young African-Americans they are destined to be part of the underclass all their lives? What is the value in that? Especially when you’re sitting there as first lady in the White House proving it need not be, proving you don’t need to be underclass. Just because you’re born into it or you think you don’t have a chance, it’s not your destiny. Why is this not stated?

I can understand somebody who just got out of jail in false imprisonment telling people that the museums may not be the place for them, phony baloney, plastic, whatever. But not people who’ve reached the pinnacle of their professional lives still being oriented toward telling audiences that they are destined to be second class the rest of their lives! I just don’t understand the value in that. Except I do politically.

From the Democrat Party standpoint, I understand why you’d want to tell ’em that. You want them hating your opposition. You would want them not trusting your opposition. You want them to be looking to you for salvation. That’s another thing that’s dastardly about this as far as I’m concerned. Cohen writes, “I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry — and anger is discomforting.

“We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This of course is nonsense. In her case, Limbaugh and others need only have waited until the end of the week to understand her better. At Tuskegee University, she told the graduates of that historically black institution that she wasn’t always first lady. Once, she was just like them.”

What do you mean, “just like them”?

They’ve already escaped! They’re at Tuskegee! They’re already achieved! That’s the point of Tuskegee! Tuskegee has a great story of emancipation. That’s my exact point. I don’t think what she did at Tuskegee… If I were in the audience at Tuskegee, I’d have been a little confused about hearing what a hard path I’ve got after what I’ve just gotten through to get there and be graduating from that place. It’s one hell of an achievement.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: On CNN last night, Don Lemon discussed all of this with Marc Lamont Hill, who is the Morehouse College professor of African-American Studies. It was about my comments about Michelle Obama and the museums. By the way, I’m gonna tell you something. Do you know anybody…? How many…? I’ll ask it this way: “How many white people have never been to Lincoln Center in New York because they think they’d be out of place in there?”

Untold numbers of thousands of people feel intimidated to go to Lincoln Center ’cause what they think goes on in there is the opera and the ballet. Everything they read about it is tuxedo, black tie, and it’s some soprano singing something along with Beverly Sills, and, “That ain’t my place.” How many of ’em think that it’s discrimination keeping ’em out of there, versus…?

I mean, how many white people never been to museum because they think they’d be bored in there? How many people never been to a museum just like they haven’t been to the opera just like they haven’t been to the philharmonic because it ain’t Jay-Z? How many fans of Jay-Z have never been to a museum? “Jay-Z’s what’s hip! A museum? Dinosaur bones? I don’t care about any of that. Get serious.”

(interruption) Well, “How many fans of the museum or the opera have never been to Jay-Z?” That’s a good question. How many people that show up at Lincoln Center for the season have ever been to a Jay-Z or Beyonce concerts? And if they’ve gone, have their noses been up in the air, or not? I mean this is all just silly. It’s not helpful, is the point.

But, anyway, let’s get to the way CNN dealt with it. Don Lemon talking with Marc Lamont Hill.

LEMON: She was well received by the students at Tuskegee, but not everybody is happy about this. I want to play this. This is Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Michelle Obama is on a roll. She is playing the race card. She’s doubling down on it…

HILL: (laughing)

LEMON: Why does the right always get ticked off when either the first lady or the president talks about race? Why does the right…? Why do they always get mad?

HILL: When a black person mentions race like one time —

LEMON: Be honest with me. Why?

HILL: ‘Cause they (sic) black!

LEMON: (laughing)

HILL: The race speech about Jeremiah Wright — which actually happened before he was president — Ferguson, the beer summit, and the Trayvon thing. So that’s three times in six years that he’s mentioned race. Somehow, when he talks about an issue that’s clearly devoted to race, or connected to race, somehow we want him to be raceless.

RUSH: All right. I didn’t hear all that, so I’ve gotta go back and read the transcript here, and I got confused over who was saying what. Thank goodness I have a transcript. Lemon says, “Why does the right always get ticked off when either the first lady or the president talks about race?” We don’t get ticked just for that. When do they not talk about it? When does the left not talk about race in this country as though it’s 200 years ago?

That’s the problem here. Lemon says, “Be honest with me.” Lamont Hill: “When a black person mentions race like one time…” Lemon: “Be honest with me. Why?” Marc Lamont Hill: “‘Cause they[‘re] black! The race speech about Jeremiah Wright — which actually happened before he was president — Ferguson, the beer summit…” Okay, I don’t even know what these guys are talking about there. Here’s the next bite. This is Don Lemon.

After Hill says that people want Obama to be “raceless,” Don Lemon says…

LEMON: The thing is, is that if you have a particular expertise or if you have a, you know, something that you are, like say we elected a general, talk about military issues. If Hillary Clinton is elected, we’ll talk about foreign affairs. So they’re black. Why can’t this be just a teachable moment?

RUSH: Now, remember, this is the guy who actually asked if that Malaysian airliner could have been vacuumed up in a black hole. We did not make up this sound bite. This is not Paul Shanklin imitating Don Lemon. (paraphrasing) “The thing is if you have a particular expertise, if you have, you know, something that you are, like let’s say we elected a general, talk about military issues. Hillary Clinton is elected we talk about foreign affairs. So they’re black, why can’t this just be a teachable moment? Why can’t it be their expertise?”

So race is an expertise.

Race is not an expertise. You’re not elected to black. You’re born black. If Hillary Clinton, I guarantee you, if Hillary Clinton’s elected we’re not gonna be talking about foreign affairs. We’re gonna be talking about feminism, again, from the liberal perspective. The problem here is that race is being — I think it’s a cover. I think it’s being used as a cover, as an excuse, when it has so much more potential than that, is my only complaint. Why would they not seek to be inspiring? And I don’t mean by promising more government money and more government programs. I’m talking about personally inspiring.

The simple act of telling people they can be better than they think they can. The simple act of telling people, “Yeah, it’s hard, but you can become what you want to become.” The problem is, a political party benefits if more and more people do not look at their lives that way. If more and more people think they don’t have a chance, that the deck is stacked against them for whatever reason, that political party thinks it’s going to score big by creating dependency in those people and they’re successful, and they’re right. That’s what’s so dehumanizing and dignity destroying about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me cut to the chase here on something that I’ve been dancing around. Richard Cohen and even these guys on CNN. Not so much them. But Cohen and people like him, you know what I think bogs ’em down? I really think they have a never-ending sympathy for black people based on slavery, and it leads to what I call the soft bigotry of low expectations. It’s just a constant feeling sorry.

It’s almost as though they acknowledge that it’s impossible for African-Americans to be first class, full class citizens because of slavery. They feel so sorry for ’em about that, that we have to basically acknowledge whatever feelings or thoughts they have about it ’cause it’s just so unfortunate what happened. And I understand looking at things that way, but it’s not helpful. It doesn’t help anybody to have low expectations of them. It doesn’t facilitate anything.

It bothers me, that in terms of the human dignity that’s not being expanded or utilized or promoted, I don’t even know what the correct word is. But feeling sorry for somebody, yeah, for a while it’s nice and helpful, but it’s not a solution to anything, especially when it’s used as a means of tolerance for whatever is said or done. “Well, you have to excuse it, Mr. Limbaugh. Look, they’ve been — oh, for all 200 years,” so forth. At some point it’s not helpful. And I think the evidence is all around us that the left’s way of dealing with all of this is not helpful.

It’s like Obama said, if you’ve been doing something for 50 years and it’s not helping, it may be time to change the way you’re doing things. That’s what he said about Cuba. It’s what he said about our relations with Iran. Well, how about the Democrat Party’s relationship with African-Americans? ‘Cause it hasn’t been working for 50 years. Same complaints, same anger, same misery, same dismal future, need to do something different, don’t we? It’s all I’m saying, folks.

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