All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 1, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:33
November 1, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Oh yeah, well you hear this too, the truth about public teacher salaries.
Wait till you hear this.
Just one of the many things I got to do.
And the program today, before it comes to a screeching halt in a couple of hours, greetings.
Hi, good friends, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the distinguished prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
You've seen some of the notebook entries, not the signs on the protest march.
Some of these so-called college students at Occupy Wall Street, other places around the country, are writing their sad sack stories on notebooks, notebook paper, and like this.
And then they're holding it up and people are taking pictures of it.
And they're lamenting the worthlessness of their education.
There's no future.
They've invested all this time and money in their student loans and there are no jobs.
Basically, you've seen those.
And here's one.
This is an example, but I think, ladies and gentlemen, I have detected here what's really going on with all this and how these sad sack students are just a bunch of dupes and in fact useful idiots.
Now, I'm going to have trouble reading this.
This is a camera photo of a protester's scribbling in a loose leaf notebook here.
I graduate college in seven months with a useless degree in classical studies.
I have worked very hard and am on track to graduate with, well, I can't read it.
Latin, I think, as a track to graduate with Latin, I am in a Greek organization with many volunteer hours under my belt.
My job prospects zero.
So basically, here's a person who's taken Latin and is about to have a degree in classical studies and doesn't have the slightest idea.
Her job prospects are zilch and she's ticked off.
Now, do you think somebody going to college, borrowing whatever it is, in this case, $20,000 a year, to get a degree in classical studies ought to be told by somebody at the school that it's a worthless degree?
Well, I don't know what the minor was.
It might be Latin.
I can't read.
It's a lousy picture.
I can't read the woman's printing her handwriting.
But at any rate, why is it that no one in her life told her that getting a degree in classical studies would not lead to employment?
In fact, how many college students do you think believe that just getting a degree equals a high-paying job?
Probably a lot of them.
Not that you can blame them.
That's what they've been sold on.
That's what they've been told, Ergo.
That's what they expect.
A college degree equals success, riches, whatever, not work.
This is key now.
Snerdley's in there laughing at me, but stick with me on this.
Get the degree.
The degree and the diploma are all you need.
That's the guarantee.
So this student says she wants a degree.
I'm assuming it's a she.
There's no picture of the students.
I don't know.
But this person goes in there with a degree, wants to get a degree in classical studies.
Now, I think the colleges ought to be held accountable here.
You show up, you want a degree in classical studies, you need to be told what that really means.
Well, how do you want to use your degree in classical studies?
Do you even know what it is?
Well, yes, I want to study the classics so that I can be an expert in the classics, so that I can then study them further, like, and, you know, help others.
Really?
Okay, how much money do you expect to make doing this?
Well, if it's a college graduate with classical studies degree, maybe a Latin minor, $200,000 a year, enough to pay off my student loans in the first four years.
And then after that, who knows?
Can you tell me where do you go to apply for a job with a classical studies degree?
Well, anybody who's interested in studying classically, I would think, would be interested in my services because I'm going to be an expert.
At that point, somebody at the university ought to say, babe, you are wasting your time in a nothing major.
We are stealing your money.
You're going to be qualified for jack excrement when you get out of here.
But they don't.
Now, this is part of the trick.
This is the ruse.
And it's actually clever.
Snerdley's in there laughing uncontrollably.
I know I'm a naturally funny guy, but follow me on this.
So here you have Miss Braindead, freshly out of college with her classical studies degree, who thinks that she wants to go classically study and that there's, and that people also want to study classics studiously and classically, that she's going to be very hireable, very marketable, and so forth.
Gets out in the real world and finds her only chance is Occupy Wall Street and to write a note for a TV camera about how worthless her degree is.
Well, that's what she does here.
Her job prospects, zero.
Yeah, they are, and they have been since you declared that major.
And somebody should have told you that from the moment you declared the major in classical studies.
Tell me, any of you at random listening all across a fruited plane, what the hell is classical studies?
What classics are studied?
Or is it learning how to study in a classical way?
Or is it learning how to study in a classy as opposed to unclassy way?
And what about unclassical studies?
Why does nobody care about the unclassics?
What are the classics?
And how are the classics studied?
Oh, because you're going to become an expert in Dickens.
You don't, you're assuming it's literature.
See, this money, you're assuming we're talking classic literature here.
What if it's classical women's studies?
What if it's classical feminism?
Who the hell knows what it is?
One thing I do know is that she, the brain-dead student, doesn't know what it is after she's got a major in it because all she knows to do with it is go down Occupy Wall Street and complain and write a note for the cameras.
But as I said, this is deviously clever.
Socialists, liberals work undercover for decades taking over higher education, and then they dilute it and they make higher education anything but higher.
Really, nothing special about it unless you go specific into the law or medicine or something where you really have to know it.
But most of these majors are useless, such as black women's studies, women's studies, whatever studies, postmodernist theory in the new modernist world, whatever they get a degree in.
The socialists that run universities dilute the education, they offer useless majors, and then they lie about the quality of these useless majors.
They lie about the happiness and the jobs and the money that awaits you after you get the degree in something like classical studies.
Then, and this is where the payoff is: after a generation or two of such students, after a generation or two of such worthless degrees, after a generation or two of deceived students with worthless degrees out in the world finding themselves very unhappy, very unemployable,
and without money to do all the fun things they want, what do they then demand?
Socialism as a remedy.
They demand that everybody else take care of them.
And my friends, this is not an accident.
I think this is part of a strategy that the left has had, part of many strategies they have used in taking over the education system.
We know they propagandize.
We know they indoctrinate.
We know they dumb down.
They also teach the preference of communism, the moral superiority of liberalism, socialism, communism.
They teach that capitalism is immoral and unjust.
They promote all of this worthless education.
And then these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed know-nothings get out of school with what they think is their ticket.
And it's a ticket to ride nowhere.
What do they then demand?
Everybody else take care of them.
Ergo, you get Occupy Wall Street.
Ergo, you get young generations of students asking for government control of everything because it was so unfair.
Everybody said, so they did everything.
Their parents told them they did everything.
Everybody told them they went to school, they got a degree, and these evil businesses won't hire them.
These dirty, rotten CEOs are stealing all the money and they're giving it to themselves in bonuses and salary, but they won't give it to the college graduates who rightfully deserve it, who've worked hard and have applied themselves.
They got great degrees like classical studies.
They're unhireable, unemployable.
And that's just unfair and unjust.
And ergo, here comes the clamor and the clarion call for socialism, for government to fix it.
I would love to steal this technique.
I'd love to take over education and steal this technique and put our values in here and reverse some of this stuff because this is part and parcel of what is happening in higher education today.
For all of you young skulls full of mush out there, and I realize that many of your parents are quite angry with me over the past 10 days because it is thought that I have been trying to encourage you to punt college and forget it.
You don't need it.
It's not what I said.
I said, be very careful.
If you're going to go to college, do not do classical studies.
What the hell is it anyway?
Somebody can.
You sent something down to me?
Well, good.
All right.
Department of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, you sent that to me.
Did you took it?
You sent it to me in an email.
Right.
Okay.
So I won't be able to get to it until I go to commercial break.
So it's worthless to me right now.
You can tell me I expect it to be worthless after I read it, and it's worthless because I can't go to it because I'm in the middle of a segment.
Anyway, HR found the classical studies department at the University of Pennsylvania.
He sent to me what it is.
Can't wait to find out exactly how right I am about this.
In fact, let's take a break.
I'll take a break.
An EIB obscene profit timeout.
And I did not need a college degree to know how this works.
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh, here on a cutting edge of societal evolution.
I get an email from a friend of mine who's a renowned newspaper columnist whose name it's probably best I don't mention for her sake.
She says, Rush, I have a degree in classical studies.
It's Greek and Latin.
I worked my way through college.
I only borrowed $1,000 to do it.
I can't agree with you that the degree is worthless.
In a world with so many less than literate people, classics majors have an edge.
Now, I can understand that, but where?
And I really question some of these people graduating with a major in classical studies if they really are learning anything.
We know that people graduate high school unable to read the diploma.
You all remember the story of Dexter Manley.
The name Dexter Manley ring a bell.
Dexter Manley was a great football player, primarily for the Washington Redskins.
And I think his university was Oklahoma State.
I know he's an athlete.
But he discovered well into his professional career, he could not read.
He graduated a big eight university school, big eight conference school.
Now, I know it's athletes and stuff.
But this woman or this person who wrote the note complaining about zero job offers does not appear to be representative of somebody who's seven months away from a degree in classical studies.
Classical studies, try this.
Did a lot of research during the break.
Karl Marx was a classical studies scholar.
Karl Marx, philosopher, political thinker, studied Latin and Greek, as did Churchill, I found out.
Marx received a Ph.D. for a dissertation on ancient Greek philosophy entitled A Difference Between the Democratian and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.
Now, you'll note nobody hired Marx, so what he had to do was figure out a way to destroy humanity on his own, and he was able to do it.
But nobody hired him.
His classical background is reflected in his philosophies, indeed, the term proletariat, which he coined from the Latin word referring to the lowest class of citizen.
So Karl Marx was a classical scholar, ancient philosophy and literature.
Here's what the University of Pennsylvania says about their department.
Welcome to the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for over 200 years.
The University of Pennsylvania has offered a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs representing all aspects of the broad field of classical studies, from languages and literature to history, archaeology, and cultural studies.
The department encourages interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to teaching and research and maintains productive ties with a variety of programs, including religious studies, English, comparative literature, medieval studies, philosophy, linguistics, Italian studies, pasta, the history of art, and the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Now, I don't know about you, but it does not make me want to sign up for a major in this.
This sounds like my all-time favorite comedian, Erwin Corey, answering the question, do men wear shoes?
Which he said was a two-part question.
Question is actually, Johnny Carson asked him, why do men wear shoes?
Professor Corey said, well, brilliant, brilliant question, Sir Carson.
Brilliant two-part question.
The first part of the question is the word why?
Why what?
Why now?
Why then?
Why anything?
Why?
The unanswerable quest for knowledge and thirst for knowledge.
And we should all ask why every day, every night, every morning, every day.
And with women we do.
Why?
Do men wear shoes?
Yes.
That's what I was reading when I read the University of Pennsylvania description or classical studies.
Anyway, it still doesn't change my theory of what's going on here.
You steer people to useless degrees.
They come out, don't know how to do them, use them, don't even know what they're qualified to do, don't even know where to go.
And when it doesn't work out, then you demand the government take care of it, demand socialism, or a job retraining center or some sort of.
What's the question, sir?
A program observer has a question.
Yes.
Yes, that's very true.
Useless people would be useless regardless of their degree.
No question about it.
Useless people.
There's no degree that's going to change a useless person into a useful person.
No college degree is going to turn anybody into any.
In fact, one of the big problems I think that a lot of people have with a college degree is that they expect it is the ticket, not the work.
That it is the ticket.
Victor Davis Hanson, by the way, he's another, he teaches classical studies.
He is an expert on ancient Greek history, by the way.
But he's a farmer.
Victor Davis Hansen is a farmer, and he is a writer, columns and so forth.
He's at the Hoover Institute, the campus at Stanford, writes for National Review Online and other things.
And that's where he derives his income.
He doesn't go to classical studies office.
Now we just realized here, we better get some phone calls mixed into this show.
There's going to be a balance problem.
My newspaper columnist friend has assured me it's okay to use her name.
So it would be Deborah Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle.
I met Deborah the first time in Sacramento back in the 1980s.
Yep.
And I hear from her mostly when I have made a grammatical error, and she corrects me.
Well, Deborah, I did, well, I emailed Walter Isaacson.
Walter Isaacson, you know, I bet people don't know that.
Well, no, people know it because it got reported.
But when Walter Isaacson ran CNN, remember, they wanted me to do a Sunday morning show on CNN and a Sunday morning football show.
The two would go back to back.
And Roger Ailes at Fox, because it caused all kinds of internal consternation at CNN when employees there found out.
This is when the works.
And what Roger Ailes heard about it, he says, this is the first time I've ever heard a CEO needing a security detail in his own building.
Speaking of Walter Isaacson, Ailes gave that line to Maureen Dowd at the New York Times.
Walter is now at the Aspen Institute, and I've stayed in touch with him.
Deborah, yeah, at the Chronicle, mainstream media.
She's not mainstream media.
She's not.
She's not in the sense that we use the term mainstream media.
There's a mainstream publication.
And she ranks high there.
But her head's still screwed on straight.
And nobody knows grammar like she does.
I hear about it.
You know, when I screw up.
Okay, let's go to the phones.
We're going to start Salt Lake City.
David, great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Well, Mega Ditto is here from Salt Lake.
Rush, good to talk to you.
Thanks very much, sir.
I read the best thing yesterday, and it just had to make me chuckle.
Our friends down at the Occupy movement are trademarking the name Occupy Wall Street.
Yeah, I saw that myself.
So you're telling me the anti-capitalists are capitalizing on being anti-capitalist.
Exactly right.
And they're also trying to figure out a way to keep the homeless from coming in and stealing their food.
So great.
And we've also learned that it is the homeless who are being directed to Occupy Wall Street by the cops.
The New York Police Department's telling the homeless where Occupy Wall Street is.
And they go down there.
They got booze and food.
It's a homeless person's delight.
And the homeless are showing up.
And so the cooks at Occupy Wall Street say, hell with it.
Yeah, what we need to do is these classical study people, we need to send them to me, and I will pay them how to study the classified ads to get a job after college.
Well, you know, it's obvious as I look into this classical studies business, it is obvious at one time it was something of great esteem, something of tremendous important value.
I have to think like everything else in higher education today that it's been dumbed down.
In fact, about Victor Davis Hansen, he actually Created the classics program at the University of California State University, Fresno, in 1984.
And he was professor there until recently.
He created it because of the deterioration in the whole field, because of how it's just, it's lost whatever specialness that it once had.
But I think, you know, there's all kinds of theories to explain what's going on in higher education.
For example, it's not new that college graduates don't know anything.
That's not really that new.
Now, I think it is relatively new.
Two generations that worthless degrees are being constructed and taught and awarded.
But generally, what's happened is that American employers have taken these ill-educated graduates and they've turned them into productive employees after a lot of investment.
But in this economy, in the Obama economy, employers don't have the money, they don't have the wherewithal, and they don't have the confidence or the money or the time or the patience to go out and hire uneducated people and turn them into something.
Because they can't get a handle on what faces them next year with Obamacare, what other regulations might be awaiting them.
So this woman, their person, whoever it is, I'm assuming it's a woman that wrote this note, Occupy Wall Street, lamenting the fact she's going to have zero job opportunities with her classical studies degree, the villain is Obama.
There'll be a time where the economy will be able to absorb these people again, but it's down the road a bit.
Because after you get a degree in classical studies, what do you need?
You need reality studies.
And reality studies is what you get when you get out of college and you start going to work and you learn what you don't know.
And if you don't have the ability to admit that you don't know anything, then reality studies is going to be a cold slap upside ahead.
And it isn't going to be pleasant.
Who's next?
John in Indianapolis.
Hello, John.
Thank you for waiting.
Great to have you on the EIB.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush, for taking my call.
Did you know you can get a degree in queer musicology at UCLA?
Well, I don't want to be taught by a union teacher.
Thank you.
You're going to be taught by a union teacher.
Yeah, I wouldn't blame you.
Queer musicology is a degree at UCLA.
Okay.
Excellent.
Don't ask me what it is.
Don't ask me what it is.
You can get a golf management degree at the University of Birmingham, Florida Gulf Coast University.
Well, just don't tell the parents.
See how useful this is?
Yeah, just don't tell the parents is exactly right.
You can get a degree in Star Trek at Georgetown University.
Oh, geez.
I'm not kidding.
A degree in Star Trek, John.
You've thrown me off, Rush.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
You didn't call to talk about useless degrees.
No, I've spun that record before.
Thank you.
Anyway.
Did you call to talk about the fact that Bank of America is dropping the $5 a month debit card charge?
Absolutely not.
You didn't call about that either.
Well, I'm sorry.
What is it that you call about?
You're killing me.
I called about the fact that last week you introduced that Mr. Herman Kane would be advertising on your program.
Yes, and he still is.
In all 57 states.
Paying in advance, yes.
And yet, 24, 48 hours later, I told Mr. Sergule, because he is the best call screener in America, give that man a raise.
I told Mr. Sergley that I didn't know what date that was.
And yet, 48 hours later, it's a national scandal because he's advertised on your program.
Oh, I see where you're going with this.
Kane starts advertising on the EIB network.
His numbers start ticking up, and all of a sudden, we got to take Kane out.
I see.
Exactly.
It's absolutely almost beyond belief.
Well, the way you've explained it, it's not beyond belief.
It's entirely.
I'll tell you what, the Herman Kane ads could be responsible for his record fundraising.
I mean, that's what happens to other people advertise here.
It's what happens when I advertise on my own show for 2IFBT.com.
Let's see.
John, was there anything else?
I got your subject wrong when I was there.
Was there anything else you wanted to add to that?
Yes, I do.
I think that the 2010 midterms will carry over into 2012.
I think that America is smart enough to realize and have our internet savvy.
And by using websites like yours and other right-wing websites, that I think that that will be the Achilles' heel to, you know, the debt.
Obama.
Well, plus, Americans are angry.
Well, not only that.
I also think that what Eric Holder has done with South Carolina as well as Utah and Arizona and what's going on.
They're suing South Carolina over their immigration policy.
Exactly, sir.
I think it's coming up in this.
Plus, Fast and Furious.
I really don't think the people in the Beltway quite understand the degree of rage the people of this country have over what's happening to their country.
I really, I think the people inside Washington, establishment, both parties, just look at this as the usual political game, the ebb and flow back and forth.
I don't think they understand the degree of real rage that exists in the country over what Washington has done to the country and the future.
And I think they're in denial about what the 2010 elections meant.
And I think a lot of people are going to be shocked and surprised a year from now when the presidential race results.
John, thanks much for the call.
I really appreciate it.
Folk, yeah, they are.
Bank of America dropping its plan to charge customers $5 a month for using the debit card.
The move is a dramatic retreat following decisions by several rivals in recent days to also drop their new fees.
SunTrust and Regions Financial Banks also said Monday that they will stop charging customers for debit card transactions.
What?
That's exactly what I was going to say.
If you're sitting out there applauding, you ought to stop and bend over, grab the ankles.
You think they're not going to get this five bucks from you someplace else?
You're crazy.
The thing is, you would have seen him take it with a debit card charge.
Now you're not going to know where it's coming from, but they're going to get it from you.
The views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time.
Here we are having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have to the audio soundbites.
This Chris Saliza from the Washington Post blog, postpolitics.com, he was on Angria Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, this afternoon.
And she said, what do we do in trying to sort this out?
Where, Chris, can you come down?
What he's had at the moment, Andrea, is a relatively united front among conservatives, people like Rush Limbaugh basically saying this is the mainstream media trying to tear down a conservative.
The problem with that storyline in that narrative is that as it becomes clear that he's remembering things he didn't remember 24 hours ago, and let me say, just out of my own personal reflection, it seems to me that these would be moments that you would not forget if there were these allegations made against you.
I just don't see it going away anytime soon, Andrew, because of the tack he took.
He said, not true, 100% denial.
Well, if it's less than 100% denial, even if it's only a 95% denial, there's still room there to ask questions and wonder what really happened.
It's fascinating to study this.
Just a little hoping that there's something there.
So hoping that Herman Cain steps in it.
And every time I hear one of these people go on and on and on about, let's take what is the worst that could have happened here?
What?
Done what?
Done what?
Okay, we're talking about a gesture.
By the women's own admission, there was nothing overtly sexual, right?
So what is the worst thing that could have happened here?
Whatever the worst thing is, it pales when you compare it to anything done by Bill Clinton, John Edwards, or Ted Kennedy.
Now, where Chris Salizza is the sense of proportion.
You people in the media love to talk about the sense of proportion.
Where is it in this story?
He keeps changing his story.
Things he said then aren't what he's saying now.
This is something you would never forget if you had been accused of sexual harassment and he's saying he didn't remember it.
If somebody accused me of sexual harassment and then said I had done nothing overtly sexual, I would be so confused I wouldn't know what to do.
I'd be scratching my head.
What the hell did I do?
If somebody said I sexually harassed them, but whatever it was was not overtly sexual, how could you plead guilty to it?
My friend Andy McCarthy has recently posted on this at National Review Online.
And here's what he says is, I'm not sure how conflicting Herman Kane's statements about this nonsense are.
And I frankly don't care.
Kane's made a number of conflicting statements on matters of substance, i.e. negotiating with terrorists, abortion, the propriety of killing al-Qaeda's al-Awlaki.
We got abundant basis to probe how consistent Herman Kaine is, how deep his convictions are, and what all that says about his suitability, just like we ought to be probing conflicting positions taken by other candidates.
But on the politico sensation out of nothing report, the real story is how confident the left is that it has set the terms of and the traps in our public debate.
Unfortunately, that confidence seems well placed.
So as far as Andy is saying here, the real thing to note is how confident the left is in their ability to set traps and nail somebody on the right.
Set traps and nail a conservative.
There's something seminal that has taken place now in this Herman Kane story, and it is this.
The press has given up on the crime.
The press is no longer concerned with what Herman Cain did.
Now they're trying to get Herman Kane on the cover-up, even if they have to make up the cover-up.
Their story today, I should have it in front of him, I've got it in the stack.
Their story today, basically at the end of it, they're asking these women to come forward.
Damn it, help us here, they're saying about how much easier this would be and about how important it is for these women to come forward, put their names to it, and nail this down.
Damn it, the women won't come forward.
What are we going to do?
Okay, so they have to give up on the crime.
This is very important, folks.
They're now, you just heard with Chris Salizza, now they're trying to nail Herman Kane on his inconsistency, on the cover-up, how his story is changing.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
Don't go anywhere.
Wow, another busy broadcast hour has come to an immovable, screeching halt.
Here's the end of the political piece, by the way.
Republican strategists privately speculated Monday that Kane's campaign could suffer grievous damage if one or both women came forward with new details.
They're begging these women to come forward.
I am more interested in what you think of this.
▲
Export Selection