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March 21, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:13
March 21, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, there it is.
All right.
All right, just organizing what's left in the stacks of stuff to go for our final hour of broadcast excellence today on the award-winning thrill-packed, ever exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds.
Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you with us, folks.
Those of you watching on the Ditto Chem.
I know it's a thrill to be here as well, and we're glad to have you.
800-282-2882.
The email address is Rush at EIBNet.com.
By the way, I hope you people who have signed up for our podcast service distributed now through iTunes have noticed that the podcasts are ready twenty minutes after the program's conclusion.
We're able to mass distribute uh through the iTunes platform within 20 minutes of the program's conclusion.
It's cool.
It's very easy to do.
Uh all of it's explained at the homepage at Rushlimbaugh.com.
We were talking about uh school bus Nagan a moment ago, and he's uh he's been holding news conferences today.
Uh he says that New Orleans is better prepared for the upcoming hurricane season because of stronger flood walls and better evacuation plans.
Now, I'm sure that one of the things that will assist the better evacuation plans is that there's so well not as many people there uh uh as there used to be.
So it's gotta be if the same thing happens again.
It's got to be easier to get fewer people out of there than um than if it were the same population.
Have you also noticed uh Acuweather, led by the expert there, Joe Bestardi, uh, have uh predicted that the Northeast is gonna get it big with a hurricane this season.
The Northeast, they're overdue for a big one.
And Bastardi was out there answering questions about what about global warming?
Well, global warming.
No, it doesn't, yeah, it may have something to do, but we're gonna get these storms regardless.
And so now the Northeast media is focusing on this as though it's already a disaster.
It's already happened, but what are we going to do about it?
It's just it's funny to watch this.
I mean, it you can make the prediction, and I can understand, you know, trying to get people uh geared up for something like this, but it it just I just the attempt here to to create panic and fear, it just I don't know what disturbs me.
Uh did you see this story about about uh people that watch daytime television?
Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention, and other cognitive skills.
Uh researchers reported Monday.
We need to ask the question, is it really the fault of daytime TV, or are they just stupid to begin with?
Why else it'd be watching this crap?
Uh other if it's not stupid to begin with.
This isn't this is bad news for Oprah, because basically what the report's saying is that daytime TV turns you into a mindless sponge.
You sit there, you soak it all up, you have no idea what you're watching, get your feelings going up and down one way or the other, and at the end of the day, you've accomplished nothing.
Now, next paragraph says that that doesn't mean that daytime television's a brain drain, since it's not clear there's a direct relationship between the two.
Well, okay, I took care of that.
Maybe they're just stupid to begin with.
Maybe daytime television is not making them stupid.
Maybe they're just show up that way.
But regardless of the reasons for this, a preference for talk shows and soaps is a marker of something suspicious, said some guy named Joshua Fogle of the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
The findings do point to some association between TV choices and intellectual function.
Have you, Mr. Snerdley, Snerdly watches C-SPAN all day, uh, which has its own uh, I think characteristics, but nevertheless, have you watched, have you just flicked around and watched some of this mindless twaddle that is on daytime television?
I it it is.
I mean, it it is.
It is it is the bottom of the barrel.
It is as low rent.
Uh it's it's stunning, and it it aims at lowest common denominator.
It really takes aim at lowest uh uh common denominator and uh finds it.
Now, Dr. Joshua Fogle made sure to save his career uh in this story.
He said, This doesn't mean Oprah is bad for you.
However, an older woman's fondness for the show could signal a possible problem.
Now, what's that?
Well, this is just the doctor trying to stay alive.
You don't rip the Oprah.
Uh, particularly a story like this.
It doesn't mean Oprah's bad for you, but any time there's a but, however, an older woman's fondness for the show could signal a possible problem.
You know what these people need is this show.
These people need this show.
And whatever intellectual doldrums they find themselves in, uh, we could cure.
Also, this from the Washington Business Journal today, the headline, celebrities commit 3.1 million to women's radio.
Greenstone Media has lined up backing from a high-profile group of women to syndicate talk shows for women on FM radio.
The DC-based company has secured $3.1 million in venture capital as part of its first round of funding from investors such as Billy Jean King, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Rosie O'Donnell.
Former FCC Commissioner Susan Ness co-founded Greenstone Media last year to create radio programming aimed at women on FM between 25 and 54.
Other investors include Martha Kaufman, the uh creator of Friends, Jamie McCort, president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Wallace Annenberg, Vice President of the Annenberg Foundation.
Ness said a group of us were lamenting that there's virtually no programming that really targets women on the radio dial.
And so the more it's all on television, and you see what it's doing to them.
I mean, this is exactly what we need.
We need women having we need to give women more places to talk.
Is this really what we need?
Uh well, I don't know if you call it radio nag.
I mean, if if if if a national organization for women were sponsoring that work, then you can call it NAG Radio, the National Association of Gals.
But I don't think this women are pretty much associated with the Nags.
It just I I uh stunned that anybody thinks we need more outlets for women to talk.
Speaking of women who talk, Laura Ingram just on fire today on the Today Show with uh James Carville and and uh what's his name, Gregory.
You know, Gregory yesterday had this had this in-depth uh serious interview with uh Erica Jong in which he elucidated from her, elicited from her her ongoing dream of having an affair with Bill Clinton.
So today Gregory takes a step up to uh to talk about Bush and the war in Iraq and so forth, and James Carville is also on the show.
David Gregory says, Laura, the White House made a determination that speaking about the wars candidly is what's important now, and yet it's clear the president's having a hard time being heard.
The Today Show spends all this money to send people to the Olympics, which is great.
It was great programming.
All this money for where in the world is Matt Lauer.
Bring the Today Show to Iraq.
Bring the Today Show to Talifar, do the show from the fourth ID at Camp Victory.
And then when you talk to those soldiers on the ground, when you go out with the Iraqi military, when you talk to the villagers, when you see the children, then I want NBC to report on only the IEDs, only the killings, only the reprisals.
When people are on the ground, whether it's recently David Ignatius of the Washington Post, whether it's recently on the city.
Let me finish, David, because you got you guys.
Wait a minute, Laura, wait a second.
If you want to be fair, first of all, the Today Show went to Iraq.
Matt Laura was there.
He repeated.
Okay, and we were we and we've got a Bureau there.
So David, David, to to do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off.
She nails it.
That's exactly what they did.
They were hanging around in a hotel bout.
That's why whenever a hotel gets blown up, it's breaking news because journalists might have died.
Or they're covering the news in a hotel on the balcony.
And they go out and find video of a burning, smoldering vehicle that was blown up by an IED, and that's the news of the day.
And they don't get out there.
Uh And if they did, I mean the stories would obviously be different.
Well, I don't know about that, because whatever doesn't advance the action line is not going to be reported.
So Gregory moves to uh Carville, uh, who, by the way, just j I'm just told close the deal on a vacation home at Area 51.
And Gregory says James, the President wants your advice.
What would you tell him?
This is not going to be a blossoming democracy.
That's going to be a beacon for the world, anything like that, certainly not in a in the next couple of years.
Talk about the consequences of failure, a regional civil war, what it can mean.
You know, it it's not working, sir.
You gotta change things.
You got you got to, you know, you gotta consider maybe partition the country at some point they didn't want to be.
Put heat on the Iraqis.
Tell them that we're not there for ever.
You have to take more and more control of your own country.
But I think that that's what they have to do.
All of this press bashing and this this is silliness.
About eighty reporters have died over there.
And do is the coverage been perfect?
No.
But the truth of the matter is that by the Iraqis own estimation, they're in the middle of a civil war.
We shouldn't deny facts, we shouldn't attack messages, we should deal with facts on the ground.
That's what they've refused to do.
That's what the allies refuse to do.
They they don't admit that they're in a civil war.
It's it's the exact that's what it's what Zarkawi and uh and Al-Qaeda are trying to foment and create, and they've got aids and assistance in this country trying to help them along.
And they are the U.S. media and the Democratic Party.
But note this.
Now here we're having a discussion on manliness today, and Carville's advice to President Bush.
Talk about the consequences of failure.
Now that would really be inspiring, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I gotta take a uh quick, uh brief EIB extreme profit timeout.
But we will continue.
Okay, President had a uh just a tremendous press conference today, bang-up job.
Subject uh predominantly covered was Iraq.
It has uh been covered extensively almost wall to wall since uh the weekend with the supposed massive hundreds of thousands of long-haired maggot-infested dope-sming FM types marching against the war that never happened.
Two hundred here, eight hundred there, a thousand there.
It was pitiful.
It's a pathetic display of anti-war sentiment in this country.
They had to be embarrassed.
And we had the third anniversary on Sunday.
We had the Sunday morning shows devoted to it.
So I have I've been I've been trying to counter some of this with a uh alternative items in the news about the Iraq War, and I want to recommend uh two things to you.
I'm gonna read excerpts from one of them here.
Uh Christopher Hitchens has just an excellent piece.
This guy is is uh he he's carrying a load all by himself in a lot of ways out there in the mainstream press with his guest appearances at play because he gets invited a lot of places because they think he's a lib, and he is.
But on the uh Iraq war, he's uh he's mostly exactly right.
And he has a great piece at Opinionjournal.com today, which is the Wall Street Journal's free opinion site.
Uh also we'll link to it at uh uh at Rushlimbaugh.com.
There's also, you know, one of my one of my favorite uh blogs, if you will, is called the American thinker.
A guy named Thomas Lifson runs it.
And he's got quite a stable of really intellectually hefty contributors.
And it's a uh uh got a piece today by a man named J.R. Dunn, who has done a lot of things in life in addition to being editor for twelve years of the International Military Encyclopedia.
Now, this prints out to um almost nine or ten pages, I believe.
So I I haven't even had a chance to read it all.
It came to my attention just prior to the program starting today, but I want to read just the first some excerpts here from just the first page.
Uh and remember the story yesterday from uh forget the man's name, but he was from the U.K. Times, and his theory that uh the worst thing about the uh war in Iraq is that we'll not be able to do it again.
Um because of the the incessant propaganda, the investment and defeat that the American left and the American media has, uh the ongoing, never-ending criticism, the demand for failure, the statement that we have failed, it's been going on and it's a drumbeat into the uh the pulse of the American population is gonna make future incursions, while necessary, almost impossible to do.
Because they will be deemed failures before they even start.
Well, this piece has a a similar perspective in the sense that Mr. Dunn is convinced that we've already won.
Prospects of Terror and Inquiry into Jihadi alternatives.
This is just the first of three parts.
One part today, uh parts two and three come later.
The first campaigns of the long war are drawing to a close.
The jihadis have lost the opening rounds.
What's next?
There's an unconscious conviction that what happens next is nothing.
We go back to everyday life the way things were before all the unpleasantness in Lower Manhattan and Washington those long years ago.
We shut out the harmful, hateful world once again.
We go our own way, and we forget about jihads and suicide belts and dirty bombs and beheadings and all the other nightmares that have filled our days since 2001.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be in the cards, because what happened on 9 11 was not an earthquake, over and done with quickly, but a long, slow and complete reshuffling of the tectonic plates that comprise human civilization, something comparable to the deaths of empires and the passing of eras.
Such events are not over in a day or a year or a decade.
They take their time.
And when it ends, at last, the world will be a different place in ways that we now have no way of knowing.
But the part that we have played in it will in some shape or form match our position when it's all over, American or European or Arab, Muslim or Christian or secular.
We are still amid early days, roughly the days of Midway and Guadalcanal in a previous great struggle.
Not the beginning of the end, as Churchill put it, but the end of the beginning.
The jihadis have lost Iraq.
They've lost Afghanistan.
It's true that fighting continues in both countries, but at this point it's effectively theater.
It can't be repeated often enough that the type of war we are involved in is as much political as it is military.
By any political measure, the jihadis have been routed.
Their only chance at prevailing was to appeal to the Iraqis and the Afghans as a viable alternative to elected democratic governments.
No such attempt was ever made.
Instead, the jihadis have relentlessly made the Iraqis and Afghans suffer.
Their final chance at Iraq lay in derailing the political process last year, and they failed at this, and now it's over.
Not the violence.
There'll be car bombs going off in Iraq for years to come, unfortunately, but any opportunity of a jihadi victory is gone.
Now skepticism on this point's understandable considering the circumstances.
Doubters are encouraged to read any of the myriad mill blogs written by soldiers on the spot, or the recent reportage from Iraq by Victor Davis Hansen and Ralph Peters.
It's a sad comment on the nature of the times that anyone relying solely on the legacy media, the drive-by media.
It's a sad comment on the nature of the times that anybody relying solely on the drive-by media knows next to nothing of what's actually going on in Iraq in Afghanistan or in truth most other areas of the world.
The Islamists now have a choice of either changing or fading out the way the anarchists did early in the last century, like the jihadis, the anarchist followers of Galliani and Bakunin, no more than a vague memory today, were an international terror network bent on converting the world to their ideology.
And a good long run, they set up a lot of bombs.
They killed a lot of people, but they disappeared at last in the 1920s, leaving behind only a legend far more romantic in tone than it deserves to be.
It's doubtful the jihadis will fade out, yet not after spending over 20 years organizing and laying the groundwork.
They may hurt, but they still have a punch.
According to the Defense Department, at least 18 distinct groups active throughout the Islamic world are currently operating under the al-Qaeda umbrella.
Organizing has been detected in Europe and elsewhere.
Al-Qaeda has settled into Gaza, probably the West Bank, and has been detected in Beirut.
A lot of activity in both places.
In no way emblematic of a movement ready to give up.
But if the jihadis want to continue, they'll need to adapt a strategy, not modify the current one.
They never have, up to this point, displayed the least signs of ever having a strategy.
Bin Laden's concept of action appears to have been to make his move, then sit back and wait for Allah to handle arrest.
Allah has been disinclined to do any such thing.
In fact, if Bin Laden actually believed that Allah's will is revealed in the course of events, he'd more than likely be devoting the rest of his days to prayer and repentance above all else.
So I just wanted to give you a flavor for this.
that just takes me to part of page two, and there are six more pages of this to go.
But it's a it's an attitude, again, Jay uh uh J.R. Dunn, editor International Military Encyclopedia for twelve years.
This is at the American Thinker dot com, part one of three parts, uh parts two and three to come later, maybe tomorrow and and uh Thursday.
Uh but just to sh I just want to treat you to all the divergent opinion from people actually informed from someplace other than a hotel balcony in Baghdad about what's going on over there.
A quick time out, folks, hang tough.
We be right back.
Rush Limboy, you're guiding a liet through times of trouble, confusion, tumult, chaos, hurricane forecasts in March, even though the season doesn't start until June.
And even the good times.
800-282-2882.
Oh, yes, I did want to talk about the San Jose Mercury News guys.
Yeah, I printed that out, and I gotta find out what I did with it.
But I'll find it.
I gotta go back to the phones.
People have been waiting patiently.
Here's Sally, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Welcome.
Nice to have you with us.
Mega Stay at home mom, subscriber ditto to your rush.
It is a true honor.
Well, thank you very much.
I just wanted to let you know my husband and I were flipping around and we found C SPAN the other night, and Harvey Mansfield was being interviewed by Naomi Wolf.
Okay, hang on.
Harvey Mansfield is a guy who's upset Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post.
He's got this book on manliness, and that's that's what uh the has fed her column in rage today.
So you watch this guy on C SPAN.
Yes.
And Naomi Wolf, uh, I believe a former Al Gore staffer, definite liber.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
I don't mean to keep interrupting you.
You're gonna mention these names, and I've got a I want to make sure people know who this is.
Naomi Wolf, one of the uh early feminazi pioneers.
Uh and her relationship with war was that she advised him on what clothes to wear during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Needed to wear more something to say about that.
Right, n needed to wear more earth tones, needed to uh you know, it's all phony.
It's don't be who you are, Al, because who you are is a geek.
So I gotta make you look like a man.
Like a guy of the earth.
And it was Naomi Wolf.
You'll remember there was a it was Esquire Magazine.
You may remember this, Sally.
It was Esquire Magazine, I think.
They had a cover story of Al Gore in his new earth tone jeans.
Yes.
And everybody was convinced that that photo had been enhanced in the groinular area.
I use that word so people real Linda won't know what I'm talking about.
You know, the package, the package was uh was shadowed there to make it look like well, you know what I mean.
And and Naomi Wolfe was a little bit behind that, supposedly.
Well, she even made pains to correct Mr. Mansfield that she advised Al Gore not on fashion, but on women's issues.
However, Oh, really?
Yes, yes, she made pains to to correct that point.
Well I think so.
Correct, yes, apparently.
But what I really noticed was we just found it comical watching her try to smile through her seething hatred at this man, and especially when he was trying to make points about gender differences and areas where men excel.
Um the the best she could do was to say that yes, men could read maps better, and yes, they do die younger, but other than that, she was loath to admit any differences.
Now, did she did did Mr. Mansfield at the same time talk about uh any any areas where women uh happen to be superior to men in various in anything.
Um he did try to, however, she was just going after him great guns.
And really, yeah, but so she she was so sh see.
I'm glad that you saw that and and could uh tell us about it because it remains one of the central tenets of the uh of the Jurassic feminist movement, and that is that there are no gender differences.
All that the only reason that there are apparent gender differences is discrimination.
A patriarchal society discriminating against women, and this is what makes people think women can't do this, can't do that, or unlike men this.
But what it's what I said earlier, and I I uh Sally, I mean this in the bottom of my heart.
One of the one of the primary objectives of the of the modern era of the feminist movement, which gives you a ginned up in the late sixties, early seventies, was to get women to be more like men.
Get them to join the same country clubs, join the same business clubs, dress the same way, get on the corporate ladder and try to climb it the same way.
At the same time they were trying to make women be more like men, they were trying to get men to be more like women.
They were creating a new castrati.
They were out there neutering these guys and turning them into into into what they wanted men to be with a total roll reversal, which is absolutely wacko.
And they've succeeded.
Most of most of male liberalism is the new castrati.
If we could just get feminists to have children, then that whole myth would just be destroyed.
I have a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter, and those gender differences are displayed for me each and every day.
Well, speaking of that, I have actually known liberal couples who tried this back in the uh I guess as it was the seventies.
One of the one of the theories that was postulated by the uh by by the uh the radical feminist was if he if you if you have a little girl, paint her bedroom blue, give her G.I. Joe, uh don't give her Barbie, give her give her guns and this sort of stuff, and she's gonna grow up to be just like a guy.
And put your little boy in a pink bedroom and give him Barbie and so forth, and he'll grow up to be just like a girl.
The theory was we condition uh infants and young children to be who they are by our by our own prejudice against uh the the two genders.
I'm sorry, the three.
And then and I know couples that tried it.
And it of course it was BS.
It did the the the guys that grew up with Barbie ended up throwing Barbie as a weapon around and and uh eventually demanded the bedroom, get the pink off the walls and so forth, and uh and the women, you know, tried to nurture G.I. Joe uh rather than learn what G.I. Joe's mission was.
The little girls did.
It's it's all just it's all across but see they they can't let this image that there's no difference die or the whole feminist movement goes with it.
Exactly.
But it wasn't Yoke, thank you for calling Sally.
What it led to was okay, women wanted to be firemen.
Women wanted to join the fire department, let me be more they wanted to join the police force.
We had video of this on the old Rush Limbaugh TV show of of and uh look at folks, you have to understand I'm I'm I'm not saying this to offend anybody.
I just I'm I'm I'm just a realist.
We had video tape of women trying to perform some of the physical training that that uh firemen have to go.
They couldn't do it.
They couldn't scale the wall, they couldn't uh they couldn't perform some of the tasks with uh with weights and so forth, they had to carry around lug the hose uh around it is had trouble so they had to lower the standards necessary uh for women to qualify.
And that's that's that's when you know people got all upset, and the same thing started happening uh in the uh in the in the military, too.
You had to lower standards and basic training uh in order to say that women were qualified.
Now this is this is when I say lower standards, we're just talking about physical things here.
We're talking about strength and and uh and th and then you to if somebody wants to say that there's no difference in gender that way, uh th they're just you know blind and and refuse to admit the truth.
But uh the fact that Naomi Wolf was was caustic to Mr. Mansfield doesn't surprise me because the whole foundation of the modern era feminist movement is that there are no gender differences, and the only thing that creates them is discrimination and prejudice.
Here's Ryan in Newport Beach, California.
Your next sir, hello.
Uh Manly Diddle's from Sunny Newport Beach in Conservative Orange County.
Thank you, sir.
Um two points related to the manliness debate.
First, liberals know that manliness appeals to the vast majority of women in America.
I mean, that's what prompted the fake kiss between Al Gore and Tipper in 2000.
He was trying to fake manliness to appeal the women voters.
With the kiss?
Yeah, remember the kiss.
Yeah, you know, I remember that.
I remembered that.
And women responded favorably.
Yeah, they liked it.
They liked it.
A lot of us got sick, but they liked it.
That's right.
That was his attempt to appeal to manliness.
Um, and the other the other issue is this criticism of manliness isn't a new phenomenon.
I mean, we're we're being reminded of it now, but the libs went after President Reagan for being manly in his second term.
I mean, he pledged support for the freedom fighters, the contra freedom fighters, and Congress acted in a feminized, nuanced way.
Well, he stuck to his guns, unlike Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs, and they attempted to scandalize him and bring him down for it.
Yep.
Same thing going on here.
Well, you know, we had a caller earlier today who uh had a pr he summed it up pretty well.
Uh liberals look at manliness and see chauvinism.
Uh they see male chauvinist pigs, they see sexists, they see brutes, they see predators.
You know, the modern feminist movement actually tried, I mean, and you you guys who all of them are minding your own business one day had a fight with your wife, and the next day there's a knock on the door, and it's some social services woman saying that the report is coming that you've been brutalizing your child, they take the child away from you.
They tried to establish this notion that the normal pre uh the the the the normal orientation, the average man was predator.
And so when a guy comes out and writes a book about manliness, why, manliness equals predation, uh chauvinism, you know, all these things that the uh the feminists have tried to get rid of by creating uh via neutering the new castrati.
Uh quick timeout, we'll be back.
Thanks for the call out there, Ryan.
Stick with us.
I just got a uh a helpful reminder from Diana Schneider, who is the editor of the Limbaugh Letter.
Uh yes, Diana, I did read this note.
Uh little inside baseball there, folks.
She she asks me, so Naomi Wolf, wasn't she the one with the whole alpha male concept during the Gore campaign?
And she's right.
Now what if she brought up the whole concept of the alpha male?
What is the alpha if if the alpha male concept is not manliness, then what is it?
Uh and and the point is she had to tell Al Gore about it because he wasn't one.
Al Gore part of the new Castrati.
So she's having to advise him on a wardrobe which she now disclaims responsibility for.
She only talked about feminist issue or f uh uh whatever.
And and but this I do remember this alpha male business.
So the whole point was for Al Gore to fake manliness.
Fake it.
She's so this this little interview, uh Sally, that you saw uh Naomi Wolfe do with this Mansfield guy, she was just being phony as she could be because she understands the concept totally and was attempting to get Al Gore to emulate it to fake it because she knew he wasn't.
And you have to give her credit for this, folks.
You have to give Naomi With uh Quef credit for this.
At least she recognized that liberals lacked the manliness necessary to get elected president and was trying to do something about it, even if it was trying to get Gore to fake it.
All right, here's this story.
I mentioned this, had it in a snack yesterday, didn't get to it.
Uh it's uh New York Times story, McClatchy News.
Uh newspapers, uh company for whom I once worked back in Sacramento.
They used to own KFBK Sacramento when I was there in uh 1984.
They sold it to Westinghouse Broadcasting a couple years after I was there, but uh they bought the night reader news chain.
And in the process, they've incurred a lot of debts.
They're gonna sell to help finance the purchase, twelve night ridder newspapers, and they've identified which ones, based on profit margins and expenses, and they have identified the flagship.
Knight Ritter used to be located in Miami or Fort Lauderdale Summit, South Florida, but the the the head honcho moved out to San Jose, and the San Jose Mercury News is now a McClatchy newspaper that's going to be sold um uh after being purchased from Knight Ritter.
And one of the reasons is that it's got very high operating costs.
Uh its profit margin is uh well below the average.
I think the according to the New York Times, the the San Jose Mercury News profit margin of nine percent is well below the average of about twelve percent for the Knight Ritter papers that McClachey is keeping.
And so the people at the San Jose Mercury News are beside themselves.
It it's sort it's sort of reminiscent of when Lawrence Tish bought CBS and did a financial analysis of the whole network and found the news division was bleeding money, so we're gonna lay off two hundred people.
And Dan Rather and the boy, well, well, what do you mean?
You're gonna hold us to bottom line constraints?
Why we're the news division.
Why we we're immune from bottom line.
We're public service, uh, saving America, destroying Republicans.
You can't hold us to bottom line.
And Larry Tish said, I don't care what you do and who you think you are.
We're gonna gotta I'm not gonna lose money in your division.
And these guys at the San Jose Mercury News, according to this New York Times story, are acting somewhat the same, and it's just funny to me.
When Dan Gilmore first arrived at the San Jose Mercury News in 94, he recalled he felt like he was in the belly of the beast.
In his previous job as a tech reporter for the Detroit Free Press, he had trouble getting editors to understand how important the tech story was.
Now he was at the center of the most vibrant part of the American economy where fortunes in history were being made almost every day.
We were one of the few newspapers that was growing, said Mr. Gilmore, who, with a number of other prominent hires to the Mercury News, provided some of the best chronicling of the dot-com bubble era.
The bubble burst, but Silicon Valley has come back.
The Mercury News, however, has not.
Last Monday, the McClatchy Company announced it was buying Knight Ritter at a deal valued at four and a half billion.
Also said it would immediately sell twelve of those night ridder papers to help finance the acquisition.
The Mercury News, which calls itself the user manual for Silicon Valley, was to be jettisoned along with papers in cities like Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Akron, Ohio.
And the uh the the read the rest of the story.
The the shock that is coming from these newspaper people is I don't like to see anybody in pain and suffer, but I did I've always said that there's an arrogance elitism to people in journalism, and and they're asking out there how how can people just cavalierly sell this newspaper like it was just another business?
Don't they know how important we are?
Well, the newspaper business is like any other business.
It is uh a business, and McClatchy needs to finance the purchase, so it uh uh no, no, no, no.
McCl Snerdley just says, is it really money or they just want to get rid of the kookiest left wing paper?
Mr. Snerdley.
You won't find a quirkier left-wing bunch than the McClatchy people.
I mean, they are they're solid liberals.
They're totally liberal.
If they're not, they're not getting rid of the Mercury News because they're too kooky.
That was probably one of the things in the plus side to keeping them.
No, it's it's a business.
It's all about you sp you go out and buy something for four and a half billion dollars and you got to finance the purchase somehow.
You don't want to keep the properties that you don't think are going to contribute to profit.
Uh now, in all fairness, the the McClatchy paper chain is a it's it it is very liberal, but it does have a reputation for not being kooky liberal, and it it's it's it's you know, it's it's not like reading the New York Times today.
That that they've gone over the edge.
Uh the local paper down here is just like reading a daily blog.
Uh the the McClatchy chain, the Sacramento Bee, is uh it's a it's got its detractors, but it's uh it's journalism.
It's uh they're liberals.
You know, there's no um no two ways about it.
Let me take a brief time out and I'll try to squeeze in a phone call.
We've got a guy from Milksbury.
Uh if we have time, I'll get him in.
Back in just a second.
Okay, got about a minute here.
Robert in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania.
I wanted to get to you, sir.
Yes, hi, Rush.
Um, yeah, the one thing missing seems to be a timetable to get out of Iraq that would tell the people that we're not interested in staying and would help to change us from being a catalyst to to uh to this violence uh that they're responding to uh to just being a source of support while they're making the transition.
And all that we have to do really is think about how would we feel if another country came in with soldiers that didn't speak English and occupied our country and then kept permanent bases there.
So we need to also say we're gonna here's our timeline, and no permanent basis.
So that this is your country, and we're not gonna monopolize your oil.
But as long as we have permanent bases and people there.
No, no, no.
Uh look, it's exploitation.
Robert, Robert, Robert, I've been to Afghanistan, and I I'm gonna assume the same circumstance exists in Iraq.
They don't want us to leave.
They they don't want a permanent departure, but it would be it would be suicidal for everybody involved to announce timeline.
Um I know it it sounds caring and uh and sensitive and very wise, but it's it's a stupid idea.
Thank you.
Thanks for the call.
You guys have a great day.
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