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April 4, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
April 4, 2008, Friday, Hour #2
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Thank you, Johnny.
Appreciate it a lot.
And happy Friday, everybody, here on the Rush Limbaugh Show on the EIB network.
We're going to be back on the phones with you like lightning.
So get ready, and in fact, place another call at 1800-282-2882-1800-282-2882.
I really only have one thing on the promise list that I said it would get to, so let's go ahead and do that, and then we're right back on the phones with you on this day in which we're taking a look 40 years back at the assassination of Dr. King and the progress that America has made since.
It is amazing progress, unless you are a Jeremiah Wright, or the shocking percentage, and this is this is the story that I don't want to get all conspiratorial about it, the story that no one will cover.
But it does get a little tough to phrase this, so I'll give it my clumsy attempt.
Jeremiah Wright's views are shocking.
So far, so good.
What would I believe shock you even more is the percentage of black America that thinks he's right.
Now I'm not saying it's 70% or 75.
I don't even think it's a majority.
I think most black folks are pretty even-handed.
They're 90% liberal, whatever.
That's wacky.
Loving diversity in every way except ideologically, I guess.
But I if you would like to think that no more than one or two percent of black America is as far off the deep end as pastor Wright.
But you should have heard the calls that I'm taking here in fairly diverse Texas.
Uh and I think there's probably borne out across America if you said if a talk show host were to get out there and say, hey, black folks, which is of course always a great way to begin a segment, say hey black folks, pastor right, crazy, or does he have a point?
And I don't mean have a point in being angry retroactively about slavery, please.
We should all be angry retroactively about slavery.
I mean should you be mad as a wet hen in 2008, as if no progress has been made since 1958 or 68, and a ton of people, and I don't know if it's five or ten or fifteen or twenty or twenty-five percent of black America is on board for this clap trap.
Now there's no way to measure that and no way to be sure of it, and yeah, it's just a gut feeling I have, but it's a gut feeling based on observation.
So, yes, the majority of black America, while maybe not agreeing, you know, with me or with Rush on a bunch of things, that you know, even the average liberal black, like Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, very liberal black colonist, but his reflection today essentially asks black America to say, look, stop fighting the fight as if it's 1955.
There's some gripes that white people have that are not racist, I heard him say I'll meet the press a few weeks ago.
You know, there's been amazing progress.
You know what the really sick thing is about Jeremiah Wright's uh uh Mesozoic era anger?
The evidence that he's dead wrong is right in front of his face.
Barack Obama is a couple of steps from being president of the United States.
How could that even happen in a country that deserves to be called the U.S. of KKK?
Good lord.
So anyway, we have the Dr. King assassination anniversary, which is certainly a spark for for conversation, but I promised you some war news, and there is actual war news.
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmidt write for the New York Times.
So it is easy to examine how much tooth gritting they had to do in writing this story.
Uh nobody.
Just just having fun.
Dateline Washington, a new national intelligence estimate on Iraq, cites significant security improvements and progress toward healing sectarian political rifts.
Now, this is what your liberal friends will tell you is not happening.
You've been able to put the surge up on your side of the scale and say, look, General Petraeus was right.
The surge is working.
Now we've had a violent couple of weeks.
There's no doubt about that.
But overall, since the surge began, uh places are safer that didn't used to be safe.
There are there's an unbelievable reduction in the amount of death, which is what chapped me so hard about that 4,000 figure, the day that figure came out.
Do you remember that?
Do you remember the near glee with which the media sought to beat you down?
4,000 dead.
It's more than 911.
Well, no kidding.
No kidding.
Yes, It is.
And each one of those deaths deserves to be revered, prayed over, thoughtfully considered, and blessed.
But those 4,000 dead deserve better than the dark, somber, out of context reporting that America got that day.
You want to know what 4,000 American deaths are?
It's called the summer of 1968.
Speaking of 1968.
Between Dr. King's assassination and Bobby Kennedy's assassination, two months in 1968, I guarantee we probably lost two or three thousand.
That was the the fall of 67, the spring of 68, uh the winter spanning 68 and 69.
That's 4,000 dead on the way to 58,000 in Vietnam.
But you didn't hear a whole lot about that.
58,000.
All you hear are, I'll tell you, it's another Vietnam, it's another Vietnam.
Well, you know what?
It could indeed become another Vietnam if at this rate of American loss the war goes on for another sixty-five years.
Yep, we will then have another Vietnam.
Yep.
And one thing you certainly didn't see would be the World War II casualty figures, in which 4,000 dead is one percent of what we lost.
One percent.
So they'll throw you World War II.
War haters will throw you down some World War II.
We've been involved in this war longer than World War II.
We've been here longer than it took for us to take down Hitler in Japan.
Yeah, that's true.
On the calendar, they are right.
But what they seek to do to make this war look so useless, so bloody, so costly that it's not even worth it.
Well, was it worth it to take out Hitler?
Yeah, it was.
How many lives did that cost?
Four hundred thousand, and that's for all the theaters of World War II, Europe and Asia.
Four hundred thousand.
So against that backdrop of fraudulent tone in covering what is and is not war progress.
One wonders how much impact there will be for this story today.
And here comes General Petraeus, due in Washington very soon to give lawmakers that next progress report.
Because the NIE, the national intelligence estimate that war bashers so frequently use.
Well, is it all right if some people who actually believe in our troops?
Is it okay if some people who actually believe in the war?
Is it okay if we grab a hold of an NIE for our side today?
Can we do that, please?
Because the new national intelligence estimate says there is progress toward healing sectarian political rifts.
The classified document provides a more upbeat analysis of conditions in Iraq than the last major assessment by United States spy agencies.
I'll in fact want to take some calls here, but I'm going to come back and give you some details from this story because you're going to need them at the dinner table tonight.
You may.
You may need them over the weekend, watching some Final Four basketball if somebody leans over and says, Yeah, I'm rooting for UCLA, but boy, that war stinks.
You may then argue with them about both points, if you wish.
So I'll give you some more armament here in just a little bit.
And as we go to calls, as we do go to calls, let me uh having invoked the city of Memphis plenty with regard to what happened there 40 years ago today.
Um something else may be happening in Memphis this very weekend, if you take it to Monday.
Uh that would be those University of Memphis Tigers winning the national championship.
Now I know folks in Southern California and in Kansas and in North Carolina, they're pretty geeked up about this too, as well as they should be.
But having once been one of them, the people of Memphis rise up today and say, you know what?
How about our turn?
UFC, you know, UCLA, you know, that's a that's a lot of lot of success there in Southern California.
Kansas, North Carolina, please.
Well, look at legacies of national championships won and almost won.
Can you throw us a little something here on the banks of the Mississippi River?
And uh, I don't know if it will happen.
There is that pesky free throw shooting, but I hope it's okay if I'm a if I'm still a Tiger fan.
Especially since my newfound Texas team got smoked.
Smoked by them last weekend.
Wow, did you get the number of that truck?
Okay, one eight hundred two eight two-2882-1800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Davis in Texas, filling in for Rush.
And so let's go to Birmingham, Alabama.
Hi, Dennis.
Mark Davis in for Rush today.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Hi, how are you doing, Mark?
Good.
Um I was born and raised in Birmingham.
Um, born in September 68.
So folks can forgive me if progress since the 60s is all I've seen.
All I've known.
I've seen, you know, the Birmingham mayor.
Right now we've got our second black mayor.
We've had a black mayor for close to 30 years.
This one here, Larry Langford was president of the county commission, powerful man.
We've got uh representative and Arthur Davis that speaking about running for the Senate out of Alabama.
Never would have thought of it in the 60s out of Alabama.
You know, while I drive by the 16th Street Baptist Church every day, and remember the bombing in 63, I don't dwell on it.
We've got a lot of folks, the older generation, your Sharptons, your Jacksons, your Reverend Abraham Woods, your Fred Suttlesworth, that have marched and done their time and paid their dues, but yet they're living in the 60s.
There's there's no leader these days that stepped up to take their place.
There's a a void that Dr. King left that nobody's stepped forward to fill.
There's there's nobody to step forward to say, here's what we've done since.
We've made progress in terms of the economy.
We've got John Lewis in Congress and things like that.
And I think we do a disservice to Dr. King and you know, Fred Suttlesworth and all those if we fail to recognize the changes that they've made possible.
Dennis, uh some calls need no um no illumination from the host, and this is one of them.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Totally correct.
Dennis's state of Alabama is particularly instructive, not just from the people who get elected, uh in terms of the Alabama's propensity for actually electing black people, which one would have thought would never happen in a uh several generations back in George Wallace's day of the mid-sixties.
But I mentioned Governor Wallace for a reason.
He was governor from 63 to 67, he was governor from 71 to 79.
He was governor again in the middle eighties, largely on the black vote.
You tell me there's no redemption in America.
You tell me there's no healing since 1968.
When George Wallace, here's another Maryland suburb story from my youth.
I'm hanging out, it was a nice spring day in May of 1972, and I hear the ins and the radios crackle that George Wallace has been shot uh about ten miles away from my house in a uh shopping center in Laurel, Maryland.
And by then, I'm like fourteen, maybe able to navigate through stuff like this a little easier than I did in uh in 1968, and not to be unkind to anybody's legacy, but having George Wallace shot, not exactly like having Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy shot, just in terms of gravity and in terms of of of national pain.
In fact, the shooting of George Wallace, you know, uh by Mr. Bremer, who is now out, by the way.
Is he out?
That's good.
That's always good.
Uh it's it it it sent everybody into a hard look at at his legacy and what happened between 1972 when he was shot, and just a a short decade later, you know, and and maybe taking a bullet will mellow your views in a lot of ways if you remain alive.
But um from the days of standing in the schoolhouse door essentially saying, you know, black kids getting past me to 1983, when he was elected governor of Alabama, largely on the black vote right after Fob James.
You cannot tell me that that's not an amazing piece of evidence of healing.
And I'll say something else too.
Uh I am a um I was born in Texas, and I've I'm a largely a creature uh of the South.
I'm back here now, but since then, you know, Jacksonville, Florida, Memphis.
These are the places where I've worked and places where I've lived.
I've never lived north of the Mason Dixon line, ever.
My parents are from North Carolina and Alabama.
Uh and I will tell you that the South has done and continues to do a better job in healing up race relations than a whole lot of the haughty Northeast.
All right, more of your calls in just a moment.
1800-282-2882, Mark Davis in for Rush on the EIB network.
Heading into the weekend, I have television viewing advice for you.
Hi, Mark Davis filling in for Rush Limbaugh on the EIB network.
Maybe you've heard a lot of buzz about that John Adams miniseries on HBO and how absolutely great it is, and maybe you've it's bummed you out because you know there's only seven parts in it, and they've already run four of them.
What point is there in starting to sign on now?
I mean it's I know you sort of know how the story goes, but la many is the time that I've been told about some mini series that's wonderful, but it uh it I'm in midstream.
I I can't get on board.
Except HBO is doing you a favor today.
Uh six o'clock Eastern, five Central, four mountain, three Pacific.
So pretty well finish up the Limbaugh Show and then run to the TV.
Uh they're running all four of them.
It'll take five hours to do it.
Each episode is about an hour and a fraction.
Uh episodes one through four of John Adams with the magnificent Paul Giamatti uh and uh and Laura Linney and a bunch of other folks, just just a spectacular thing that'll make you feel great about the country.
It's right from David McCulloch's great book about John Adams.
Adams was a kind of a a narcissistic uh little tart of a man, but his sense of duty and his devotion to country is so inspiring and so wonderful.
And any time modern popular culture can sprout something that makes you feel really good to be an American, I tend to view that as noteworthy.
So the John Adams miniseries uh set your TVOs abuzzin' because they run all four of the of the episodes that have run this very afternoonslash evening, depending on your time zone.
Check local listings, as they say.
And then episode five runs fresh on Sunday night and Sunday night and Sunday nights thereafter on uh on HBO.
Boy, build them for that.
All righty, it is 1800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Davis, filling in for Rush, and people have called.
Among them Judy in Clarkston, Michigan.
Hey, Judy, Mark Davis in for Rush, and it's nice to have you.
Hi, Mark.
Hey.
Um, you're doing a fine job.
You're very kind.
No, I'm sorry that one of my best friends, Rush, isn't there today, even though he doesn't know me?
I think of him that way.
Well, then you'll give him special dispensation.
You'll you'll give him special dispensation.
He is at William F. Buckley's funeral where all of us wish we were.
Anyway, if he appreciates the kindness, go ahead.
But I'm calling because it's open line Friday, and I have a very simple, stupid question, which I know you people like.
I don't understand.
Why we have the lawmakers, we have the government, we have the technology, we have big oil.
It's all their money.
Why our Congress or our government can't say we have screwed up and we have screwed this country.
Why don't we open those oil fields in Dakotas in Anwar, build refineries, and have all the money.
If I have to pay 315, 330 a gallon, all the money kept in the United States.
Your question is you you've you've undercut your question.
It is golden, and if enough people ask it, the answer will be given, and it is this.
Judy, thanks for the call.
The answer to why don't we do that?
Why in the world don't we drill and refine more of our own oil?
Environmental extremism.
Environmental extremism, the notion that making some caribou shuffle twenty feet to the left is somehow an abomination of nature.
The notion that some offshore drilling uh is somehow going to make uh you know California drop off into the sea.
Environmental extremism in Congress today.
This is what made it so obscene.
It wasn't just um disturbing, it was obscene to see people like Congressman Ed Markey of uh of Massachusetts just grilling the living daylights out of these oil executives, and all these guys are trying to do is get us more oil because we like oil.
Everybody wants to run our cars on baby shampoo or corn pone or whatever.
Well, if if a car's developed that works the same way, runs the same way, has the same horsepower, that then maybe we'll think about that.
Until then, alternative fuels will remain a fringe pursuit.
Till then, we like us some fossil fuels.
So here's Ed Markey just just excuse me, raping these guys rhetorically uh about how they failed to go into enough of alternative fuels research and and all of this nonsense.
Uh and and blame it on the Bush administration.
Well, the reason you have these high gas prices is eight years of failed Bush administration policies.
No, the marketplace is why we have high oil prices, a marketplace that would be friendlier to all if America produced more oil, a marketplace that would be more affordable to the working class that Democrats supposedly care about, if we had more American oil, more American oil drilled, more American oil refined means more American oil in the pipelines and more of that supply will mean that the price will go down.
That logic lost on the American left.
So your question is spectacular, ma'am, and there is the answer.
It is environmental extremism that keeps America from having the oil it needs and getting less from countries that want to kill us.
Mark Davis for Rush, be right back.
E. IB on a Friday.
Could your spirits be higher?
You're listening to the Limbaugh program.
It is a Friday.
Life is good.
Plenty of problems to address in America, but we do it in the upbeat atmosphere that this program always provides.
It's a very uh heavy and significant day for Rush as it is for America.
He is at uh William F. Buckley's funeral today, and he will be back on Monday, and I uh I somehow feel there might be a story or two that he might share.
Can you imagine what it's like uh to be there at St. Patrick's uh there at 50th and 5th in Manhattan and I boy the mind reels, and I'm sure it's just uh an unbelievably just intellectually and emotionally uh heavy day for Rush and for everyone in attendance, and for all of us who revered the legacy of William F. Buckley, who's laid to rest today.
So Rush will be back on Monday and probably have a thing or two to share about the experience that he's having today, which enables us to have the experience that we are having today, for which I'm grateful.
Let's head back to your calls.
We are in Jamestown, South Carolina.
Godfrey, Mark Davis, in for rush, and it's nice to have you.
Hello.
Yeah, how are you doing, Mark?
I'm good.
Oh, okay.
I just want to make a comment about the uh the remarks that Obama's pastor made.
Mm-hmm.
And uh one thing uh people don't understand is that uh a lot of older black Americans are in a frame of mind of where they've been denied and beaten up and spit on for half the life and probably three quarters of their life.
I saying that he's right, but you had to think that once you've been in that situation for so long, you kind of don't forget it, and it kind of sticks to you.
You know that's where his comments are coming from.
I don't want him to forget it.
And and we'd better not, and I and if there's any white folks out there saying, you know, all you black people just need to kind of get over the colored water fountains and get over slavery.
We don't have that anymore.
The fact that we had it ever is something that is a continuing painful memory.
But here's the big butt, as Pee Wee Herman would say.
And stay with me on this, because it'll take a second.
Because all I can talk about is me, but we all like to think of ourselves as the embodiment of all that is enlightened, so here's my humble attempt at that.
As a white guy, I will never ever as a 50-year-old white guy that I was born two months after President Eisenhower had to call those National Guard troops in to let those black kids go to a school in Arkansas, invoked that last hour.
That's the America I was born into.
I can't believe that.
That that's like uh to me, that's like being born when dinosaurs walked the earth.
Uh when my parents were born in the 30s, in the 30s, they were adults and walked into buildings in in Florida and North Carolina and Alabama where they were grown up and saw colored water fountains and and saw all kinds of Jim Crows.
I cannot for the life of me imagine what it is like to be a black man or woman of a certain age and to have lived through that.
So let me offer that as my opening paragraph.
That having been said, I just don't think that it's healthy for them, for us, for anybody, to walk around in 2008 and say that it's okay for you to be as angry, as bitter, as filled with hatred for America as you might have been when America was so wrong.
We got we got almost done.
I'm almost done.
I swear to God, I'm almost done.
We we got better.
We got a lot better.
So to the part of Pastor Wright that wants to talk about how our history is filled with misdeeds, he's right.
About how we have not made all the progress we need to make.
He's right.
But when he steps forward to say that America is still evil, still generally racist and still bad.
Black, white, and people of every color must rise up and say, no, sir, you are wrong.
We are a flawed society, but a great society because a great society could uh an ungrate society could not have made such progress.
Done.
Floor is yours.
Yeah.
Oh, one more thing I want to comment on is uh you made a comment about it being uh racism being better in the South.
They kind of got over it more so in the North.
I think it kind of is.
Yeah, I got to agree with you on that.
I'm originally from New York, and I live in Jamestown, South Carolina now.
And to my surprise, New York is more segregated than South Carolina is.
Yep.
Now what I I gotta know, what gets you from from going from New York to the Palmetto State?
When did that happen and under what circumstances?
It was uh uh about seven years ago.
Uh me and my wife had uh we already had two kids and we had a set of twins, and I just knew that at the time I was not gonna be able to support six people and pay a mortgage and because she was on she was out of work for two years.
So we decided to relocate.
And uh to South Carolina?
Yeah, oh yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Well, did you do the you did the research and said, okay, let's see, uh Illinois, nah, New Mexico, nah, South Carolina.
Yeah, well, my my wife's parents are from there, and they had the landset on the city.
There you go.
I knew there had to be a connection somewhere.
Now here's the point.
I think you've you've discovered the truth about the modern South, but when you, and maybe not with your wife's family connection, but when you, a New York black guy were packing the bags for South Carolina, did you in a way feel like you were moving to the dark side of the moon?
Um I did in a little a little bit because I hadn't been in and out of South Carolina since uh 92 since I met my wife's like new addiction.
But once I got down here, I was real pleasantly surprised.
I was really surprised.
Well, that is the truth of the modern South and uh the state of South the governor and state of South Carolina tourism people appreciate it, and then I do too.
Thank you, Godfrey.
When I was I've thrown down my Memphis credentials of having been there 85 to 90, and I I would be like judging a barbecue contest in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
And you'd head down there, and you know, you'd realize that it's not so very long ago that you know you might have been driving down to Clarksdale for a good old country lynching.
And what you find today is I mean, listen, are there issues of race everywhere?
Of course there are.
Uh are the black folks of Clarksdale doing as well as the white folks of Clarksdale?
No.
But that's pretty pretty well true everywhere.
And uh and but a lot of that though is is just no longer because of white racism.
There are just so many complicated factors.
Uh my point about going down to Clarksdale is what I saw in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Uh, you know, 20 years ago, let's say, is black folks and white folks seeming to get along a whole lot better than they occasionally do in Boston, seeming to intermingle and share genuine uh, you know, uh affection for each other.
Uh the the is as neighbors and occupants of the same town, uh at the same time in New York, you got all all manner of uh of racial tension exploding.
And I guess maybe the uh maybe one of the best reasons for that is that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don't live in Mississippi.
Now, as for um just on on one little story here, because I want to get on to another theme here and welcome your calls on on this as well as that.
We can do a lot of things today.
It's obviously Friday.
The the open line Friday concept is alive, even though Rush is away at uh Bill Buckley's funeral, where we're certainly doing that.
Anything you want to go ahead and bring it to us at 1800-282-2882.
One of the things I wanted to mention today is the notion of stories that are in the news really prominently this week, where the story being told to you by the dominant media culture, they bury the lead in the uh you know the the oil executive story, them being blistered before Congress.
The real story is that these guys are just trying to bring us more oil, a substance America still loves and still wants, and there's nothing wrong with that.
In the housing crisis, for example.
I love I love these housing crisis stories.
Every day on the news, you sit down at night, and there's Charlie Gibson or Brian Williams or whoever's watching Katie Kirk, watching a story uh about some poor schlub who's uh they're they've cut they've they're coming to get his house.
They foreclosed.
Last night on ABC, there was this New York couple that had a process server outside the house, and I can understand how this would be Pretty embarrassing.
They're essentially going, get out!
We're foreclosing.
Get out.
And so what was their story?
What was their testimony?
The reporters asked them.
And they essentially said, Well, uh, we were making thirty grand a year.
We bought a three hundred thousand dollar house, and we're sitting at closing, and it was obvious that the numbers just did not work, but the the lender was just so hungry to get us to sign, which of course the lender will do, that's called an unscrupulous lender.
They are to be avoided like unscrupulous car salesmen, unscrupulous doctors, and other unscrupulous people.
You got to have the consumer wisdom to get out of there.
So what was the moment at which life turned to you know hell for these folks?
They signed the documents at closing.
They signed them under pressure.
Oh, really?
Well, dare I suggest that it was their job as uh wise consumers to reject that pressure and say, wow, dude, I just realized I make 30 grand and this house is is worth 300,000.
This is this is a nightmare.
I excuse me, I gotta go.
They didn't do it.
They signed it.
There was another story uh like last week, some lovely couple that's actually got some money.
They uh I I love how they go to these these houses.
These stories go to the reporters go to these families, you know, Bill and Nora uh the Settlemaier are in their own living hell in South Florida, and their house is nicer than mine.
She's getting out of an escalade.
Oh my God, life is so terrible.
Like, whoa, what?
What?
These folks are not eating dog food.
How how they've made some bad decisions, which is the common thread for all just about all of these stories.
Are there unscrupulous lenders?
Of course there are.
Is the market soft?
Of course it is.
Make smart decisions.
All these people in these housing crisis stories that are supposed to make you feel like America is about on the on the verge of a depression, are really stories about people who have done stupid things.
They've made bad decisions.
This South Florida couple wanted to get into the condo market.
They they went shopping through the papers with found a couple of condos, bought them pre-construction, hoping to flip them by the time that the uh construction was finished.
Well, then the condo market went soft.
Sorry.
The lesson in this is don't invest money that you can't afford to lose.
That's basic.
That's basic.
And if you don't do that, you might really pay a price for your ill wisdom.
So there's so that all the housing crisis stories, that's another example of you.
You're just being pitched a story that just is not the way that it is.
Let me take the break, and when we come back, I'll give you the destination where I was where I was actually going.
Thanks for coming with me on this bike ride.
And that is the story of the graduation rates.
Because this does have a little something to do with race in America, which we're taking a look at a lot today on the 40th anniversary of the loss of Dr. King.
The graduation rate story, they gave you a headline.
How many of you are told if you live in such and such a city, your chances of graduating, your kids graduating is 50%?
What?
What?
Not exactly.
I'll explain what I mean in just a moment.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush on the EIB network.
Little NXS to tap our toes to for a Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I'm Mark Davis.
Hi, filling in today.
Rush is back on Monday.
To the phones, 60 to 90 seconds.
See if I can make good on that promise.
Because here's the deal.
Here's the other story that's been told a lot this week, where the real story lies beneath, and few have the courage.
I'm sorry, I don't say this like I am courageous and nobody else is.
But it's just harder to reach some of these conclusions, so I'm going to very thoughtfully and lovingly try to do so.
And that's the graduation rate story.
You heard the just horrible graduation rates in many of our cities, a lot of our bigger cities, a lot of our urban centers, inner cities, as they're called.
And the story would go something like this.
If you are in a major urban area, your kids' chances of graduating are 50-50.
What?
As if you take a thoughtful good student in one city and move them to South Detroit, it sucks the brain out of his head?
No.
I would suggest that your thoughtful good student has just as good a chance of graduating in Compton as he does in Connecticut.
What kind of stupidity is this?
Well, it's an attempt to sidestep the truth, and that is that this is a human behavior issue.
If indeed our inner cities, our urban jungles, our wastelands of uh of of big, big, big, big city America are filled with with horrible dropout rates.
It's not because that's where all the blacks and Hispanics are.
Because if you go to the suburbs, you find graduation rates are a whole lot better.
Suburban New York, suburban Oakland, suburban everywhere.
That's not just because that's where the white kids are.
That's where the blacks and Hispanics moved who actually have a work ethic.
That's where the black and Hispanic kids are whose parents actually care for them and stay together and keep an intact family and a good breakfast and a loving, supportive atmosphere.
Because you give that to a kid, and that kid's gonna do well no matter what his pigment might be.
So the solution to this graduation rates nightmare in our big cities is for the people who live in our big cities, no matter what color they are.
Stop making excuses.
In the case of the minority folks, stop blaming whitey and get your act together.
Stop committing most of our crimes.
Stop devaluing achievement in school.
God, I was I was back in Washington.
I I grew up in the suburbs of DC, had a chance to be back on the radio in DC from 90 to 94, and um and there was a story came out in the Washington Times, like call it 92 or something, where getting good grades, they did a little survey, getting good grades, uh respecting teachers was derided as acting white.
It is one of the saddest stories I've ever heard.
In Tampa, Ken, Mark Davis, in for rush, and it's a pleasure to have you.
How are you doing?
Call I do listen I listen to the show uh regularly with uh Rush Limbar.
Uh uh not not so much of a fan, but it's I listen for my own reasons.
And occasionally, and occasionally I find things that I agree with.
In fact, some of the things you just said I I agree with in terms of uh I have all A students in terms of my children, they all straight A students and whatnot.
And as I said, or I don't know if you've mentioned before I'm you know African America.
And uh I just wanted to say though that I think though that the and sometime I guess maybe because of the format that the issue doesn't get the proper addressing that it needs, and and I think that sometimes people think that racism is really just a cross being burned on the lawn or uh or a noose being hung up.
So uh conversely, I also want to say that some things aren't just aren't racist that sometimes are mistaken for racist.
For example, uh there's things that happen in in the corporate workplace that I see where I work that happened to white people that happened to black people, and I see some things that seem to only happen to black people, and I think that the those types of things are a little bit more uh shaded and subtle.
And subtle.
I think you're absolutely right.
I I gotta scoot out here in about thirty seconds, so let me just salute you and tell you I agree with you.
Uh that the racism of today is not so much about a cross burning in your lawn or a rope being slung over a tree.
It is more subtle and thus maybe harder to detect.
But here's the thing.
Uh uh American law has done all it can.
There is no longer a law that discriminates against black folks.
What we have right now are laws discriminate against white folks.
We're trying to get rid of that affirmative action thing.
But um the solution to the remaining racism that we have is in the hearts and minds of Americans.
All of us treating each other better and treating each other as equals.
That's how we take care of the remainder of our racism problem.
Ken, thank you.
Appreciate it a lot.
Mark Davis, in for rush, and right back in a moment.
Face it, on what other radio station right now can you hear the Pointer Sisters doing the neutron dance?
The uniqueness of the Rush Limbaugh program, true in so many ways.
I'm Mark Davis filling in for Rush today.
Uh coming up in the next hour, we talk those Chinese Olympics, and I'm the picture of mixed feelings about that, so all that's coming up in just a second.
And Carrie, North Carolina.
Mary, got about a minute, but it's all yours.
Hi, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, Mark.
I'm a North Carolina conservative looking forward to some final four basketball games and an upcoming primary.
Go heels and go whoever you're rooting for.
But what I want to talk about today is Mr. Obama's message of change.
Yeah.
Um, I've been thinking about it and just haven't really heard it discussed.
He's been in the U.S. Senate two years.
He says that change needs to come to Washington, that they have not gotten the job done.
Yeah.
But he is one of the they.
Uh, and two years is half of a presidential term.
Why hasn't he already been in the forefront leading that change?
Golden questionary.
In fact, pardon the cruel mistress that is the clock, but absolutely true.
And it happens a lot in politics.
People will blame the system, they'll say the system hasn't done right by us when they've in fact been part of the system.
What's that about?
Good for you for bringing it up.
I'm Mark Davis Infor Rush, one big hour remains.
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