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Aug. 9, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:47
August 9, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists.
On across the fruited plane, time for broadcast excellence on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Open Line Friday, one of our favorite days of the busy broadcast week, ladies and gentlemen, because during the week, Monday through Thursday, when we go to the phones, you have to talk about things I care about.
Because I don't want to sit here and be bored.
Because if I'm bored, everybody will be bored.
And nobody wants to listen to anything.
It's boring.
That's why on Friday is such a great career risk.
Because on Friday, we'll take calls from anybody about anything.
I don't have to care about it.
It's a little present, if you will.
And give you people a chance to talk about whatever you want.
A great opportunity.
And if I don't care about it, I'll either act like I do, i.e. fake it, or who knows what.
But I always look forward to it because sometimes it features a lot of surprises.
I've always said the purpose of callers, and this is one of these things from the earliest days, the nitpicking critics would harp on this and misrepresent it on purpose, getting it totally wrong on purpose.
I have always said that, by the way, I got a note from someone.
I don't know what this is about.
Somebody sent me a note saying nobody recognizes Oprah without the wig and the makeup.
What is that about?
Is there a picture of Oprah out there that I don't know about?
Or is she in a movie where she does the little thing herself?
Well, I don't know.
People send me emails.
See, everybody assumes I know everything.
So they send me these notes sometimes, and I don't know what they're talking about.
Sometimes I get emails without any data in them.
And so I've been perplexed by this for the last 20 minutes.
And I just saw it again.
Anyway, what I've always said, the purpose of a caller is, is to make the host look good.
And if you strip it down to the bare essence, that's, of course, being brutally honest and true.
But it's for the sake of the show.
And it does not mean, see, this is where the media always took it out of context.
On purpose, never listening to the real explanation.
Making the host look good does not mean lavish praise.
It does not mean sucking up.
It doesn't mean that at all.
What it means is inspiring.
Making the host look good is something that, you know, a call that excites the host.
And the host really comes to life.
Somebody who inspires or spurs the already ample brain of the host.
Now, frankly, folks, to be quite honest, there aren't very many hosts out there who can be such inspired.
Their callers know more than they do.
But that's not the case here.
So I always look forward to it because you never ever know what you're going to get.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, ilrushbo at eibnet.com.
So I was going through the show prep today, and you know what I find myself doing?
And I have to catch myself.
I'm throwing more stuff away.
And as I'm halfway to the trash container here where I throw things.
And the way this show gets prepped, I constantly am reading.
When I read something I like, I print it to my studio printer and then I forget about it.
Wherever I am, the afternoon or night, I print to the studio printer.
And once I have printed it, I forget it because I'm confident that when I go in the next day and collect the things from the printers that are going through it, I'll remember why I wanted to print it and why it was a possibility for the stack of stuff.
I find myself lately throwing more stuff away.
And I caught myself on a thing today, throwing it away.
And I asked myself, would you have thrown this away 10 years ago?
Would you have thrown it away 15 years ago?
Would you have thrown it away one year ago?
And I stopped myself and I put it back in the stack.
And in order to illustrate what I'm talking about, I put it at the top of the stack.
Now, I threw it away because it's depraved.
I threw it away because it's just, it's just absolute.
It just represents, it's just another example of the descent our culture is taking toward the sewer.
But then I stopped myself and I ask, is it really, I think it's crucial that we all ask ourselves every time we think that, is it really a crashing toward the sewer?
And if it is, is it really new?
Does it represent something that has not happened before?
And the honest answer most of the time is no.
It's not anything really new.
I think the depths of depravity have been plunged long before today.
I don't know that we're setting any new standards for depravity.
I think what's happening is we're learning more and more about it.
Well, up, up, up.
I take that back.
Television is clearly more depraved.
I mean, the other day, I got to say I was surprised.
The TV show Ray Donovan came up.
Now, I watch Ray Donovan, but I've not told anybody because I've, you know what, I've thought that if you knew that I watched Ray Donovan, that you would think that my own morality had hit the sewer.
And so I didn't mention it.
I watch it.
And it's not about not plugging it or plugging.
It's not that.
It's just, and I watch.
It's not an appointment watch.
I mean, I won't stop what I'm doing to watch it.
But after I know it's aired, I never watch it live.
I don't watch much of anything live anymore.
But if there are a list of things on Apple TV or on the DVR to watch, it's not going to go to the top, but I will eventually watch it.
And I was shocked.
I really was.
I probably should admit this.
I was shocked to learn of the people that I think would be just not just offended, but angry about such filth loving it, which is all good.
I mean, it's these surprises, learning that you're wrong about the way you think about it, those are all good things to happen.
But some of the people that I can't believe not only watch it, but like it are the same kind of people who in the past have told me how TV needs to be cleaned up, that it's just going to hell in a handbasket all the sex, all the violence, all the crude language.
Now, I guess everybody's given up.
We've defined deviancy down now that we strictly look at the entertainment value of it.
Whether we think the acting's good, the writing's good, story's good.
No matter the depravity, we'll watch it.
And then somebody said, Well, wait a minute, what's the difference in that and the Sopranos?
And you loved the Sopranos.
I guarantee, if you go back and you look at, and I, when Gandalfini passed away, I did, I went back and I watched some Sopranos episodes from every season.
And I don't think Sopranos got anywhere near this show in terms of things that happen, language.
Some of the stuff, I could tell you everything that happened on the Sopranos.
I would not be nervous in describing, there's not much that happened on that show, I'd be afraid to recount.
But there's stuff.
If you haven't seen Ray Donovan, there's stuff I can't tell you without violating decency standards like crazy.
So the show prepping and talking about cultural things, it bothers me.
And yet here I am watching this show.
It bothers me.
And it bothers me for the country.
That's all.
So much of what's going on does.
Now, here's the story that I was going to throw away.
And I didn't because something about it made me realize that it'll help me make a point that I have been making about the cultural depravity that's taking place.
It's one half of this story is no big deal.
It happens all the time.
It's been happening since the beginning of time.
Florida man accused of killing wife.
Okay, big deal.
People have been killing each other since the beginning of time.
What this guy did, though, it's in Miami, South Miami, a South Florida man who authorities say fatally shot his wife was charged with first-degree murder last night after turning himself in.
You know how they caught him?
He posted a photo of her dead, shot up body on Facebook.
Now I'm going through this today.
Okay, that's trash.
Absolute trash.
If I start talking about this, the stick to the issues crowd is going to inundate me.
And then something stopped me halfway to the trash bin.
I said, no, this dovetails with precisely a point that I have been making for I don't know how many years.
And that is this social media, this desire for fame, this desire to get noticed, this desire that so many people have to get on TV or to be talked about is causing some really dangerous things to happen.
Miami-Dade police said in an arrest affidavit that Derek Medina, 31, said he shot his wife, Jennifer Alfonso, at their South Miami home after she said she was leaving him.
She was leaving.
He's splitting.
The guy apparently was a loser.
When officers responded to the home, they found her body as well as her 10-year-old daughter, who was unharmed.
According to the affidavit, the 6'2 ⁇ , 200-pound Medina, or Medina, I don't know how you pronounce it, the couple became involved in a heated argument in an upstairs bedroom when he armed himself with a gun and pointed it at her.
He said that she left the bedroom, returning later to say that she was leaving him.
He says that he went downstairs and confronted her in the kitchen when she began punching him.
He claims he went back upstairs to get his gun and confronted her again, at which time she grabbed a knife.
He said that he was able to disarm her and put the knife in a drawer, but that when she began punching him again, he shot her several times.
A post on Facebook, a Facebook page, identified as Medina's or Medina's, said that at 11.11 a.m. yesterday, quote, I'm going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife.
Love you guys, miss you guys.
Take care, Facebook people.
You'll see me in the news.
And to think I almost threw this story away because it's depraved, because it's depressing.
Well, the reason, I know I don't know this guy, and it's just one example, but look at what this social media.
Look, I can't, I really run a risk even talking about this because I'm going to come across as an old fuddy duddy.
And that's not the point.
It's all about wanting a great country.
It's all about wanting this country to stay great with plenty of prosperity and opportunity.
And every time I see something like this, I think that this, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
I just think it's unfortunate there aren't any standards here.
We have so many people so obsessed with becoming famous that they're just engaging in activity, ruins their lives in this quest.
We have people who are destroying their own humanity.
Now, some would say, Rush, it's no death.
Don't worry about it.
These same kind of people have always existed.
They just destroyed themselves in different ways before this social media hit.
That may be.
It may be.
I just think that there's a rising level of ignorance, stupidity, surfaceness, shallowness, self-absorption.
And all of these things that people are pursuing happiness, but they're pursuing things that will never, ever make them happy.
And they don't know that.
They've got a distorted view of what will make them happy, what happiness is, and it's based on what they see on television.
And that just, it makes me sad at the end of the day.
And it makes me wish there was something I could do about it.
And of course, there isn't because we're a free country and there is free will.
Anyway, this guy's post at Facebook said that his wife was punching him.
He wasn't going to stand for any more abuse.
However, YouTube videos linked to his Facebook page earlier this week show him working out in a martial arts studio punching and kicking a heavy bag.
And then the next and final post at 11,11 a.m. titled Rip Jennifer Alfonso was a gruesome photograph showing a woman in a black leotard slumped on the floor.
She looked like she'd fallen backwards, her legs bent to her sides, blood on her left arm and left cheek.
The photo was up for more than five hours before Facebook removed the page late yesterday afternoon.
The obsession people have with sharing everything, becoming famous.
And now this guy even says it.
You guys take care, you Facebook people.
You're going to see me on the news.
You're going to see my dead wife's body on the news.
You're going to see that on Facebook.
I'll do anything I can to get noticed.
And these people, I guess, these are the people electing Democrats if they vote.
Now, one more thing from this article about this Medina guy, the guy that killed his wife and put the picture on Facebook.
On his Facebook page, Medina claimed to be a supervisor at a property management company and to have appeared in the Miami-based crime drama Burn Notice.
Though his name doesn't appear to be in any of the credits for the program, he's out there bragging.
I was on TV.
I was on Burn Notice.
Look, I killed my wife.
I put her picture on Facebook.
Hey, Facebook friends, I'll be seeing you later.
You'll be seeing a lot of me.
Now, my brother David sent me a note.
He says, you're right about one thing, wrong about the other.
We're experiencing no greater depravity today than ever.
It's the same.
I guess human nature is human nature.
And then he said, I think there is a striking difference now in America in that our politically correct liberal culture is condoning and glorifying all of this and calling it tolerance.
And you know, that is right.
That sort of rings the bell for me.
That's what it is.
It's not that it's happening.
It's always happened.
This kind of depravity.
There's nothing new since Genesis.
You've heard the old thing.
What is bothering me is that it doesn't bother as many people.
Moynihan, the defining deviancy down business.
And we end up condoning this stuff.
And if we don't condone it, we glorify it because the left wants to take every one of these acts of depravity and use it to advance their agenda or an element of their agenda, such as guns or what have you.
And it's all called, we have to understand the rage, it said.
We have to be tolerant of people who have come from unfortunate, low-class socioeconomic circumstances.
And it's called tolerance and acceptance and understanding, rather than some of this stuff being condemned and dealt with.
And that's what's disturbing.
And then when you add to it that the secular left, the people that traffic and love immorality love throwing standards out the window.
They don't want any standards.
That's exactly what it is.
It is the lack of being shocked, the lack of revulsion, and even the laughing at and acceptance of this stuff.
Okay, now I finally figured out what this cryptic message about Oprah was.
I don't care about Oprah in the first place, so I don't stay informed and up to date on Oprah.
I don't know what Oprah is doing.
So I get this, I get this note.
No one recognizes Oprah without the wig and the makeup.
So what the hell is that about?
Well, I finally found out what it's about.
Grab Audio Soundbite 17.
Apparently, last night on Entertainment Tonight figures, Nancy Odell interviewed media mogul the Oprah.
And during a discussion about whether the Oprah still experiences racism, what is she?
The highest paid woman on TV in the world.
So naturally, they would do a discussion about whether Oprah still experiences racism.
I mean, it makes total sense, doesn't it?
She got her own TV network.
She's got her own magazine.
She's one of the wealthiest people in the world.
The probably the wealthiest media person in the world on the talent side of things.
And billionaire just won the Medal of Freedom Award from, by the way, speaking of that, I think it's the Medal of Freedom, some presidential medal.
And there's like 17 of them that were announced.
And there's not one conservative individual on the list.
Not one.
Not one.
Now, granted, they're chosen by the president or staff or whatever, but not one.
I've got the list here, some almost threw that away too.
I might have thrown it away.
I don't remember.
I'm throwing more and more stuff away.
But I think I kept that.
Not one conservative on that list.
And understandably, politically, Obama, Liberal Democrat.
Yeah, but he's also the big unifier.
He's also post-partisan.
He's also the guy working real hard with people to bring us all together, supposedly, which is a crock.
Everybody knows it.
Anyway, back to Nancy O'Dell and Entertainment tonight.
Question about whether or not the Oprah still experiences racism.
Nancy Odell said, just a couple of weeks ago, you faced a shopping incident while you were in Switzerland attending Tina Turner's wedding.
I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear.
And I go into a store, which shall remain unnamed.
And I say to the woman, Excuse me, may I see that bag right above your head?
And she says to me, No, it's too expensive.
One more time, I tried.
I said, But I really do just really want to see that one.
And she said, Oh, I don't, I don't want to hurt your feelings.
And I said, Okay, thank you so much.
You're probably right.
You can't afford it.
And I walked out the store.
Now, why does she do that?
Well, obviously, she's a racist scum who thought you, as a black person, couldn't afford anything, certainly not that bag.
And she wanted you out of the store.
That's what we're all to conclude.
Why not mention the brand name?
Who was it?
Gucci?
Louis Vuitton?
Is that how you pronounce it?
Vuitton.
Well, who was it?
Tell us who it was.
By the way, this is not the first such incident with the Oprah.
There was a time when the Oprah was in Paris and she went into some high-brow, very upscale, elitist retail establishment.
Except it was right at closing time.
And they would not open the store.
I think I've got this right.
It's very close to this.
And they would not open the store for her.
So the Oprah went to the nearest camera and microphone and said that this store didn't want her in there for whatever reason, that it wouldn't open up for her.
And because I think that there was a racial component implied there as well.
You know, I look at this a whole different way.
If I were Oprah, I would be so thankful I could go someplace and not be recognized.
I'd be happy about it.
Now, I might, we've all been insulted by retail people.
It happens.
And I don't know if she's looking at a $400,000 purse either.
We don't know how much the purse cost.
Do we?
It was a $35,000 purse.
That's why it's on the top shelf.
So that can't be easily.
So it's a $35,000 purse.
If Oprah walks in there, guess she did not have on the wig or the makeup or whatever it is that makes her look like Oprah.
And if it were me, I'd be ecstatic that they didn't recognize me.
Ah, correct.
A $38,100 bag that they told the Oprah she couldn't afford.
And of course, the Oprah could buy the store if she wanted to.
So anyway, that's, I'm sorry, that's, so I get this note.
No one recognizes Oprah without the wig and the makeup.
What in the world?
Because people.
Oh, you're surprised at that?
The Swiss Tourism Office, the government of Switzerland has apologized to the Oprah for the retail.
It's Switzerland.
Well, what do you mean, who cares?
Switzerland's ideal.
I mean, it's what liberals here tell us we all ought to be like.
Sweden, Sweden, Switzerland, all these European.
Have you guys, let me ask you, you know, speaking of TV shows, this is great.
Have you seen the new NBC show?
Well, it's four or five episodes into it now, called Crossing Lines.
Have you seen that?
Oh, this is a show that's funny without trying to be.
This is classic.
It's on NBC Sunday nights at 9, but it wasn't on this past Sunday because they had the Hall of Fame football game.
But the premise is you have some crime fighters working for the International Criminal Court.
And because they work for the ICC, they are able to go from country to country crossing lines as crossing borders without any problem whatsoever.
They're more powerful than Interpol.
They're more powerful than any local or state police agency.
But this, see if I can describe this for you.
The producers and the network obviously think that Europe is the ideal.
And that's what we all ought to be.
Donald Sutherland plays the quintessential, perfect, wuss, NAMBY, PAMBY, Euritan, European heading up the ICC.
And this show is, it drips what they think is refinement.
It drips what they think is political correctness.
It just drips foreign accent.
There's not one American English accent in this show, except maybe for Sutherland.
The head haunt show is a guy from France named Louis.
And there's a couple of famous actors in it.
One and the others are newcomers.
But to me, it's hard to describe this.
And maybe others wouldn't see it the way I do.
I see this show as being put together by a bunch of people who think Europe is the cat's meow.
They're the smartest.
They're the brainiest.
They are the most cultured.
It is just, if we could just be more like them, if exactly if we could just be more like these people.
And of course, the International Criminal Court may as well be God.
If the smartest people in the world work there and the most understanding and the most tolerant, it's just, it's a, you know, we've always known that the modern incarnation of the left thinks we all ought to be like Europe.
I mean, these people get around by train.
And Obama and the Democrats think trains, I mean, that's a wet dream for these people.
It's just, if you understand and if you're able to detect the mindset that puts this show together, it's hilarious.
It's not a comedy.
They're not intending to be laughed at.
But it's the greatest entertainment.
I cannot watch this show without busting out laughing and hitting pause and rewinding just to hear a couple of things.
I even run around imitating some of the characters and their accents and their hoity-toity and their elitist above everybody else attitudes.
No, we don't know.
We do not know that the salesperson based her judgment on the Oprah's skin color.
The salesperson obviously thought that the Oprah couldn't afford the, what is it, $38,100 bag.
Maybe it's because the Oprah's fat.
Well, that's another.
How was the Oprah dressed?
I mean, she didn't look like the Oprah, obviously.
And was she wearing a jumpsuit with tennis shoes, maybe Air Jordans that were not laced up?
I mean, who knows?
Maybe the judgment that the Oprah couldn't afford a $38,000 bag had nothing to do with her race, because aren't the Swiss enlightened in that regard?
I mean, aren't Europeans, there ain't any racism in Europe, right?
There really isn't.
There's no discrimination.
There's no racism.
There's no class envy.
There's, oh, she was wearing a Donna Karen skirt and sandals.
Hmm.
Hmm.
How did, well, would the sales clerk know it was a Donna Karen skirt?
You think the sandals did it?
Switzerland, August, sandals.
Look, don't most people think that the fat and the obese are poor and stupid?
Isn't there that prejudice around out there?
Isn't there?
Where do you see fat people?
Where do you see?
You see them at places where things don't cost very much.
Well, I'm just saying, isn't it possible?
Just throwing it out there.
There's even more data pouring in here on the controversy in Switzerland involving the Oprah.
It turns out that the owner of the store where the Oprah was now, the Oprah's version, as told to that great journalistic enterprise Entertainment Tonight, the Oprah's version was that she asked to see an expensive bag on a top shelf and that the shop person said that it was too expensive.
So the Oprah says you try one more time.
I really just want to see that one.
And the shop owner or the clerk said, no, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you can't afford it.
And the Oprah said, okay, well, yeah, you're probably right.
I can't afford it.
And then left and called Entertainment Tonight.
Now, the shop owner, Trudy Gotz, G-O-T-Z, great Swedish name, told the BBC that the Oprah's version here is not exactly what happened.
Shop owner told the BBC that the Oprah was absolutely allowed to look at the $38,000 bag.
They kept the bag behind a screen.
And then the shop owner, Trudy Gotz, said my salesperson wanted to give her the handbag in her hand, but she didn't want to take the bag, claimed Gotz.
Now, didn't want to take it and may mean didn't want to buy it.
Who knows?
I mean, it's translation time here.
So the shop owner further stated that the assistant, the clerk that had dealt with the Oprah, had worked in that store for a few years and takes care of the most spoiled customers from all over the world.
She knows how to deal with.
She really said this, folks.
She really said that we've got an expert dealing with the spoiled in there.
She's really correct.
She knows how to deal with them.
The BBC may be racist because they're presenting a version here that doesn't dovetail with the Oprah's version.
BB said Mrs. Gotz said her assistant spoke both Italian and English.
Her English is not quite as good.
She tried to show the Oprah the same style in other qualities because maybe she didn't understand what she wanted.
So there's a lot of backtracking here and CYA going on.
These people, these are Europeans.
They're not accused of racism.
There isn't any racism in Europe.
And there's no class envy.
There isn't any class warfare.
There isn't any global warming.
What else is there in it?
There isn't any poverty.
I mean, it's utopia over there.
That's why everybody's so shocked.
I mean, you would expect something like this to happen, say, in Alabama, but not Switzerland.
I'm not insulting Alabama.
I'm voicing the arrogance of the left.
Ladies and gentlemen, if I had an out-of-control ego, like most media people do, if I were self-absorbed and thought the world revolved around me, like many people in the media do, I would think that I am the reason President Obama has decided to call a news conference.
If I were self-absorbed, thought the world revolved around me, thought that everybody hung on my every word, if I thought that I was the center of the universe and had all of this power,
I would think that my two days of ridicule and criticism of Obama going on a late-night comedy show to discuss a very serious terrorism issue was the reason why he's all of a sudden called a press conference for this afternoon.
But I don't have that kind of ego.
I don't have a ego that makes me believe the world revolves around me.
Am not self-absorbed, this is just pure coincidence.
It is nothing more than pure coincidence that two days and I don't know that anybody else has been harping on it, but I'm sure it's just pure coincidence that after I highly critical in a serious way of the stature of the office being diminished by virtue of the president's actions going on a comedy show to talk about a very serious national security issue,
I'm sure it's just coincidental that he called an emergency press conference for later this afternoon.
My criticism of the president going on a late-night comedy show to talk about serious things, my criticism, was so significant, Chris DeLiza, the Washington POST had to address it.
And then, after I addressed Chris DeLizza addressing me, he went back and addressed it again in the Washington POST today, as did USA Today, and for all intents and purposes, they are both acknowledging that.
Yeah, Old Rush had a point, Has a point.
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