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Aug. 13, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
August 13, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Did I not tell you, ladies and gentlemen?
Did I not predict to you yesterday?
Did not I raise the veil.
Lift the shades and tell you exactly what was going on with the media and Hillary and Obama.
And there it is, unfolding right before everybody's eyes and ears.
Thank you.
Yes.
And we have more.
Even more evidence and more data today to share with you in that story.
Greetings and great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, a telephone number if you want to join us, 800 282-2882.
And the email address is Lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
So after 26 years of being misquoted, purposely taken out of context, misreported upon, lied about, and all this stuff.
It's some of this stuff now is beginning to get to the point I need to comment on it.
Most days I just let it go by, not wanting to elevate it.
But what the left, and particularly the leftist media, is attempting to do in twisting my comments about the Robin Williams suicide yesterday cannot go unnoticed.
In fact, I didn't even know that I was on the hot seat till I got an email about 20 minutes ago about all the crap I was getting.
I said, What crap?
And so I sent a series of links, all spawned by Media Matters.
Media Matters took one thing, a bunch of they took it all out of context, and then fed all these other outlets, and they ran with it.
The upshot is that all of these media people think I am just a reprobate, a cold heartless guy because I accused Robin Williams of committing suicide because he was a liberal, and I did no such thing.
I don't know why he committed suicide.
This is my point, and neither do they.
They are the ones trying to explain it.
They are the ones justifying it.
They are the ones glorifying it.
What I did yesterday was expressed some real concern over the fact that the way they are glorifying this, and I made it clear that I I'm not comfortable with the glorification of suicide.
Life is too precious.
We all only get one.
And I was worried about this, the coverage of all of this leading to copycats, people wanting to get the same kind of treatment in the media.
In the pop culture media, people seeking the same kind of laudatory coverage, greatness, genius, all of this stuff.
And I thought it was irresponsible the way this was being covered yesterday.
Because they don't know either why he committed suicide.
What I did was analyze the coverage, which is what I do every day on this program, is analyze who the left is.
I didn't presume to know why Robin Williams committed suicide.
I didn't know yesterday, and I don't know today.
But they do.
They claim to know.
All these people giving me the business claim they know why.
And it was that that I was analyzing.
Now I want to go back at this little bite here.
We've got about two and a half minutes, what I said yesterday.
I want to replay it for you, even though you were here and heard it.
This is what's being taken out of context.
Um, and it as you will hear, this is about media coverage and my analysis of it, and and ancillary related things, but all of these low rent, despicable,
irresponsible, pathetic, so-called media watchdogs on the left, are trying to make it sound like I said that Robin Williams gave up because he was a liberal and he's hopelessly doomed to misery and despair because that's what liberals are devoted to.
And I said no such thing.
Here it is, and then after this, I have some backup.
I have some, as Lanny Davis would say, some poof.
Some drop-down proof, poof, that what I was telling you yesterday about these people, a way they do this, cover this, talk about it, is true.
Sit tight for that.
Here's what I said yesterday that's being totally distorted.
Take and predictably so, by the way.
I should have known yesterday.
I should have given you a heads up it was going to happen.
Here it is.
So our last caller from Des Plains, Illinois, wanted to know what is the politics in the coverage of the suicide of Robin Williams.
Stop the tape.
Well, I believe there is some.
Stop the tape.
Did you hear what I said?
What is the politics in the coverage of the suicide?
Not what is the politics in the suicide.
And that's what I addressed.
Resume tape.
Some.
But I don't think that the politics is driving it.
I think there was on the part of media and Hollywood, I think of genuine affection for the guy that is driving it.
But there is politics.
If you notice the coverage is focused on how much he had, but it wasn't enough.
Have everything.
Everything that you would think would make you happy.
But it didn't.
Now what is the left worldview in general?
What is if you had to attach not a philosophy, but an attitude to a leftist worldview.
It's one of pessimism and darkness, sadness.
They're never happy, are they?
They're always angry about something.
No matter what they get, they're always angry.
And they are animated in large part by the false promises of America.
Because the promises of America are not for everyone, as we see each and every day.
Right here, there's a story from Fox News website.
Do you know?
It says right here that the real reasons that Robin Williams killed himself, where he was embarrassed in having to take television roles after a stirling movie career, that he had to take movie roles that were beneath him, sequels and so forth.
And he finally had to do television just to get a paycheck because he was in so much financial distress.
He'd had some divorces that ripped up his net worth, and he had a big ranch in Napa that he couldn't afford any longer and had to put up for sale in a house in Tiburon he couldn't afford anymore.
This is all what's in the Fox News story.
He had it all, but he had nothing.
Made everybody else laugh, but was miserable inside.
I mean, it fits a certain picture or a certain image that the left has.
I mean, they talk about low expectations and general unhappiness and so forth.
And right here it says that one of the contributing factors to Robin Williams deciding to kill himself was survivor's guilt.
It's in the headline.
Now, all of that, all of that is repeating what media said.
Every bit of that.
None of it was characterizing what Robin Williams did or said, because I don't know, and neither did they.
They were the ones offering the excuses, the reasons.
They were the ones wringing their hands and lamenting how sad and unfortunate it was.
I was trying to explain to you why.
They are who they are.
The daily quest on this program is to educate and inform people about liberals, because I think they are disastrous.
The evidence is all around us, how disastrous they are.
So it's a massive educational project.
By the way, the uh uh survivor's guilt in that Fox story yesterday, in case you missed it, the claim was, again, this from somebody that claims they know why he committed suicide.
And it's so unfortunate.
Americans is so dark, and it's just it's so miserable.
Even people who have it all just can't get by this.
It's their worldview.
Survivor's guilt is three of his good friends, John Belushi, Christopher Reeve, and uh the Andy Kaufman all died young.
And he didn't.
And he felt guilty.
That's what the story said yesterday.
Not me.
I don't know.
That's what they said.
Now let's go to a couple of things here that just happened to appear last night and today that make my point for me as an exclamation point.
First, in the New York Daily News, a piece by Jennifer Michael Hecht.
Robin Williams dead at 63.
Don't let Robin's darkness spread.
Losing Robin Williams hurts.
Many millions of people loved him wholeheartedly.
Others saw him as brilliant but a little too earnest.
So the pain is widespread.
Makes sense that we're talking about it in the media and on the internet, but it's also a real problem.
Mass celebrations of people who kill themselves can send the wrong message and influence others toward hurting themselves.
That's exactly what I said yesterday was my fear.
My big concern was all of this glorious laudatory coverage of suicide.
There's nothing glorious about suicide.
There's nothing genius about it.
It's a sad, sad thing.
And yet the coverage of this incident, I fear could be inspirational for others who are unhappy, depressed, or what have you.
In recent decades, says Jennifer Michael Heck, there have been many sociological studies that demonstrate what's called suicidal modeling.
A suicide at a school can lead to a spate of suicides there, and such clusters happen in many other kinds of communities, such as within a profession or in a geological or geographical area.
And after a celebrity suicide, the general suicide rate has been shown to rise, especially for people of the same age and gender.
The effect was observed as far back as the publication of the sorrows of young Werther in 1774, which ends in suicide and was said to cause suicides of young men across Europe.
Anyway, that's that.
And then last night I'm I'm I'm looking at the Drudge Report, doing show prep, and I come across and drudge it linked, by the way, to Rushlimbaugh.com and that the entire transcript of that brief audio soundbot I just played for you.
Drudge linked to him.
It's out there for anybody to get the truth about.
But the media matters types in the American Lebanon, including politico and media, I just revel in taking me out of context and misrepresenting me purposely and on purpose because it feeds their temper template or narrative about me.
Russell Brand.
Robin Williams' Divine Madness will no longer disrupt the sadness of the world.
And this is a well-written piece.
This is a heartfelt piece.
This is one of the in terms of just writing.
This is one of the best things I've read about this incident, the sad suicide of Robin Williams.
But I want you to listen.
For those of you who especially heard me yesterday, I want you to listen to this paragraph.
There's actually a couple I want to share with you.
Is it melancholy to think that a world that Robin Williams cannot live in must be broken?
No.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is precisely what I said the left's analysis of this sad event is.
What is the world at the dark?
It's a it's a place of pessimism and sadness.
Where there is no happiness.
People are just miserable no matter what happens.
That's the left's worldview.
That it is that worldview which leads them to want to Implement all of their policies to fix that and create utopia, is it not?
They wish to create utopia, which is impossible because they live in a daily dose of dankness, darkness, misery.
They describe it that way.
That's what they believe.
And especially to some extremes, America is.
So when I saw this, I said, Well, this makes my point.
Is it melancholy to think that a world that Robin Williams can't live in must be broken?
To tie this sad event to the overarching misery of our times?
No academic would co-sign a theory in which the tumult of our fractured and unhappy planet is causing the inherently hilarious to end their lives.
Though I did read that suicide among the middle aged increased inexplicably in 1999, has been rising ever since.
Is it a condition of our era?
Is our era so broken that people are now left to suicide?
Is our world so broken that not even the brilliant Robin Williams can live in it?
Is this sad event representative of the overarching misery of our times?
I don't, folks.
It's uncanny.
How they make my point each and every day when they just exist as they are.
And then there's this paragraph.
What platitudes then can we fling along with the listless insufficient wreaths at the stillness that was once so animated and wired, the silence where the laughter once was.
That fame and accolades are no defense against middle ill mental illness and addiction.
Here we go again.
I lamented yesterday this constant overarching desire for fame on the part of people that live, breathe, and die on social media.
And here's Russell Brand writing Fame and accolades are no defense against middle illness and addiction.
We live in a world that's become so negligent of human values that our brightest lights are extinguishing themselves.
Once again, the world is so dark.
It's so unhappy, it's so miserable that the brightest among us check out.
It's making my point.
None of this is about Robin Williams.
I'm commenting on what others are saying about this and the way they're glorifying it.
That we must be more vigilant, more aware, more grateful, more mindful, that we can't tarnish this tiny slice of awareness that we share on this sphere amidst this infinite blackness with conflict and hate?
Can't we overcome the conflict and hate?
Can't we love one another?
Must take a break.
There's more.
Don't go away.
And continuing to prove my point, here's one more from the Russell Brand column on the Robin Williams Suicide.
That we must reach inward and outward to the light that is inside all of us.
That all around us, people are suffering behind masks less interesting than the one Robin Williams wore.
Do you have time to tune into Fox News to cement your angry views to calcify the certain misery?
So is that what you're gonna do?
You're gonna turn it to Fox News, you're so mad, you're so miserable, you're gonna turn on Fox News to have your anger and misery.
Calcified, confirmed.
Don't tell me that there isn't politics in all of this.
And then Russell Brandt says he's not gonna turn on Fox News.
He is going to watch Mrs. Doubtfire.
Or Dead Poets Society, or Goodwill Hunting.
And he's going to be nice to people.
He's not going to watch Fox News.
No.
Calcify his anger.
He is going to watch Fox watch Robin Williams' movie.
Be nice to people and mindful of how fragile we all are.
How delicate we all are.
Even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it'll never expire.
Reference there to Robin Williams.
So I'm just sharing this with you to put an exclamation point.
Everything I said yesterday in analyzing the media coverage, the glorification, the celebration, if you will, of something that is really a very sad and just really unfortunate thing to happen.
A suicide.
USA Today.
Furor over graphic details of Robin Williams' death.
Oh, yes, this story is about how everybody is mad at that coroner guy in San Rafael for being so detailed in answering their questions.
Have to share this with you, too, so don't go away.
By the way, Russell Brand said that what he was gonna, he was not gonna watch Fox News and calcify his anger at everything.
That's what you people who watch Fox News are.
You're just you're just mad.
You're angry, and you watch Fox News to stay mad.
But he's not gonna do that.
No, no, no.
He was gonna watch Mrs. Downfire.
Well, he might be interested in reading a story from the UK Telegraph, which now posits that Robin Williams committed suicide because he didn't want to have to play Mrs. Doubtfire again in a sequel movie.
Robin Williams' friend reveals actor resented having to do Mrs. Doubtfire.
Close friend says actor dreaded making movies as they brought out his demons.
And they link this to a possible reason for Robin Williams' suicide.
Dana Milbank, I'll get into this in a minute.
Dana Milbank has a column today in the Washington Polk, post Americans' optimism is dying.
It is the very essence of the American dream, an irrepressible confidence that our children will live better than we do, and now it's gone.
It's been slipping for some time, really.
But a Wall Street Journal NBC News poll this month put an exclamation point on Americans lost optimism.
This is my point.
There is some of that that traditionally has not been what America is all about.
That's another definition of American exceptionalism.
Remember Reagan's Shining City on a hill.
What that actually meant was in the morning in America TV commercials.
There used to be an unbridled optimism about most people in this country.
Because of what was possible as the result of being an American.
And in the last almost six years, there's been an assault on that.
People have been told that that America really never existed.
That America was never real.
That America was always a phony America.
It was contrived and founded and made up for a relative few people.
But that's never been.
America really is, like the rest of the world.
Miserable, unhappy, dark, filled with fear and pessimism.
We have no business being a happy and optimistic here, given the plight of the rest of the world has always been the battle cry of the left.
Now the USA Today piece, as I say more on Millbank's analysis of that poll.
But I found this last night, too, and I this is classic.
See, it's a USA story in the headline Fioror over graphic details of Robin Williams' death.
Ever since the news of the suicide hit.
People were wondering, how did it happen?
Was there a note?
Where did it happen?
In addition to why.
And the media was out clamoring for all the details they could get.
And yesterday afternoon the details were provided, as they are required by law.
The coroner's office is Public records, the coroner has to divulge the details.
It's if they're made public.
Well, USA Today was not happy about that.
The picture painted was gruesome.
No detail, it seemed, was spared.
On Monday, Robin Williams' grieving wife asked for privacy a day later.
The Marin County Sheriff's Office revealed graphic facts about the beloved actor's suicide.
Many who watched coverage of the news conference yesterday were stunned and offended by the level of detail disclosed.
Shock turned to anger as the media reported the facts.
Investigators in California said Williams' death was a suicide by hanging.
Officials detailed how he was found dead in a bedroom, clothed, slightly suspended in a seated position without a chair, with a belt around his neck, one end of it wedged between a closet door frame.
Now people say, wait a minute, how can you be in a seated position without a chair?
It's called rigor mortis.
But get this whole thing.
Here's what, again, explains this to me.
Okay.
On one hand, what do you expect after reporting this event with such glory?
Robin Williams was genius.
He was brilliant, he was unique, he was special, treasured, beloved, you name it.
But suicide is ugly.
Suicide is not glorious, it's not beautiful, it's not genius.
And so the details that the coroner released yesterday conflicted greatly with the romanticized reporting of the preceding day and a half.
The details of the suicide destroyed this idyllic picture the media had created.
What?
What?
No!
No!
Don't tell us that no, no, we don't want to know.
Oh no!
Because the details destroy the feel-good aspects and characteristics of the way the media was reporting all of this.
It doesn't comport the coverage and the details of the death.
Don't comport with the personal image that's being hoisted and put on a pedestal.
The image of someone dead as the result of hanging by suicide obliterates this nice, warm, fuzzy picture that was being painted throughout the media and all over the social sites.
It's a shocking reminder that none of this really is the way it's being reported, which was my attempted point yesterday.
None of this really is the way it's being reported.
This is sad, it's heartbreaking, it's devastating, it's ugly.
It's it's it's upsetting.
But that truth didn't comport with the manufactured pictures and image.
And so people got mad at the coroner, and the media got mad at the coroner when he released all of these gruesome details.
How dared they?
How dare they?
Why have no b what about privacy?
What about privacy?
The media all of a sudden asking about privacy.
And then there's this paragraph in the USA Today story.
What about the media ethics involved?
I always love it when the media starts analyzing itself.
Al Tompkins of Media Watchdog Pointer, the Pointer Institute, P-O-Y-N-T-R, T E R. Al Tomkins said it's legitimate and defensible for the networks and local TV stations and online sites to carry the news conference live.
However, that doesn't mean that journalists Need to repeat the graphic details.
Aha.
So it's perfectly fine for journalists to show up in their cameras and microphones and listen to the coroner.
Reveal all the ugliness, but journalists don't have to repeat it.
Well, how's everybody gonna know if the journalist?
How about using this same philosophy when it came to the Trayvon Martin case or any other circumstance?
It's okay for the cops to report it, but the media doesn't have to amplify it, like NBC did editing a 9-1-1 call to make it look like George Zimmerman was a racist.
I love it when these guys start analyzing themselves.
Oh, it was perfectly fine, perfectly fine, perfectly defensible for all of these networks and stations to carry the news conference.
But, but, but that doesn't mean journalists need to repeat the graphic details.
So it's okay for them to know.
But they don't have to tell you.
You can't handle it.
You can't deal with it.
Journalists, however, as citizens of the world, who've seen all the ugliness up close and report they can handle it, but they shouldn't repeat it to you.
The fragile, the fallible, the weak, the depressed, the pessimistic, the doomed.
No, no.
They should keep these details to themselves.
Al Tompkins said, yeah, the coroner's office has an obligation to report what they know, but journalists do not have the obligation to report that information over and over again in that level of detail.
Really?
Is that right?
Well, when do journalists have the right to report all these details?
When it involves a Republican, a conservative, I guess there's no limits.
Journalists can report every detail over and over again and make some up even.
Well, when it involves a favored, favored son, protected member of the liberal left, then we're supposed to dial it back.
And only the elite few can really know, but they're not supposed to tell the plebes.
Al Tompkins, Pointer Institute also said the subject of suicide requires particular discretion.
Suicide experts say graphic details about the exact cause of death, the details of a death, particularly when they involve a celebrity, are more likely to have a contagion effect.
Breed copycat.
Well, again, one of my concerns yesterday.
But it is not the details.
See, here's he's got this exactly backwards.
The details of the suicide are not going to spawn other suicides.
The sycophantic, slobbering, complimentary platitudes and nonstop tearful remembrances are what spawn copycats.
Now this guy actually trying to tell us that the details of Robert Williams'suicide are going to spawn copycats.
No, no, no, no.
The details are not.
The details are gonna suppress copycats.
It's the fawning coverage that's going to spread.
Copycats, if there are any.
Okay, that's the I had folks.
I I appreciate you indulging me here.
But these people continue to purposely distort and take totally out of context.
I mean, these are the people claimed they have the mental acuity, and only they have the mental acuity to do nuance.
The rest of us are too stupid.
Only they qualify to do nuance.
Well, what I did was very nuanced yesterday, and they totally missed it because they intended to.
Now I must take a brief time out.
We've got other things, of course.
Uh Hillary and Obama, and this, this great.
That just ex another set of predictions yesterday came true, coming true, right before our very eyes and ears.
And Dana Millbank, Americans' optimism is dying.
He doesn't get why.
He doesn't know why.
He's just worried about it.
I'll explain that to him, too.
That's my job.
Back after this.
And let's go to the phones, my friends.
We will start in Indianapolis on the EIB network today.
Hello, Ben.
Great to have you, sir.
Hi.
Thanks, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I'm just wanted to make the comment on the media bias that you're pointing out.
We had two tragedies here recently, Robin Williams and what happened in the accident with Tony Stewart, who is, you know, here from uh Indiana, who leans conservative.
He was invited to the White House, he turned it down a couple years ago.
Uh and the way the media reported the tragedy with him was everything to tear him down, saying Tony Stewart kills 20-year-old.
You know, all these terrible things, uh convicting him of stuff, and and we're a flyover state, you know, we're God guns and NASCAR.
And then you got Robin Williams again, a tragedy, but everything the media is doing is to to build him up.
And he's someone that's into the White House as is a big liberal.
And and I see the politics in it where you know, a conservative, when an accident happens, they try to destroy him.
And uh, you know, with Robin Williams, they're trying to build him up.
What are your thoughts?
Robin Williams is one of them.
Um Rob Robin Robin Williams exemplifies, I mean, this whole circumstance for them paints a picture of the sadness and the desperation and the disappointment that awaits everybody.
No matter what you have, it's still it's dark out there.
It's this and it it permits it it's uh uh it's a vehicle for the media continue to paint a picture uh that they want to continue painting Tony Stewart circumstance.
That's that's I th the politics of that um and I did hear some in the media claim that what drove him to do it was a macho southern culture, even though he is from Indiana.
But NASCAR, of course, was founded.
I mean, the the left makes fun of NASCAR and car racing anyway, they always have.
Back when the soccer mom phenomenon occurred, they tried to come up with NASCAR dads.
I mean, the Democrats have done everything they can to make inroads with the NASCAR gang, but when they found out the NASCAR gang likes guns, they realized it was going to be futile.
So they went back to making fun of them and and and trashing them as uh uh NASCAR was founded.
Um it really was.
The original NASCAR drivers were guys that were that were distilling whiskey illegally and were running away from tax collectors.
They were the you know, running away from the revenueers.
And that gave us NASCAR.
And to them NASCAR's hick, and it's uh it's hayseed and so forth.
And it's not beautiful.
It's not genius, uh, it's not talent, it's uh it's not entertainment, it doesn't bring out the best and everybody, all this stuff that's so uh predictable.
So it's just it's those are two examples if you want to use them, are are fairly good evidence of the choosing of sides that takes place.
Here's uh here's Lee in Modesto, California.
Great to have you on the program.
Wait, hello.
Good morning, Rush.
How are you doing?
Just fine, sir.
Thank you.
Um, what an honor.
Um I wish I was calling under um better circumstances, but about three months ago, my brother took his life.
He hung himself similar to what Robin Williams did, and he lived in a Bay Area County, not too far from where Rob Robin Williams lived.
And after the fact, my parents and family tried to get information from the authorities, and they were stonewalled.
And through it all, kept asking for reports.
Coroner said there was no blood work done, blood was taken, and my brother had been on some medications, and half of which you know we know causes suicidal tendencies.
They've been stonewalled the whole process.
And I told my mom, I said, you know, maybe our brothers my son my brother, your son, should have been a a movie star because every time something like this happens, we hear about it immediately.
We would have got more information had he been famous.
And um they've gone and checked with everybody what they could get, and they were told that they can't release the information because they're protecting the identity of the vic of the um victim.
My mom said, The victim is dead.
We want to know it's his family.
What was in his system?
Why did he do it?
Did he take the met too much medication?
What went on?
And nobody would give them any answers.
And they're still at that that point trying to get information.
So when I heard about Robin Williams, I called my mom.
I said, Did you hear about Robin Williams?
And she said, Yeah, and it started all over for her.
And maybe it's different from county to county, but Marin County, they have to release the details.
Well, they said this was a state law to us.
Okay, well, Lee, hang on.
I'm gonna I've gotta go.
I'm really out of time here.
Be right back, folks.
Folks, we have to take another top-of-the-hour, obscene profit break here, but don't go anywhere.
Because there's always more.
We never run out of stuff to talk about.
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