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Jan. 1, 1989 - Rush Limbaugh Program
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19890101_Rush_to_Excellence_Tour
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Limbaugh, Bennett, Born, Kelly.
Join Robert Torny, Mona Sharon, Frent Bozell, and Gary Bauer in the National Conservative Forum.
Highlights now on Video Cassette Just 1995.
The National Conservative Forum video.
A video snapshot of America as seen through the eyes of some of the most prominent conservative thinkers of our time.
Call 1-800-622-RUSH.
Well, I'll tell you, I hope it's cooler in that building than it is in this car.
I knew it was supposed to be over 100 today, but that's normal for here.
Is that right?
Are they coming in here?
A strong political influence, a pioneer in talk radio, and true blue patience.
So, please, join me in welcoming the S.T.A.R. himself, ladies and gentlemen, Rush Limbaugh.
Thank you.
So glad you're here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, because I only want to help you.
And I don't mean that I just want to screw you.
I really want to help you.
See the pickets outside?
Undeniable truth of life, number 24.
Feminism was established so that unattractive, ugly broads could have easy access to the mainstream, right?
Did you see it?
Yes!
Use for it!
Bunch of cows.
And how about the one?
If you love Hitler, you'll love Rush.
Oh, slime balls.
You know, I am really tired of being compared to Hitler.
Most conservatives are.
Anybody have a condom?
Somebody have a condom?
Come on.
And I know it's going to be a woman.
And in fact, only, I will only take a condom from a woman.
I know you have you buy them more than men do.
So say the surveys.
I'm not going to wait all night.
She has one.
She has one.
Marvelous.
Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous.
Embarrassing because my 18-year-old son gave it to me.
Now wait, wait.
Hold it.
Stay where you are.
Stay where you are.
You said what?
My 18-year-old son gave it to me.
Why is that embarrassing?
There you go.
Safe sex.
No, Take it, take it, take it.
I have more.
You know, her son gave it to her.
That's why she was embarrassed.
Okay.
I only use these in these occasions.
Why would you know the sight of one this color, if I were a woman?
All right.
Okay, ha, okay.
Yes, it is lubricated.
Yes, my hands are greasy.
But I do it because I care.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is safe talk.
Do you know what makes this safe talk?
This condom.
This condom protects you from whatever evil words I might enunciate.
For those of you in Rio Linda, that means speak.
Or if speak confuses you, say would also suffice.
Now, do any of you, you ought to see, there's a little old lady up front here going, why did I come here tonight?
Why'd you bring me here, Harry?
Never seen one of those.
Lady in the front row said, my God, I didn't know they were that big.
Wait till you see it when it comes off, ma'am.
You might get frightened.
No, you are protected from any evil because this condom will filter out any bad words.
Filter out any disease of the voice.
Filter out any problem.
Why?
Surgeon General says so.
Frankster at heart.
These women are going.
Now, the reason I do that is there's a theme during tonight's program I want you to never forget.
Illustrating absurdity by being absurd.
That's what I do.
In many ways, I like to illustrate my point of view rather than just say it.
Everybody tells you what they think.
And how many times are you persuaded by it?
Zero.
Somebody tells you what they think, especially if they're pointing their finger in your face or yelling at you, it's not going to persuade you, it's not going to convince you.
All it's going to do is make you rebel because you don't want to look like an idiot in front of people.
You want to hold up your end.
Well, the Surgeon General of the United States said that if you don't want to get AIDS in this country, the best thing you can do is to use a condom.
Just use a condom.
And in fact, in New York, they've taken him seriously.
There's a program in New York, Rubber Up for Safety.
I'm not kidding you.
Rubber up for safety.
Television ads.
These ads are playing on television in New York City.
Not cable vision, television, over-the-air, broadcast television.
Imagine, if you will, a roaring fire and two good-looking men sitting next to it.
Let us be respectful of our friends in the Bay Area.
You people, I hear the name you're throwing up here.
Let me tell you, this show has standards, this show has decency, as you will see as the night goes on.
You had a roaring fire, you got two men sitting by it.
There is the remnants of a dinner table that you see.
One of them is looking lovingly at the other.
A narrator says, as though it is the man speaking, speaking silently, we had a wonderful dinner by the fireside.
I asked him if he believed in safer sex.
If he enjoyed safer sex.
He said to me, he had never felt happier than that moment in his life.
And at that moment, a couple of condoms drop out of nowhere right on the table in front of the guy with the graphic rubber up for safety.
If you lived in New York, your kids would see this commercial.
Daddy, what's that mean?
What would you tell them?
You want to not get AIDS in America?
And if you're a man, you want to not get AIDS?
One thing you don't do.
You do not ask another man to bend over and make love at the exit point.
That's what you don't do.
The second, the second thing you don't do is go find some homeless derelict, some wandering shred of human debris, and say, hey, pal, can I borrow your needle?
And if you don't do those two things, you have just protected yourself about 90% of not getting AIDS.
And you haven't even bought a condom yet.
That's the point that safe talk is all about.
And during the course of this presentation tonight, where I will dazzle you, let you in on the inside, explaining to you how I do what I do and why I do it that way.
Remember the phrase, illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
Now, let's go to some questions.
Will you ever have kids?
Not that I know of.
For your 35 undeniable truths, add one.
Number 36 men are no good.
You know what I say when people say, why did you get divorced?
Why did I get divorced?
Why did anybody get divorced?
There's only one answer.
Men are jerks.
Women all love that.
My friends, I want to take some time here to be serious for the briefest of moments.
In illustrating absurdity and in trying to convey to you how I try to persuade, look, I don't want to persuade by telling you anything.
I don't want to rely on my rhetoric to persuade you.
The question arises, am I trying to persuade even or am I just a guy on the radio having fun?
I have had, because of opposition in several cities, I've had to adopt a posture which would make liberals think that I'm harmless because they love to believe people are stupid.
They think you're an idiot.
They think you're a fool.
They think all of us who love Ronald Reagan and conservatism are neophytes.
And you are harmless as long as you convince them that's true.
Even though that's a difficult thing for me to do, to appear dumb, I try nevertheless.
And the extremism that the liberals think that I am helps to kind of quiet them down.
I say on the radio, I'm not trying to persuade anybody.
Don't worry about me.
Hell no.
I'm just a guy on the radio having fun.
Am I trying to get anybody elected?
No.
Already do.
Am I running for office?
No!
No, I want to have fun in life.
But am I trying to persuade?
Absolutely.
Somebody who's as passionate about things as I am, of course, you want to convert.
You want to persuade.
You want to try to convince people that what you believe in is right because you find it worthy of taking a stand on.
Fewer and fewer people take stands these days.
More and more people say, oh, well, that's just the way it is, and I'll go ahead and live my life.
I don't personally agree with it, but I'm not in a position to say you can't do it.
Somebody better and real fast.
Impose some morality.
Now, I have gotten in real trouble in the past three months, actually four, with my stand on abortion.
Very controversial issue.
It is an issue that's right down the middle.
As many people for it as against it.
So as a personality, there's no safe side.
Recently, there have been conventions of talk show hosts.
And one of the big criticisms is, hey, you guys, anybody can oppose a pay raise.
What kind of guts do you have?
Hey, you guys, anybody's against this or anybody's against that.
Why don't you take some tough issues on?
Well, I do.
And one of them is abortion.
I doubt that I have converted anybody.
And you can't do it in one setting anyway.
But I decided I wanted to illustrate my feelings on abortion rather than just tell people what I think, because that's why everybody does it.
I decided to invent the caller abortion.
And I got more grief for the caller abortion.
I got more grief for that than anything I've ever done, including the condom update when the little old ladies and tennis Adidas group here complained and moaned about up, up, and away as the theme song for it.
I had station managers around the country faxing me, saying, you're killing me on this.
People who say they love you can't handle this.
It's too personal an issue.
You're being too cruel.
It's tasteless.
You've got to stop it.
You're killing me.
I can't deal with the complaints.
I said, sit tight.
It's just the pro-choice crowd calling.
They're lying to you about who they are.
But I couldn't convince them that was the case.
And so I eventually had to cancel the feature.
Let me tell you how it came about.
Everything that happens on my program, by the way, is spontaneous.
I never sit at home the night before and say, I think tomorrow I'll do this.
Or tomorrow I'll do that.
It just happens.
It was National Condom Week.
Valentine's Day.
It's true.
And I am doing my show on WABC.
And I've got a call that I'd rather not have.
It's a call from a woman who's talking about abortion.
And abortion hasn't come up at all on the show.
It's out of place.
It shouldn't have made it.
But because I don't hang up on callers, I'm stuck.
I've made the pledge that I never will hang up on callers.
Every host does that.
I've made the pledge I'll never abuse callers.
Every host does that.
I don't insult callers.
I'm probably the politest talk show host in America right now.
I probably am.
But how do you get rid of a call you don't want?
You abort the call, exactly.
So I'm sitting here doing the show at his lady.
He's talking about abortion.
I'll tell you a little funny story first.
And I say to the call screener, off mic, the intercom, gee, I wish I could abort this call.
And light went off, and I said, get me Phil Latzman.
Phil Latzman is really a gopher, nice guy, that's the title.
For the four hours I'm on the air, he's there to get me whatever I need.
Cup of coffee, condoms, sound effects, what have you.
I said, Phil, I need a vacuum cleaner sound effect.
I want about 12 seconds.
I want a seven-second scream.
I want you to hear the vacuum cleaner turn on.
I want you to be able to hear the vacuum cleaner turn off.
What are you going to do?
I'm going to abort calls, Phil.
You're going to what?
I, Phil, I'm going to make broadcast history.
I'm going to abort calls.
I can't get rid of them any other way.
I promised the audience I wouldn't hang up on them.
Well, okay.
He went to the management of the station.
I think you should know Russia's going to abort callers.
They said, that's okay.
new york the first thing i had to know had to know when does a call begin because Because I need to know at what point it is unsafe for me, the host, to abort the caller.
I'm not going to jeopardize myself in this.
I'm not going to jeopardize my health or my life.
I have to know.
So I called the phone company.
I got a scientist from New York tell.
I didn't want to talk to anybody who had any emotion in this.
I wanted to talk to a man of science for the true definition.
When does a call begin?
I got him on the phone.
I said, tell me, sir, when does a call begin?
Does it begin when I dial?
Does it begin when I get a ring?
Does it begin when somebody answers?
And what's a busy signal mean?
I said, at what point does that little unviable electronic pulse become a call?
He said, well, we start charging you when it's answered.
I said, that's my answer.
A call becomes a call when somebody answers it.
He said, yes.
Now, why do you want to know?
So, because I am going to start aborting callers.
Oh, okay.
New York again.
But I still am not totally comfortable because I don't answer the calls.
Melvis Nerdley does.
And sometimes she puts those calls on hold for minutes, gestating out there before they hit the air.
And I say to myself, well, I have to know how long it takes a call to gestate to full term.
We settled on 20 minutes.
We just chose it arbitrarily.
Then somebody said, Rush, you can't do this.
This is not you.
This is not the stuff you're made of.
You don't abort calls, Rush.
Put them up for adoption.
Put them on hold.
Let some other host adopt that call.
Leave it for somebody else to take.
I said, I can't do that.
Why not?
That poor call might be abused.
I don't know what the adoptive host is going to do.
It might languish out there for years before somebody takes it.
No, no.
There's absolutely no way I would do that to a caller.
Put it up for adoption.
How senseless.
When you can't predict what's going to happen.
No.
Now I'm going to abort these calls and I'm going to do it with happiness.
And I'm going to do it with them and vigor.
Just think.
We wouldn't have a homeless problem had we aborted all of them.
We wouldn't have Senator Kennedy if Rose could have been convinced.
All these wonderful things.
So I then asked for a volunteer from the national audience to be the first aborted call on American radio.
We asked the caller who was first in line if she would be willing to do it.
She said she would.
I said, I would like to demonstrate to you, ladies and gentlemen, what happens during a caller abortion.
Ma'am, I want you to start talking.
When you start talking, it doesn't matter what you say.
It's irrelevant.
Just start talking.
She said, okay.
Mr. Wimbo, let me tell you something.
I think that we hassle, no trouble.
Caller is his flaw.
I might have been okay up to this point, but I asked the broadcast engineer, Jim McGuire, said, Jim, did we get it all?
I think that rubbed people the wrong way.
No pun intended.
Did it 25 times.
A modern human record.
25 caller abortions in three weeks.
But the protest got so severe, so outrageous, so vocal that I had to stop it.
Because my instincts, which I use a lot, told me that this really was something.
I thought I was getting letters from people who normally wouldn't write.
I thought I was getting comments from people who normally wouldn't comment.
My instinct said, well, she may have gone too far on this, but Rush, you probably have made your point, so why beat him over the head with it anyway.
So I decided to cancel the feature because I want you to know, by the way, that you do have something to say about what happens on my program.
Not much, but some.
More than on other shows.
The traditional talk show host of today, had he found you were so bugged by it, would have just pummeled you with these things.
Not I.
It's not my intention to offend.
I'm trying to draw a crowd, attract an audience.
Don't want to offend people.
It's going to happen anyway when you tell them what you think.
You can't help but offend people.
If you do it like I do with passion, confidence, bravado, arrogance, conceit, and cocksuredness, they hate you.
So I announced my cancellation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am today canceling the caller abortion feature.
In canceling it, though, I want to say something to you.
Who am I?
I'm a guy on the radio.
A guy on the radio playing sounds.
Recorded sounds of a vacuum cleaner, a common, ordinary, everyday household appliance, and a scream.
A common, ordinary, everyday scream.
Happen to say the word abortion around them?
And you call here, and you write here, and you say, Rush, you have no heart.
You're tasteless.
Your insensitivity is appalling.
Your cruelty.
Have you no decency?
Who am I?
A guy on the radio playing sounds.
Not one aborted caller suffered in any way.
Not one shred of damage done.
In fact, many of them considered it an honor and wanted tapes of it to play for their friends.
Yet, it goes on for real 4,000 times a day in your neighborhood.
What are you doing?
You're calling a guy on the radio saying, stop it, stop it, stop it.
All I'm doing is playing sounds.
Stop it, stop it, I can't handle it.
It's happening for real in your neighborhood 4,000 times a day.
You're calling a guy on the radio.
You've got your priorities mixed up.
You ought to feel about an inch tall.
Besides, if you didn't know in your heart that abortion was a savage, violent act, this wouldn't have bugged you in the first place.
And I knew I had them thinking.
I don't know how many of you persuade that way, but I deem to say that it's much more effective than just pointing a finger in somebody's face or standing in a doorway and saying, no, no, you can't do this because all you do is arouse rebellion.
Let's see what other questions we have here.
Rush!
Listen to this.
Rush.
Did your mother have any children that lived?
I'm an aberration.
How many of you remember the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament?
600 sons and daughters of rich Democrats decided to take six months off and march from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., stop along the way for nonviolent seminars.
They're going to plant peace trees in the front yards of former war protesters, great men like Stokely Carmichael.
They were going to try to get arrested on nuclear test sites and strategic air command bases.
Great thing to do for peace.
Stupid thing to do for peace.
Absolutely not contributory in an iota.
And yet the media once again, oh, look at these kids.
Aren't they wonderful?
Aren't they courageous?
They care.
Just like Dukakis, the loser.
Mr. Dukakis, why do you want to be president?
Because I care about people.
What B. What kind of qualification is that?
They care about peace.
They care about peace.
You know what we need to do, folks?
We don't need to raise a bunch of kids who think that peace is maintainable or achievable by flying a bunch of kites in Amarillo, Texas, and calling it a kite fly for peace.
We don't need to raise a bunch of kids who think that planting peace gardens and sending pictures of the sprouts to little Russian kids has a damn thing to do with peace.
We do not need to raise our kids thinking that all you have to do is fly a Cessna 210 across the Soviet Union.
That guarantees you won't get nuked.
And we certainly.
No, I was embarrassed.
I'm in New York and I don't get Sacramento news every day, but somebody sent me the latest tidbit, the latest pearl, the latest shred of wisdom from Grandmothers for Peace.
Foam frisbees.
Foam frisbees.
The logic was, if we'd just given these to the Contras and the Sandinistas, or if we just give these to one another and throw these around, we wouldn't shoot bullets at each other.
Yeah.
If those Chinese students had just had foam frisbees to throw at those tanks, they wouldn't have died.
And if the Contras had Ollie North get them frisbees made of foam, why, the Soviets might not own Nicaragua today.
Damn, why didn't I think of this?
I mean, that's pure stupidity.
And there it is in your Sacramento B trumpeted banner headlined, as though it's relevant to anything, and it's not.
All it does is give people the wrong idea.
We have had peace because of nuclear weapons.
We need to teach kids the only time nuclear weapons have been used in this country, the only time three wonderful things happened.
A, a war ended.
B, we won.
We won.
C, we saw the horrors those weapons create.
And that vision is precisely why nobody's had the guts to use them again.
Yet, here are 600 sons and daughters of rich Democrats going, oh no, we might get nuked any moment.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to march across the country and stop it.
Yeah, we get to Washington.
Reagan's going to call Gorbachev and say, Mike, Mike, did you see what these kids did?
Mike, they marched across this country.
It's not an easy thing to do, Mike.
They've got blisters, calluses.
They planted trees, Mike, Mike.
We've got to get together.
We've got to do something about these nukes.
We've got to throw them away.
Gorbachev says, you first.
Slim Whitman's Una Paloma Blanca.
That's where the updates were born.
Slim Whitman's Una Paloma Blanca.
Shall we have a sing-along?
Una Paloma Blanca.
Just a moment.
It was putting those bombs in there that really made it go.
That's what really made them mad.
That jagged them.
There's a line in there about something about God and the voice of God and a bomb goes off.
And I said, well, isn't that great?
God's voice is a bomb.
Well, again, illustrating absurdity by being absurd.
During the Great Peace March, an Ohio minister called a press conference.
Six weeks into it, he said, I have found a satanic message in the Mr. Ed theme.
And that theme should be banned because it is poisoning the minds of the youth of America.
Reporters said, what is satanic in the Mr. Ed theme?
He said, when you play it backwards on your turntable, and that part that goes, a horse is a horse, of course, of course, what you really hear is, sis, sis, this is Satan.
Sis, sis, sis, sis, this is Satan.
And we've got to get it off the air.
I said, whoa, this is too good.
This is too good.
So I decided that I would find a satanic message in Una Paloma Blanca, a song of peace and hope and charity and all that.
Tuesday morning I said, ladies and gentlemen, I come before you today with a heavy heart.
I have been your talk show host for six months.
I have tried to do the right thing.
I have tried to be righteous, honest, and truthful.
I have never deceived you.
I have never unwittingly led you down the wrong path.
And now I have been co-opted by evil.
Do I sound enough like a preacher?
I have been co-opted by evil.
I do not know if I can continue as your host.
I have subjected you to this evil.
This Satanism has poisoned a portion of this program.
And I have subjected you to it for six months.
I do not know if I can continue because even if I am able to rid myself of this evil, can I ever, in the eyes of God, be truthful and honest with you again?
Can I ever assure you that I will not be co-opted by this same evil?
If I didn't know it this time, will I know it again?
I expect to resign this position by the end of the week.
I went into my news digest then, opened the phones.
What did you do?
They started calling Mr. Etchison, whom you met earlier.
You better make him tell when he did.
I mean, literally, he was getting, he came back in the studio, said, how are you going to go with this?
And I said, I, judging by this, think we can go all week.
He said, I don't think you should.
He says, this really isn't serious.
I mean, people are calling me and they think you're actually spreading devil worship and that you're not telling them, and they think it's not fair.
I said, what do you want me to do?
He said, use your instincts, but don't go to Friday with this.
On Thursday, I went on the air.
I said, ladies and gentlemen, I am being forced to subject you to the evil that I have said I would no longer subject you to.
I'm told that if I don't do it, the station will because so many of you demand to know.
Well, I am going to do it so that I can maintain control.
Now, those of you who are weak in your faith, I strongly suggest you not listen.
Tune to another station.
It'll be at least five minutes, and then you can come back, it'll be okay.
But I warn you: if you listen to this and your faith is weak, I will not accept responsibility because you've been warned.
And those of you who are secure in your faith, those of you who are strong, this could shatter it.
I then started Slim Whitman's Una Paloma Blanca backwards.
Tell me, where did you get a turntable that laid backwards like this?
My disciples and I have been doing for these three years.
Maybe he can only find this for the souls.
I'll never forget you, now that I have found you.
Good to know you.
We'll be talking to you again.
Music faded away into total oblivion.
The phones are going crazy.
I'm splitting my side, laughing.
I'm saying, Rush, you genius.
You have, this is the best bit in radio history.
You have just taken what this Ohio minister did and pointed out the total futility and folly and stupidity of it.
They're going to call you from the tonight's show.
I'm going to want you to write for Carson.
You have a great future.
Kitty O'Neill says, First call.
Rush.
Rush, don't you know what you've done?
Rush, you've been saved.
You've been saved, Rush.
You've exercised the devil.
God spoke to you, Rush.
Don't resign.
You don't have to.
You've been saved.
I'm going, oh my God.
How can you believe Bezelbob, the old devil himself, lurking in the Slim Whitman record?
How do you believe that?
I mean, I tried to make it as stupid as I could.
I asked Kitty, I said, There are any more people like this in the phone?
She said, all of them.
We have six lives.
She said, all of them.
The next guy said, Rush, Rush, I have every one of Slim Whitman's records.
Should I burn them?
I said, yes.
Why not?
I didn't realize what I had going here.
Now, 2% of the audience is a maximum that calls.
98% never call.
They listen.
And I really hope that you were part of the 98%.
Funniest call.
Funniest call.
I can see this guy.
He lives in Rio Linda.
He calls from the front porch.
He's listened to me with venom ever since I got here.
He's hated me.
He's been waiting to prove me wrong.
He's been waiting to point out that I'm a hypocrite, that I'm a liar, that I'm a phony.
He's been waiting for it.
Now this is it.
He probably wears a flannel shirt, even on days like this.
Scraggly beard, losing his hair, bad-looking teeth, and just holds the phone and kind of chomps into it.
I pick up the phone.
Hello, you're on KFBK.
Hey, I don't believe any of this crap you've been saying about this Slim Whitman business.
Sir, how can you say that?
Have put myself through torture this week.
I don't believe any of it.
You can't fool me.
You think we're all stupid out here.
You can't fool me.
Sir, how can you say this to me?
I have risked my career to be honest.
Oh, save it for somebody else.
Look, pal, you're not dealing with idiots out here.
You think we all idiots.
That's why you do what you do.
I have that record.
You understand?
I have it.
Now, my turntable don't play backwards, but I ain't no fool.
All I did was put that needle on the end of the record and spin it backwards.
no message on that song what you got to say to that I'm laughing my guts out.
I can't stop it.
Everybody's going berserk.
This show has attracted a crowd in the studio.
I said, sir, what year was your turntable made?
All I could think of.
What do you mean?
You're just trying to weasel out of it now.
I know.
You know you've been caught.
I said, no, sir, I haven't been caught doing anything.
What year was your turntable made?
I don't know.
1979 or 80, I don't know.
Ah, that's the problem, sir.
You see, turntables made before 1983 do not have disgruntificator circuits.
Oh, yeah, yeah, disgruntled.
What else is disgruntled?
New laser technology, sir.
I can't do this. I can't.
New laser technology, sir.
Disgronificator expands the dynamic range and it allows you to clip the high end or the trebles and clip the low end of the base, expands the mid-range, which is where satanic messages are, and you can only hear them with that.
You mean to tell me if I went out and bought a turntable right today, made after 1983, I could take it home, spin that record backwards, and hear that message.
Here's what you're telling me, sir.
If it has disgruntled circuitry in it, ask for it.
It should work.
Now, I had lost composure so much.
You know, all I would have had to do was say, go to Philco.
Because, number one, they would have sold it to him.
And number two, I would have known whether he came in and bought one.
I would love to have known that.
I would love to know if the guy burned his Slim Whitman library.
You know, a year later, we did the whole thing over again, only we were up front and honest.
I said, folks, one year ago today, we did this.
And it was fake then, set it up, told him exactly what I did.
This is the best of rush.
People believed it even then.
Some people, not nearly as many, but some did.
Questions.
What do you think of Ollie's sentence?
Boo?
Who had the gall to boo back?
Oh, oh.
Didn't want any sentence at all.
Let me put the Oliver North events in perspective.
This is very simple.
You have a guy in the White House named Oliver North.
He decides that he's going to sell arms to the Ayatollah.
And he's going to do it the rich Republican way.
He's going to screw the Ayatollah.
He's going to overcharge the Ayatollah.
Millions of dollars.
This is a brilliant scheme.
We needed to keep the war between Iran and Iraq going anyway.
Why not overcharge the Ayatollah?
So we overcharge him some $10, $15 million.
The idea was to take that money and to give it to the Contras fighting the evil Sandinistas so that he could win.
The only problem was he didn't tell Congress.
Congress found out about it and said, You can't get gang.
You can't get that without telling us.
You're going to jail.
That is the Iran-Contra story.
Since that's it, folks.
Don't boo me.
That's it.
You know, you people, I've got to tell you something.
You people out there booing, you get mad at me because I tell you what people do.
I mean, I don't make things up.
I don't have to lie about things.
I have truth on my side.
Let me give you some examples of this.
Women marry up.
They all marry up.
Nothing wrong with that.
That's what people do.
Now, when I say that, you sexist, chauvinist pig, there's no political statement there.
There's no criticism there.
Women marry up.
Same token, men marry down.
They do.
Why do people get crazy over things that people do?
They do.
So now, you're going to damn, you didn't tell us about it.
$40 million later.
Oliver North's reputation is in tatters.
He cannot run for office.
He cannot vote.
He cannot seek office even.
He can't get his pension.
And he's not guilty, not guilty of all the Iran-Contra charges.
The government has wasted $40 million on a vendetta trying to get Ronald Reagan.
And Oliver North has, I think, suffered two years of hell.
Far worse than any jail sentence he would have to serve.
I find it interesting.
You should know, I know a lot of people who write George Bush letters constantly urging him to pardon North.
The answers they get back are not encouraging.
So don't look for one.
Why is it that when you go on vacations, you work instead of relax?
Do you ever get free time yourself?
Not here.
But you know, it's a good question.
I think I'd like to take a minute to answer that.
Six years ago, I was working for the Kansas City Royals.
I had been in radio 12 years previous to that.
I was working for the Kansas City Royals six years ago.
It was the end of five years there.
After five years there, I was making $18,000 a year.
Now, I don't know what kind of money that sounds like to you.
But believe me, in Kansas City, Missouri, at age 32, it's an embarrassment if you take yourself seriously.
And I was miserable.
I was unhappy.
I was aimless.
I had given up on radio.
I thought I'd already failed at that.
I'd bombed out as a DJ.
All I knew was Donnie Osmond's birthday and a couple of other things.
And nobody's going to take DJs seriously.
It really, it really, I was down in the dumps.
I had nowhere to go.
I was really without any self-esteem whatsoever.
And I talked to some friends and they said, you know, you're blaming the wrong people for this.
It's not the royals.
It's not your friends.
You're sitting there miserable.
Why do you put up with it?
If you don't like it, do something else.
I said, what am I going to do?
They said, well, what are you best at?
And I said, probably being on the radio.
Well, there's your answer.
Do what you're best at, and you'll at least be happy, regardless how well you do it.
So I decided to give radio one more chance.
And it brought me here.
When I come back here, in fact, this whole experience, not one bit of it is work.
Not one bit of it.
It is all just more fun than I've ever had in my life.
It is absolutely no hardship whatsoever to fly around the country to see people, to be on the radio, or any of that, but especially to come back here.
You know, you enjoy my show, and I appreciate that more than you'll ever know.
You have, I don't want to beat this into the ground.
I'm sure you've all felt like you weren't going to ever amount to anything, even though you knew you were capable of it.
I felt that way.
The only difference between you and me is that I'm up here and you're out there.
And the only reason I'm up here is because you're out there.
Right?
It's true.
You may enjoy my show, but I'll tell you, you people, especially you people in this town, in this area, you don't know it, so I'm going to tell you, you rejuvenated my life.
Because a successful radio person is not a success simply because he does what he does.
People have to listen to it, appreciate it, and support it.
And everybody in this room has.
I mean, for me six years ago to be mired in loneliness and aimlessly walking through life and then to come here and have tickets sell out in two hours, my friends, that hits me in the heart like nothing you can ever imagine will.
I mean, I'll tell you: you have rejuvenated my life and you have made me something I never even thought I could be.
And I have just one thing to say to you: a sincere and heartfelt thank you.
Thank you very much for coming out.
I appreciate your being here tonight.
I enjoy everything that you have done for me.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
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