RUSH: This is about the equal pay business. This whole thing, this whole equal pay thing is nothing more than a political attempt at getting Donald Trump.
Everything the left does, make no mistake, has one objective: getting rid of Donald Trump. However, if they could force him to resign today, they would. If they could force him to be indicted and convicted and sent to Rikers Island today, they would do it. If they have to wait ’til the 2020 elections, then so be it. But everything they do in the Drive-By Media, in the Democrat party is aimed at destroying Donald Trump, taking him down.
And Megan Rapinoe is the latest prop, the latest person being propped up, the latest Trump killer, if you will. And the way she’s doing it: Equal pay. Women are so unfairly treated. It’s unfair! We’re champions, and we’re not paid nearly as much. It’s not fair. Trump’s fault. I’m not gonna go to the White House. Screw that. I’m only going to talk to people who sympathize and agree with me.
All right. Look. If it’s equal pay you’re concerned about, it’s the size of the pie. The market will tell you nine times out of 10 everything you want to know. It’s up to you to accept it or to be offended by it or to be mad at it or to be blockheaded about it and reject it. But here are the numbers.
Women’s soccer — and the most recent numbers, I think it’s Forbes, but the most recent numbers for the 2010 competitive season, women’s soccer generated $73 million. Yay! The women’s percentage of that pie that they were this paid was 13%. Yay! Same year, men’s soccer generated $4 billion. What do we mean “generated”?
Well, that’s how much people spent buying tickets to attend and watch. That’s how much people spent subscribing to online streams to watch. That’s how much people spent on concessions, parking, travel, licensed merchandise, season tickets, you name it, $73 million to watch the women. Four billion to watch the men.
“It’s not fair, Mr. Limbaugh. It’s not fair.” There’s no fairness or unfairness about it. It’s just what is. It’s like saying, “It’s not fair that there’s only one black woman in the Senate.” There’s nothing unfair about it. She’s the only one that’s gotten elected. “It means that the country doesn’t want black women.” We don’t know that. You think if Michelle Obama ran for the Senate she would lose? I don’t think so.
“It’s just so unfair, Mr. Limbaugh. It’s not fair.” Fairness has nothing to do this. How many women have sought the Senate? How many women seek elective office? How many of them lose? “It’s not fair when they lose, it’s my whole point, Mr. Limbaugh.” What do you mean, it’s not fair? Fairness had nothing to do it. The same thing here. Fairness is not a factor.
Seventy-three million for the women. And you can manipulate stats however you want. You could say the women are being paid more than men. They’re getting 13% of their pie. The men are getting 9% of theirs. The men getting 9% of that four billion. I mean, this is the way they fool people, convincing them the rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes.
“It’s not fair. Warren Buffett’s secretary’s paying more in taxes –” that’s not the way to calculate it. Warren Buffett is paying much more in taxes than his secretary. It’s the rate that may differ. “Well, it’s not fair.” Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you want to change the sizes of those two pies, how would you do it?
“Well, the first thing we would do, Mr. Limbaugh, is penalize the men. We’d take some of the money being spent on men and move it to the women’s game.” You can’t do that. Not in a free market and not in a free society. So you want to go and you want to take what the men’s soccer business is generating and, if the name of fairness, you want to steal some of it and then transfer it over to the women’s pie.
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s what fairness would be.” Well, sorry, we’re not talking fairness, we’re not talking democracy, and we’re not talking freedom here. We’re talking authoritarianism, Stalinism, we’re talking wealth transfers. And there’s nothing fair about. “It is fair because it would be leveling the playing field.” No, it wouldn’t be leveling the playing field. It would be punishing achievers and unfairly rewarding people who didn’t achieve as much.
“It’s not fair that the women don’t have as much.” Fairness has nothing to do with it. There’s no singular person up there deciding how much money the men’s game is gonna get versus the women’s. The market determines this. And the market is everybody. And people vote with their dollars. The same thing with the NBA versus the WNBA. The same thing with the National Football League and the women’s NFL.
Wait. There isn’t one. Sorry. Isn’t that unfair? I mean, that’s really unfair. There isn’t a women’s NFL. Men are getting all of that pie. Oh, man. And all the concussions. You want to take some of the concussions the men are getting and transfer those over? And, by the way, look at the injuries in soccer are far greater than the injuries in other sports. That’s another dirty little secret they don’t want you to know.
We’ve been on that case ever since we started our charity, Keep Our Own Kids Safe, KOOKS, warning about the dangers of soccer. No, seriously, folks, this is a great illustration of how poorly educated, particularly economically, people in this country are. They’ll see these two sets of figures, $4 billion generated from male soccer, $73 million for women’s soccer and think it’s inherently unfair.
Wrong way to look at it. The way to look at it, well, we got a lot of growth ahead of us. We’ve got a big challenge. We’ve gotta somehow turn the women’s game into something as popular as the men’s game. Yeah, you do. How you gonna do it? Well, whoever comes up with the idea to do that is gonna make a lot of money.
As I say, there’s no singular person deciding how much money goes to women’s soccer, how much money goes to men’s soccer. The market determines this stuff. And this is a little microcosm, by the way, of what’s happening throughout our society as the left determines, “This is unfair and that’s unfair.” All these inequalities, all of these differences which are, in large part, simply organic and natural, are now being assigned political identities with white men, the evil devils out there who are deciding who gets what and taking most of it for themselves.
And then they convert as many people as possible to thinking they’re victims, and then they sign on to this. They sign on to some variation of somebody is making sure I don’t get my fair share. And once you make somebody a victim, you have destroyed them for the rest of their lives. You have taken away every bit of incentive they might have. You’ve taken away all their ambition. Because you’ve just convinced them that there’s nothing they can do to make their life better.
The deck is so stacked against them that they have become comfortable every day feeling like they are a victim of somebody they don’t even know, some thing they don’t even recognize. And this is how the left imprisons its supporters. This is how the left shackles, enslaves, and lowers the expectations of their supporters and keeps them at a fever-pitch rage of anger and discontent, which is the hallmark of your average leftist in America today: enraged, angry, miserable, unhappy, unsatisfied, with no hope.
And the only time they are happy is when they think their leaders are exacting pain on their opponents, such as when the rich have their taxes increased. “Yeah, man. You really sock it to ’em.” Doesn’t change their life at all. But they feel really good that somebody else might be suffering a little pain. And that’s your average leftist today.
And now expand that and have them all think, what is the great Satan, what is the real enemy, what is it that’s really keeping them down, what is it that’s real subjugating them, what is it that’s really punishing them? Why, it’s the country. It’s America itself and America’s founding. And if you believe that, it doesn’t take much to hear some guy come along and talk about Make America Great Again and for your leaders to say, “Yeah, all he wants is to keep you poor and miserable.”
“Yeah.” And you just continue to build support with rage, anger, depression, despondency, identity politics, which further differentiates people, separates people, rather than unifies or brings people together. That’s the American left today. It’s really sad, and it’s puzzling at the same time how they’re able to grow that movement. But it just goes to show how so many people are susceptible to the negative, susceptible to pessimism, susceptible to the idea that they can’t amount to anything on their own. That’s the real destructive nature.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Moment of, shall we say, seriousness here. I mean, not that I have been unserious in the things I’ve said. We’ve been sort of in a jocular mood in transmitting those things. But you know what’s really not fair when we talk about the unfairness of this or that, the unfairness of women, what they make, what they don’t make versus men, you know what’s really not fair, if you want to boil this all down?
What’s really not fair, these women playing for national teams, they’re playing on the American national team, and they’re using the fame generated by being on America’s female soccer team to crap on the country. Now, that’s what’s unfair, if you want to really get down to brass tacks. That’s what’s really, really low. You get selected, you earn your way on to the American women’s soccer team, and you use the fame and notoriety of your performance representing America to then turn around and trash it, on the basis that it’s unfair, that it’s not great, that it discriminates. Or, as we all know, that you hate Donald Trump.