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Sept. 12, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
September 12, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my friends, and you are listening to a five-time winner of the National Association Broadcasters Marconi Award for excellence in syndicated and network broadcasting.
Rush Limbaugh on Friday.
Let's hit it live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Yes, repen line Friday, where you know how things play out.
Monday through Thursday, the people of call a program have to talk about something I care about to get on the air.
But Friday, you don't.
You can talk about whatever you want.
Questions, comments, you name it.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
We always try to take more calls on Friday.
We seldom achieve that, but we always try.
So last night, there was a there was a football event uh last night.
They actually played a game uh in the NFL, the uh the Baltimore Ravens hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers.
More about that in a it it's now we have a race.
Men in sports, both at the executive level and in the media level, are in a race to see who can be the most politically correct feminized guy in America.
And of course, there are a plethora of reasons for that, some of which we will delve into here.
But what I was watching the game last night or trying to get into it.
I'm telling you it's different this year, and I I've uh it's not it's not just the Ray Rice, it's a some total of everything about football that has nothing to do with football that is souring me on on the whole thing.
It just isn't what it was to me.
It certainly isn't an escape.
Uh it it's no longer fantasy land.
It's uh it's not that anymore.
Anyway, I'm sitting here, I'm I got I've got the game on.
And I'm working at the uh nice of you to join us, Don.
I'm working at the uh uh show prep at the same time, and I get an email, and then another email, and three or four more emails, and then the emails keep rolling in, the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, annual conventions in Indianapolis uh this year, and last night was the grand conclusion gala awards dinner, at which they hand out the Marconi Awards.
Marconi Awards are given in several categories by market size, best station of the year, legendary station, media market, small market, major market, and then small market personality, media market press, so forth and so on, and there's a category for syndicated or network uh host.
And I have been nominated for that award 12 times.
Last night won it for the fifth time, joining the late Paul Harvey as the only person to win it five times, which I didn't know uh until I was I was told about later last night.
Um I uh I'd lost track of the because we've got them in different places.
Uh, the three of them are here, and I'm gonna, or two of them are here, two of them are at home, and I had lost count.
So somebody told me it was the it's your fifth, and only Paul Harvey has uh has won that many.
So, you know, it's it's it's an acknowledgement from the industry, which makes it even more meaningful and profound.
The people that vote on this are people that operate radio stations, operate and program radio stations of all formats.
And it's uh the votes conducted on nominations are sometime in the summer than the votes conducted sometime after that.
And this year's nominees, I mean, there were there were tremendous competition in the category, and I frankly thought I've got no chance.
I'm old news.
I'm in my 26th year, some of the nominees were up for their first or second time.
Uh, so I was totally surprised.
I did I had no expectation of winning this thing.
I mean, and more than my share, for example, and they might want to spread it around, but then again, it's a legitimate private vote.
I think every radio station involved, it used to be get get two votes, general manager, program director, something like that.
So to me, it is a huge deal because it's it's voted on by professionals in the industry.
And I just want to take a moment here to sincerely thank everybody in the broadcast business.
You know, radio is considered to be, and has been for a long time.
This is nothing that's that's relevant to anything now.
It's just it's always been the case.
Since television was invented, radio has always been considered by the entertainment media anyway to be among the lowest rungs of the showbiz ladder.
And it's the only media that I have ever really loved.
And I have a uh deep devotion to the importance of radio, to the history and legacy of it.
And I actually believe and always have that radio done well can have as much impact, if not more so, than television, even though there aren't any pictures, that's the beauty of it.
You can create your own in the minds of the listeners.
But the great thing about radio, aside from that, I think radio offers the opportunity for the most direct and intimate relationship or bond with the audience of all media.
And the reason precisely is because there aren't any pictures.
There are no pictures to distract anybody's attention or to divide it.
A good radio program will create what I call active rather than passive listening.
Active listening is the audience 100% engaged, hanging on everything that happens.
Passive listening is when it's on in the background and you're doing other things.
And that describes I don't mean to be critical here, but just factually describes some music, elevator music, music formats are designed for the things to be going on in the background while you're doing something else.
Television.
A lot of times the TV's on in a room, nobody's even paying attention to it.
It's just there to provide noise so that you don't have to sit around in a in a in a dead silent room.
Now, other times people are paying rapt attention to TV.
Don't misunderstand, but but radio done well is never in the background.
Radio done well requires, I mean, it will it will create massive active audience participation.
And that's always been the attraction of it to me.
It's always been the allure of it to me.
And the fact that there aren't any pictures means there's no distraction from what is the focal point or what is the importance, which happens to be whatever you're saying or talking about.
And it's a it's it's a it's a learned, it's it's a talent to begin with, but it then it's a practiced and learned skill.
And for all of this to happen, the primary ingredient is empathy, which translates to total respect for the audience.
Because the audience will know, you will know if you're being mocked, if you're being laughed at, if you're being made fun of, if you're thought of in less than respectful terms.
One thing that I've always tried to do is maintain a respectful relationship with the audience.
I assume that every one of you in this audience are here because you're interested and you're bright and you're intelligent and you're open.
And therefore there's no talking down to anybody Here.
And that's the beauty of it all.
When it when it all comes together and works, I don't think there's anything better than radio.
And I think because of that, radio has its own kind of, and when I say power, I don't mean manipulative power.
And I'm talking about the ability to motivate or inspire or any of the positive virtues.
It has just as much ability to do that as any media that's showing you pictures.
And so I've I've you know I've done television uh and it's fine, but I'm not a collaborative guy, so TV isn't for me.
TV is a collaborative effort.
You have to have five or six people knowing in advance what you're going to do before you do it in order to make it happen.
And I don't work that.
I don't know what I'm going to do in advance.
So TV is very hard for me, and therefore it it it I can't be spontaneous in television.
So it's not as fulfilling as as radio is.
Radio is always going to be what what it is to me.
And to get this award for the fifth time is is um is really a big deal to me.
And I wanted again thank everybody in the broadcast community who who participated in the vote.
And uh and of course, all of you, because without any of you, without you, none of this would be happening at all.
And that's the recognition.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations, not a joke.
And you know, when thinking about the program and what it's going to be, everything's for the show.
Everything's for the audio, is exactly the way I do it.
Now I want to play just a little sound bite here before we get to the things happening in the news out there, and it is juicy today.
I am chomping at the I cannot wait to begin discussing with you how CBS presented a football game last night.
But I want to take you back to my appearance on William Shatner's television show on the biography channel.
It's called Shatner's Raw Nerve.
And I did uh what that the show was an hour, I think it was.
The taping was two and a half hours, and I said, you know, you're not this is so good that you're not going to be able to edit this down to one hour.
You're going to need to do a bonus episode.
And they all readily agreed, and then they chopped it up and made it an hour, and that was that was good.
It was fine.
I was just joking with them.
But it was December 6th of 2009.
So it's five years ago when this aired.
And Shatner says you brought something with you here.
You wanted to show me to discuss.
I did.
My parents, despite what I told you earlier about being a frightened of my being on the radio, gave me this for Christmas when I was uh nine years old.
This is a Remco Caravel, and it actually transmits on an AM frequency of your choice for 500 feet.
And I would take this up to my bedroom and play records and play DJ to the house to the house of my mother and dad would sit down and listen to me.
It sounded like the quality was horrible, but I was on the radio.
And did they they indulge you?
They gave me this for Christmas.
Isn't that something?
Let's give Little Rushy a prize, which he'll grow out of and go on to college.
We know that he will.
I had quit the Boy Scouts and the Cub Scouts.
I was a quitter.
I quit everything conformist.
I was this was the one thing I didn't quit, so they radio.
At least he's showing some stick to it in this.
Or were you afraid of disappointing them?
And yet in the way you're and yet in the way you engineered it.
Yeah.
So that's deep.
That's deep.
That's exactly right.
I've enjoyed this.
Thank you, Bill, very much.
Pleasure to meet you be on your show.
Thank you for asking me.
Now I only have that Remco Caravillage right back here in our Apple Stash prize closet.
I only have that because a listener sent his to me way, way back long time ago.
I told this story on the radio a long time ago.
And so I've got it back there.
And I took it, took it with me to uh because they asked for visual aids because it's a television show.
Bring pictures, artifacts.
I said, I'll take the Rimco Caravel.
I've never shown anybody that.
So that's what that was.
Anyway, uh, it's it's quite an honor to receive this in in uh in year 26th and for the fifth time.
So thank you once again to everybody and uh anybody who had anything to do with it, because trust me and believe me, it's more than sincerely appreciated.
Open line Friday, L. Rushball ending up another exciting excursion into busy broadcast week.
And the telephone number 800-282-2882.
Last night was incredible.
I actually I didn't know what time the pregame stuff started on CBS.
And the game started at 8 30.
And I thought, well, okay, but pregame stuff will start at 8 o'clock.
So at about a quarter to late, I turned on the tube to get ready for it.
And I found myself in the middle of the most incredible pregame show of a football game I've ever seen.
Now remember, yesterday was 9-11.
Ray Rice and Roger Goodell in the media trumped 9-11.
Ray Rice and Roger Goodell trumped football.
I don't know about you guys, the rest of you guys out there, but I'm starting to get it.
I'm starting to hear, it's starting to connect.
I'm not doing enough to stop wife beating.
Wife beating is an epidemic.
It's happening all over the country, and it's really, really happening in the NFL.
And we are all responsible for it.
And we have got to do something about it.
I have learned that I am not aware enough, that my conscience has not been raised enough that I am not worried or concerned enough about this.
That it is an epidemic, and that it's happening all the time.
Why I learned that just since Ray Rice cold cocked his fiancee in the elevator, 600 women have supposedly died from wife abuse since February.
I heard that on CBS in the pregame show last night.
I heard that from James Brown, who I think wants to be the Bob Costus of CBS.
Maybe he wants to be Bob Costus, period.
I've also learned, as I predicted, football is politics.
Football has jumped the shark and has now become politics.
I also learned last night that the media could not believe that Baltimore Ravens fans continued to show up wearing Ray Rice jerseys.
The media was aghast and appalled that female Baltimore Ravens fans showed up to tailgate and watch the game, wearing with pride Ray Rice, Baltimore Ravens game jerseys.
The media was so stunned, so outraged that they actually sought to speak to some of these women.
And the women said, hey, it's a one-off.
He apologized for it.
She's still with him.
Get over it.
Then the media was doubly shocked when after the game they went into the Ravens locker room to speak to Ravens players.
And they found a bunch of Ravens players that said, we did this for Ray.
Ray is one of our brothers.
Ray made a mistake.
He doesn't deserve all that's coming down on him.
He's apologized.
He never lied to anybody about what he did.
He told Goodell.
He told anybody that asked what happened in that elevator.
He doesn't he has bled with his brothers in this locker room.
He has helped us make this city what it is.
This is what some of the players.
The media is flummoxed.
The media doesn't understand Why there isn't universal disgust and hatred for Ray Rice and Roger Goodell.
You know what else I learned last night, folks?
I learned that when I make fun of the way Barack Obama cannot throw a baseball, and he can't throw a baseball.
He throws like a girl.
He walked out there that first pitch at the Washington Nationals.
He threw, I mean, wearing the mom jeans.
I mean, it was, it was, it was comical.
You know what I learned?
I learned that saying that diminishes women and leads to domestic violence.
I learned that's what James Brown in the CBS pregame show told America that we've got to stop making fun of men who throw like girls or calling them sissies because that is going to diminish women and lead to more violence and death.
Did you know that?
Yes, of course, Mr. Snurtley, we're gonna get to John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, by the way, saying we're not going to war with ISIS.
We're gonna know war here.
This is a really, what is it?
Uh it's like a pinprick counter-terrorism operation.
But we're not going to war.
I tell you what, you know what?
I am waiting for Susan Rice to blame the video for the fact that ISIS exists.
They went to the State Department that that Marie Barf Harf, Marie Harf.
And somebody said, um, well, how does this fit into the war on terrorist?
You know, I don't think I've ever used that term here.
War on terror.
There is no war.
So the regime is trying to tell us that what Obama outlined on Wednesday night's not a war.
Well, to be caught because he's he's not going to use authorization.
He's going around Congress.
I've got, there are a couple of pieces in the stack today.
There is one from a guy named Bruce Ackerman, who's a Yale professor, is just oh my God, this is devastating for Obama because this guy says that Obama is doing what Bush only dreamed of doing.
Oh yeah.
So, yes, my friends, all that's coming up.
You don't seriously think a three-hour program would go by and we wouldn't talk about one of the top two stories a day, do you?
But I want to finish with it, because folks, this this none of this is just crazy.
We're feminizing this game, and it's a man's game, and if we're if we if we keep feminizing this game, we're gonna ruin it.
If we keep tricky fying this game, we're gonna ruin it.
It's gonna become something that it was never intended to be.
And so many men now, uh, executives in the league and and sports drive-bys are in a race to see who can be the most politically correct feminized guy.
It's just, it's comical to watch this.
Now I'm wondering, did James Brown last night had a monologue?
We have excerpts of it.
It went kind of long.
We have got this the last half of the monologue.
He uh, well, let me read it to you first, and then we'll play the audio sum.
This is James, this is a pregame show.
By the way, this followed 20 minutes of Nora O'Donnell from the sideline.
She's at the CBS early morning news show.
She's on the sideline talking about this domestic violence stuff and the Ravens and Ray Rice and the commissioner and then after that they cut back to the studio crew, not the studio crew was on site.
It was James Brown, Coach Bill Cower, and Deion Sanders.
By the way, one of the things war on women.
Are these guys beating up their wives?
Are they all Republicans?
Are they?
Are they voting Democrat, you think?
I mean, who's really conducting the war on women here?
Who's actually doing this?
Who has brought all this about?
All this supposed abuse on women that takes place in the NFL.
Who are these guys?
Think they're voting Republican?
I Kind of doubt it.
What?
Yeah, I did.
I did just ask that.
I did just ask that.
Are these guys who are engaging in domestic violence, which is a war on women, are they voting Republican?
They vote in Democrat.
I think the odds are they're voting Democrat, aren't they?
I'm t I'm sorry if they're gonna politicize this, they're the ones politicizing this.
I'm doing nothing but following along.
And they're the ones that have this stupid war on women meme accusing the Republicans of it, and I don't see any Republicans accused of this.
Anyway, James Brown, the host of the CBS pregame show, started out by saying two years ago.
Hang on just a second, let me find where I've got to pick this up.
One second, folks.
I thought I was the right page.
Here it is, number nine.
Have number nine standing by.
Two years ago, I challenged the NFL community and all men to seriously confront the problem of domestic violence, especially coming on the heels of the suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Joven Belcher and girlfriend Cassandra Perkins.
Yet here we are again, confronting the same issue of violence against women.
Now, I didn't see James Brown do.
I don't watch pregame shows anymore because they've gotten away from I mean, they're just they're they're they're artificially laughing at jokes that aren't funny, it's it's kind of juvenile.
So I tune in for the games now.
So I did I miss James Brown and his initial national plea to men to stop beating up women.
But I remember the Joven Belcher circumstances happened on a Friday, Kansas City.
He uh got drunk and went home and and he murdered.
There wasn't any suicide here, he murdered his the mother of his child and went to the Chiefs facility and committed suicide.
So James Brown says two years ago, I challenged the NFL community and I challenged all men to seriously confront the problem.
Yet here we are again.
Now let's be clear, he said.
This problem is bigger than football.
There has been appropriately so, intense and widespread outrage following the release of the video showing what happened in the elevator at the casino.
Now, wouldn't it be productive if this collective outrage could be channeled to truly hear and address the long suffering cries for help from so many women, and as they said, to do something about it.
An ongoing comprehensive education of men about what healthy, respectful manhood is all about.
And our audio sound bite picks up at that point.
It starts with how we view women.
Our language is important.
For instance, when a guy says you throw the ball like a girl or you're a little sissy, it reflects an attitude that devalues women.
And attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion.
More than three women per day lose their lives at the hands of their partners.
That means that since the night of February 15th in Atlantic City, more than 600 women have died.
So this is yet another call to men to stand up and take responsibility for their thoughts, their words, their deeds, and as Dion says, to give help or to get help.
Because our silence is deafening and deadly.
Have there been six hundred murders, spouse abuse murders since February?
I mean, that's the statistic he cites, but it yeah, I missed the source of the stat.
Well, we I don't know.
I think we would have heard about that, unless the perps are Democrats, and then we can't hear about it because the Republicans are doing the war on women, right?
Well, no, don't smirk in there.
There's all kinds of crime we don't hear about because it doesn't fit the narrative of white on black.
We don't hear about the crime in Chicago.
For example, we don't hear about black on black crime.
We don't hear about black on white crime.
We hear on white on black crime.
So I don't know.
I heard this last night, the first time I've heard six hundred women are dead since February spousal abuse.
Why haven't we heard this?
Why is there this deadly silence?
If it's true.
But of course, the main takeaway is you gotta stop making fun of the way Obama cannot throw.
Because it be well, when you how does it demean women?
What do you mean?
How does it because when you well, when you say he throws like a girl, you are diminishing women.
You're effectively saying that women can't throw, and you're making fun of a guy for looking like a woman who can't throw.
So you're you're you're you're diminishing women and any.
And when you diminish women, that leads to them getting beat up.
That's what James Brown says.
When you diminish women by making fun of the way they can't throw, that's going to lead to them getting abused.
That's exactly...
At any rate, uh now, CBS folks, they may have scored big ratings, I don't know, uh, with this pregame focus on domestic abuse and violence.
But I'm tuning out of it.
This is not why I watch football.
I have no desire.
This is not why most people watch football is to be preached to by another branch of the media who are trying to move a feminist and politically correct liberal agenda forward.
I have no desire to subject myself to it.
I don't need lecture on domestic violence.
Not during a game.
There are other venues for that.
Of course I'm against wife beating.
I'm against I'm also against mixing social issues with broadcasts of sporting events, too.
But that line has been blurred now.
I re remember the days, folks, when when it was said by people in the NFL that I was not welcome, that the NFL doesn't want political people, and the NFL does not want divisive people.
We can't have people who are divisive in the NFL.
And now look.
What is the NFL?
It's become nothing more than the latest extension of the Democrat Party leftist agenda.
Sixteen female senators push NFL on violence.
Sixteen female senators signed a letter yesterday urging the commissioner to institute a zero tolerance policy for domestic violence.
They said they are shocked and disgusted by the video of Ray Rice.
They wrote in the letter, tragically, this is not the only case of an NFL player allegedly assaulting a woman even within the last year.
They don't want any second chances.
The letter says if you violently assault a woman, you shouldn't get a second chance to play football in the NFL.
And then this Richard Blumenthal, a senator from uh Connecticut, he wants a full-fledged investigation of this.
U.S. Senate investigation of this.
Sorry, this is not why.
I watch football.
This is going to be the death of this sport.
It is no longer an escape.
It's no longer about great athletes.
It's no longer about amazing athletic achievement and drama.
It's now become about guns and gays and domestic violence.
These are the topics that we are all going to be lectured on all season long.
A press conference for a practice squad signee in Dallas.
Because he's gay.
The never-ending refrain on the Washington Redskins name.
And now this guns, gays, domestic violence, these are topics that I frankly don't need to be preached to about.
I don't need to be lectured, and I certainly certainly don't want to turn on a football game and end up being accused of all kinds of social misbehavior.
A brief time out, my friends, and we'll continue after this.
Don't go away.
Welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
So just to sum up, Mr. Snartley says, you know, there's no way they can misquote you on what you just said, but they will anyway.
Let me restate it.
Not restate it, repeat it.
I resent that the venue of football pregame shows, and now even the game.
I resent that this venue has become a lecture to the viewing audience on guns, gays, domestic violence, political correctness.
I resent the implication that wide swaths of the viewing audience are guilty of this.
I resent that a football analyst is delivering this from a hoity, toity position of moral perfection.
It insults me.
And insults me for everybody watching this to sit here and essentially be lectured and preached to about not caring enough or being guilty of it or not doing enough.
Did these people just figure out this week that domestic violence was wrong?
They're acting like they never heard of this before, and it's the latest outrage they've run into.
I think I knew domestic violence was wrong when I was six or seven years old.
So did most everybody else.
Or maybe it's some misguided effort to save the NFL.
I I don't know.
But this monologue that James Brown gave would be far more valuable if it was directed to whoever it is perpetrating these crimes, not the audience.
Anyway, let's go to the phones.
People have been patiently waiting.
We're going to start in Miami.
This is Dan.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Afternoon, sir.
Been listening to you since you started.
Big fan.
Thanks for uh doing what you do.
I really appreciate that.
That's a long time.
Yep.
Enjoyable.
Uh listen.
Um you know the expression a picture tells a thousand words, and you were talking earlier about radio versus TV.
Right.
I remember how, you know, when I was a little boy, Vietnam War changed when somebody got shot live on the air.
I'm convinced abortion would be illegal if it were seen.
So why, if the facts of this case regarding Ray Rice have been known for a few months.
Why does the fact that the video has come out?
The video now trumps everything.
As horrible as it is, it it this is it's not any different than what was known.
Maybe the facts are debated a little bit, but it's not any different than what I think for a few months.
I actually think there's an answer to this question.
You're absolutely right, the pictures change everything.
I mean, Coach of the Ravens admitted that.
That that's just, as you correctly said, that's cultural now.
Vietnam War, tell you what began the end of the Vietnam War was not Walter Cronkite saying that that some operation failed.
It was a picture of young children burned by Agent Orange fleeing an explosion in Time Magazine.
That's what did it.
You're right.
Naked girl running away from disaster with her skin burned by Agent Orange.
Um Ray Rice only got two games.
That's the root of this.
The suspension was thought to be insufficient because everybody knew what happened in that little bit, even though I didn't see it.
Didn't see it, but knew what had to happen because what we did see was an unconscious woman being dragged out of there like one of the Bertha Butt sisters.
And so this, in fact, this is a point a lot of people are making.
What why did we even need this video?
You have to know what went on in there, but the commissioner says, well, Ray Rice was ambiguous.
He may have said he slammed her and uh Ray Rice people.
No, no, no, no.
Ray did not lie.
Ray told the commissioner he hit her.
So this is dicey.
But the two-game suspension was judged to be insufficient, and then the video on top of that focused the fact that the suspension was not big enough, and therefore that people weren't taking seriously enough.
And then it was just open season.
The politically correct social architects had their open door and they stampeded right through it.
A brief break here at the top of the hour.
We come back.
There are just a couple more loose ends.
Humorous audio sound bites, actually, from the um national lecture last night on domestic violence and all the men who are engaging in it.
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