All Episodes
Previous Next
July 17, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:44
July 17, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The views expressed by the host of this program documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
And that's all you need to know.
It's a thrill and delight to have you with us each and every day.
And if you want to be on the program, that could happen.
You need to really think about it because it could happen.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
My friends, I can't tell you the number of people who have, well, recently and over the course of my sterling professional career who've said to me in a rush, it's a lose-lose proposition to talk about race, even seriously, the way you try.
You can't win.
All you're going to do is get yourself in trouble, and it isn't worth it.
You just ought to leave it alone.
Just make it one of these things when something comes up, just discipline yourself to ignore it.
Don't go there.
I've been told this.
Gee, I don't know.
I probably, this is the first time I mentioned Jesse Jackson's name back on the radio, back in 1983 in Kansas City.
And I hear it from close friends, people who say there's no rush, there's nothing to be gained.
And my reaction to that's always been, why isn't there?
They may be right.
And why isn't there anything to be gained?
Why is it a lose-lose proposition to discuss race?
And I think it would be said not just of me, but a lot of people probably would be advised the same way.
Just leave it alone.
Problem with that is that when you surrender it, you're surrendering it to who?
Who are we letting discuss it and therefore shape opinion about it?
In my mind, the answer to that question is the people who have made a mess of this country and this culture for way too long, and that is leftists.
Of all races, creeds, stripes, religions, I don't care, leftists.
There's an ideology that has slowly been eating away at the foundational fabric of this country.
And I just, I don't know whether it's race or whether it is any issue.
I don't care what.
I just, I can't let it go.
I care too much about the country, and I care too much about everybody that lives here.
And I'm cursed.
I think I'm cursed.
I'm cursed with a, well, I have a hope, a desire, that everybody in this country love it.
That everybody in this country enjoy the life they've been given and the opportunity they've been given to live that life in this country.
And I can't tell you how disappointed I feel when I run across people that don't and can't enjoy their life.
And I think that's what this really comes down to.
I mean, folks, The kind of anger and angst and tension on this and practically everything else that the American left cares about does nothing but make people miserable and nervous and in some cases unhappy.
Even the people they claim they're looking out for, and maybe not just even, but especially the people they claim to be helping.
They claim to be the sole representatives of.
They claim to be the guardians.
Those people that are under their wing are miserable.
And that misery and angst, unhappiness, it is exacerbated by the left.
It's amplified.
And anything other than that isn't permitted.
And that just, well, it bothers me.
And in some ways, it honestly does break my heart.
I have such a deep appreciation for the uniqueness of life.
We all only have one.
And most people, well, maybe not most, way too many people don't even think about it, because for whatever, too busy, too absorbed in things.
But I've always kind of been in awe of it.
And the fact that there's only one and the fact that all we have on the other side of it is faith, that there's more.
But nobody can prove that.
That's just faith.
And so this is it.
And I've been very lucky with mine.
I've been extremely fortunate.
And because I don't think that I'm anything special or unique, I think it's possible for everybody.
But then I look around and I see so many people that basically look like they're just unhappy to be alive.
They're just miserable and angry all the time.
And I look at the people making them feel that way because they are the same way.
And it infuriates me.
So I want to, I just want to help.
I would like to be able to change attitudes and thinking in a positive way that would cause some people to reflect a little bit deeply, more deeply than they do, on the really rare opportunity that life in this country affords people.
So this latest racial thing, this Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case, all the actors in it, Rachel Gentel, people rush, don't go there.
Rush, they're not going to understand when you're trying to be lighthearted and funny about it.
They're wiring and wound too tight, and everybody's just waiting to be offended, and they're just waiting to be mad because they want to shut you up.
And you shouldn't give them ammo.
I know all that.
I just can't help myself sometimes.
I just can't not talk about it.
Now, our caller, Eileen, said that she saw something recently, and I found out what she saw.
It's a Wall Street Journal piece.
A Wall Street Journal, what was it, article, editorial, actually, called America's Assimilating Hispanics.
And the journal piece claimed to have evidence.
They claimed that they had seen evidence that showed that Hispanics are following the path of earlier immigrants and are assimilating into a singular American culture.
Now, Eileen believed it.
She read it.
It's a 2007 editorial that is being recirculated.
You have to keep in mind when you read it, though, that the Wall Street Journal is very much a pro-amnesty organization.
And not just the editorial page, but the entire newspaper is what I call open borders.
They want this influx of people.
They want the opportunity for cheap labor.
For whatever reason, they can't find Americans to do the work.
Too many are unemployed and not suffering from it, so they don't want to work.
What do they need?
The labor pool.
And that's the journal's constituency.
And so that's who they serve.
And the article at the same time, it was another article then points out that while Hispanics are assimilating, that African Americans born in this country aren't.
And in fact, they're not only not assimilating, they're regressing.
They are balkanizing, if you will.
Now, both of those assertions are fascinating.
In the case of the first one, the journal and the Hispanic assimilation, you do have to read that, knowing full well that the journal's in favor of amnesty and open borders.
And if all that assimilating is taking place, then why do we hear even more often in our society, press one for English?
And why is the audience for Telemundo and Univision, both those networks, growing?
Now, as to the other side that African Americans are regressing, oh, yeah, I heard Eric Holder say we have to have the courage to talk about race.
Nobody has the courage to talk about race.
Everybody gets beat up for doing it.
And particularly if you happen to be effective or persuasive in changing people's attitudes that the left does not want them to have, if you are able to talk people out of the mindset the left wants them, then you are really a target.
And most people don't like being targets.
They don't.
So Eric Holder and Obama, first black president, first black attorney general.
Well, you know, it's interesting, what's going on right now, the Congressional Black Caucus is having its convention.
I think NAAECP, the Congressional Black Caucasians, and the NAAC, either at the same time or back to back.
And in both places, Holder and Obama are being pressured to do something about this Zimmerman thing and the travesty of justice.
Now, you would think that President Obama would try to rise above this and do what everybody thought that he was automatically going to do by virtue of being the first African American.
That's unite everybody.
But he's not doing that.
He's got this constituency to serve.
He's got the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucasians.
You get the NAACP holder the same thing.
And they're out there and they're dangling a carrot in front of these people.
Don't worry, Zimmerman's not off the hook yet.
We just had a jury trial, and we just had a verdict, and we just had everybody involved.
Race wasn't part of it.
But because it didn't turn out the way the left wants, that's not the end of it.
No, we're not going to stop until we get what they want.
If they have to put pressure on Obama, don't know how much it'll really take.
They have to put pressure on Obama or Holder to get what they want.
What are Obama and Holder going to do?
I find it funny that Obama and Holder are being portrayed as just innocent bystanders here, but they're really under a lot of pressure.
The Civil Rights Coalition is making a big move, a lot of pressure.
You've got Obama and Holder.
And I have to laugh at that because Obama and Holder lead that movement.
They're not innocent bystanders waiting around to be influenced.
Let's see, even saying that is risky.
Yeah, but Holder's out there say we need courage to talk about race.
Well, let anybody try, see what happens.
They're lied about, taken out of context, mischaracterized, and people set out to try to destroy them.
So everybody's afraid.
I think, may not be number one, certainly top three reasons the Republicans don't exist in Washington is because they don't want to be called racists.
So the Republicans are caving on practically everything where Obama's involved, because otherwise they're going to be called racists.
And the media is going to pick up on it.
And the lie will be spread far and wide.
And the Republicans probably rightfully think there's nothing they can do about it.
They can't stop it.
They can't change anybody's thinking, particularly in the black community.
The black community believes every Republican is racist, sexist, all that stuff.
And that's what's so frustrating.
Not true.
Nowhere near the truth.
In fact, I would venture to say that most of the racism in this country is on the left.
And most of the oppression in this country stems and originates from people on the left.
They're the ones that demand you think right.
They're the ones that demand you behave the way they require.
They're the ones that demand you live the way they tell you to live.
They're the oppressors, if you will.
Now, I mentioned there's a piece, PJ Media, by David Goldman.
And I've got to take a break here, but before I go, I'm going to give you the headline of this piece and let you have some idea what's coming next.
What do you do when the oppressed are their own worst oppressors?
And this is about African Americans.
David Goldman.
I take a quick break.
As I said, we'll be back.
We'll continue after this, folks.
Do not go away.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back.
El Rush Baugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Okay, why, or I'm sorry, what do you do when the oppressed are their own worst oppressors?
PJ Media, this is David Goldman.
He starts this way.
My earliest memory is looking up at a circle of black and white faces.
I was seated in the living room of the family home in Edison Township, New Jersey, and the group I saw was the local chapter, the NAACP.
My association with the civil rights movement goes back to the age of two.
The year would have been 1953 or 1954.
And my parents were left-wing activists, among the very few white people involved with the NAACP at the time.
Their activism was deep.
In 1950, my father drove from New York with a group of Columbia University students to protest the impending execution of Willie McGee, a black man convicted and eventually electrocuted for the alleged rape of a white woman in Mississippi.
I followed my parents' example.
In my senior year of Haskrule, I organized and led a student civil rights demonstration.
I marched next to Andrew Young.
You can look it up.
I believe in civil rights as much now as I did then.
That's why it's painful to watch the degeneration of the NAACP with its silly petition to persuade the Justice Department to bring a civil rights case against George Zimmerman.
The leaders of what used to be a civil rights movement want to talk about everything but the main problem afflicting black people in America, and that is the breakdown of the black family.
Just 29% of black women over the age of 15 were married in 2010, according to the Census Bureau.
Just 29% black women over the age of 15 were married in 2010.
That compares to 54% of white women.
At all ages, black women were about half as likely to be married as white women.
It's an astonishing number, he writes.
The percentage of out-of-wedlock births has risen from 18% in 1980 to 40% in 2010.
29% of white births were non-marital against 73% for black births.
That's nearly 75%, that's nearly three-quarters of all black births occur outside of marriage.
Young black men without a high school diploma are more likely to be in jail than to be employed, according to the Pew Institute, which did the scholarly research.
And so Mr. Goldman gets to his real point here in the lead sentence of the next paragraph.
The worst oppressors of young black men are older black men who abandon their children.
And the second worst oppressors of young black men are other young black men.
94% of black murder victims are killed by blacks.
The accelerating decline of the black family portends a much worse situation in the future.
Now, what have civil rights organizations and black clergy, or why have civil rights organizations and black clergy wagered their reputations on the Zimmerman case?
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the issues that really concern African Americans simply are too painful to discuss.
And there it is.
You just can't talk about it, Rush.
Five years after the ultimate boost of self-esteem, the election of the first black president, things are getting worse, and they're getting worse faster.
If black leaders from Obama and Eric Holder on down can't talk about the real problems, then the prospects for the future are frightening indeed.
And he has a postscript here.
He says, conservatives should view African Americans' emotional response to the death of Trayvon Martin with empathy.
What makes the incident so hard to bear is so many young black men do die every day through involvement in violent crime.
However, it's 93%, 92% black on black crime.
Anyway, I read this, and again, this has stuff that you're not supposed to say.
You're supposed to leave this alone.
But I, one more thing on this, and then we'll get to the phones.
And we are back.
Great to have you with us, my friends, El Rushbaud, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Rachel Gentell was on television with somebody, and she said that she's educated.
She has a 3.0 GPA.
Well, her high school, I guess.
She's 19.
I don't know where she goes to school, but she said that it's wrong to think that she is uneducated.
She's got a 3.0.
I don't know in what, just overall GPA.
Now, if she does, it's – well, it leads to – I have an editorial here in the Chicago Tribune.
And it's about Chicago Public Schools.
Chicago Public School officials revealed yesterday that only 52.5% of the district's elementary students met or exceeded state academic standards in the last school year.
That is down 22% from a year earlier.
That is horrible.
You know the numbers in New York.
The dropout rate in New York has grows of 50%.
In Chicago, public school officials revealed that only 52.5% of the elementary students in the district met or exceeded academic standards.
And let's all acknowledge that academic standards ain't what they used to be.
So it's pretty pathetic that just barely over half of Chicago public school students are meeting current standards.
That is a 22% drop from just last year.
Students didn't suddenly get less intelligent, it says here.
They were not doing as well in the past as everyone was led to believe.
That's the point.
The state had dumbed down the tests and lowered the scores to avoid sanctions from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Educators fed parents an illusion that the vast majority of Illinois elementary students were performing well and fed the illusion that they were on track to succeed in haskruel and go to college, but they weren't.
They weren't learning anything and that was being camouflaged.
They weren't learning anything, but that wasn't being reported.
The school district was doctoring everything so as not to lose federal money.
And as this editorial points out, this isn't exactly news.
We've been talking about this for years, they say here at the Chicago Tribune.
The state of Illinois finally moved last year to toughen the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, SAT, in anticipation of meeting new national standards known as the Common Core Curriculum.
Chicago has now reported its results, the first indication of how much inflation was going on in the Illinois SAT.
We don't know yet how big the drop will be across the state, but you can count on shock from Zion to Cairo.
The Illinois State Board of Education has preliminary figures, but says it won't release them until final figures are available in the fall when everybody's forgotten about this.
The board, which took a lot of heat in pushing through the higher standards, should release the preliminary figures now, the paper says, instead of letting them trickle out district by district, the results will be ugly.
Thousands of students statewide who were rated as meeting standards just last year will not make the cut in 2013, and their work is no different.
Their work has been pathetic.
Their performance has been pathetic, and they've been passed.
And they've been told that it's okay.
And this was done for a number of reasons.
It wasn't just getting federal money.
It was so the teachers would meet their performance examinations.
And it was so the teachers would get raises.
It was so there's all kinds of reasons for this.
But students weren't performing, and that was covered up.
And it was covered up dramatically.
As poorly as everyone thought Chicago schools were performing a decade ago, the reality is much worse.
And the achievement gap between minority and white students remains wide and in some cases even wider than in past years.
And what this means is that African American students are in even worse shape than the district-wide average.
Now, this to me is inexcusable.
Who runs these organizations?
Who runs these districts?
Who comes up with these requirements?
Who then comes up with these techniques to avoid proper assessment?
It's leftists, folks.
See, this to me is one of the starting points for discussing race.
And what, because what we're talking about here is how the people in charge, the people who claim to have their best interests at heart, are not educating them.
They're simply not being taught.
I'm sure Rachel Gentel thinks she's got a 3.0.
She believes she's got a 3.0.
And somewhere she probably does, but it ain't a 3.0 that is recognized as a 3.0 by current standards, but she's got one.
Which is the point.
Rachel Gentel and people like her are being exploited.
Unserved.
What's the term?
Used?
Thrown away.
They're being dumbed down.
They're being thrown away.
They have no chance.
They're not learning anything.
At the same time, they think they know it all and that nobody else knows anything.
It's compounded.
At the same time, they think they're on the cutting edge.
They think they're trendsetters.
They aren't being prepared.
Nobody really cares about them.
And the people who don't really care about them somehow get away with being thought of and perceived as their protectors and as their guarantors.
It's just a shame.
It is an absolute crime.
And then, Rush, don't talk about it.
You're not rushed.
You're not supposed to go there.
There's nothing to be gained here.
And the sad thing is, that's probably true.
But at least when I finish, I at least think I've given it a shot.
And what little shot it can be from a radio show, but still, I feel like I have given it a shot.
You remember all those stories that came out of Atlanta about the same thing, the teachers and the superintendents, so forth, were changing the grades, literally elevating the grades of the students so that better results would be shown so that everybody involved would end up getting more money.
The district, the teachers, the superintendents.
And while it was a scandal and it was perceived and reported as a scandal, the real scandal was not commented upon, and that was the damage done to the students.
And I remember one of the interesting characteristics or facets of the story out of Atlanta was the students, some of them, were outraged that they'd been shortchanged.
Some students had the presence of mind to understand, you mean they gave me an A and I didn't qualify.
They didn't want that.
They didn't know anything.
They had not been taught anything.
They had not learned and actually passed tests that qualified them for an A.
And some of them spoke out and were upset about it.
And the people doing this are the ones who care about them, the ones that love them, the ones that are protecting them against all this racism out there.
The people responsible for this are the ones supposedly looking out for them.
And the ones doing all this are destroying their futures.
They aren't teaching them anything and they're not preparing them.
And furthermore, they're filling their minds with a bunch of destructive things.
I'm going to tell you something.
And I fully expect to get in trouble for this.
Oh, that got their attention in there.
Probably got your attention too.
So we've got this piece by David Goldman, in which he basically says that what do you do when the oppressed are their own worst oppressors?
And his point is he's a civil rights activist from back in the 50s.
And he says that the greatest damage being done to blacks in America is being done by other blacks.
That's the summary of what he's saying.
And then this piece out of Chicago with what's happening in the school district there, and that comes after what's happened in Atlanta.
And then you go to New York with a dropout rate's 50%.
And you look at how much money is being spent per student to educate them.
And you look at the results.
And it's, folks, it's just unacceptable.
I would call it criminal, but it's just.
We're talking about American kids here.
We're talking about Americans are going to grow up clueless.
Worse than clueless.
They're going to grow up thinking things that are absolutely no use.
They're going to grow up thinking things that end up being destructive for them.
When I watch cable news and I see a guest from the left wing of the civil rights movement, I don't care if it's a Columbia professor or a University of Pennsylvania professor or some activist, here it is.
It appears to me in listening to them and watching them that they don't think that there is anything good or positive or enriching or joyful about being a black person in America.
All I see is anger and rage and unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
They just, they don't seem happy.
And it's depressing.
Because of all the places in the world, see, this is where I get in trouble.
Of all the places in the world where enjoying life to the fullest extent possible, of all the places where you can do that, it's this country.
But see, that's where it breaks down.
Because while they're not taught anything in school, and while they got great inflation, they're also told stories about how rotten this country is.
And maybe it isn't any wonder why they're not happy.
Maybe it isn't any wonder why they're not positive or forward-naked.
I just, it's something I've noticed for a long time.
I don't have to mention names to you.
There are exceptions.
It's not universal, but on the political side, there just doesn't seem to be any joy, any happiness, anything good or positive about being a black person in America.
And I wonder, my gosh, are they teaching young kids that?
It's just, as I say, it's profoundly dispiriting and depressing.
And that's what made me remember, I think it was Alastair Cook, the British historian, who said that in his letters to America that America would never overcome the original sin of slavery.
Nothing they could do, nothing we Americans could do that would ever put that in the rearview mirror.
And that's depressing too.
Because going back to the first thing I said about this, we all only have one life.
And in the United States of America, to see so many lives not even get close to realizing full potential dreams, it's just really depressing because it's so unnecessary.
And to think that this exists because this set of circumstances is helpful to some people, the Democrat Party.
It's just, I know.
I'll be back in just a second.
Don't go.
Okay, to the phones we go.
And we go to Boston, Scott.
I'm really glad that you waited.
Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Rush, you're my hero.
I appreciate that, sir.
Thank you very much.
Well, you are.
And I have to say, while waiting, the parodies are something that I've never heard.
I guess you don't hear them unless you're waiting to talk to you.
But those are hilarious from Bird Brain Flu to the Bonnie Franks album.
Oh, yeah.
I'm glad you like those.
Those have been aired throughout the program's history.
Yeah.
And we just recycle them there rather than play dumb elevator music for you.
Sounds good.
Don't ever give up, by the way, or relent or relinquish talking about the racist thing.
I hope my kids will listen.
I've been telling them for a long time, you know, how you're able to discuss things in the arena of ideas, but just in particular, the racist thing.
As far as credibility goes for you, I mean, you were married by, I think his name is Hutch, a black minister.
You had Elton John, you know, playing at your wedding.
So in terms of having credibility to discuss the issue in terms of where you're at, I mean, that kind of thing is something that needs to be known for just people who pick up and listen to you and just might hear about you on a small-time basis.
But the reason I called is, you know, I'm trying not to be emotional about it, but it's hard not to be.
There's a Twitter mayhem going on up here in Boston about the Rolling Stone cover, Zhokar Zunaev in a sort of fluffy teenage look from Facebook.
You know, that is amazing.
There is a celebratory almost, almost a celebratory cover photo of Zhokar Sunaev on the cover of Rolling Stone.
This guy being romanticized.
I know that there is tumult in Boston over this.
And just, I'll tell you, Scott, just more evidence of the decline that's happening all over our culture.
It's the fastest three hours in media, my friends, and two of them are already gone in the can, as it were, on the way over to Limbaugh Broadcast Museum at rushlimbaugh.com.
But we will be back.
▲
Export Selection