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June 1, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
June 1, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this show, not necessarily those of the staff, management, nor sponsors of this station.
And they soon will be because they should be.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program, the one and only EIB network on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday.
The only sunshine we have in South Florida today is liquid.
It's finally raining out there.
I don't think it's going to officially end the drought.
I always say we could get 10 inches in the next 48 hours.
I'm just going to be marveling at how quickly the grass starts growing again and turns green.
It always has amazing.
Grass is one of the most amazing life forms on the planet.
I learned that from the BBC series, Planet Earth.
You ought to watch that series.
You cannot watch that series and believe in global warming.
Well, you can't believe in man-made global warming.
After you watch it, greetings, folks, here's the phone number, and you know the drill.
We go to the phones.
The program is all yours.
You can call about anything.
Well, pretty much.
And we're not going to complain about phone bill.
We're not going to share carrot cake recipes and that sort of stuff.
But something you think needs to be discussed hasn't been this is a day to go for it.
You have questions or comments?
This is a day to go for it.
800-282-2882 and the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Well, I'm sure many of you have heard about this by now.
The Republican National Committee has been hit big time by a grassroots donors rebellion over the immigration bill.
The Republican National Committee has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors.
Ralph Hallow has this today in the Washington Times.
The RNC is faced with an estimated 40% falloff in small donor contributions and aging phone bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update.
The National Committee yesterday confirmed the firings that took place more than a week ago, but denied that the move was motivated by declining donor response to phone solicitations.
Tracy Schmidt, RNC spokeswoman, said the phone bank employees were terminated.
This is not an easy decision.
The first and primary motivating factor was the state of the phone bank technology, which was outdated and difficult to maintain.
The RNC was advised we would soon need an entire new system to remain viable.
Well, something doesn't wash here.
Put the system in.
I mean, you realize how important this is fundraising.
The RNC fired a phone bank operators.
It's because they're not generating revenue.
It's because you people aren't donating.
And I can imagine how these phone calls go.
Hi, I'm from the RNC, and I just want to confirm that your donation from last year you want to maintain.
Can we put you down for 75?
No, you can't put me down for anything.
Why not?
Well, because the immigration bill.
Why should I continue to give money to people that are going to be re-elected and do the things that we don't want them to do?
That's not happening.
This is the president's bill.
There's a lot of Republicans out there that are supporting this, too.
You can take your donation, cram it in your phone bank that you just got rid of.
You know, that's what's probably a little microcosm of the conversations going on out there.
Fired employees acknowledged that the RNC committee's phone equipment was outdated, but they said a sharp drop-off in donations probably hastened the end of the RNC's in-house phone bank operation.
One fired phone bank solicitor who asked not to be identified.
Nobody wants to be identified anymore except on their MySpace page.
Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year, the way they were running for the first four months, it would probably total $100,000 by the end of the year.
There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the National Party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call amnesty for illegal aliens.
Meanwhile, John Derbyshire, National Review Online, has a good little piece here on temporary workers.
He says, Dan Griswold and other enthusiasts for the Senate immigration bill lay much emphasis on the temporary worker program, as if this was a wonderful new development in U.S. immigration practice.
But we've had temporary workers and programs forever.
There are currently six categories of visa covering temporary workers, and they're listed on the USCIS website.
Six categories for temporary worker visas.
You have the H-1B, which is specialty occupations, Department of Defense workers, and fashion models.
I'm not making this up.
If you're a fashion model from overseas, you come in here, you come in on an H-1B visa.
The H-1C visa, nurses going to work for up to three years in health professional shortage areas.
The H-2A visa is a temporary agriculture worker.
We all know who they are.
The H-3 visa is for trainees.
The H-4 is the spouse or child of H-1, H-2, or H3.
So Derbyshire says the right question to ask is not do we need a temporary worker program, but why do we need another temporary worker program?
If, for instance, we need more fruit pickers, why doesn't Congress just up the H-2A quota?
Now, of course, well, we'll answer that in a second.
But as the immigration wonks have told us until they're blue in the face, there's nothing temporary about temporary workers.
Once you're here, you're here.
And Derbyshire says, case in point, me.
I came here in October 1985 as a temporary worker on an H-1B visa, good in theory for only six years.
I'm still here.
Nobody's made a move to force me out.
Temporary worker program is hogwash.
There are no temporary workers, only settlers.
I'm here to tell you.
Now, the question, why don't we just, in the case of the illegals doing jobs Americans won't do, the fruit pickers and the agriculture jobs that come in on the H-2A visa, why don't we just up the H-2A visa quota?
The answer, because employers do not want lawful visa temporary workers.
They want illegal immigrants who are cheaper.
And I got a, somebody sent me a question today.
Rush, only you can explain this.
Don't these businesses who know full well that when these people are made legal, they're going to be unionized inside of 30 days, don't they understand this?
They think they're getting all this cheap labor.
And when the unions get hold of them and subjugate or subject these businesses to new union contracts, out the door goes cheap laborers.
No, no, no, no, you're missing the point.
And I think a lot of people are missing the point.
There are still going to be illegal immigrants after we legalize the 12 to 20 million that are here.
There is no enforcement mechanism.
Ah, Rush, you're wrong about this.
Increased border security.
I'm not wrong about it.
It's Ted Kennedy who's been wrong every time he's opened his mouth about this for 43 years.
It is the illegal immigrants that the American businesses want.
That's the cheap labor.
After these 12 to 20 are legalized, They are going to be less attractive to American business.
They want the illegal immigration, and that's the true low-skilled, low-wage, and uneducated bunch.
And there's nothing to stop that.
See, this is the problem with the bill, among many other problems with it.
They're too numerous to catalog here.
But it doesn't stop further illegals from coming in in whatever numbers that can get in.
So even if we legalize these 12 to 20, we haven't solved the problem.
And that's where the disingenuousness is on the pro-Senate bill side of this.
Interesting story here, the Los Angeles Times on the whole concept of the unions and illegal immigrants.
And the headline of the story is, unions split over immigration bill.
Thrust of the story is that the manufacturing unions are against the illegal immigration bill.
Government and service workers are for it, and it is dividing the Democrats in Congress over this.
Because, of course, Big Labor, one of their big, big, big constituency groups.
Anyway, the problems are propping up, sprouting up all over the place with this bill.
Welcome back, folks.
It's Open Line Friday with National Treasure Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Mickey Kaus, what was this?
Slate.com.
Headline, Hillary caught eavesdropping.
Page 93 from the yet unreleased Gerth Van Netta Hillary Clinton book has quite a bombshell, Kaus writes.
Listen to a secret, secretly recorded audiotape.
Hillary Clinton listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.
The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with her husband Bill.
Bill's supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and a tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.
So the Clintons were out there just like that couple, that grandparents driving on I-75 here in Florida, heading up to Jacksonville to do some Christmas shopping.
And like every one of us, they had a cell phone monitor in their car right there in a dashboard.
And they decided to tune in and listen.
And they all of a sudden, just quite by accident, they said they caught a moment of history.
They listened to Newt Gingrich talking to John Boehner.
By the way, who was it?
Jim Moran got this.
Was it Moran or with the who?
McDermott?
Well, yeah, it was McDermott.
Baghdad Jim McDermott.
Anyway, this couple, just the sweetest people you'd ever want to run into, grandparents, accidentally tuning around their cell phone receiver in the car, like we all have in our cars, and hear this conversation between Newt Gingrich and John Boehner.
Gee, this is history.
What do we do with this?
And they decided to give it to Baghdad Jim McDermott, congressman from Washington, who then gave it to the New York Times, which then published a transcript of the conversation.
So far, McDermott has been in lawsuits, has lost up to 800 grand now in terms of reimbursing Boehner for all of this.
We find out now the Clintons have been doing the same thing.
The Clintons have been engaged in illegal wiretapping.
They're monitoring cell phone frequencies of, so they hear calls from enemies of the Clintons plotting their next attack and so forth.
Now, don't get carried away here, my friends.
This will not affect a single Hillary supporter or a single drive-by editor.
It's like that picture that's out there.
Hillary was making a speech yesterday, and somebody on the graphic behind her misspelled the word tomorrow with two M's in it.
And Hillary's up there making a speech.
Now, she didn't misspell it, but she's standing in front of it.
If this were a Republican, this would be all over the news today, as in Dan Quayle and Potato.
So the drive-bys are not going to care about Hillary and monitoring people's cell phone calls.
But what this sort of shows us is this.
The last three major wiretap stories on American citizens have been, well, how many of you can name the three?
What are the big three wiretap stories on American citizens?
Going back a number of years.
No, no, no, not the NSA.
No, Number one, Bobby Kennedy wiretapping Martin Luther King.
Yes, he did.
They wiretapped Martin Luther King, and they were collecting a dossier on his infidelities.
The Kennedy attorney general, the Kennedy Justice Department, was doing Bobby Kennedy wiretap Martin Luther King.
Then we had Baghdad Jim McDermott passing on wiretaps of Republicans, as we've talked about.
And now Hillary Clinton wiretapping anybody she says is an enemy, monitoring their cell phone calls with a cell phone receiver.
Chairman Meow, we call her.
Chairman Meow strikes again.
And nobody's going to care.
Well, it's going to be in the book.
The book's not yet released, but Kaus is a copy of it and has put this on the website.
We'll see what kind of traction it gets.
Jeff in Indianapolis, you're next as we go back to the phones.
Hello.
Great to talk to you, Rush.
Thank you very much, sir.
I have to share a story with you, and I know you as a professor of the Advanced Institute for Advanced or Conservative Studies.
I yet, just as a student, I had a conversation with my mother this past weekend, which we usually get into some heated political debates.
And I learned something about liberals this week, and I know you say that you, well, you know them very well.
But we progressed from subject to subject, one from the war to global warming to defending the war now that we're actually there.
And the two things that really stood out to me for the first time ever that I really find lacking in almost the ⁇ in all liberals would be logic and reason.
They don't have either one of those things on their side.
It's a belief that they have, and they're sticking to it.
There's no room for debate.
It's a religion, and they don't have to explain it.
If you don't get it, you're the kook.
They don't have to justify what they believe to you.
You have to justify what you believe to them.
They're having a superior.
Some of them do.
Your mom, a lot of it is governed by emotion.
It's what they feel.
And that governs their political point of view.
But most liberals have a superiorist view of themselves.
There is no debate on anything.
There is no other side.
There is no alternative.
And if you start talking to them about it, you're just threatening a little cocoon in which their worldview is housed.
That is absolutely true.
And my mother pretty much closes up at that point and says, nope, that's the end of the discussion.
And I'm like, but she can't explain what she thinks because she doesn't think.
And if you don't understand how she feels, then you're the insensitive boob.
But she doesn't think she should have to explain it.
She has to justify.
Liberals don't think they have to explain it.
Yeah, well, I just appreciate all you do.
And for those people who seem to think that we're mind-numb robots out there, we're nothing like that.
They know it.
They know.
That's why they're so afraid of you.
They know you're not mind-numbed robots.
They try to discredit you by saying that.
They know.
They know exactly what's happening.
They just, in terms of this alternative media creating more informed, educated people in the arena of ideas, that's what bugs them.
That's why the fairness doctors want to shut it all down.
Appreciate the call.
Jeff Judy in Tampa, you're next on Openline Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Raj.
Great to talk to you.
I'm a big fan.
Thank you.
But I kind of did a double take.
I don't know if it was this week or last week when you were talking about preschool, the universal preschool initiative that I think Hillary was pushing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And that it was indoctrination.
And that may be the case with the universal model.
But I think you also said that it was like babysitting and preschool.
There's nothing to back up that there's any advantage with preschool.
And actually, there is.
There are studies.
There are very solid studies going to do with the school.
We're talking four-year-olds here.
Excuse me?
We're talking four-year-olds.
Yes, but you know, there is research to say that 85% of social, intellectual, and psychological development occurs before the age of five.
Who's research?
Who's research?
Well, whose research?
Well, I don't have the I could get it for if you want me to.
I can't do it right this minute.
But based on that, there have been longitudinal studies that show that, I mean, what I'm trying to getting at here is this.
There's another way of looking at this, and there is a business case for supporting pre-K, not for a universal model, which I agree with you, can be very problematic.
Well, but that's what we were talking about.
Oh, okay.
And that's what Hillary wants.
And, you know, add another year of school.
Look, the problem is not that we're not taking care of our fourth grader, four-year-olds, right?
It's that by the time they get to the second, third grade, too many of them can't read.
And there's nothing.
And so what we're going to do instead of fixing, oh, let's add another year of school and let's put the federal government in charge of it.
I used babysitting as a means of sort of a flippant way attacking this because they just want to get hold of these kids and indoctrinate them because actually your research is exactly right.
That's precisely when all kinds of psychological and intellectual development is taking place that we don't see.
Yeah, but could I tell you this, that there is another business case for this, and businesses are wanting to get involved in helping disadvantaged kids who are not making it through the school system.
They're not entering the workforce.
They're not contributing to the tax base.
They're becoming criminals.
There is a longitudinal study.
There are a couple of them that are very respected now showing that high-quality pre-K for disadvantaged kids does have very, very good academic.
I know Mrs. Clinton cited that.
That was in the story I read.
Mrs. Clinton cites it, you know, that's what I'm saying to you.
Why let her take, why let her get, why let her use this study?
Why not use the study for more of a business case and for a tax-based base?
I mean, there are businesses interested.
I mean, why let her get the issue?
But the reason why is because even if it's thought by experts, quote unquote, that doing something like this would be good for these four-year-olds, it ain't going to be good if the feds run it.
It isn't going to be good if Hillary Clinton's federal government runs it.
And that was my point.
Okay, well, then what I'm saying is.
What are the parents for for crying out loud?
Okay, but then what I'm saying is, why let Hillary take this issue?
Why not go along with their business?
Now, there's a big move now among businesses to work with these initiatives to target just.
Well, commercial break.
Commercial break.
Hang on.
We'll be right back with you.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you.
We go back to Judy in Tampa.
Judy, just so you don't misunderstand me on this.
I don't have any disagreement that daycare and pre-K and all that can help disadvantaged kids and get them into elementary schools so that by the time the kid enters a public school, he can't read at grade level.
By the time he reaches eighth grade, it gets worse in high school.
And we end up having remedial classes in college.
What's the difference in age four and age five when we start kindergarten?
The problem is not there.
The problem's happening later on.
But the thing is, the problems happen later on because they don't get the good foundation.
And it isn't just getting remediation in colleges.
It's getting more criminal activity.
It's getting people who are not making any money, not getting into the workforce.
There's more and more competition.
These kids don't have a chance, and Head Start is not cutting it.
There's getting to be more and more emphasis on pre-K.
You know, you're missing the whole point.
Whatever good, and I will, I'll accept your premise.
Whatever good is done in pre-K, four, five years of age, is going to be undone by the way the public schools are currently.
It's not my opinion here.
It's happening.
The dropout rate's sky high, particularly among Hispanics and African Americans in New York and Los Angeles.
You could start with them at their age, too.
But these kids who are dropping out have not had pre-K advantage, as far as I know, or have they?
It wouldn't matter.
You can have all the advantages, my theory.
You have all the advantages in the world at age four.
By the time they get into second and third grade, that's when it starts falling apart for some reason.
There are studies saying that it doesn't fall apart.
That's what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is it's worth looking into.
And what I'm saying is that.
Why there be studies that say it doesn't fall apart when we haven't done it?
Well, they have done it.
I mean, they have done it on a small scale.
And the thing is, it's been.
That's what's anecdotal.
This is how stuff gets rammed down our throat.
This is how tax increases and expanded government get rammed down our throat.
And the dirty little insinuation here is that parents can't do this.
Only trained specialists from your friendly government can handle something this major.
What I'm saying is this isn't going away.
And if you let Hillary take this, you're more likely, instead of taking this, looking at it seriously, and try to turn it into more of a business model.
Sadly, it isn't going away precisely because more people in this country don't have the guts to stand up and accept their own responsibilities as parents.
And they're too eager to farm it off and do look at his babysitting.
And that is what I meant.
Government will take and grab every aspect of life it can if you let them.
I know you keep talking about businesses doing this and businesses having an interest in this.
Well, let's let businesses run all the schools then.
Let's just have, let's turn the whole thing over to the private sector.
Let's do that because I guarantee you the results will be better than what we're getting now on an overall basis.
I'm glad you called.
Thanks so much for holding through the break.
Who's next on this program, Sternley?
Keep up here.
Craig in Richmond, Virginia.
Welcome to the program.
Rushbo.
Hello.
What?
Yes.
What?
What did you say?
Tomato?
No, no.
I said Rushbo.
Rushbo.
Thank you very much, sir.
Great to have you.
Yes, black conservative dittos to you, my.
And you're a real inspiration.
It's a real honor to see.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Yes, and my comment is: no more nice guys in the White House.
I President Bush.
I respect President Bush.
I respect the Todd Bush family.
I have a question.
Shoot.
Before you finish your point here, because I am a student of voices and dialects accents.
Are you a Katrina refugee?
Oh, no, no.
Are you from New Orleans or Louisiana?
No, lifetime Richmond, Virginian resident.
Wow, okay.
Well, I didn't mean anything insulting by it.
It was just insulting.
Well, look, I've been told I have a southern accent.
I can relax.
And they tell me I need to get rid of the accent.
No, it's who you are.
Don't get rid of it.
Don't let them talk you out of that.
Well, yeah, well, I'm making my own movie this summer, and I'm going to have a little clip of you.
It's about me, but I'm going to be, video will be on.
I'll have something inspirational that you're saying.
Everybody wants to get in the act.
Okay, no more Mr. Nice Guys as president.
That's what you're saying, huh?
Well, listen, the Fort Dix thing was that was Clinton being a nice guy.
And I mean, hey, a nice guy can marry my daughter.
A nice guy can live next door to me.
But when it comes to commander in chief, come on, Rush.
I mean, we help these people out over there, and they come here, Fort Dix thing.
We bring them into Fort Dix to get them acclimated to their new home.
How do they repay us, Rush?
And Bush won't do this with the, well, President Bush, let me be respectful, wants to do this with 45,000 Iraqi refugees.
They want to bring them here.
So much nice guy.
Well, you have a point.
I mean, you have a point, particularly in dealing with the enemy.
Yes.
You actually do have a point.
But the country wants nice guys.
Country wants nice, touchy-feely people.
But if you take attributes of a president and you categorize them in numerical order, I want nice guy to be in the mix, but I don't want it to be one, two, or three.
My goodness, I want it to be eight, nine, or ten.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
Right on, right on, right on.
Can you imagine how Teddy, not Teddy, can you imagine how Harry Truman would go over today with his salty language and his take-no-prisoners attitude about things?
Look at, on the other side, Ronald Reagan was, for all intents and purposes, outward appearance, a nice guy.
He was tough as nails behind closed doors and in dealing with Gorbachev and others.
That's a good point, sir.
I appreciate the call.
Thanks so much.
This is Joanna.
Is it Joanna or Joanna?
It's Joanna.
Joanna, she's Steubenville, Ohio, and it's your turn on Open Line Friday.
Rush, it's great to talk to you.
Thank you.
It's the second time ever I've talked to you in my lifetime, and I've lived a long time.
And I appreciate all of your thoughts, and I want your thoughts on this thing that has my husband and I troubled.
The other night, well, not troubled, but confused.
Disturbed.
A little disturbed and confused.
Sort of confused, yeah.
The other night we were watching Charlie Rose, Warren Buffett.
He was interviewing Warren Buffett.
Now, I'm sure you know who Warren Buffett is.
Oh, yes, I played Warren's golf tournament a couple times.
In fact, I was on my way to play in his golf tournament on 9-11.
We had to turn back and come back after the towers were hit.
Yeah, he's pretty rich, isn't he?
Well, yeah, the second richest guy in the country.
He talks about billion dollars like I talk about five.
But Charlie Rose came right out and asked him, if he were to vote now, does he have any preferences as to who he thinks would make a great president?
And he said, oh, yes, I do.
Hillary Clinton or Obama, Barack Obama.
And you were surprised he's a Democrat?
No, it wasn't so much that I was surprised he was a Democrat, but I was surprised at the praise that he laid on him afterwards and the praise he laid on Hillary.
I could not believe what he was saying.
The only thing I could figure is he was talking about all this money he's going to give away or has given away and will be giving away, and he wants it all gone by the time he's gone.
And I guess he wants Hillary to help him.
Give me your thoughts on it.
I'd be happy to.
Warren Buffett, as a nice man, at these golf tournaments, these charity golf tournaments, he'd always be at dinner after our lunch, and after lunch, he'd get up and speak.
And the last one that I was able to attend, he started railing against the estate tax.
And he told all of us that the last thing he was going to do was bestow his wealth on his kids, and it would ruin their lives.
He's only going to give them a couple billion.
He didn't say that, but that's come out later.
But he's all for the estate tax.
He thinks it ought to be thrown.
He's a liberal Democrat.
Now, it's surprising to people because the left has created this image that all rich people and all tycoons are big-time, evil, mean-spirited, extremist Republicans.
But he's not that.
He's very liberal.
He's very Democrat.
He sounds very smart.
Well, he is.
I mean, there are all kinds of ways to define SMART, though.
That's true.
You know, Mr. Buckley wrote a column in Playboy magazine back in 1985 or 1986 called, I forget the exact title, but How Do We Define Smart Today?
Back then in 1986 is the task that he assigned himself when he started writing it.
Smart is an elusive.
You know, there's intelligent, there's informed, there's educated.
I think Warren Buffett obviously is brilliant in the world of finance.
He's obviously brilliant.
His politics make me wonder, you know, what's he missing?
And there's a little, there's a minor little contradiction.
I had this story last week, or maybe it was the week before, shortly before or after the Hillary Clinton babysitting story on the K-4, or the pre-K4.
The major airlines have to pay the majority of taxes.
Well, their customers do, but they have to make the payment to the federal government to run the air traffic control system.
And somebody came out and said, well, you know, corporate jets aren't paying nearly their fair share, and there's a lot of them out there now.
And the major airlines were all for this.
Oh, yeah, we need to share the burden.
We need to get rid of some of our taxes and pass it on to corporate owners.
And Warren Buffett owns a company called NetJets, which is a partial ownership plan.
You can buy a fourth of an airplane, different kinds of airplanes.
You can buy a tenth.
You can buy half of one.
You can buy X number of hours on one a year.
And it's a big bid.
It's been very successful.
And he argued against increasing the tax burden on corporate owners because of the impact it might have on his business.
So when something like that happens, aha, tax cuts, tax increases, well, they're great when they happen to other people, but all of a sudden when they impact you, well, it's a different, different story.
You have to have a lot of respect for Warren Buffett, what he's accomplished, what he's done.
And he is very philanthropic.
For those of you in Rio Linda, it means he gives a lot of money to charity.
But I think Warren Buffett is sort of like an argument.
You know, people out there saying that some of all of our ideology is genetic, not environmental.
It's genetic.
Now, some people disagree with this, but I can understand your frustration.
How can somebody like Warren Buffett look at Hillary Clinton and not see the danger she poses to the very economic climate that allowed him to become the second wealthiest way?
She's out there talking collectivism.
She's out there talking taking corporate profits, big oil and all this.
She's talking about shared responsibilities.
But I'll tell you what, next, I'll tell you what you do.
Next time, any of you in Washington or New York, next time you hear that Hillary's flying someplace to make an event, here's what you do.
If she's flying out of national, you're going to have trouble because that's really, they've really tightened that down because of 9-11 and so forth.
And if you fly into National on your own plane, corporate plane, you got to have air marshals or at least one.
It's a big pain in the rear.
But if she flies out of Dulles, which the restrictions are not nearly like they are at Nashville because Nashville is right downtown, next time you hear that she's flying somewhere in a personal appearance, head out to signature flight support at Dulles and say you want to hitch a ride with her because you're going the same place.
Because, well, she's talking about sharing and a common good and all of this.
And next time that she's getting somebody to give her a ride on their corporate jet, just be out there, say, I'd like to go.
You know, I'm going where you're going.
And I won't bother you when I get anything.
I won't drink or anything.
I'm not going to bother sitting back and I just need to get where I'm going.
I've heard you so brilliantly and eloquently say, Mrs. Clinton, that we all need to share and we all need to work for the common good and so forth.
This is made to order for me.
Let's see what she says.
But as to Mr. Buffett, I think it's a mystery to me how big-time capitalists can sit there and openly support somebody who, if you believe what she says, wants to really start whacking away at the capitalist system we have here.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh, with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
We're on Open Line Friday, and we go to Boston.
This is Terrence.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Rush, I was watching TV the other night, and I was pretty disturbed.
I want to get your opinion on this.
Have you seen the new Lowe's commercial?
Anyway, it's new Lowe's commercial.
I don't think so, but you know.
Well, it has, let me tell you what it is.
It's got a couple on there, a husband and wife, and they're talking to a specialist, this woman.
And every time the woman suggests something, the husband says, it's too hard.
I can't do it.
I can't do it.
It's too hard.
And the woman's specialist, oh, you can do it.
So finally, at the end, the husband gives in and says, honey, you were right.
I was wrong.
I was thinking, you know, this commercial is really emasculating.
And I feel like all these shows and these commercials are up to the moment.
Wait a minute.
I need to know something.
I need to know something.
You say it's a curse for Lowe's.
Yes.
L-O-E-W-S.
L-O-W-E-S.
Lowe's hardware.
Lowe's hardware.
Oh, well.
I knew that I need to know a little more information.
The first thing, advertising, I have always said, is a window on the soul of the country because people who design advertising, the creative people that do it, have to reach out and find a way to separate people from their money.
And commercials have to be entertaining or informed or all those things, penetrating, they have to stand out.
The way I would interpret that is the dirty little secret in American commerce is that, particularly in married couples, the wives are the ones who spend the money.
Right, but isn't it the man?
The guy that's going to do all the work anyway.
Well, that's the joke of it.
The joke is that the guy can't do it, doesn't want to do it.
I'm not disputing your point because I'll guarantee there's a couple female creative people that put that together.
They had to be.
A husband's a lug.
Wife knows what to get done, what to buy, and so forth.
And she's not going to do it.
She's going to teach him to do it.
Oh, he can.
He finally realizes he's right.
And, of course, the payoff line in that, I think, and I haven't seen it, is, honey, I was wrong.
Everybody knows that that's the fastest way out of trouble for any husband.
Well, you know, my girlfriend saw nothing wrong with the commercial.
Of course.
But the more I thought about it, this is absurd.
I mean, it was ridiculous.
It was almost like two women against the one guy.
It may not be that absurd.
And the idea, that's why this book, the Dangerous Book for Boys, is out.
More and more men are not learning the fix-it-up stuff because it's too manly.
We're just not doing it.
Women have been taking it over because it needs to get done.
And of course, it makes them feel empowered that they can do it too.
Look, I can find a garden hose and I know where to point it.
Look, I can rake the leaves or what have you.
But I think there's a lot of humor in that commercial rather than an attempt to masculine.
I think it derives from the fact that whoever put that together already thinks that that circumstance exists.
And they're trying to sell products.
And if you're going to do things that are going to offend a whole lot of people, it isn't going to work.
Well, do you think it's a growing trend?
I mean, surely this isn't the only commercial like this.
Feminization of the culture?
Yeah, no question about it.
But I mean, the fact that it's now, I mean, not only is it in TV shows and in books and in magazines, I mean, now our very advertising.
It's in the schools.
That's what I'm telling you.
Advertising is a window on the soul of America.
Advertising will tell you what's going on in the country.
I study advertising.
I don't watch it.
I study it.
I mean, I have to watch it to study it, but I'm sophisticated enough to separate myself from the tricks, the marketing tricks.
I should shop at Home Depot.
Well, you know, do me a favor and keep an eye out for this commercial.
I will.
Look, I don't mean to be rude here, but the constraints of time are choking me here.
I have to run.
Thanks much.
I'm sure we'll be talking about this even more now.
Say, Terrence in Boston, I know you're still out there.
I just checked the email, and a lot of women, I just got, we're going to comment on this in the next hour.
A lot of women think you're a wuss for reacting to a commercial.
Sorting his point.
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