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March 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
March 23, 2009, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Am I on air?
I didn't hear the theme music.
I didn't hear the intro, didn't hear anything.
It's Markstein here.
Anyway, I didn't hear.
Did I get the big build-up from Johnny Donovan?
I can't hear a thing.
I can't even think of my earphones.
It's an amazing thing.
But America's Anchor Band is away today.
And this is your undocumented anchor band Mark Stein sitting in.
Sorry about that.
Very unprofessional of me.
Don't know why.
Can't hear a thing in the headphones.
But oh, I've just heard somebody on the other side of the glass take corporate responsibility for it.
Okay, so it wasn't me, folks.
The astoundingly amateurish intro was not me.
And if it was, all I want to say is, look, I'm really good when the teleprompter's on, but sometimes the teleprompter just goes down and I'm not there.
Anyway, so the amateurish introduction was my Obama introduction.
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, as he likes to say.
I think that's Carmen Miranda, isn't it?
I like you very much.
Fantastic stuff.
Anyway, America's Anchor Man Away and your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
And that's great.
Terrific to be here from the foreign exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a terrific exchange program.
Guys like me get to come and study at the Limbaugh Institute.
And in return, Nancy Pelosi gets to do a couple of semesters at the Danish Academy of Confiscatory Taxation.
And Chris Dodd gets to study at the County Galway College of Home Decor on the beautiful west coast of Ireland.
And Bernie Frank gets an adult education course in advanced theatrical outrage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
So it works out well for everyone.
Great to be with you at the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
El Rushbo will be back tomorrow with highly professional show openings.
So don't worry about that.
Nothing much happening today.
Just another lousy trillion-dollar bailout.
What is it today?
More toxic assets?
I don't know.
Actually, our opening of the show today was a kind of a toxic asset.
Can we get a bailout for that?
Anyway, don't worry.
Whatever it is.
There'll be another trillion-dollar expenditure along next week.
Just another 12 zeros tossed on the Obama bonfire of American wealth.
Anyway, if you heard Johnny Donovan's intro just now, which evidently I didn't, Johnny calls me a...
No, no, no, no, now they're offering to play it again.
That'll make me sound even more ridiculous.
The man who needs two intros.
That's like Obama with the two teleprompters.
You know, he's got to have teleprompters at every angle just in case he misses one.
I don't need the intro.
Johnny Donovan calls me a former disc jockey, which is true.
Like Rush, Rush is a former disc jockey.
And critics are always bringing this up.
I get a lot of stuff, fellas saying, quote, nobody takes these theories seriously other than a few fringe extremists like the uneducated, illiterate former disc jockey Mark Stein.
Well, we former disc jockeys are holding our own.
Did you see this coup in Madagascar the other day?
The headline, the headline was great.
Former disc jockey Andrey Raggiolina sworn in as Madagascan president.
The previous president has been deposed by a disc jockey.
This is the first time in history a disc jockey has deposed a president.
Quote, you know, who knows, as Madagascar goes today, Washington may go tomorrow.
Mr. Rajiolina, a 34-year-old ex-disc jockey, has suspended parliament and set up two transitional bodies to run the Indian Ocean Island.
Unquote.
Now, this is great news for power-crazed former disc jockeys.
I don't even know how he did it, because normally when you hear about these coups in these banana republics, you've got to be like a disaffected colonel in the armed forces to stage a coup.
But now, Disc Jockeys are doing it, which I think is terrific.
And I wish this guy, President Rajiolina, well.
He's a smooth talker.
He doesn't need a teleprompter.
In his first degree on state radio, he abolished parliament and then did a traffic update and announced the winner of this week's competition.
Unfortunately, Washington does not support the coup in Madagascar.
The Obama administration is cutting off all aid.
And human rights groups say this guy, Rajiolina, has an appalling record.
It's the Kathy Lee Gifford Christmas album.
Anyway, I'm just saying, don't provoke us, former disc jockeys.
We're on the march.
Today, Antonariva, and I think that's how you pronounce the Madagascar capital.
And tomorrow, Washington.
So we may get into Madagascar politics in the course of today's show.
If you're an exiled Malagasy president for life, do feel free to call us 1-800-282-2882.
But of course, our main focus today will be on the sterling efforts of the Obama administration to bring the U.S. economy in line with the Madagascar economy.
He's doing a fantastic job.
You may have seen the president doing his special Olympic shtick with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show last week.
Or you may have seen him yucking it up about the impending global meltdown with Steve Croft on 60 Minutes last night.
Boy, that was pretty hilarious when he was just laughing at the way so much of America's wealth is just evaporating.
Because you got to laugh.
This kind of stuff would get you down, eh?
Anyway, so he was like laughing it up pod 60 Minutes.
So you may have seen him doing that.
You may have seen him on the season finale of Dancing with the Stars, doing the Lambarda with Cloris Leechman while simultaneously expressing his good wishes for the Iranian nuclear year.
Oh, I'm sorry, the Iranian New Year.
The Iranian nuclear year isn't for a couple of weeks yet.
You may have seen President Obama guesting on Sesame Street, dueting with Kermit the Frog on It Isn't Easy Being Green, a great performance.
You may have seen him reading the lottery numbers on South Dakota Megabucks.
You may have seen him doing the Sham Wow Infomercial at 2 in the morning.
You may have seen him on the security camera outside WZZZ AM in Dead Skunk Junction, banging on the door and offering to come in and read the farm prices.
But today, but today, the EIB network is proud to present the world's first exclusive non-interview with President Obama.
In the next three hours, he will not be here.
He will not be here.
You will not be able to hear him laughing.
You will not be able to hear him joking about the global economy, joking about Special Olympics or anything else.
He's not going to be laughing it up about the collapsing Dow, doing one-liners about the disabled.
It's not going to be here.
If you're looking for the one-stop shop for all your Obama personal non-appearance needs, this is it.
Now, it's very rare in U.S. broadcasting these days to find any airtime he's not hogging.
But the Rush Limbaugh show is it, at least until the new fairness doctrine kicks in.
And then Rush, of course, will be sitting here like everyone else, slapping his thighs as the president reveals how Tim Geithner's goofy incompetence always brings a smile to all our faces.
Now, last week was an amazing week, an amazing week.
President Obama compared AIG executives to suicide bombers.
His teleprompter went rogue on St. Patrick's Day and accidentally outsourced Obama's speech to the Irish Prime Minister, after which the president thanked himself for inviting himself to the White House.
His office misspelt the name of the Brazilian president on his official visit.
The British Prime Minister sits down at 10 Downing Street to watch the DVD of Psycho that the Obamas gave him.
And have a think about that for a minute.
Isn't that a weird gift for one head of government to give to another the DVD of psycho?
Anyway, he sits down to watch it and discovers it doesn't work in British DVD players.
And then when the White House is asked to comment on this, the official spokesperson, quote, snickers.
Anyway, then the Commander-in-Chief decides to make wounded soldiers returning from the battlefield pay for treatment for injuries received in service of their country.
Then he goes and does the first ever presidential disabled joke on national TV.
I don't recall Taft or Chester Arthur ever doing special Olympic shtick on the tonight show.
And then he rounds it all off on 60 Minutes, clutching his sides at the collapsing economy, to the point where Steve Croft asks the president if he's punch drunk.
This is an unprecedented week in American history and one seriously weird presidency.
Now, Rush was in killer form on Friday talking about this.
And we're going to stick with some of the themes that he was talking about.
There's basically three takes on Obama pre-November.
The first was that he was this post-partisan, moderate centrist reach across the aisle type.
The second is that he's not a moderate.
He's a doctrinaire leftist, marinated in left-wing politics his entire adult life and entirely committed to a European-sized social welfare state in America.
And the third is that he's an incompetent.
He wasn't qualified to be president.
He was qualified to be a low-level community organizer in Chicago.
He could just about do that, but he's now way out of his league.
Let's examine those three options on the show today.
I think the first thing we can say is that the post-partisan, moderate centrist thing is bunk.
We know that.
We know that's over.
For all the Obama cons, the Metro cons, the sophisticons, like David Brooks of the New York Times, Christopher Buckley, these fellows who were saying they liked his temperament.
Temperament, by the way, that's basically the New York Times equivalent of when Tiger Beat starts raving about the Jonas brothers being totally cool.
You know, they say, wow, he is just totally cool.
And that's what it means when David Brooks starts raving and Christopher Buckley start raving about Obama's temperament.
But we know that is bunk.
The one thing that is not on offer in America right now is a bipartisan, moderate centrist presidency.
So that leaves us with the other two options.
That he's not a moderate.
He's this doctrinaire leftist committed to a massive expansion of government that would fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state, and I think would push us to a tipping point that would condemn us to the same fate as many of the European economies.
And the third is that he's an incompetent, that the guy is no, when he's off the prompter, everything he says is either wacky or slightly unpleasant, like his special Olympics thing.
Rush was talking on Friday that he's not cool.
He's not cool.
He's actually a cold man.
And I think that there's some evidence for that.
When you look at what he was saying on the tonight show, it's interesting to me that every time he's off the prompter and he says something, it comes over at minimum as thoughtless and at bottom as actually rather sort of hard and cruel.
He's the opposite of Bill Clinton in that respect.
He doesn't feel your pain and he doesn't care that you know it.
He does not feel your pain.
That's why he's on with 60 Minutes and laughing it up as the economy goes down.
He spent two months helping to vaporize American wealth and he thinks it's a terrific laugh.
He thinks it's Gallows' humor.
You know, Gallows' humor is when you're on the gallows.
He's not on the gallows.
He's still got his driver.
He's still got his plane.
He's still got his book deal.
Things are going fantastically for him.
It's everybody else who's on the gallows as their jobs are going, as their 401ks are going, as their home prices are heading south.
That ain't Gallows humor.
That's the sheriff condemning the man to the gallows and whooping it up and roaring with laughter as the guy is led out and taken up the scaffold.
That's what was going on last night.
So we'll get into all that in the hours ahead.
The first is three hours on radio.
Mark Stein sitting in for El Rushbo on the EIB network.
Hey, Mark Stein on the EIB network.
Great to be with you.
Rush will be back tomorrow.
Today, the big news today is the next phase of this TARP thing.
No big deal, just another trillion dollars for toxic assets.
This guy, Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, he's like a toxic asset all of his own, isn't he?
Apparently the markets are up because he announced this toxic asset plan, but he didn't do it on TV.
Every time he goes on TV, the market drops 500 points.
So like another six press conferences, you're not going to need to worry.
There's going to be a Dow Jones index.
We can all relax.
But this time he announced the plan, the big plan, from a secure location, and the markets liked it because they didn't have to see him.
He's like, what's the guy, the groundhog in Pennsylvania?
Punks at Torney Phil?
Treasury Tim.
He sticks his head up above ground.
And if he sees his shadow, the American economy knows it's in for another six years of winter.
But anyway, today he's done his thing from the secure location and the markets seem to like it.
This new plan to toss another gazillion dollars down the hole.
It's going over great.
Here's what the New York Times said.
Quote, three chiefs of investment firms said in interviews that they were impressed with the terms of the program, which would have the government lend nearly 95% of the money for any investment.
It's not really like an investment then, is it?
If you're getting 95% of the money from the government.
Anyway, but they said they remain reluctant to participate because of the potential for future regulation.
Quote, the deal is good, but it's not worth it if I'm buying myself into a retroactive tax or a congressional hearing, unquote, the chief executive of a major investment firm said, insisting on anonymity because he didn't want to seem at odds with the Treasury Department in the event that his firm ends up participating.
This is right, you know.
The deal is good, but it's not worth it if I'm buying myself into a retroactive tax or a congressional hearing.
That's right.
What's the point of letting the government into your company if you're going to get a 90% tax slapped on parts of your salary and you're going to be hauled up and humiliated before Congress?
I gather three, I think it was three AIG executives resigned on Friday on grounds of personal security.
This is all weird stuff because essentially we own these companies.
The American taxpayers own these companies and yet we're driving down their reputation and driving away their talent.
I said at the beginning of the show, I'm an undocumented American, you know, so I slip across the border early in the morning with everybody else and after an hour or so I bang on the trunk of the car and they let me out and I take a cab to the EIB studios.
But a reader wrote to me the other day and he said, well, looks like we're finally going to be getting that border fence.
It'll be to keep American businessmen from fleeing the country.
Sad but true.
It reminded me of something John Kerry said back in the 2004 campaign.
You remember he was always going on about Benedict Ardell CEOs.
We will repeal every single benefit, every single loophole, every single reward for any Benedict Arnold CEO that takes American jobs overseas and sticks you with the bill.
And then he decided that wasn't what he meant.
And he told the Wall Street Journal that Benedict Arnold didn't mean somebody who takes jobs overseas.
But he said he was referring to people who take advantage of these transactions for tax purposes and give up American citizenship.
He goes, that's a Benedict Arnold.
You give up your American citizenship, but you want to continue to do business.
I had no idea what he was on about.
You know, Benedict Arnold CEOs who give up American citizenship.
I mean, is that a big problem?
Because of tax loopholes, there are thousands of CEOs who find it advantageous to take out Mexican citizenship and then swim back to America and work as undocumented executives.
I had no idea even by John Kerry's standards.
It sounded goofy.
But, you know, cometh the hour, cometh the man, and now it makes perfect sense.
We're going to have to build a border fence to prevent corporate executives fleeing the country, taking up Mexican citizenship, and then swimming back across the Rio Grande and working as undocumented executives, which is the only way you'll be able to avoid that 90% tax that Barney Frank wants to stick you with.
As Esquire Magazine said many years ago, it's Frank's world.
We just live in it, unfortunately.
And if you are one of these people, if you're one of these people who thinks that in a dispute between the political class and the business class, it's in your interest for the business class to fail, you are going to get a very tough lesson in the years ahead of what happens when you kill the wealth generating sector of this country.
This is a no-brainer.
This is a no-brainer.
If it's Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama on one side and the fat cat corporate executives on the other side, let them have their nickel and dime bonuses.
It's better than giving the government the power to levy 90% tax rates targeted at effectively specific individuals.
And now Obama on 60 Minutes says, oh, no, never mind the particular individuals.
We'd like to broaden it.
We'd like to broaden the 90% tax cuts.
All that more coming up on the EIB network.
Hey, great to be with you for the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
Rush will be back tomorrow.
Don't forget, you can check out everything at rushlimbore.com, but he will be here live in person tomorrow and through the rest of the week.
Outsourcing, outsourcing.
It's out of control now.
The latest thing is that the federal government has outsourced condoms to the Chinese.
Apparently, the federal government spends billions of dollars of your money on condoms.
Not for any Nancy Pelosi activity, but apparently to carpet bomb Africa with.
And they used to buy American condoms made in Alabama.
Where's the town in Alabama?
Well, it's not, I don't know, southeastern Alabama.
But this town in southeastern Alabama, apparently the condom capital of North America.
Fantastic place.
I don't know where.
I've never been there.
I don't know, as you go in, as you go into town, they've got like a giant condom in the town square or whatever.
But they were the condom capital of the United States.
And now, but the problem is here, they price themselves out of the market.
The government used to buy condoms from this company in Alabama, Alatec, for five cents a condom.
The Chinese were selling them for two cents a condom.
So now the federal government has outsourced the massive American condom budget to the Chinese.
So the Chinese communists now, the communists, the condommunists, are getting the benefits of American taxpayer dollars as we've outsourced the U.S. Agency for International Development, which buys 10 billion condoms a year.
I don't know what that's for a bit.
Did they buy more in the Clinton era?
I don't know.
And then it kind of dips.
I don't know.
But it's currently 10 billion condoms.
No other government.
By the way, they say the United States is no longer a world leader.
No other government buys as many condoms as the United States.
We are the world's number one supplier of government condoms, but they're now made in China.
Everything, everything is outsourced.
EIB Network, Mark Steinstillian for Rush.
Let's go to Carl in Jacksonville, Florida.
Carl, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hey, how are you doing, Mark?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Okay.
I was listening to you talking about him laughing on 60 Minutes.
Yeah.
He laughed at it.
I think the reason why he was laughing is because he's amazed because he's getting away with this.
They keep throwing smoke screens up, and everybody just keeps following the smoke screens, and he's getting away with it.
And now he feels comfortable, and now he's just going to keep going.
And it's going to, I don't know, I think he's going to ruin things.
That's all I could say.
Yeah, I'm beginning to think that's true.
And if you think about it from his point of view, he's right.
The thing is, he can sit there and laugh.
And what's anybody going to do about it?
Because the fact is, the media who basically gave us this guy, he's their creation.
He's their invention.
They told us what he was.
They took this guy.
Nobody wants to know him.
He'd just be some obscure state politician in Springfield if he hadn't been anointed by the media and raised up as the new Messiah.
And he knows that they're so invested in him that they cannot afford for him to fail.
And although a lot of these kind of big shot columnists at the New York Times are now bailing on him, Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich are all saying, whoa, what's happening?
This kind of strange narcissistic incombident wasn't the kind of guy we thought we were supposed to be getting after the hated Bush.
In effect, in the end, they'll stick with him because if he fails, they fail with him too.
So they can't afford for this guy to be a failure.
Thanks for your call, Carl.
He's laughing, says Carl in Jacksonville, because he knows he's getting away with it.
It is one very weird interview, this 60 Minutes interview.
It's strange to see a man talking.
I mean, it's weird.
It's like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers cackling as he's plotting to destroy the world.
The Dow will be down to 3,000 by the end of the week.
He metaphorically had a Victorian moustache he was twirling while he was doing all that cackling.
Very, very weird.
I don't know what that's about, but if you haven't seen that 60-minute interview, go and look for it.
The bit where Steve Croft asks, are you pudge-drug? is priceless.
The next interview, he'll be asking whether he'd like to see a doctor.
It's a weird and slightly strange thing.
Let's take another call.
Let's go to Chris in Lee's Summit, Missouri.
Chris, you are on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Oh, it's an honor, Mr. Stein.
I'm a subscriber to National Review, and your last article in there, the USA, was really, really quite good.
Yeah, that's about quite an important point.
We talk about America being the most powerful nation on the planet.
How is it then that every single bad Canadian and European idea comes to the United States, like socialized health care, confiscatory taxation, and all that?
And yet no good American idea, like the First Amendment or the Second Amendment, ever goes north of the 49th parallel or over to continental Europe.
The traffic is all.
I can't explain that, but I know that you're Canadians, the best export to the United States.
But listen, the thing about Obama, he went on the Leno show last week, and everybody made a big deal about that special Olympics comment that he made, which I thought was off the hand.
It's not such a big deal to me, but if a conservative would have made it, it would have been a much bigger deal, of course.
But the comment that really upset me was, you know, he talked about this dog that he was supposed to get, and he chuckled it off and said, oh, that was a campaign promise.
Ha, ha, ha.
Well, you know, he's lied about Iraq bringing the troops home, closing Gitmo, and the lobbyists in his administration.
And when he said those things during the campaign, we all knew he was lying.
We all knew that he wasn't going to follow through with that stuff.
And that glibness, that flippancy, that hubris of his is just, it really upsets me.
Yeah, you are right, because he basically did this slogan, change you can believe in.
And then what happened?
He complained that American warplanes were bombing these innocent Pakistani villages.
In fact, he stepped up the unmanned raids over the Pakistani tribal land since then.
He's kept that.
No, you're right.
And, you know, why is it that Jay Leno gives him the toughest question from a journalist that he's had about this 90% taxes that Congress was going to do on the AIG people?
And he actually asked that question in a somewhat serious fashion, and no other journalist in the mainstream media has bothered to give him such a tough question.
No, well, they're still invested in him.
And the upscale guys, the guys who thought they'd made enough for a comfortable retirement, your Frank Riches and Maureen Dowds, your David Brooks's, and so forth, the big shot guys at the New York Times, they're horrified because they're seeing their wealth just sort of vanishing before their eyes.
But if you're like some salaried guy on one of these flailing American newspapers, you're still a little bit in love with him.
So when they're in the press room, it's still, oh, look at me, look at me, please.
Let me ask a question of you, Your Majesty.
Oh, you're the most handsome prince.
They ought to be embarrassed that somebody like Jay Leno, who doesn't know anything about politics, can ask a tougher question of the president on his show.
Yeah, yeah.
But I tell you, there's a reason for that, too.
That if you, at a certain level, Jay Leno understands that this is disastrous.
It's disastrous for his industry.
It's disastrous for the vitality of American life.
Once you accept that Congress can basically just identify groups of people they dislike and levy punitive taxes on them, then you're in Banana Republic territory.
That's Banana Republic territory.
And good for Jay Leno for seeing that.
Thanks a lot for your call, Chris.
You know, Chris is right.
That dog, when he goes, ha ha, yeah, I said I was going to get a dog, but hey, that's just another broken campaign promise.
What's the big deal?
Who could keep track of the bull?
This guy is actually, he's laughing at us.
He knows that essentially he suckered the media into succoring the American public.
Why should he care about whether he lets us in on the scam now?
It makes no difference to him.
He's there.
Thanks for your call, Chris.
Lots more straight ahead.
This is Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
Great to be with you.
The start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
Do you remember what it was they used to say about Barack Obama?
He was the most brilliant orator.
Do you remember when he gave that speech about racism, that he could no more disown the Reverend Jeremiah Wright than he could disown his own grandmother?
And then 10 minutes later, he disowned Jeremiah Wright, and whatever it was, two weeks later, he disowned his own grandmother or whatever.
He was supposedly the brilliant orator.
People said, this is the greatest American speech.
They started teaching it in classrooms.
They said, this guy is the greatest orator since Abraham Lincoln, since Churchill, since Henry V at Agincourt, since Socrates.
This guy is the greatest orator.
There's a Yahoo News report now on what's it called?
A gaffe a minute.
I love this.
The reporter goes, the reporter's talking about how Obama isn't, amazingly enough, amazingly enough, along with all the broken promises about his dog and rendition and gitmo and overflights to Pakistan and all the rest, along with all the other broken promises, it turns out he's not actually that great a speaker.
And I like the way this reporter has smoothly segued in the space of moments from hailing this guy as the best orator since Socrates to now saying, but in a way, quote, it's heartening to hear our politicians stumble over words, mangle syntax, and make inappropriate jokes.
It shows politicians are human too, sometimes, unquote.
That's Yahoo, that's a Yahoo News today.
How come they never wrote that during eight years of the Bush presidency?
Now at last, now at last, we've got a bumbling, lovable, inarticulate president we can all get behind.
It humidizes him.
Sure, he was this smooth, cool, super-sophisticated dude all on the campaign trail, but now we can see he's just a bumbling, stumble-bum, inarticulate oath like the rest of us.
Oh, that's heartening.
That is terrific news.
Let's go to Ed in Omaha, Nebraska.
And Ed, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Good to talk with you.
Mark, it's very good to talk to you.
America Alone is a fine book.
Thanks.
Thanks very much, Ed.
But I have to take exception to your previous caller because, well, the reason I called is that my wife and I have a special needs 19-year-old daughter.
And she's cognitively challenged and she has epilepsy.
And she's also a member of the Special Olympics bowling team.
Right.
Now, her average is about 38.
Right.
And she tries her best, and this is the best she can do.
So my question to you and all your listeners is this.
What kind of a man would use her as the butt of a joke on a national tennel television show?
Well, Keith Olberman at MSNBC actually attempted to give an answer to that.
He said on the evening this was broadcast, he goes, now there is one danger in this kind of environment, and that's in that in a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere.
That was the word he used in this, I think it was comfortable environment, something like that.
And what he was applying, what he was implying, basically, is that impeccably progressive liberal men, when they get too relaxed and too comfortable, find it somehow it's entirely natural, as you say, to make jokes about people with special needs.
This is the exact, this is the point, Mark.
In other words, what we saw there was a window on this man's soul.
I mean, he is relaxed and he is comfortable and he tells us who he really is.
But my question, what kind of a man would demean those of us who are perhaps least capable of defending themselves, this supposed champion of tolerance and diversity to tell a joke like this at the expense of these dear people.
And what you're saying is right, that it's the assumptions behind the joke that are revealing, that in fact he kicks loose, he's relaxed, he's off the teleprompter, and as you say, you get a glimpse of who this man really is.
And this was Rush's point on Friday.
One of the critics of this joke in the Chicago Tribune, a columnist in the Chicago Tribune, was writing, I believe that President Obama is a kind, compassionate person who doesn't harbor bad thoughts about special needs children or people in the Special Olympics or whatever.
But there's no evidence for that.
Basically, people have projected onto Obama what they think he is.
And a lot of the evidence when he's off the teleprompter or when he's just calling women sweetie, when he's doing his Nancy Reagan cracks, when he's doing his Special Olympics jokes, is that actually this is an rather unlikable, arrogant man who looks down on everybody other than him.
Thanks for your call, Ed in Omaha, and certainly appreciate hearing from you.
Mark Stein on the Rush Limbaugh show, you know, we were talking about this business, this tonight show appearance.
I agree with Rush, actually, that there's something unbecoming about a president who only shines in a kind of popular culture environment.
Christopher Hitchens has a line that politics is showbiz for ugly people.
And there's a lot of truth in that.
In a sense, there's supposed to be a difference.
A politician should not be entirely effective in a pop culture environment.
And there's something slightly off about Obama complaining.
He was complaining the other day that people were criticizing him.
And he's going, oh, it's like American Idol and everybody's Simon Cowell.
Well, you're the American Idol president.
You basically ran and won as a kind of presidential idol contest.
And you're now like, you're now in the situation of these American Idol winners who then go on, they win the competition and they make their first CD.
And 15 of the 16 tracks are lousy.
And you realize that the guy actually, aside from winning the presidential idol contest, hasn't got the sustaining talent to go the difference, but the distance.
But the idea of complaining that everybody is being Simon Cowell when you're going to run around doing your March Madness and doing your March Madness picks, going on the tonight show, when you're basically living as a pop culture president, don't then come on and tell us, oh, you know, everyone's being like Simon Cowell to you.
You put yourself in that league.
This is Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
Lots more.
Straight ahead.
Mark Stein for Rush on the EIB network.
El Rushbo will be back tomorrow.
We were talking about the way this is going with the Obama devotees jumping ship.
30 days in, it was all the Obama cons, the guys who thought he was going to be Mr. Moderate Centrist.
And now 60 days in, we've got the New York Times guys jumping off.
My favorite is Michael Wolfe, Michael Wolfe of Vanity Fair.
He's written this thing, Barack Obama is a terrible bore, which is a very vanity fair way of looking at it.
It sounds like Gore Vidal pronouncing on Barack Obama.
But the opening line is, sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter.
It's not often I come to the defense of Jimmy Carter.
But look at it this way.
This is March.
This is March 23rd.
60 days in.
60 days in.
There hasn't been a presidency beginning like this in living memory.
It's unfair to Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter should be suing for defamation over comparisons like this.
Because if you go back to March 1977, even Jimmy Carter wasn't Jimmy Carter then.
I mean, Jimmy Carter took longer to become Jimmy Carter than Barack Obama's taking to become Jimmy Carter.
This is unprecedented.
This is unprecedented.
We'll be talking about that at lots more straight ahead in the fastest three hours on radio.
Two hours still to go.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network.
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