RUSH: Here is Ray in one of my favorite cities that I can’t go to.
CALLER: You’re always invited to my house, Rush.
RUSH: San Francisco. Well, yeah, it’s getting to your house that would be the challenge. I love San Francisco. I guess it’s kind of falling apart now with all the homeless and the urine and the puke everywhere, but still it’s just gorgeous. I got the new Apple TV and they’ve got screen savers that are actual video made by helicopters and drones. Golden Gate Bridge. You know, I’ve been to the South Tower, top of the South Tower, Golden Gate Bridge. It’s the most fascinating thing I’ve done. Under the South Tower at Fort Point, they don’t let you go there now, Homeland Security, I think. But, anyway, I always love getting calls from San Francisco ’cause it’s the only way I’ll ever visit there is pretending I’m there when I’m on the phone with somebody. This is Ray, and finally you’re up. How are you, sir?
CALLER: Good, sir. You know this whole Mizzou thing also points towards Ben Carson, unfortunately. You know, these young minds full of mush, these kids that the left likes to call useful idiots, what they’re protesting is the very people that they say support them, which is the Democrat Party, the racist left in this country, and it’s just ridiculous. If they knew their history, they would know that slavery was defeated in the Civil War and the only remnant that remains systematically in the system of the United States is the Democrat Party.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: It comes all the way up to Bird and all this Democrat machinery that thinks that you have to have a white overlord, rich white overlord and you can’t have any kind of free thought. And Ben Carson is the epitome of it. If you dare leave the socialist left plantation in this nation, they send the dogs out after you to destroy you or bring you back.
RUSH: Boy, is that ever right. If you are a conservative African-American or a conservative woman they are going to try to kill you.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Reputation, career, they are going to try to take you out. You represent a huge threat to them. African-American, conservative, female conservative, what a threat. You’re exactly right. Let me ask you a question. During the break I read a piece at The New Yorker and it’s some guy saying, “Okay, folks, it’s about time we got serious and finally embraced political correctness instead of making fun of it because look at what it’s accomplishing.” Meaning Mizzou, great achievement, what a wonderful thing that’s happening here. And we need to embrace this. It’s an article written for leftists. It’s an article written for Democrats. Time to embrace political correctness.
CALLER: Well, if we embrace political correctness, then we basically vacate the position that we have free thought, any sort of freedom. What these kids are basically saying that they want freedom from isn’t slavery or racism. It’s any type of personal responsibility.
RUSH: I know. I know. Well, the biggest — the biggest — laugh about this is to listen to these kids, these children, which is what they are. They’re still effectively kindergartens in terms of their maturity, kindergarteners in terms of maturity and attitudes. Demanding their freedom? Demanding their freedom to do what? What are they being denied the opportunity to do? They can do anything they want to do. There aren’t any limits on them!
What the hell are they talking about?
Who’s denying them freedom?
What, freedom to have never-ending A’s? Freedom to have no student debt? Freedom to not have to pay tuition? What the world do they mean by freedom? Where the hell are they oppressed? This is… You’re raising a great question, and it’s built off mine. How in the world can there be all of this oppression in places run by the Democrats? Universities, cities, towns, run by liberal Democrats. Why is it that these young children feel so oppressed and so denied and so shackled? It doesn’t makes sense to me. (interruption)
No, let me explain. Look, you know I lived in Sacramento. I went to San Francisco quite a bit, and I really liked it. It’s a beautiful place. It really is. And I did go to the top of the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, after I saw the movie A View to a Kill, a Bond movie. I was friends with law enforcement in Sacramento, and they put me in touch with somebody at the California Highway Patrol, who arranged with the Bridge Authority. (interruption) How did I get up there? I walked up the cable.
No, I’m just kidding. There’s an elevator inside. You take a golf cart out to the South Tower and you go in a little door, and you get in an elevator that is open — it’s not enclosed — and it holds three people. I had an old-fashioned video camera, a Super 8 video camera that was in a case. I had to put that on my head and hold my arm straight up so that all three of us could fit in this elevator. The elevator takes you not to the top, takes you 30 feet from the top; then you have to climb a ladder. And there’s a hatch like on a submarine that opens.
That pops open, you climb in, and then you’re on the top of the South Tower. Well, you’re not at the top. You’re not at the saddles where the cables go over, but you’re there… They don’t let you go up there because they claim you’ll get vertigo if you go to the absolute highest point. They won’t let you go, but there was not a cloud in the sky that day. There was no fog that day. It was ’86, I guess, maybe ’87. It might have been the spring of ’88.
I don’t know when, but I stayed up there two or three hours. I didn’t want to leave, and I could see everything from up there that day, and then I had to do back down that ladder 30 feet, get in that elevator. And when you’re in, it’s dark in there. There’s no lights inside that. You can hear it creaking and bending. You feel it moving as it should, as it’s designed to, with all the weight of the cars on it. It was a fascinating, fascinating experience.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I actually wanted to walk up the cables to get there, but they wouldn’t let me, even though like the painters of the bridge do. They clip you on. There are handrails on those cables, but they wouldn’t let me do that for insurance purposes, obviously. But I would have done it if they would give me the-go-ahead. So I took the elevator.