Rush Limbaugh Program - January 20, 2014, Monday, Hour #3

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Jan. 20, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program

35:37

January 20, 2014, Monday, Hour #3

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	Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
	Rush Limbaugh, a man with whom you could and would totally trust your wife, your daughter, your husband, your spouse, and your kids in a Motel 6 overnight while you're out of town on a business trip.
	Epitome of morality and virtue, striving to do the right thing each and every day.
	Here at 800-282-2882, the email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
	If you want to be on the program, I want to finish this Peter Beinart piece.
	I remember Peter Beinart, we talked about him last week because he was crowing over the media finally defeating Governor Christie.
	This is the guy who told Wolf Blitzer last week that it was great to take Christie out because he had a reputation for bipartisanship and he had shown an ability to convince people on immigration and gay marriage and he'd taken a position more palatable to the kind of voters the Republicans need to win.
	And he had a big personality.
	He just didn't seem like the next Republican in the line.
	And that's why I think his political wounding is really a danger for the Republican Party.
	Beinart was worried.
	This is the end of the Republican Party if Chris Christie's gone.
	That's who we're talking about here.
	And now his piece here in The Atlantic, The Questionable Ethics of Teaching My Son to Love Pro Football.
	And I left off with his assertion.
	The only thing you need to know about the large man writhing in agony on the screen is whether he's on our team.
	That's what his eight-year-old son, he thinks, is learning watching the game.
	And here you have all of these egghead, these pointy-head intellectuals sitting up there in the northeastern corridor believing all this stuff about brain cells being damaged and there's no concussions and this stuff.
	And they don't know what's happening in real America.
	Real America, such as Belglade, Florida, and the bowels and heartland of Texas, these people are out playing this game and they're trying to get good at it.
	It's their ticket out of wherever they are.
	And they're not going to be able to talk these people out of it.
	The only way they're going to succeed here is to ban this game.
	They're not going to be able to persuade people not to play it.
	Try as they might.
	When my dad, I'm now picking up with his column.
	When my dad made me a football fan, get this.
	The media was not filled with stories about the way repeated blows to the head erode brain tissue.
	The media wasn't filled with stories about how these blows to the head cause a lifetime of confusion, depression, aggression, dementia, and memory loss.
	By the way, there is no evidence that football is the sole reason.
	But see, this guy has bought this premise.
	Hook, line, and sinker.
	It's like we had the news last week that a woman researcher has disproven the notion that football players are six times more likely to commit suicide.
	She found it's just the opposite.
	That the percentage of suicides in America, the number of people that played football, six times less than the general population.
	It's the exact opposite of what the media have been saying.
	So, anyway, this guy is, yeah, when I was learning about football and my dad was teaching me the media wasn't filled with all this stuff about how football causes a lifetime of confusion, depression, aggression, dementia, and memory loss.
	Former players didn't attach suicide notes to the one found in 2011, the apartment of former Bears Safety Dave Dewerson, which read, Please see that my brain is given to the NFL's brain bank.
	So, my father can't be blamed for fostering in me an emotional attachment to football that overrides the moral analysis that I would apply to some other activity that physically and mentally disfigures its participants.
	I warned everybody that this stuff was going to happen.
	I, on the other hand, have no such excuse.
	I mean, I could perhaps break the chain, whether he realizes it or not.
	My son likes watching football for the same reason I did, because it's intimate time with his dad.
	If I didn't let watching football become one of the things we shared, if I told him it's something I regret, he might take to it anyway.
	But it would be less likely.
	And if he made it to adulthood without heartwarming memories of sitting alongside his old man watching other men pulverize their bodies and minds, he'd be more able to rationally decide whether professional football is something a decent society should allow.
	I'm telling you, you couple this, it's the media that makes its living covering this sport in large part that is going to end up, perhaps, doing it great damage.
	Bob Ryan, this one I'm surprised at.
	I'm surprised that the piece he wrote has not gotten wide play.
	Bob Ryan, who is leading sports writer for the Boston Globe, renowned, universally accepted as the best in his day.
	And he's now a sports writer emeritus.
	He's all over ESPN.
	He's one of these guys that within the industry has impeccable integrity and credibility.
	Bob Ryan says it's cold with other sports writers.
	And he had this piece apologizing for his role in popularizing a sport which maims and brutalizes participants.
	And it just sat there.
	Now, I don't watch ESPN every day, so I don't know if it was talked about there, but I do a lot, as you know, reading, and I didn't see anything beyond his story.
	So I don't know what ramifications there were from it, if any.
	But now this, my son will now be more able to rationally decide whether professional football is something a decent society should allow.
	Let me ask you a question.
	I want you all to think about this for a second.
	I don't necessarily want you to call and answer it right now unless you have an immediate answer that's totally encompassing the question.
	But it's a very simple question.
	How did football, how did the National Football League get so popular?
	In our lifetimes, Major League Baseball was the national pastime.
	Major League Baseball was it.
	Pro football happened, and it had its legion of fans, but it's only relatively recently that it has become the most watched television program whenever it's on.
	So, what is it that's made the NFL, specifically the NFL?
	College football is a the reasons for fandom there are different well, there's some overlapping, but there are also some distinct differences.
	What is it about the NFL that has made it this popular?
	Do you think is it because fans are watching to see grown men be ruined for life via injury?
	Is that it?
	Is it because the fans know it is indecent and barbaric, and we are no different than the ancient Romans trekking to the Colosseum to see whoever was going to be killed that day?
	Why is the National Football League so popular?
	And how did it happen?
	Let me remind you of something that will not help you with your answer.
	It's just an interesting factoid.
	When I worked for the Royals, 79 to 83 marketing department, I knew the people that worked over at the Chiefs and played our Thursday afternoon touch football games, front offices, competed after the baseball season ended.
	And let's share marketing materials.
	And I forget, it was the early 80s, and the NFL had sent out a little flyer that they wanted their teams to post in the office, the marketing departments, to let them know what their task was.
	And the flyer said something that astounded me: if you know, it said that more people go bowling in one week than attend NFL games in a season, then you know America.
	The NFL chose this mechanism to tell its marketing people how far they had to go to get this game mainstreamed.
	And in the 80s, it was, I mean, it was really popular even then, but even then, the number of people that attended games, which has always been the fundamental key, was dwarfed by the number of people that went bowling.
	The people that visit the tomb of the unknown Bowler dwarfs the number of people who go to Pro Football Hall of Fame.
	For example, now, how do you explain this?
	I don't know if the stat still holds.
	I doubt that it does.
	I doubt that that stat's true anymore.
	Now, this is a question to which there is an answer.
	I just wonder if you know what it is.
	Why is it so popular?
	Because, folks, we are living in a time where the left is trying to persuade you that a decent society would not tolerate a game like this.
	Certainly would not promote it, and certainly would not introduce it to children, and certainly would not glorify it, and certainly would not attach stardom to it.
	No way.
	So, companion question: why does the left all of a sudden hate it?
	Why does the left want to harm it?
	Why does the left want to persuade more and more people not to watch the NFL?
	And just a third question for my own idle curiosity: do the people that run the game are they fully aware of what's happening out there in this regard, or are they not?
	Are they of the frame of mind that nothing could damage our game?
	At least this can't.
	Now, as you ponder the answer to your question, remember what fired up a large percentage of this country last night after the game.
	A post-game rant interview by one of the stars of the game created a nationwide buzz for a while and converted millions of people to automatic fans of the Denver Broncos.
	Richard Sherman.
	And I still suggest that you find some things that Richard Sherman has written, and you'll be amazed.
	I'm telling you, the guy is smart.
	He's really, he knows his business.
	He knows his craft.
	He has studied it.
	He's, it'll shock you if what you saw of Richard Sherman last night is all you think Richard Sherman is.
	I got quick time out here, my friends, but be patient.
	We'll be back.
	We will continue and roll right on right after this.
	Hi, how are you?
	Welcome back.
	Great to have you, Rush Limboy, here in the cutting edge of societal evolution.
	Speaking of a National Football League, opponents of the Redskins name will politicize the Martin Luther King holiday today by insisting that Dr. King would be fighting with them for a name change were he alive, which I think is a cruck.
	I think that is BS.
	There is no way that these people would know this.
	They have their making it up.
	It isn't just the bottom line is, this is something that's petered out.
	This was one of these things.
	The Redskins were supposed to have changed their name by now.
	This is a last gasp.
	They gave it everything they had.
	Now, it doesn't mean they're not through.
	They'll keep trying.
	But I think this is one of the failures that the left has experienced.
	Nothing's written about it that way.
	Nothing is talked about it because the left, of course, in the media, never fails.
	But this was supposed to be a slam dunk as far as they were concerned.
	All they had to do is start huffing and puffing and make a little notion about it, but the owner of the Redskins ignored it.
	Everybody involved in the Redskins ignored it.
	Nobody is, they're not going to change the name.
	So, this is a last guess.
	Well, Dr. King, he would have joined.
	Dr. King had far more important things to be concerned about than this.
	And we go back to the phones.
	And ladies and gentlemen, we have another 12-year-old who has read Rush Revere and the Brave.
	No, I hadn't finished it, actually.
	It says here, this is Ben in Maryville, Tennessee.
	Ben, are you still there?
	Yes, sir.
	Well, thank you.
	So it says here that you haven't finished the book yet, but that you really like it.
	I have not finished the book.
	Yes, I really like it.
	And I think I'm on about page 119, 120, and I just started it this week.
	So it's really fast reader.
	Well, I only read that on books that I really like.
	Yeah, I know.
	That's exactly the way I am.
	If I'm reading something, I don't like it.
	I just plod through it.
	Well, this is great.
	So page 120, I mean, you're roughly halfway through it.
	Yeah.
	I think it's 100 or 201 pages, I think.
	Well, you have actual content, yeah.
	Now, let me, Ben, have you in school learned about the Pilgrims yet to any great degree?
	Have you learned much about them at all prior to reading this book?
	No, I've learned a whole lot more in this book so far than I have in school.
	But that Pilgrims.
	Like, I did not know that they were called the Puritans.
	Yeah.
	See, you didn't.
	That is, that is, I wasn't taught that either.
	When I learned about the Puritans and the Victoria, all that came much later in school for me.
	Yeah.
	And I'll tell you, one of the things that, even for me, when I was learning about the Pilgrims, the religious, I mean, I was told that they were fleeing religious persecution.
	I didn't know.
	I wasn't taught how deeply religious they were.
	Yeah, I didn't know that either about them.
	Well, that's great that you're learning it because it's, I guarantee you, the story that you're reading is the truth.
	And it's been so incorrectly written in a lot of classrooms.
	It's taught in a way that it really isn't true.
	So that's why I wrote it.
	And it's exactly for people like you to be able to learn the truth about it because that really is the root of the founding of the country.
	And I have a question.
	Yeah.
	Well, it kind of seems to me like since he's a substitute, you're going to be able to write a series like with different historical things.
	Are you going to write more books?
	Let me see if I understand the question.
	You said since Rush Revere is a substitute teacher, meaning...
	Yeah, like he could go to another classroom and he did another historical thing.
	Like, are you going to make more books?
	You think that'd be a good thing for there to be more?
	Yeah, because I really feel like I could learn more from these books than I could at school.
	Well, you know what?
	That's important.
	I will keep that in mind as I determine what the future holds here.
	Now, Ben, don't hang up.
	Don't hang up the phone.
	And we're back.
	Rush Limboy here, executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
	Zero mistakes.
	Let me go out on a limb.
	Ladies and gentlemen, and that is telling you about Richard Sherman.
	I've mentioned earlier in the program, this is the guy, again, that had the egotistical, egoistic rant after the game last night that so many people found objectionable.
	And I'm telling you, the guy is bright as he can be.
	He is really smart, well-spoken, well-educated.
	He has worked hard to escape his childhood circumstances, economic and otherwise.
	He comes from a very solid family.
	His father has driven a sanitation truck his entire life in Compton, California.
	Went to Stanford, went to class, graduated, is extremely well-spoken, well-written, and would be, I frankly think, as I go out on the limb here, I don't want to put pressure on people that they perhaps don't want themselves.
	He would be an ideal role model for young people of all races, simply because of his work ethic, because of his achievements and accomplishments.
	That's why this thing last night that he did was really out of character, in a sense.
	Now, it was also real, and it happened.
	I think I can probably explain it in terms of ego, which I took a stab at earlier, so I don't want to cover old ground.
	But if you search this guy, find some things on him at YouTube, find some things that he said, done, written, and so forth.
	You'll agree with me.
	He, I think, has a lot to offer in that regard.
	But again, he may not have any desire to do that either.
	So I'm not trying to put any pressure on him whatsoever.
	He's just put it this way.
	He studies the game every bit as much as Peyton Manning does, his facet of it.
	And his assessment of other players and how he studies other quarterbacks and competes against them is if you're a fan of football, it's fascinating stuff.
	Here is Richard in Rockford, Illinois.
	Richard, I'm glad you called.
	Welcome to the EIB Network.
	Hello.
	Hello, Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller.
	Well, it's great to have you here, sir.
	I just fix.
	I want to make one comment first, and then I'll tell you what I told Snardly.
	I'm in a real fix.
	I'm living in a household with not only a liberal, but a liberal who doesn't care to pay attention to what's really going on in the world.
	Now, to my comment that I called in about, as far as Obama saying that everybody is turning on him because they're racists, I guess I'm the ultimate racist because I've been against him since I heard his comments made to Joe the Plumber when he was first running for office.
	And he said that when Joe pinned him down, he admitted that he was for income redistribution.
	Yeah, but he didn't put it that way.
	Well, what he said was, we want to spread the wealth around.
	Yeah, but Joe kind of cleared it up a little bit, too, and said he used the term income redistribution, and Obama kind of concurred with it.
	True, but you actually are not a racist.
	You are simply saying this to illustrate a point.
	Yeah, that's exactly it, sir.
	That's exactly it.
	I mean, just because I don't, this is too touchy a subject, and I don't want people to report, oh, yeah, no, no, racist, admit calling it.
	What Rich, he's being facetious.
	Richard is saying, I've opposed Obama ever since I saw the Joe the Plumber episode when Obama admitted he wants to take from people and give to others.
	He wants to redistribute, spread the wealth.
	Race says the guy's a socialist.
	And well, his point is here, race.
	We oppose Obama because of who he is and his policies.
	We oppose Obama because of what he's done.
	And that's, Richard here is just being facetious, but I got to be real careful, giving the eyes and ears tuned to this program.
	What?
	No, there's too many literalists out there just waiting for an opportunity to take anything said here.
	No, when you have a guy call, hey, I'm a racist, that's all I got to say.
	Didn't Rockford call a limbo.
	Yep, I'm a racist, and I have been since Obama first, and they cut it off there, and that's what gets spread around.
	And then the media uses that to substantiate what Obama told David Remnick.
	And that's not what Richard is saying.
	He's being facetious because what Richard and everybody knows is that that is a cowardly charge.
	That is, I think it's gutless for the president to hide behind that, to throw that up.
	If you look at other things that he said to David Remnick, and I may as well repeat those.
	Let me find it.
	I hope I put them at the bottom of the stack.
	In the same order I use them, because it really is outrageous what this guy said to, I'm getting close here, folks.
	He praised all the job creation.
	Here it is.
	This is Remnick writing after this is an 18-page interview as it scans or scrolls on the internet.
	As Obama ticked off a list of first-term achievements, the economic rescue, the 44 straight months of job growth, a reduction in carbon emissions, a spike in clean energy technology, he seemed efficient but contained.
	Running at three-quarter speed like an athlete playing at mid-season road game of modest consequence.
	Now, folks, that's delusional.
	That's psycho-something.
	He's sitting there, he's ticking off these wonderful achievements of the past five years.
	The economic rescue.
	What economic rescue?
	We're in the middle of an economic disaster.
	44 straight months of job growth.
	Where?
	In whose world?
	92 million Americans are not working.
	You have to go back to Jimmy Carter's first term to find economic consequences as dire.
	92 million Americans not even in the workforce.
	A majority of those not even trying to find a job.
	44 months.
	So he's sitting there in this interview and he's rattling this stuff off as they're his achievements.
	And the writer, yep, oh, yeah, you're the greatest president ever, writes this stuff down.
	Now, as he sits there, does he actually believe this stuff?
	That's why this is delusional, illusory, psycho-something.
	And so he concludes, I've got all this great stuff, stimulus and job growth, economic rescue, and my approval numbers.
	It has to be because the bitter clingers are a bunch of racist pigs.
	And I maintain to you that that is cowardly.
	That is beneath the office.
	He was elected for crying out twice.
	How does he explain that?
	He was considered a messiah.
	He wouldn't have won the presidency were it not for white voters.
	Forget why they voted for him.
	Some because they wanted to get rid of the idea that the country was racist and they thought this would do it.
	Some because they believed that he was a new kind of politician we'd never seen before.
	Some because they believed he was this great unifier and was going to get rid of all the strife and the arguing and the bipartisanship and the countries around the world were going to love us and the terrorists would stop terrorizing us.
	Some believed that, but those that voted for him on those beliefs were not at all concerned about his race.
	I mean, this is really character deficient to sit there and whine about this.
	Maybe if you lose the first time, maybe you're the first black presidential candidate and you lose, maybe you go out, yeah, well, the country probably not ready for a black president.
	But you can't say with Oprah Winfrey, all of the black movie stars, wealth, and so forth in this country that they're amassing middle-class black success and the first black president says, well, I'm not approval numbers in a tank because the country's racist.
	That's cheap.
	That's cheap, and it's beneath the dignity, I think, of the office and whoever occupies it.
	Your guiding light and bulwark.
	Rush Limbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
	This is unbelievable.
	Senator Patrick Leakey Leahy.
	Senator DePence was on Fox News Sunday yesterday with the host Chris Wallace.
	And you won't believe this.
	Senator Leahy is worried about the government controlling the American people.
	Senator Patrick Leakey Leahy apparently has finally found a level of authoritarian government, which is too much.
	Now, remember, this guy is from the Democrat Party.
	He is a staunch leftist which believes, who believes, in the massive growth of government, government providing for as many dependent, helpless people as possible.
	He's right in line with Obama, who believe most people can't take care of themselves.
	Most people are incapable of making the right decisions.
	Most people need government to help them work, to help them find work, to help them keep work, to help them pay taxes, to eat, to eat the right things, to drive the right speed, to drive the right car.
	This guy has voted for judge after judge after judge that would rewrite the Constitution, further empowering government and enlarging it.
	But he's all upset about the NSA.
	Chris Wallace said, let me pick up with you, Senator DePenz, because in your legislation, the USA Freedom Act, you're calling for an end to the bulk collection of telephonic metadata.
	Are you going to fight President Obama on this?
	Think back in the history of this country.
	J. Edgar Hoover, if he had had the power when he was spying on protesters and those against the Vietnam War and Martin Luther King, if he'd had the power that's in here, do you still have to have some checks and balances before you have a government that can run a mock?
	The concern everybody has is allowing our government to have such a reach into your private life, my private life, and everybody else's, that we have the government controlling us instead of us controlling the government.
	What does he think is happening with his help?
	At least we know what these guys' limits apparently are.
	And that is the government spying on them.
	Because he doesn't care about the government spying on you.
	But he must.
	This is listen to this.
	This is a government run amok, have such reach into your private life.
	Pretty soon health care is going to be dependent on the everybody's going to have to go to government for everything.
	Government will be in charge of whether your grandmother gets an operation or not.
	Government will be in charge of as much as they can put themselves in charge of.
	And he's not worried about that.
	This NSA thing, telephone metadata, why, that's going a little bit too far.
	I sometimes wonder if these guys have the slightest idea how they sound.
	We need to stop government from controlling the American people.
	Everything he has done, every vote that he has made, every piece of legislation he has supported, has furthered the whole premise of government getting bigger for the purpose of controlling people.
	Here's Lyle in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
	Hi, Lyle.
	Glad you waited.
	You're next on the EIB network.
	Hello, sir.
	Ditto's Rush from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
	Thank you, sir.
	A fan of many years.
	I'm 60 years old.
	I'm a sports fan from when I was a kid.
	What we love as males, men, in this country, we got to admit deep down, we love violent sports.
	I love football.
	I watch football because of the fact I might see a great hit.
	I remember the days of Alex Harris and the Fearsome Porsom from Detroit.
	But, you know, ESPN, I'll tell you this.
	Well, the Fearsome Porsom was the Rams.
	Okay, but okay, so you like the big hits.
	I love it.
	Why?
	But let's go find it.
	Why do you like that?
	Well, because, Rush, I played the game.
	I played the game when I was a kid in backyards.
	We played that, we couldn't afford the equipment, so we played tackle football in the backyard.
	We love to hit each other.
	Yep.
	That's what guys like.
	Ditto.
	Ditto.
	But why?
	As a spectator, I'm trying to dig deep.
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I'm not even voicing an opinion on what you're saying.
	I'm just trying to dig deep.
	What is it about the big hits or the violence, as you say?
	What is it about that that makes you because that's what they're going to try to stop the game being played with?
	Let me tell you something, Rush.
	It's machoism.
	Ah, now we're getting something.
	It's the way God made us.
	Now we're getting some.
	Us as men and women differently.
	Now we're getting somewhere.
	Now.
	Thank you.
	And hockey, our favorite saying way back when was: I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.
	Yeah, I hear you.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I want to see the hits.
	I want to see the fight.
	I want it controlled.
	Let me translate.
	Let me translate.
	This guy loves sports because it's one place he can watch men be men.
	Think of it what you will, but that's what you say.
	Back with more.
	I'll tell you something else.
	You're playing football.
	You don't have any equipment.
	As a kid, you're playing backyard tackle football.
	One of you gets hurt.
	And what happens?
	You go find somebody to replace him.
	You don't cry about it.
	You just get the kid whatever he needs, and then you find a replacement and you keep playing.
	Of course, there are many more reasons for popularity.

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