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Aug. 1, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
August 1, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I want to kick off today with a hearty congratulations to Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz, Tea Party candidate, wins the Republican nomination for the Senate in Texas.
And you know what Ted Cruz did?
He served Chick-fil-A at his victory party.
Ted Cruz served Chick-fil-A at his victory party.
And we want to congratulate Ted on a generational change.
Our big sponsor, Freedom Works, was intimately involved in the...
A Ted Cruz campaign.
Happy anniversary!
Ted Cruz!
Anniversary!
Yes, all right.
Okay, I tried every year we do our best here to downplay birthdays and so forth.
It never works.
It is.
It's a 24th anniversary of the EIB Network.
That's right.
August 1st of 1988.
They just placed a giant cake in front of me.
And it's one, two, three, four, seven candles on it.
What does that signify?
Nothing.
All right.
I've made a wish, and here goes.
See, still have amazing breath control after all of these years.
Let me help you lift the cake up.
There we go.
I'm not going to tell you what I wished for.
That's a 24 more years.
Oh, that's automatic.
That's automatic.
I'm not even thinking about the end of years.
Anyway, staff, you ought to see what they gave me.
In fact, we're going to, well, you've probably already seen a picture of it.
They went out and they replicated the bust that was commissioned of me for the Hall of Famous Missourians, in which I was inducted this past spring.
Stephen Tilly, the Speaker of the House, hung tough amidst all the controversy back then.
And we flew in and had a great day in Jefferson City.
So I get an email from a couple people yesterday.
We want to drop by in California.
We want to drop by tomorrow morning just to be there on your 24th anniversary and have a little gift for it.
Oh, geez.
Okay.
This stuff embarrasses me.
You people, I do not like being the center of attention.
Somebody asked me if I'm going to the Republican convention.
It's like, no, I'm too famous.
I'm not going.
It'd be a distraction.
So anyway, I drove up.
I got here this morning in the LA contingent.
Most everybody was already here.
Unusual.
And they came in.
They said, hi, how are you doing?
When you got a chance, look, we can't bring this to you.
You finish your show prep.
You take a break.
Just head out to the front office.
Okay, so about an hour later, I walked out the front office and there's the giant, I mean, this thing is huge, bust of me.
And it took me, I read the plaque on the front of it, and then I realized it's a replica of the bust that is on display at the state capitol, Jeff City, Missouri, that I didn't have much of a chance to look at because it was, you know, get from point A to point B to point C to point D kind of day, and I didn't have much chance to stop and look at it.
So it's really, fuck, you don't know how odd it is to look at a bust of yourself.
It's not like looking at a picture.
It's lifelike, and it's huge.
It's a little bit bigger than my head, and it looks good.
This same artist did it, the sculptor out of Kansas City, Missouri.
And so we've taken pictures of it, and we put it up at rushlimbaugh.com.
Heartfelt thanks to the staff for that because it's really great.
We've advertisers, clients in here, any number of people, and they're not going to be able to avoid seeing it.
And you know what they're going to think?
My God, this guy has got the biggest ego ever.
He's got a bust of himself in here for everybody.
And I made that point.
I said, yeah, well, that's the image they have.
We may as well further it along.
So there it is on display out there.
Cookie also went back to our audio soundbite archive.
And I have the cue sheet here.
And she has a soundbite from my grandfather back in the early 90s from my old speech teacher in Haskrule, Irene Wright.
Irene Wright, we always tried to play silly phone.
Well, we did.
We played silly phone tricks, my brother and I, friends.
It was our pastime.
And every time we tried one on Irene Wright, we never succeeded.
She always knew it was us, but she never told anybody else in town that we were on the march.
She never ratted us out.
So we were able to pull off our pranks, despite her knowing.
And then there's a couple sound bites of my mother and one of Bill Clinton complaining that there's no truth detector to gauge what I say.
And I told Snerdley, you know what?
I don't know if I start with this stuff or stick to the issues crowd.
They said, no, no, no.
You never talk about yourself.
You may as well make some of this about yourself.
I said, okay.
I readily agree.
But seriously, congratulations to Ted Cruz in Texas.
And the fact that he served Chick-fil-A at his victory party.
They're out there saying Ted Cruz served hate chicken.
You realize it's certain places, Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day today.
And by 9:30 in a lot of places, Chick-fil-A was out of breakfast.
They were already serving lunch.
Millions of people are showing up at Chick-fil-A today, celebrating Chick-fil-A values.
I don't know how many millions are streaming into Chicago today to celebrate Chicago values.
How many things last 24 years?
Cars don't.
A lot of relationships don't.
It's hard to think of many things that last 24 years.
And how many of those things that last 24 years actually improve in 24 years?
Single malt scotch does.
Certain vintages of wine improve.
Cigars, if kept properly, will age and improve in the process.
I mean, you can even say that women, well, yeah, Snerdley, look, it's there's there are some attractive 24-year-olds still around, for example.
I'm just kidding.
I couldn't, I couldn't, you know me.
I love stereotypical sexist humor, especially the more politically incorrect, the more I like it.
24 years is five more years than Michael Phelps has medals, for example.
And in all these 24 years, people ask me, what are you most proud of?
I don't know.
Don't really stop to ponder that.
But there is one thing.
Started 1988, and this show was it.
And it doesn't seem that long ago.
I read tech blogs written by young people who think the 1990s is ancient.
They write about the technology that existed in the 1990s as though the way you and I talk about Model T's and Model A's.
It's a fascinating perspective.
To me, 1988 was yesterday some days.
And then it seems like a century ago other days.
And some days this seems like the first day.
It seems like August 1st, 1988.
It's different every day.
But the one thing, I go back and look at the timeline, 1988, all there was was ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN on air media.
Yeah, I mean, you had local stations, but in terms of national, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, you had the newspapers and the magazines.
That was it when we started.
Back then, you had a job at ABC, CBS, or NBC.
Those were tough jobs to get.
There weren't very many jobs.
There weren't very many TV commentators with analysis gigs on television.
You got one of those.
It was unique.
You were special.
Now those things are a dime a dozen.
Everybody, people you've never heard of, people that nobody else has ever heard of, are routinely on television as Republican strategist, Democrat strategists.
You wonder, who are they strategizing for?
Where do they go to strategize?
What organization are they part of?
You've never seen them before.
Now, it's one of the easiest things in the world to get an analysis gig, which ties in to my point here.
Back in 1988, they had a monopoly.
They had a monopoly on what was reported.
They had a monopoly on what was said about what was reported.
And as important, they had a monopoly on what wasn't reported.
They were able to spike news stories, and nobody knew.
If they didn't report it, nobody knew that it had happened.
There wasn't any competition.
And it was a faux competition between them.
ABC, the way it worked, CBS was the acknowledged Tiffany, and everybody let them have that.
NBC was acknowledged second place.
ABC was acknowledged third-place startup.
They came to the game late, and they were growing, and everybody was happy with the position they had.
Nobody expected to unseat Walter Cronkite.
But John Chancellor and Huntley and Brinkley, they carved their own niche in their own audience, and they were happy with it.
And then over at ABC, you had Dean Reynolds, whoever it was, I forget way back then, but they really didn't compete against each other because they were part of the club.
They were all part of the same club.
And then CNN came along, and they had no competitors because all they wanted to do was cable.
And they owned the news on K.
And it was all the same.
If you missed it on CBS, turn on NBC.
If you missed it there, turn on ABC.
If you missed there, go to CNN.
If you missed that, LA Times.
Missed that, New York Times.
It didn't matter.
It was all the same everywhere.
And then August 1st, 1988 happened.
And a sleeping giant known as the silent majority appeared to come to life out of nowhere.
Now, they had always been there.
Conservatives, constitutionalists, traditionalists, whatever you want to call them, however you want to describe them.
They were always there, but they never, ever saw their views reflected in major media.
Stop and think about that.
Never are so seldom as to essentially be never.
No matter where they watched, no matter where they went, every Republican sucked and every Democrat was a prince.
No matter where they read, no matter where they turned on the radio or television.
Maybe one exception was Paul Hervey, early morning in the radio.
They were there.
All of a sudden, they show up, start showing up, audience surveys in robust numbers.
You do.
You start showing up in robust numbers, and the monopolists don't know how to deal with it.
So they assign all kinds of conspiracy theories to explain why and how somebody they had never heard of, me, ended up getting a gig on a satellite out of New York for two hours.
How did this happen?
Who is this guy?
They never, because I never networked.
I didn't hobnob with management people or anybody else.
I just wanted to be a guy on the radio.
And when I moved to New York, I just wanted to be the most listened to guy, pure and simple.
And all of a sudden, they started assigning characteristics to you.
Oh, you're a mind-numbed robot.
I'm a Pied Piper.
You don't know what to think, say, or do until I tell you.
But then other days, I'm just an entertainer.
It can't take Limbaugh.
Then the next day, I'm the titular head of the Republican Party.
And then when Clinton won, that's it.
That's the end of Limbaugh.
The public has just rejected the Republican Party.
And with it, there goes Limbaugh.
Every election, no matter who won or lost, it was the end of me.
What will he talk about now that Bush is gone?
When Bush won, by the way, in August 1988, we started back in November of 88 when Bush won, well, that's the end of Limbaugh.
What's he going to talk about now?
Then Clinton wins, that's the end of Limbaugh.
The public has rejected the Republicans and Limbaugh.
Then they, only a year later, said Clinton is what made Limbaugh.
I mean, it has been to try to follow these people has been schizophrenic.
As each day, month, year, they attempt to explain to themselves how this all happened and why it sustains.
And you know the drill.
Racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, with occasional compliments, some days.
But still, there is a resentment and a curiosity and an anger.
They've thrown everything at this program to try to wipe it out.
They haven't been able to because they didn't make it.
This program did not become a success because media told you this was something cool and hip that you had to be a part of.
There is no end of Limbaugh until I determine that there's going to be an end of it.
They've tried it, thrown everything they can.
Lies, there doesn't matter.
And the reason it never matters is because of you.
You don't believe them.
You know how they operate.
You know what they're trying to do with these phony, trumped-up controversies.
Unlike other media people, the media has made people you've never heard of.
All of a sudden there's buzz and PR releases and interviews and profiles.
They say, who's that?
And those people every day have to go out and first and foremost make the media happy.
They have to go out and make the media happy, make the media like them.
They have to show up at clubs at 2 o'clock in the morning so it looks like they're hip.
And if the media turns on them, they're in trouble.
That's got to be a heck of a life to really have to every day care what the National Inquirer may say about you.
Fortunately, that is not me.
So we've always existed in a different universe or different realm from the traditional media.
It's all been made possible by you.
We've been through thick and thin on this program.
Largely been thick.
I'm not talking about my weight.
These have been 24 straight years of good times.
And it's a golden age here at EIB.
And we, all of us here at the EIB network, have you to thank for that.
Let me take a brief time out here.
We'll come back and get some of these sound bites from my grandfather, mother, the speech teacher, and then move on from that into the rest of the news of the day.
You have the big Olympic controversy now is badminton.
And when I get, can you imagine angry badminton people calling me today?
Yeah, it'll probably happen.
All right.
Don't go anywhere.
Be right back.
One of the points I was going to make in the previous monologue, starting back in 1988 when the monopolists owned everything and then this program came along.
One of the things when I people ask me proud of, I don't know if it's so much proud of, but this is something that is, if I may say so myself, amazing.
Starting in 1988, this show is it.
And the first thing that happened was that local radio, radio media's copycat, they do what works.
So local radio started hiring conservatives, and that began to blossom.
Then the syndicators, you know what?
Let's put some other people up.
So guest hosts on this program ended up getting their own shows.
Not going to mention any names, but you know who they are.
The left threw all kinds of competitors.
Jim Hightower, Gary Hartpence, Mario Kumo, Air America.
They didn't take.
But look at, there is now more conservative talk on radio and on television than there's ever been.
Fox News, 1997, about nine years after we started on radio 1988.
Through all of that, none of that cannibalized this program.
It didn't lose any audience.
All these new programs attracted their own, and therefore that, in a business sense, that pie, a pie of potential customers for advertisers, that pie grew like crazy, and a whole new market was created for broadcasters as well.
Now, if those other shows hadn't started, this audience would probably be 80 million, 100, but it doesn't matter.
Fact is that the market grew.
The 20 million that became this audio did not shrink and become 10 and half of them go someplace else.
We grew the market.
That's big.
EIB into our 24th year, ladies and gentlemen, saying what the left doesn't want you to hear.
And we have become the real mainstream media since 1988.
You know, it's interesting, the concept of growing the pie.
You realize we have a president who doesn't believe that's possible.
We have a president who believes that our economy is a zero-sum game.
He believes if somebody gets a $10,000 raise, that somebody either got fired or had $10,000 taken away from them.
He really does.
He does not understand.
I'm convinced of this.
It's not that he doesn't believe, he does not understand the whole concept of expansion, of an economy getting bigger.
Doesn't look at it that way.
He looks at it in entirely different ways from you and I. Zero-sum game.
In his view, every station that picked up my program had to fire somebody.
Limbaugh, he didn't do it on his own.
Every station, it was on 612 stations, 612 people got fired.
He doesn't see that an entire segment of broadcasting was saved, AM radio.
He doesn't see all the new jobs that were created because of it.
It's not the way he looks at it.
And we don't need somebody like that leading the country.
We don't need somebody.
He doesn't even understand the concept of an expanding pie, of an expanding market with increasing amounts of money.
There's nothing the government did.
They talk about the fairness doctrine, Reagan did that, but that was simply getting rid of a regulation.
That nothing to do with creativity.
It didn't do anything to help business.
All it did was open up the First Amendment, which it shouldn't have been impeded on in the first place or infringed upon in the first place with the fairness doctrine.
So all it did was correct a mistake.
But the government didn't build this.
And there is nobody who had their life destroyed or career ended because this program succeeded.
Anyway, back in the early 90s, we were doing Rush to Excellence tours all over the place, building the program, and put together a couple of videos of Rush to Excellence shows.
And one of the videos interviewed people where I grew up, members of my family.
And so we went back, Cookie did it unbeknownst to me, and she put together just a few of these things.
And first up is my grandfather.
This is a montage.
It's Rush Limbaugh Sr.
And by the way, about whom there is a new book out.
I've talked about it to you a couple of times from the University of Missouri Press.
And it's by a guy named Dennis Bowman, who's a great historian.
And I wanted to mention that to you.
Every family has this mythical patriarchal figure that is larger than life.
Our grandfather, my grandfather, really was larger than life, really was Mr. Perfection, the way he lived his life and was treated by people the way he treated people.
Anyway, here is just a couple of minutes of him talking about me in relationship to the rest of the family.
Well, the Limbaughs are not inclined to be people who have fun laughing and all that, but Rush's mother is.
And I would say that all of his humor comes from his mother.
When I hear Rusty, I can't help but think of his father, who he is so much like.
When his father had a conviction about a thing, he didn't hesitate to say it.
And he was like Pitt the Elder.
If a thing needed to be said, he wanted to say it with emphasis.
I can't help but believe that there is in this generation, and there will be in future generations a conviction that those values are, after all, basic and that they ought to be preserved.
I have been an active citizen in politics and I think that I had something to do with instilling that idea in Rush Jr.
Now, as far as Rusty was concerned, I don't remember that I ever was in a position where I caused my ideas to prevail with him.
But I'm sure that his father was responsible for giving him that idea.
And I think that he has lived it and he is now, I'm glad to say, giving it to a large segment of the American people.
That's my grandfather, Rush Limbaugh Sr., who lived to be 104.
And this early 90s, I forget the exact year, but he would have been very close to 100 years of age at the time.
That was recorded.
Also from the early 90s, the video producers, they went out.
What?
What's early?
Well, grandfather is being humble there.
I mean, he was trying to credit my father, and who deserves a lot of credit.
There's no question.
But for him to speculate that he was unaware of any influence he might have had, that was him just being humble.
And grandfather had profound influence on all of us in the family.
Still does.
Still does.
Here's Irene Wright, former drama teacher, speech teacher.
Never was able to pull a prank on her.
She was wise to us, but as I say, she never gave us up.
She never warned anybody that we were on the prank path.
She left the targets wide open for us to hit.
And they went and they talked to her.
The time I knew him, I thought he was destined for some radio.
Yes, that's been his love.
And I think it's quite remarkable that he, you know, has achieved what he's achieved because he did it on his own with many hurdles to overcome.
And I do know the Limbaughs, you know, go in for law.
And I remember one day in speech two, coming down in that I had my class at a rather large auditorium and there sat Rush all along.
And when I walked down, he said, you know, Ms. Wright, I just don't want to be a lawyer.
But I thought a great deal of his father, and I knew he would understand.
I just knew he would.
So I said to Rusty, why don't you talk that over with your father?
And evidently, Rush Sr. did understand because he did not pressure him into going into law.
He always wanted to do radio.
That's all true.
Never pressured me to go into – you've heard me tell the story of pressuring me to go to college, but he never pressured me to go into law.
I mean, if he had had his brothers, he would have done something else.
He went into law because it was the family thing to do.
If my father, had he followed his genuine passion, he would have run an airport or owned a flight service or done something with aviation.
That he was very good at the law.
He was a passionate defender and so forth.
But he never pressured me.
It was just get a degree.
Got to go to college.
And that was the outgrowth of having lived through the depression.
That was the only way out of it back then.
If you had a college degree, if you didn't have it, you have no chance.
Another reason why he didn't pressure me to get a radio was the first thing I hadn't quit.
Heck, folks, I was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts for a year.
You get that for signing up.
If you're still a tenderfoot after a year, you haven't done anything.
I got the Gold Brick Award after the first camp out for doing nothing.
The Gold Brick for being the most worthless member of the troop on a camp out.
All I wanted was out of there.
So I acted like it.
Here's my mom.
We have a couple of sound bites from her.
We had four and five-year-old kindergarten here at college, you know, the train school, they called it.
And one day, the teacher, who is now gone, had me in for conference, like she did all the parents.
She said, if Rush doesn't, she called him Rush, if Rush doesn't change his ways, he'll never grow to be the man his grandfather is or his father.
Five years old.
I'm five years old, and the teacher brings my mom in.
If he doesn't change his ways, I have no idea what I was doing.
I don't remember five years old at the train.
Well, I don't know what I was doing, but I wasn't aware of doing pranks.
I do remember throwing a chair off the top of the jungle gym at the outdoor playground.
Took a chair up to the top of the jungle and tossed it off of there.
I don't know why.
Don't remember why.
I don't know what was going on.
But I mean, five years ago, if you don't, he doesn't change his ways.
He's never going to grow.
And then this is my mother telling the story of her and my father watching Nightline the first time I was on it with Al Gore.
And that's when Rush Jr. turned around to me and said, where did he get that?
And I said, from you, of course.
And that really pleased Son Rush, that his dad finally realized that it was a wonderful thing to know that he had absorbed his thoughts about politics.
It's just like his dad all over.
He is just his, the political views are his dad's.
Although he said he got his smarts from his dad, and I'm going to say silliness from me.
Yep.
Yeah, she mastered this ability.
Nobody disliked her.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Remembered everybody's birthday.
First thing she ever asked anybody when she met him, and she never forgot their birthdays.
Never.
And then there's this.
This was June 24th, 1994.
Bill Clinton on Air Force One flying into St. Louis.
He called our affiliate, Cam OX.
He's there to open, I think, a new train station or the dedication of a refurbished train station.
He's flying in to do that.
And he's doing an interview with the morning host then, Kevin Horrigan and Charles Brennan.
And this is how that went.
After I get off the radio today, with you, Rush Limbaugh will have three hours to say whatever he wants.
Would you like to leave him out?
I won't have any opportunity to respond.
And there's no truth detector.
You won't get on afterwards and say what was true and what wasn't.
I'll say the president of the United States, 1994, six years into this program, the president flying into St. Louis complaining to my local affiliate's morning show that there's no truth detector, nobody to set things straight when I finish.
He's got the bully pulpit of the United States.
No, that was not the first presidential attack.
Well, wait a minute now, 94.
It could have been that, yeah, I don't know which came first, this or trying to tell a racist joke about me at the White House Correspondent Center.
When did the Waco invade?
Whatever the Waco invasion happened in relationship to June 24th, 1994.
I don't.
Anyway, yeah, I've had to face critics since I was five.
Since I was five years old, I've been facing critics.
You'll never be.
You imagine the Democrats out there now.
Gee, I wonder if there's a way we can still figure out to get him into law school.
And we go to the phones.
We are going to start Ocean City, New Jersey.
Tom, I'm glad you called.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Yeah, hey, Rush, how are you doing?
Congratulations on your 24 years.
I was painting my dining room back in 1988, and I was up on the ladder, and I had fixed the phone up for the radio for a little company.
And I was up on the ladder.
When I heard what you had to say coming out of the radio, I almost fell off the ladder.
I couldn't believe for the first time that I was actually hearing something that I believed in, the good, honest reporting and analysis of what was going on in the world.
And I'm a retired New York City police officer, and we knew in the police department all those many years that the Cronkites and Gabe Pressman and Jennings and Harry Reisner and all these guys, they were giving us bogus news and bogus information.
And to hear somebody with a good, honest American idea for the first time, it just blew me away.
I listened to that video and said to myself, where is this coming from?
It still amazes me that this is in 1988.
Listen to what the guy, this is what was happening all over the country.
Shocked.
Couldn't believe that it was allowed.
Couldn't believe.
There was a woman, Tom, who called early on in the program who told me that she feared I was going to be arrested after she heard me criticize Ted Kennedy.
Well, I'll tell you, I kind of agree with you.
I thought you somehow or another got into the studio by accident.
I figured, well, wait till they hear this.
This guy won't last.
But the other thing I wanted to tell you, Rush, is this, to ask your audience to please pray this guy out of office because he's really ruined the country.
But at the same time, he's awakened the sleeping majority.
The sleeping giant of.
Well, I'll tell you what, we hope so.
That's true.
I'm still in 1988, and people remember where they were.
Could not believe.
That's how biased things were.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing and then didn't think it would last.
That somebody was going to come shut me up.
It had to be a mistake.
Tom, thank you very much.
Here is Pamela in Houston.
Pamela, great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Well, thank you.
This is truly my lucky day.
So the reason I'm calling is I want to give you an example of how things have changed drastically.
Because back in the late 80s, when I first started to listening to you and local talk radio, every time the shows would end, they would put a disclaimer on it saying the views of this show don't necessarily reflect the opinions of this station.
Yeah.
And that's no longer the case.
Now, the stations are completely conservative, and they use it as a draw.
That's how they get you to listen to it.
It's very, you know, that's what you're saying.
That's conservative radio.
It's exactly right.
Even the early affiliates were scared to death that they're going to get bombed.
They were scared to death that something was going to come.
So they put these disclaimers on at the beginning of the program, even during the program at commercial breaks.
The views expressed by the host on this show are not the views necessarily of the staff or manager.
I started doing the disclaimer myself.
Just to show them I was on there.
We opened the program, the views expressed by the host on this show.
Not necessarily the views of the staff management sponsors of this station, but they should be.
That even made very humble.
It made some of them mad, asked me to stop that.
But she's right.
It wasn't long they started advertising the fact that they were the station.
It was a location for conservative talk.
Pamela, thank you.
I appreciate that.
And we will be right back.
You know, we ought to call the White House and tell them we have this bust of me that we'd like to donate.
We'd like to lend them a bust of Rushland.
By the way, for this Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, I'm checking my emails.
I don't care where it's coming from, whatever part of the country where there are Chick-fil-As, there are traffic jams of a quarter of a mile or more for people supporting this place.
And our first caller talked about this sleeping giant that's been awakened by Obama.
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