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Jan. 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:39
January 12, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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The views expressed on this program, documented to be almost always right.
99.6% of the time.
That's the latest opinion audit in from the Sullivan Group.
Great to have you here, folks.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Rinaldus Magnus turned 60 in 1971.
He was still in the middle of his tenure as governor of California when he turned 60.
I, of course, turned 60 years of age today.
I've always, when I was younger, I always wanted to be older, and that hasn't changed.
I haven't worried about becoming 60.
I don't worry about becoming 61 because every year has been better than the year before.
And I know that's not true for everybody, but I always thought it was going to be for me because I hated being a kid.
I just, I didn't like not having any control.
I just, I just, I just, I saw everybody older than me seemed to be enjoying life a lot more than I was.
So I was envious.
Everybody says, well, I was told, you better cherish your high school years, your college years, because you can't get them back.
I wouldn't want them back.
I didn't like them in the first place.
And the more I look at Washington, the more I'm convinced those people never got out of high school.
They're still in it.
Everything is about who's in the big click.
Who's popular?
Well, look, I know everybody wants to be older.
Nobody wants to die if you look at it that way, but come on.
You know people who worry about getting older.
They start talking and they feel older.
You know what I found about getting older?
The one thing, honestly, everybody else but me seems to look older to me.
I don't in any way feel whatever you're supposed to feel at 60.
And I remember, I remember having a conversation with someone my age back at WABC in New York, way, way back 88 to 90, somewhere in that era.
And we were talking about this, getting older.
And I was contrasting myself.
Let's see, I was 51, 91, I was 40 in 1991.
And I was thinking back when my dad was 40, and this other guy's dad, too, we were commenting on how our dads at age 40 seemed set.
You know, they had lived the active portions of their lives, and they were now established and set in, and the routine of their life was established.
It's what it was.
And I didn't think when I was at 40, I did not feel at all the way I saw my dad at 40.
So my friend and I began discovering or discussing this.
And he had a fascinating theory, one which I have now stolen and use as my own.
And that is that our father's generation and our grandfather's generation, they had to grow up a lot sooner than we did, the baby boomers.
If you are a regular listener here, you know that I believe the baby boom generation has had to invent its traumas.
We've had to invent our problems to convince us that our lives have been tough.
Because compared to our parents and grandparents, we don't know what tough is.
Now, I know everything's relative and that life isn't easy, but this generation did not face two concurrent threats to its existence as in World War I and World War II, plus the Great Depression.
These people, our parents and grandkidparents, at 18, they knew that life was about things much larger than themselves.
And the baby boom generation still has people who think life's about nothing but them.
The me, me, me, everything's about my comfort, my psychological health, my what have you.
We have had so much time on our hands that we've been able to focus on ourselves like our parents didn't have the time to because they didn't have the prosperity that we had.
They didn't have the wealth nor the opportunity for it, but they created it.
They set the stage for all of that.
And as a result, we've had to invent our traumas, our problems.
And we didn't have to grow up as fast as they did.
At age 40, some of them were worn out.
After having been, my dad was a China-Burma in World War II, but you had members of that generation all over Europe and in the Pacific theater as well.
You had the Germans on one side, the Japanese on the other.
Then you had Khrushchev showing up, banging his foot at the United Nations.
I remember my grandparents weren't taking any chances with that.
They didn't just think it was theatrics.
They believed it.
When Khrushchev came to the U.N., started banging his shoes, said, we will bury you, we will bury you.
Well, not on my watch, you won't.
And they believed it.
And that was in the midst here of the arms buildup and the Cubans and everything choosing to go with the Soviets.
And they had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there was genuine threat back then, genuine fear.
Now, we've had our wars.
We've had Vietnam.
We've had Iraq.
We have Afghanistan.
We've got terrorism now.
But we've not had to mobilize the whole nation.
I remember some years ago during the early days of the Iraq War, this might have been 2004, 2005.
I went down to Miami with some friends for the weekend.
And they wanted to take me and show me the Versace mansion, which had been turned into a club of sorts, a hotel-type club.
Big Friday night in Miami turned and went down to the South Beach and so forth.
And I was struck.
Most of the people in this place were young.
They were 21, 25, some, I guess, or even younger than that.
And they were all there to be met, hopefully.
Some wanted to meet, others wanted to be met, but it was a marketplace for the beautiful people to run into other beautiful people and hope to have fun the rest of the night.
And I'm thinking at the same time that's going on, we have people their age, men and women both who had volunteered to join the U.S. Armed Forces, and they're over at Iraq.
And this is at the time where the media is not supportive of this at all because they're bashing Bush.
The country's not at all unified here on this particular war effort, not like it was during World War II or World War I.
And it's more like, I guess, strains of Vietnam.
And I was just struck in a fit of pride, actually, over what a great country we are.
And thankfully, we have so many people who continue to take life seriously and make it work, the country work.
Because while we had, and this is not to condemn the people that were at the Versace mansion at Friday night, I mean, nobody was making them join the military.
They didn't have to.
They were there, and they were pursuing purely hedonistic and siboritic delights, purely.
And for all I know, they couldn't have cared less that what was happening in Iraq was happening.
They couldn't have cared less that there might have been weapons of mass destruction.
Or maybe they did know and they were just trying to run away from it.
So they didn't have to face it.
Who knows?
Doesn't matter.
Because at the same time, hundreds of thousands of people their age had volunteered.
And then I remember having listened to the media and the Democrats castigate those who had joined by saying, well, what would you expect?
They're uneducated.
They come from certain geographical parts of the country.
They really don't have a future given the Bush economy.
The military is their only way out.
I mean, it was offensive even back then to listen to the people who volunteered for the U.S. Armed Forces to be impugned and maligned the way they were.
And yet they did it anyway.
And I just know that that was not the case back in World War II.
World War II, the whole, you know, my parents' generation, their parents, because of necessity, there was a singular focus.
You go back and look at that war effort and the armaments that people banded together to build in a hurry, all of the weapons, the airplanes, Navy ships.
It's profound, the output of this country back then.
Even go back to the Great Depression, my grandparents' generation.
Great Depression.
Look at all the things that were built in five years of the Great Depression.
The Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building.
Empire State Building came in ahead of schedule.
Built during the Depression.
Back in the days where we actually built things in a depression.
And back then, there wasn't talk of unextended unemployment benefits.
There wasn't talk of national health care or anything.
That mindset just didn't exist.
And because those things didn't exist, people had to do what they could to defend for themselves.
And if that meant picking up, moving to San Francisco, working for whatever you got paid in a dangerous job like building the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridges or the Hoover Dam or the Empire State Building, it's what you did.
You found work wherever you could.
It was just an entirely different mindset.
My point is that people of our generation, one of the reasons I, at 60, feel like I don't feel any different than when I was 25 or 30 in a lot of ways.
And it's because my friend's theory that we've all had a lot of luxury.
We haven't had to grow up as fast.
Some of us have chosen to, but it wasn't a necessity.
There's far more wealth today than there was then.
There are far more outlets for wealth.
Technological invention and creation has led to lifestyles which are more comfortable in a creature comfort way and economically comfortable than ever before.
So it's a partial explanation.
It all came about because I was telling my friend that, you know, I'm 40 now and my dad, when he was 40, seemed 60.
And I wonder, I don't think anybody when I was 40 looked at me and thought I was 60.
Now, maybe everybody thinks their parents are old.
I don't know.
But I don't think even now people look at me and say, oh, wow, look at that old fogey 60-year-old.
I don't think it happens.
As I say, and I'm sure all of you feel the same way.
Everybody else looks older, but I don't.
I look in the mirror.
I don't look any older than I always have, although I know that's not true, but everybody else looks like they're getting older.
I don't know.
It all fascinates me.
But my point is, I have never feared getting older.
I've always wanted to get older because I always thought that every year would be better than the next.
And in my case, being honest, taking things on balance, it has been the case.
It has been true.
So thank you to all of you who have been sending in your well wishes.
I appreciate it.
I really do.
And we'll talk about this again, I guess, next year on the same day.
Oh, and by the way, this monologue, just to show you what I'm talking about, this monologue was delivered to you by somebody who is totally deaf in both ears.
If this had happened to me 25 years ago or 30, and I love to explain this to people.
If I'd lost my hearing 25 or 30 years earlier, it'd have been the end of my career because I can't do this.
Nobody can, not being able to hear.
And without the invention of cochlear implants, which enable the totally deaf to reconnect with their environment and be able to hear, there would have been no way I could have continued to do this.
Now, let's look at the timeline, show you how fortunate I feel.
Let's look at the timeline of humanity.
Straight line, left to right.
Whatever the length of time.
I don't care there are arguments about how long humanity has walked the earth.
I don't know how long it is, but whatever that length is, my time on it is no bigger than a speck of dust.
So in the timeline of humanity, my time on this planet needs a microscope to be seen.
That's one way of looking at how insignificant we all are, by the way.
On the other hand, look at the odd good fortune of timing in the timeline of humanity, where I am but a speck.
The place in that timeline where I am a speck happens to coincide with humanity's technological advent and capability having advanced to the point of inventing things to let the deaf hear.
Now, I know Beethoven was dead, and look what he still did, too.
That's superhuman to me, knowing that.
But some people have perfect pitch.
I don't.
Some people know notes.
Sing me a C and they can do it.
Are deaf or not.
Point is, it's not the thing.
I do this.
I am struck by the profundity of that, if that's the right word.
Also, I happen to come along and live at a time within the realm of the invention of radio.
There's a lot of things to be really thankful for in a godly, divine way, as far as I'm concerned.
And that's why I think all of this, I think life itself, as you know, is precious and not to be trifled with.
And I feel blessed.
And I've said this.
And I usually tell you that each and every Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But it's true.
And the one thing I will acknowledge is getting older.
Of that hits me even harder as I get older.
And the awe I have for people who can do what I can't do or who have chosen to do what I haven't, my awe and appreciation for them grows and grows and grows.
So it's a, you know, getting older is a progression of things.
There's no question.
And you start thinking things different ways, but I still remain amazed at how young I feel based on how, when I was a kid, how old 60-year-olds appeared to me.
I said, do you think they still get up and drive?
You think they still want to get out of bed?
At any rate, a little long here.
I got to take a brief time out.
We'll do it.
We'll come back and continue right after this.
Okay, back to the phones to Evansville, Indiana.
This is Phil.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Mega 20-year listening demos, Rush.
Thank you very much, sir.
Hey, just wanted to let you know that my wife and I enjoyed watching you on the Haney Project last night and look forward to the upcoming episode.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I'll say this: episode five, focus on, they're all good, they're all good, but don't miss episode five.
Oh, I won't.
What did you like about it?
I just thought it was really entertaining.
I liked that, Rush right here.
Okay.
I thought it was really enjoyable from just the interaction between you and Hank.
And I can sort of relate to my golf game.
I like to play each week, but some of the frustrations of the game, trying to knock it out of the bunker, relate to that.
Looking at the green from the standpoint of looking at the ball and we're trying to find out.
Haney has fixed the bunker problem.
If you watched the show last night, you heard me say I have no idea what I'm doing getting out of a sand trap, out of a bunker.
And hell, I mean, I have no idea where the ball was going, period.
Anytime I swung the club.
And that's, you know, you want to try to change that.
You want to have some idea where it's going.
You want to be able to go in the general direction you're aimed.
And the game is so seductive because the ball isn't moving.
It looks like it'd be one of the easiest things in the world to do.
It's not like somebody's throwing that ball at you 90 miles an hour.
But it is very hard because the movements that you undertake to hit the golf ball are really not natural.
And that's why they have to be taught.
Well, some people naturally are inclined to them if they're athletic.
Most people aren't.
It has to be taught.
But I'm glad you liked it, Phil.
Thanks much.
Next episode, next Tuesday at 9 on the Golf Channel.
You know, one of the really chilling things about the aftermath of the shooting in Arizona on Saturday, just days after the Constitution was read aloud in Congress, is so many politicians are all too eager to jump on any excuse to chip away at more of our constitutional rights.
Just days after it was read on the floor of the House.
Just amazing.
Now, do you remember, you may not remember this, the timeline, on Saturday afternoon, one of the first reports of the shooting in Arizona was by NPR.
NPR misreported that Gabrielle Giffords had died.
They were later corrected.
Other news outlets ran stories, and they mildly slapped NPR for reporting this.
And then NPR backtracked.
So yesterday in Washington at the Center for Internships and Seminars, actually have such a place.
The Center for Internships and Seminars.
I wonder what the lobby of this Washington Center for Internships and Seminars looks like.
Former CBS News correspondent Marvin Kalb spoke about the differences in the current media environment versus those at other points in American history.
Said this.
We have moved from a society that, for the most part, lived by the daily newspaper and radio into a society where we are absorbed with cable news and the internet.
We are also absorbed with radio.
There are, generally speaking, talk radio hosts who have enormous political power, the number one being Rush Limbaugh, who can attract 15 million people, 18 million people a week.
He's being paid an enormous amount of money to attract that kind of an audience.
There is not a comparable liberal representative of the world on radio, not a comparable one.
Well, it's not for lack of trying.
Is it my fault?
Who are these planners that are not allowing a comparable liberal representative of the world on radio?
By the way, does Bill Clinton know about this place, the Center for Internships?
Whoa!
I wonder if it was invented just for him.
Maybe his foundation, maybe the Clinton Library Massage Parlor, funds the Center for Internships.
Maybe Clinton created it, in fact, absolutely, with unmarked bills from the Clinton Library Massage Parlor.
At any rate, here's Marvin Kaub lamenting that I'm the number one, 15 to 18 million, he's about 6 million short, being paid an enormous amount of money to attract that kind of an audience, not a comparable liberal representative of the world on radio, not a comparable one.
Audience and quality.
Either one.
Not for lack of trying.
They've tried Jim Hightower.
They've tried Gary Hart.
They've tried Mario Cuomo.
They have tried.
They've tried a whole network.
They've tried liberal comedians.
They've tried out-of-work liberal politicians.
They've tried.
It isn't my fault.
At any rate, Marvin Kalb was not through.
Here's another point of his remarks.
NPR, which is reputed to be the finest radio news operation in existence in the United States.
NPR, last Saturday, when Congresswoman Giffords was shot, went on the air an hour or so after the bulletins first ran, saying that she was dead.
NPR was sucked in to the modern world of communications where so much information is out there.
We're not checking things very much anymore because there are so many facts, quote unquote, out there that it is difficult for us to discern the true fact from the made-up or the incomplete, quote, fact.
What, is that my problem too?
So NPR, good, hardworking, honest, decent people.
The system screwed them up.
Here they are.
They're diligently working to get the facts.
Good bunch of liberals on radio.
And they're out there doing everything that they can.
Do it right.
And they get tricked.
They reported, tried to do the best they could, Gabriel Giffords had died.
And it wasn't because they screwed up.
It wasn't because they wanted to be first.
It wasn't because of any mistakes the human beings that work at NPR made.
No, no, no, no.
It's because there's too much information.
And there's not enough appreciation for facts.
Now, Marvin Kalb says that there's not a comparable liberal on radio.
Really?
Barack Obama has access to radio TV whenever he demands it.
The president of the United States is a liberal.
The president of the United States uses his office to attack people, to punish industry.
He not only has a bigger audience than all of conservative radio combined, he has the power of government.
And yet, Marvin Kalb tells interns at the Center for Internships and Seminars that I am too powerful because there's not another liberal like me.
The president doesn't count.
I, you see, am more powerful.
Why?
Now, obviously, that's not true, but why does Kalb say this?
Kalb says this because in his ideal world, there would not be anyone opposing what Obama is saying.
There wouldn't be anybody other than him and his ex-buddies at CBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, dutifully echoing what Obama was saying.
But now there's, well, that monopoly doesn't exist.
So it's a problem.
The problem is not that there's not another liberal.
The problem is that there's a whole new media that doesn't swallow and doesn't take stenography from a liberal Democrat administration.
Bill in Livonia, Michigan.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Mega conservative dittos and Dave from Michigan.
Thank you, sir, very much.
My wife asked me to say that she also enjoyed you on the Haney Project last night.
I said, should I tell him that you like his golf swing?
And she said, more like Backfield in motion.
I'll take it.
Great.
Rush, I was struck this morning listening to the opening segments of the show, the Ashley Banfield interview with Lochner's good friend and the description that he gave.
I realize that it describes 99% of young people in America.
Let's grab that.
Soundbite number three, this is what Bill's talking about.
This is Zach Osler speaking on Good Morning America Day with Ashley Banfield.
She asked, what was his motivation?
What about this speculation that he may have been fueled by partisan politics and rhetoric in the media?
He did not watch TV.
He disliked the news.
He didn't listen to political radio.
He didn't take sides.
He wasn't on the left.
He wasn't on the right.
You think that's a description of 99% of the youths of America?
Absolutely.
And I originally told your call screener that I referred to it as his generation, but I realized it's all generations.
When I was young and entering the age when I was able to start voting, I was non-political.
And I was more, Young people are caught up in pop culture, and they have no interest in politics.
And one of the things that as I thought this through, I realized that around election time, the people that are responsible for pop culture tried their darndest to get young people to the polls.
And the campaign from MTV is, of all things, vote or die.
Right.
Yeah.
Vote or die.
Yeah.
Rock the vote.
Voter die.
Well, that was actually not MTV.
I think that was Sean Diddy, P. Diddy, whatever he combs.
He had a T-shirt.
He had a T-shirt on their vote or die.
Yeah.
Right.
That's why you're the professor and I'm the student.
Well, no, you remembered it.
I didn't.
I just minor point.
They're all the same bunch, whether it's MTV or Sean P. Diddy.
It's all the same left as the Hollywood left.
It's a great, great point.
Every election, the architects of the pop culture try to inspire their charges and motivate them to vote.
And every year they tell us they're going to be the difference.
They seldom are, but that doesn't stop the pipe dream from occurring.
Bill, appreciate the call.
Really do.
Thanks much.
Scott and Jackson, Mississippi.
Sorry, great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Happy birthday, Russ.
Thank you very much, sir.
Yes, sir.
I wanted to respectfully take issue with your characterization of Representative James Clyburn's remarks and one of the clips that you played yesterday.
I believe your assessment was that he objected to the reading of the Constitution on the House floor.
And if you listen carefully to the clip, I believe he said he objected to what occurred during the reading of the Constitution.
While he didn't elaborate, I think specifically he was talking about the outbursts that occurred from the gallery when they were covering the portion of the Constitution that spells out the qualifications for the office of the president.
Yeah, there was somebody in the gallery who said Obama, Obama.
I think that was one instance of that.
Yeah.
I don't have the transcript of the clip in front of me, nor do I have the clip.
But he didn't specify that.
He just talked about reading the Constitution.
And what happened during the reading, and that was a recent report.
Now, surely he's trying to associate that nutjob in the gallery with the members on the House floor, which is inappropriate.
No, no, you can't, not surely.
Otherwise, I would agree with you.
I don't think that was his context.
I think Clyvern and a bunch of Democrats think reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House is provocative.
And I think they think it's provocative for a reason.
The Constitution threatens them.
The Constitution is an obstacle to them.
Now, I understand you're respectfully disagreeing, but you're putting words in his mouth he didn't say, which we try not to do here on the EIB network.
He did not specify the outburst in the gallery.
He threw it into a list of a lot of things that he thought were revving people up unnecessarily so.
Anyway, Scott, time's short.
I'm glad you called.
Thanks much.
Mike, in Long Beach, California, hello, and welcome to the program.
Sir, it's an honor.
Thank you.
First off, happy birthday.
Thank you, sir.
My birthday as well, and I think it's a good idea you're stating earlier just to reflect on the blessings you have in your own life, not only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but on your own birthday.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
But the reason I call on the Hank Haney project last night, yours by far so far is my favorite.
I mean, it was not only entertaining, but helpful.
But the best quote of the night actually didn't come from Hank.
It came from you.
I'm not sure that you're aware of that.
But it was.
No, no, no, no, no.
Most quotes, yeah.
What did you hear?
What I heard was you were on the range, and I don't know if you had your driver out or an iron, but your ball went left when you hit it.
And you said nothing good ever happens when you go left.
Oh, yeah.
Started busting up.
It was hilarious.
I do say that.
I mean, it's never good to go left in golf, but politically and morally, I mean, how much worse, you know?
And it was quite good.
There's no question about it.
No question about it.
Now, I've used that line a couple of times.
I remember I was playing at Pine Valley, one of the nation's top five courses.
I was a guest there.
And I was playing in a group behind Tom Brady and Rodney Harrison when Rodney Harrison was rehabbing from a busted knee that he had experienced in a game prior season against the Steelers.
And I had just met Harrison in the clubhouse.
I had talked to him for a while about football, he was a safety and so forth.
And he duck hooked his t-shot.
We're all on the t-shot.
We're on the T-box waiting behind him.
And I said, nothing good ever happens when you go left.
And he looked back at me with sort of a glare and then a little bit of a smile trickled on his face.
I happened to see him back in December, the 19th, up in Boston for the Sunday night game with the Packers and the Patriots.
And we relived the moment.
He's a good guy.
And we'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
All right, I just reread Congressman Clyburn's comment about what happened in the House reading the Constitution.
It is conceivable that he was talking about the outburst in the gallery.
It is conceivable.
But he didn't say that.
We're not mind readers.
Congressman Clyburn needs to learn to express himself better is the lesson to be learned from this.
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