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Jan. 18, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
January 18, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Ha, how are you?
Oh, man, oh, man, great to have you here, ladies and gentlemen.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence, hosted by me, your guiding light, your Brock, your bulwark, your you can count on him guy.
No hoaxes here at the EIB network, real or imagined.
And it's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
That's right, folks.
No hoaxes.
No real hoaxes.
No imagined hoaxes.
No imaginary hoaxes.
It's going to be fun today.
I always look forward to Open Line Friday.
I don't know why it never ends up being anything different, but there's always the chance it could be.
Realize that it never ends up being anything any different.
I don't know why I still do it.
I give callers the opportunity to talk about anything they want besides what I care about.
And every time they come to the phone, it's stuff I care about.
Which is, I mean, that's cool.
Whatever happens, happens.
It's 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushball at EIBnet.com.
You know, I should have asked this question.
I got to do some inside baseball stuff here, folks.
Bear with me.
I should have asked this because it's really off-the-air stuff.
It's about the website and stuff.
Cocos, shoot me a quick flash.
Should I mention what we're doing today, what might go wrong, and the thing might blow up, or should I not?
Well, I need guidance on this.
And as soon as I get the answer, I'll tell you where everything's going to be okay on the website or whether it's not.
Anyway, Lance Armstrong was on the Oprah show last night on the own network.
I'll tell you, I hope you found this interview and network on your cable system in time because she got right into it.
She got in, got it, and got out.
I mean, you could have wrapped this thing up the first 10 or 15 minutes.
It's when he admitted everything.
And then after that, it became kind of aimless wandering.
New York Times says that the reason Armstrong's doing this, everybody's been asking me, why do you think he's doing this now?
The New York Times says that the reason is that Lance Armstrong wants to compete in triathlons and running events, but right now he can't under the world anti-doping code that typically governs competitions like those.
So confessing to a media figure might get his lifetime ban lifted.
That's what the thinking is.
Well, that's what they think.
A media figure with a quasi-religious following might get his lifetime ban lifted.
That's just what the New York Times says.
All kinds of other reasons abound.
Therapeutic doesn't want the pressure living lie anymore.
Wants it just all out there, clean slate.
Doesn't have to worry about who he told what lie to anymore.
But even some of the other people involved still say he didn't come clean enough.
It was Betsy Andreas.
He didn't come clean.
He didn't apologize for lying to us.
He's still narcissistic.
So there's still some people out there that are not happy.
Of course, the sports writer media, these paragons of moral virtue, these guys that have never had one moral slip up in their lives.
You ever notice that about reading the sports media?
In fact, there's an interesting piece from one of the founders at Deadspin that I have here today.
I thought this piece was filled with potential when it started, and it just didn't quite get where I would have taken had I written it.
But basically, this guy, co-founder of Deadspin, writes a damn good indictment of the drive-bys and how this kind of thing can happen, particularly in sports media.
And he raises a fascinating question, and it's something that I've thought about a long time.
Going back to my days, well, back to a kid, teenager baseball fan, and reading newspaper about athletes.
But when I was working for the Kansas City Royals, one day it just hit me.
Every, for the most part, every media story about athletes, these people are put up on pedestals because of their athletic ability.
And they're used.
This is not a role model complaint or argument about that.
They get treated in the media in a special, almost indescribable way that nobody else other than entertainers, Hollywood types, also get.
And in this indictment of the sports media by the Dead Spin, which broke the story on the hoax of Mantaiteo, that's who Deadspin is, soon to be the new AP, in competition with TMZ for that.
Basically, they talk about how it happens, how the narratives get started, and how it is that not one person in four months of a story can recognize that they're being hoaxed in the media because the story's too important.
The story's too valuable.
The story fits what they already believe about sports, that everybody in it is special.
Everybody in it is a cut above, better than everybody else.
Narratives and stories like this generate a lot of hits, a lot of clicks on websites, generate a lot of attention.
In other words, there's a lot of investment in the hoax.
It's kind of like the way the news media covers Democrats.
It's impossible for a Democrat to be a failure.
It's impossible for a Democrat to be a reprobate.
It's impossible for a Democrat to be a mess.
It simply doesn't compute.
It's not possible for a Democrat president, a Democrat senator, a Democrat president who got Lewinsky's in the Oval Office and was disbarred, lying under.
It's not possible for those people to be less than superstars.
It just isn't possible as far as the mindset of the media is concerned.
And thus, this guy's point is that sometimes they are genuinely shocked when these people that they put way up on these pedestals turn out to be just average, common, ordinary, everyday people with foibles.
Just like everybody else.
So we've got that to discuss and dissect.
And media analysis is a very popular thing these days.
Everybody's engaging in it.
So I'll take my turn.
We have, of course, the gun control battle raging on.
The status of the Republican Party.
Where are they today?
Where do they stand?
What are their prospects?
We have the New Jersey governor, Chris Crifty.
Chris Christie, obviously now, he condemned the NRA ad.
Did you see that?
Let me find the soundbite.
I told the broadcast engineer we're going to start with Lance Armstrong, and I just decided we're not.
Now I got to find Chris Crimp.
Here it is.
Number four.
Well, let me check and see if I got a note here from Okay, Coco said, don't bother telling you that the website video might blow up today.
So, okay, good.
So here is Chris Christie.
He was in Trenton, New Jersey.
He's the governor of New Jersey.
And he called the NRA ad reprehensible.
Now, it's obvious to me what's happening here.
Governor Christie is positioning himself for 2016.
And I think that he hopes to pose a real challenge to Hillary in the Democrat primary.
Here's what he said, got a Q ⁇ A yesterday at a press briefing to announce the creation of the NJ Safe Task Force to study how to reduce gun violence.
And during the Q ⁇ A, he said this.
To talk about the president's children or any public officer's children who have, not by their own choice, but by requirement to have protection and to use that somehow to try to make a political point, I think is reprehensible.
I think it's awful to bring public figures' children into the political debate.
They don't deserve to be there.
And I think for any of us who are public figures, you see that kind of ad and you cringe.
So there's Governor Christie positioning himself as I think a real challenger to Hillary in a Democrat primary in 2016.
Well, no, I don't think Governor Christie cringed at the kids on stage with Obama because, you see, those kids are not being exploited.
This is, again, this goes back to the media and the way people look at things.
A Democrat president would never exploit kids.
Only the NRA would exploit kids in reacting to kids being exploited.
It's the narrative.
There's no Democrat that would ever do anything bad.
There's no Democrat that ever has any mean spiritedness or wants to hurt anybody.
Whereas the Republicans, that's all they do.
I'm just saying if he keeps going with the way he's deranged, he's going to be challenging Hillary in a Democrat primary in 2016.
I know I'll hear about that.
Again, another foray into subtle humor.
But you know, even among my staff, I had to repeat it four times before they understood what I was saying.
Low information staff is exactly right on this.
I mean, you've been watching me here for 10 minutes.
It's the fourth time I used the line.
And it took you four times before you thought I was screwing up.
You thought I misspoke.
Wait a minute.
You did a Democrat primary?
You're scratching your head.
Have you forgotten the presidential embrace on the beach in New Jersey?
Have you forgotten the one week before the presidential election?
Let's see what else.
I was something on the tip of my tongue that I was going to say in relationship to this, but it slipped.
65%, Raffsmussen survey.
65%, two out of three Americans recognize that their constitutional right to own a gun was intended to ensure their freedom, that it's not about hunting.
65% see gun rights as protection against tyranny.
Now, I know many of you wish that 65% were higher.
Right now, given where we are elsewhere, I will take that number.
I'll take it.
That is a number That's not going to sit well with the Democrats and the media after all of the attention that guns and the Second Amendment have received with all of the literally again living in a different world comments from people like Bob Schieffer and Tom Brokaw.
What was it?
Schieffer compared taking out the NRA to taking out Hitler.
Tom Brokaw, the anchor emeritus at NBC News, has compared getting rid of the Second Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
I swear these people get attached to stories.
I'm going to tell you right now what happened with Dr. King and the Civil Rights Act and the marches in the 60s, I'm telling you, are still perhaps for certain aged media people the most formative experience in their professional lives and everything gets related back to that.
As far as Brokaw is concerned, we're still living in the 60s and we're still dealing with Selm.
Selm.
Everything, you know, the country we still have water hoses and dogs being used.
We still had slavery.
Nothing's changed.
How in the world do you compare what's happening now post-Sandy hook and people buying guns, people buying guns and trying to protect and save the Second Amendment are being equated by Tom Brokaw is the same people that opposed the Civil Rights Act.
And by the way, that's another thing.
Grab audio soundbite number one.
I think this, this, I wasn't even going to use this, but here it is.
Let's grab it.
Juan Williams was on Hannity last night, and they're talking about Obama's gun control plan.
Now, listen to this.
I think that race has a lot to do with this conversation.
That's why I think you see Congressman Johnson from Georgia saying, hey, look, if you look across the South, high membership in the NRA, high amount of gun ownership, principally among whites, and in fact, mostly Republicans.
So now it's racist.
Adherence to the Second Amendment, appreciation, a desire to not touch it is racist.
Only white, racist Southerners care about the Second Amendment.
And I have no doubt, by the way, that Juan Williams, a child of the Northeast who thinks he grew up in Selma, believes this, folks.
I have no doubt that the people Juilliams hangs around with at the Washington Post and NPR, wherever else he works, believe this, that the only people that care about the Second Amendment are the guys from the old South, which Lincoln didn't finish wiping them out.
Damn it.
And that's their job now.
And we had those two stories mentioned earlier in the week.
Was either Slate or Salon, one of the two, and the New Yorker talking about the old South and how it's being isolated because that's where all the gun-loving white racists and bigots are.
And that's what Juiams is saying.
And here, grab number two.
May as well, Douglas Brinkley, noted historian, don't you know, on the Fox business notes on with Imos today?
And Imos is, I go to Texas every couple of weeks to various rodeos with my kid, run into all kinds of people.
I think the fear of a lot of my friends there is that this is the first step in trying to take all of our guns away from us and in effect repeal the Second Amendment.
What can be done to assuage the fear of people who feel that way, Doug?
In Texas, there's a land commissioner that wants to basically allow everybody on public buses to carry guns and bring them into the state parks and bring them every gun, almost like Archie Bunker used to want to hand out a gun to go on an airplane, so then everybody will be loaded and nothing can happen on the plane.
That mentality is just out there, but it's Second Amendment craziness.
And just as freedom of speech has some limitations, we don't go in and scream fire in a movie theater.
You don't have to have these kind of magazines to end up being a hunter or to have home protection.
So some kind of reform's got to kick in.
Race is on.
Second Amendment defenders are just a bunch of crazy racists, primarily in the South.
They believe this.
They're not just saying it, folks.
They believe it.
And so when they see this rat's muscle number, 65% of Americans, not 65% of people in the South, 65% of Americans see gun rights as a protection against tyranny.
It's going to tell them how out of touch they are.
They're not going to want to admit it, and so they're going to just discount it.
And it's not going to make them happy.
Great to have you, folks, on Open Line Friday.
Here is what Tom Brokos said.
And again, I've encountered this in my personal life.
I don't have time to relate a story.
I wish I did.
I've got a break coming up.
But I've encountered, I was told that the reason a particular guy in Hollywood hated me is because he probably marched with Dr. King in the 60s, and he thinks of you as a bull counter.
And I said, this is the 2000s.
Of course, it didn't compute.
But now it does.
These guys get locked into the formative experiences of their lives, and nothing ever changes.
They got into journalism because of the 60 Rights, 60, the 60 Civil Rights March.
They got into journalism.
It remains the reason they're there.
It's why when various Democrats speak as though slavery still exists, the media don't find anything objectionable about it because they, for the most part, agree.
Brokaw said that this Second Amendment fight right now reminds him a lot of what happened in the South during the 60s.
Good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets.
Total violation of the fundamental rights of African Americans as they marched in Selma and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture, in effect, become the face of it.
Those are all Democrats that did that, Tom.
So civil rights, civil, what is the Bill of Rights?
The first Ten Amendments.
What's the Second Amendment?
Is that not a civil right for crying out?
It's breathtakingly naive, stupid.
Open Line Friday.
Great to have you here.
By the way, the NFL Championship Games are Sunday.
We have the Fortraners and the Atlanta Falcons and the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots on Sunday.
And you got to, if I haven't picked these games by 2:30, would you remind me?
I intended to pick the divisional round last week, and everything raced past me.
And I forgot it.
Now, look, I don't want to make too big a deal of this, folks, this media stuff.
And we could spend all three hours every day on media and not repeat ourselves.
But I think it's crucial.
The reason why there are low information voters is in part due to the media.
And people are on a quest for fairness in the American media, and there isn't any.
And I think it does help to understand who these people are and why they see things the way they do, how they see things the way they do.
And this Brokaw quote, this is one of the greatest illustrations that I could use to make my point.
Now, I don't want to mention any names because these guys are still alive, and I don't want them to end up being the focal point.
But I remember one time I met an actor who I admired.
I admired his work.
I didn't know anything about him.
I just enjoyed his work, and I told him so.
And he was off-putting and just this side of rude.
I didn't quite understand it.
It wasn't that long ago.
This is 2013.
It was the last 10 years, easily, maybe not even that long ago.
And I was telling this story to another friend of mine in the media who happens to be liberal.
He said, oh, I can tell you why.
He marched in the South with Dr. King in the 60s.
And you're conservative, and he thinks you're Bull Connor.
He thinks.
I said, that's 40 years ago.
Yeah, but nothing's changed.
But it has.
Well, it turns out that the Civil Rights Marches, the Civil Rights Act, is one of the reasons that certain emeritus journalists got into business today because that story had everything they were taught wrapped up into it.
Fairness, overcoming evil, power, speaking truth, power, all that stuff.
Racism, bigotry, all of these great things.
And it combined with the unstated purpose of journalism, which is to change the world.
I want to make the world a better place.
That's not what journalism is about, but that's why people go into it.
So here comes Brokaw, and he goes on Al Sharpton's show.
Now, 15 years ago, would Tom Brokaw have deigned to go on a show hosted by an Al Sharpton and give it his imprimatur?
And that itself is a sign of the, I think, the destructive evolution of dignity and respect that's happened throughout media anyway.
But let's get to what he said to Al Sharpton.
It reminds me, this is about the Second Amendment fight, and who these people are that don't want to give up their guns.
Who these people are that want to remain devoted to the Second Amendment?
Who are these people that are defending the Second Amendment?
In Brokaw's eyes, you people who are devoted to the Constitution are the equivalent of Bull Connor and the Klan.
It's senseless.
It's illogical.
Brokaw said it reminds me a lot of what happened in the South during the 1960s during the civil rights movement.
How?
How does the government making moves here, various elected officials and public interest groups and gobs and other people trying to infringe on a constitutional right?
How is that a reminder of what happened in the civil rights era?
If that analogy were true, the modern equivalence of the Civil Rights Act is that you people defending and loyal to the Second Amendment are not the Bull Connors.
You're the Martin Luther Kings.
You're the people marching at Selma.
You're having your civil rights denied, or there are people who want to deny you your civil rights.
African Americans back then had civil rights denied to them left and right.
That's why they were marching.
You are engaging in activist behavior and you're buying guns to try to maintain a civil right that is granted you in the Constitution.
If anybody is a bull Connor in this regard, if anybody is the authorities letting loose the dogs and trying to deny you your civil rights, the government anybody with a brain can figure that out.
But Brokaw doesn't see it that way at all.
He says good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of the fundamental rights of African Americans as they marched in Selma.
So those of you who are not mobilizing to change the Second Amendment, those of you who are not mobilizing to make it more difficult to get guns and weapons are the modern equivalent of people who sat around and let Bull Connor turn his dogs loose on the marchers at Selma.
Man, the foundation of what you must believe is that it'd be this out-of-phase.
And then he said they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture, in effect, to become a face of it.
Now, Bull Conner and these guys are all Democrats.
But you, in Tom Brokaw's eyes, you who are trying to defend a civil right that you have by virtue of the Constitution are the modern equivalent of people who denied civil rights to blacks in the 60s, in Tom Brokaw's view.
And that has governed the way he sees this country ever since it happened.
And a lot of other journalists, too.
Try this.
If a lot of African Americans back in the 60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, do you think they would have needed Selma?
I don't know.
I'm just asking.
If John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?
Anyway, that's what we're, and these people think like Brokar are all over the media.
This is the way they're looking at this.
So now what this has become, there is still slavery.
There is still bigotry.
There's still racism.
It's concentrated among people who are devoted to defending the Second Amendment and they primarily live in the South.
They are white and they're extremists and they're religious.
And this is what they honestly believe.
If it was true in the 60s and whatever happened in the 60s to address the problems hasn't fixed all the problems, then the problem must still be the same, must still exist.
And you people trying to hold on to your guns are the modern equivalent of people.
It's just cockeyed, but it is so explanatory.
It explains so much of their worldview, of what they think of the country, how they cover civil rights news or they they still do believe that there is as much discrimination today as there was then, that it has not improved, and that things like this are the proof That we still haven't fixed the problem and that we haven't even improved.
We haven't even made any positive steps.
And these are the people reporting the news every day.
And these are the people creating what's known as the low information voter.
Brief time out.
We're going to get the phones when we come back because we always do that.
Well, we try.
Always try to get the phones in the first hour on open line Friday.
Okay, so there's some debate over whether Brokaw is a prisoner to the events that he witnessed and covered and lived through in the 1960s or whether or not he's an active propagandist knowingly spreading a bunch of BS.
I think it's a combination of both, actually, but I do believe.
I've run into enough of these guys.
I know enough of them.
These events in the past that have defined for them what's wrong with this country.
They truly believe.
And once something established is wrong, it never, no matter how many efforts are made, legislation, presidential acts, no matter what, it never really gets fixed.
Like this is always going to be a racist slave country as far as these guys are concerned.
Whether they actively believe it or naively further the idea, they still believe it.
They always will.
George W. Bush can have over half of his cabinet be minority.
Doesn't count.
Obama can have 2% of his cabinet be minority, and he's praised for diversity.
And when people pipe up and criticize him, the media come to his defense.
It was Republicans who named the first women to the Supreme Court, the first women cabinet members, the first this or that.
Right now it's Republicans who have the only Hispanic members of the Senate.
Doesn't count.
Doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't refute the charge that Republicans are racist and bigots.
It doesn't refute the charge there's still massive racism in the country.
It doesn't refute the charge that the Republicans are responsible for it.
These narratives and templates get created.
They exist because the effort, the purpose is the elimination of any opposition.
It's not news.
It's not the advancement of information or knowledge.
It's to further the majority cause of the left, in this case, the Democrat Party.
Everything that happens in the news today is designed to eliminate any effective opposition to Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
Pure and simple.
Every event that's covered must first have that ability about it.
There must be, every event must give the media that ability to attack Republicans, to attack conservatives.
If the story does not have that, the odds are it won't be covered and certainly not extensively.
Okay, to the phones.
Open line Friday, Indianapolis.
Hello, John.
You're first.
It's great to have you here, sir.
Hi.
Hey, sir.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
All right.
Hey, I'm looking forward to this weekend.
I don't know about yourself because it's championship weekend.
And I just want to ask you what your take is on the potential of having a brother versus brother coaching against each other in the Super Bowl.
You know, I think that would be great.
Why?
Because it'd be epic.
I don't think it might not ever happen again.
Yeah, but the coaches don't play.
Well, so still a good storyline.
See, storyline.
I was just going to say to you, I'm not interested in storylines.
I'm not.
And I'm not trying to talk you out of your position.
It's a football game.
You can think about it whatever you wish.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not even disagreeing with you.
We're talking preferences here.
And Harbaugh versus Harbaugh for about five seconds is, ooh, that's pretty interesting.
And then I look at who's playing and whether or not I want to watch those two teams in a Super Bowl.
Do I want to watch the Forders and the Ravens in a Super Bowl?
That's what I ask myself.
Or would I rather see the Fordeners and the Patriots?
Or would I rather see the Ravens and the Falcons?
I have to be honest and not there isn't a whole one of these matchups that really thrill me.
But that's just me.
My team's not there.
My team didn't get close to getting there.
And so my season is over half over now.
But for those that like that storyline, I mean, that game has happened.
It was a Thanksgiving night game a couple of years ago.
Harbaugh versus Harbaugh.
It was in Baltimore.
And the Ravens won.
And we got about a week's worth of interviews with the parents and friends of the parents and boyhood friends.
And we got stories about how competitive both the Harbaugh boys were, how one was a practical joker.
It went on and on and on.
It never ended.
There were no hoax stories involving those guys.
But if storylines are what you like, I guarantee you'll be tired of it after the first day.
Because it's going to be the storyline, Harbaugh versus Harbaugh.
And neither of them are going to play.
Here's Bruce in Hollywood, Florida.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, it really is a pleasure.
Megadittos to you, longtime listener from your days with Bob Grant WAB Seattle, New York.
Oh, yeah.
I remember those days like they were yesterday.
I'm a Florida resident now, not living far from you in the Boca area, but I have a question for you.
Years ago, you used to say that you wanted to get a hold of an older-style Lincoln Continental.
And my curiosity has been, did he ever get that car?
Because I know you're a car buffer.
You know, this, your memory, well, I'm not a real car buff.
I used to be when I was younger.
I was a huge car buffer.
When I was 17, I got hold of every magazine I could that had pictures of Mustang, Ford Mustang, and I would cut them out and I'd put them all over the house.
Okay.
So my dad would see it and get me one.
But he never did.
Yeah, how's that working for you, right?
Yeah.
But it was a good lesson.
But the Lincoln you're talking about was the Lincoln, the year of 63, 60, the one where the doors, the rear door opened backwards.
The suicide doors, I think they were called, if I'm not right.
Right, the same model year that was being written in by John Kennedy when his assassination.
No, I never got one.
When I was finally able to, I had outgrown my desire for one.
Oh, well, there you go.
See, tastes change, don't they?
Tastes changed, desires.
You know, when you can't have something, I think you want it a little bit more than when you can get it.
That's a very good point.
Very good.
Well, Rush, again, a pleasure to speak with you and have a great 2013.
Same to you, sir.
Are you being facetious?
No, I want you to have a great 2013.
I live in your neighborhood, so that's as far as close as I get.
And this is a privilege to talk to you a lot.
Thank you.
No, no, no.
I appreciate it.
I've had more people wishing me happy birthday than ever before.
Really, I've had more people wishing me a bang-up great year.
And it's given me hope that people think it's possible that anybody could have a good year coming up.
It's actually been encouraging.
That last caller, I mean, that is a of all the things that he could ask me, did you ever get that Lincoln Continental that you said you want?
I had to serve the search of deep, dark crevices of my own mind to remember that.
And of all the things the guy could have asked me about, he chose that.
It was fascinating.
Okay, we've got to take a brief time out here at the top of the hour, my friends.
Open Line Friday will roll on.
And again, whatever you want to talk about.
We don't talk about politics or topics that everybody else is talking about.
whatever you want.
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