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Jan. 30, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:33
January 30, 2015, Friday, Hour #3
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Greetings my friends.
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly despite distractions that you would not believe.
Here on Friday, so let's hit it.
One big, exciting, busy broadcast hour remains...
And we want to talk to you.
Numbers 800-282-288.
I'm sorry, I just got distracted again.
Look, that's Dana Perino.
Look at her hair.
She looks like she just got out of bed.
But it's styled that.
It's open line.
That's kidding.
Look at.
I don't know.
I'm about to turn everything off here.
I'm being distracted.
I'm being distracted.
I need to just settle down and calm out.
A couple of deep breaths here.
No, I'm trying to respond.
I'm trying to do too many things here when I ought to be focusing on just one thing, and that's the show.
Anyway, telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Great to have you with us here, my friends.
As we head into the Super Bowl weekend, I mentioned at the top of the program, this is the first year.
And that may not be right.
There may have been previous Super Bowls where I didn't really care about the game in terms of the matchup.
Wasn't excited about one or maybe both of the teams in it, but I don't remember.
My memory is that I've been jazzed and excited and ready to go just because of the event.
And there's something I don't know.
Maybe I chalk it up to getting older and interests changing.
But I have yet to catch the Super Bowl hype.
I'm going to watch the game.
Don't misunderstand.
But in terms of, you know, in previous years, I would have sat here.
I want to talk football strategery with you every day leading up to the game.
And I haven't even thought about football strategy as it relates to this game.
And during the commercial break and the last one of the previous hour, Snerdley, while I'm trying to do something else, is shouting at me over the intercom.
He doesn't understand the media apparently.
It's just fit to be tied, but Marshawn Lynch won't talk to him.
And Goodell was having his state of the league press conference during the last hour.
It happens every Friday during the Super Bowl week.
And apparently, what was he peppered with question after question after question?
Media person, are you going to punish Marshawn Lynch?
Are you going to punish this guy?
Are you going to find this guy?
Because he's not talking to us.
But he is talking to them.
He's just not answering their questions.
He's not getting anywhere near.
The guy doesn't trust the media.
I mean, he may not be the kind of guy you want to take home to meet mom, but he doesn't trust the media.
He's not giving them anything.
He's not answering one substantive question with any substance.
And the media is fit to be tied, and they want dad to punish him.
They want Goodell to find the guy, suspend him, or do something.
And Snerdley was asking me, why is the media so upset?
And I said, well, because the guy won't talk to him.
They said, but it's just sports.
I said, don't be fooled.
The sports drive-bys think that what they cover is as important in the world as anything else.
But they are.
The bottom line, they're fit to be tied.
You know what else I just saw?
Tiger Woodson.
They've got the Waste Management Open going on in Scottsdale this weekend.
I know it does inspire what a waste management open.
What the hell?
The excrement open?
What's this?
But they're the sponsor, you know, waste management.
Anyway, the thing I just saw, Tiger Woods shot a 44 today on the front nine and is in dead last place in the tournament.
Now, you talk about the sports drive-by, Snerdley.
Ever since that fateful Thanksgiving night when Tiger had the run-in with the fire hydrant and then the golf club that was in his wife's hand.
Ever since then, in the sports drive-by world, Tiger Woods has always remained the best golfer in the world, even through all of that, when he has not been the best golfer in the world.
He still is covered that way.
Every tournament, particularly every major, every sports drive-by expert bets that Tiger's going to win it when Tiger hasn't really come close.
And it's all been hope.
The sports drive-bys have been investing hope that Tiger resumes his former stature.
And he hasn't.
And this may be the weekend where the drive-bys, the sports drive-bys, finally give up the idea that Tiger Woods is still the Tiger Woods of the number one golfer in the world days, because he's clearly not anymore.
And I can remember telling people that I don't think he ever will be again.
And the sports drive-bys all think he will.
They think every golfer goes through slumps like this.
It's such a microscopic game.
Get it back, you lose it, but he'll get it back, and he's going to win his majors.
He'll beat Nicholas.
He'll get four or five more majors.
And I've always doubted it after that series of events for one reason.
This is not a personal criticism because I'm not getting into that realm of this.
But what happened to Tiger happened.
And there are consequences to everything that happens to a person in life.
There are consequences to everything you do.
And they come from all over the place.
And one of the consequences I've always thought that would befall Tiger, up until that event, up until that fateful Thanksgiving night, one of the primary weapons that he had was he just psyched every other player out.
Most every player started every tournament if he was in it believing they had no prayer, that they weren't even in his league.
He had them psyched out before the first guy teed off on Thursday.
And as far as that impacted Tiger, Tiger was able to think of himself as Superman.
And he knew that every time he showed up on the golf course, everybody watching on TV, everybody in the gallery, everybody also thought that he was Superman.
Well, that hasn't been the case after that Thanksgiving night.
Tiger will never be able to say again that people think he's Superman.
And that fact alone, the mental damage that does to the precariously balanced psyche of a professional athlete could be enough.
I always thought it would be enough to take away that edge that he had.
From now on, from the first time he went back on tour after rehab and whatever was necessary after all that.
His first trip, might have been Augusta, I forget.
It might have been the Masters, but it doesn't matter.
He knows that everybody watching him now doesn't think of him as Superman.
They think of him in things much less terms, much less than Superman, but he knows it now.
And he's not able, he's a human being, he's not able to fool himself into believing that people still see him the way they did.
Now, I'm sure he tries to see himself the way he always has, but even that would be tough.
It's such a game of golf is so mental, especially at that level when talking about tour pros, where the talent, I mean, there are obviously players that are much better than other players, but the margin of difference, tournament golf, is not that great.
And when you take away the clear mental edge, not to mention the physical talents that Tiger had or has, that were, I mean, seven iron to hit a 212-yard sand shot.
There's not too many people that can do that, but he can't either anymore is the point.
So it's just a shame.
But those are the consequences.
And I think the game of golf is so mental, and it requires confidence.
It's so dependent on a player being confident and almost feeling invincible.
And that just doesn't, that's not part of the recipe.
I think he's got a, maybe he can overcome it.
That'd be nice if he could.
It'd be a great comeback story if he could, but it's a big mountain to climb.
That's a huge distance to come back from.
The best way, the fastest way that Tiger could come back is if somehow he could erase all self-consciousness and not be aware at all of what the TV audience knows and thinks.
and the gallery knows and thinks, and the sponsors know and think, if somehow he could just erase all that.
And that's the mental toughness of the game.
Somehow you could, if he could just get rid of all self-consciousness, that's a tough thing to do.
Now you throw into that whatever problems he's having swing-wise and mechanics-wise.
And those are things that only he and his coach can properly analyze.
An average, ordinary, everyday fan wouldn't be able to detect the differences in his swing, per se, not on TV anyway.
But I think the mental thing is so over, it's so dominant a factor in golf that this is, it's been a huge thing for him to conquer and come back from.
We see it even now.
I mean, it's proving a steeper hill than anybody thought.
From the New York Post today, a city health department form for new parents requesting.
Listen to this, folks.
I just don't want to let the words and syllables go by here.
I want you to really pay attention to this.
A city health department form for new parents requesting birth certificates asks the woman giving birth if she's male or female.
Along with routine questions, mother's maiden name, mother's legal name, mother's social security number is a gender question that's raised a few eyebrows.
The woman giving birth is asked on a form for a birth certificate if she's male or female.
Now, What have I missed?
Is there, has the Gay Lesbian Alliance actually invented the artificial womb?
And it what?
Okay, so there's no artificial womb that's being used now by, okay, that hasn't happened and I didn't notice.
Okay, so you think the question is not whether the mother is male or female, but whether she identifies as male or female?
Okay.
Well, just in case the inquiry is not clear, the birth certificate request provides a convenient checkbox and asks the question in capital letters.
What is your date of birth?
That's in caps.
What is your current age?
That's in caps.
And what is your current sex?
And that's in caps.
The form asks in the section clearly marked mother, parent, parentheses, woman giving birth.
Susan Summer, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for lesbians, gay, men, bisexuals, and transgenders, says, to be clear, it is possible for a person who has given birth to a child to identify as male.
Well, you were right.
To be sure, it is possible for a person who has given birth to a child, as opposed to what?
What else would a person give birth to?
Anyway, to identify as male.
This from the Lambda Legal Group, the advocacy group for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people.
Susan Summer said that given various transgender stages, there is room for the person who gives birth to check the male box.
Now, folk, what is happening to our culture here?
This is clearly, this is clearly a pandering to such a small minority of our population and attempts to define, redefine in the flat-out face of common sense, what we all know to be impossible.
A man cannot give birth to a human child.
It just can't happen.
And yet, on an official birth certificate application form in New York State, it sure as hell can.
It can be recorded that the mother who gave birth was a man.
Now, in the old days of the outlaw Josie Wales or John Dwayne movie, something like this, the people who proposed it would be told to go pound sand.
Instead, what happens now is that everybody gets scared, worries that somebody's going to be offended, political correctness takes over, and this kind of nonsense insinuates itself into what we all consider just the ebb and flow of normal human culture.
And it's not.
There's no way a man can give birth.
But we have to acknowledge that to some people, it's possible.
And if they think it's possible, if they identify with it, then we've got to put it on the form.
Otherwise, we don't want the lawsuit.
We don't want the hassle.
These little things like this just chip away.
And it's further evidence of how so much of our culture is being bent and shaped and formed and whatever by genuine minorities who have grievances over who they are and then what everybody thinks about them.
Anyway, let's take a brief time out.
It's open line Friday.
I want to try to get as many phone calls in as we can.
So sit tight.
Much more straight ahead.
As always, don't go away.
Oh, hey, folks, one more thing.
A little family thing here.
You've heard me talk about my cousin once removed.
My cousin's Steve's son, Stephen III, Stephen Limbo III.
He's a musician in Hollywood.
And we've put links to some of his piano performances on our website and steered you to them.
And he had a, he performed during, I think it was the Grammys.
Was it Grammys?
Golden Globes.
Golden Globes a couple Sunday nights ago.
He has composed, he written and composed and performed a classical CD or album called Pants, P-A-N-T-S.
And it's debuted at 16 on the Billboard Classical Chart.
And he was so excited.
He sent me the screenshot of it on the Billboard number 16 there.
And everybody's just so proud and thrilled.
And I wanted to mention this because he sends me a note.
I got to give you all the credit.
Your example, your encouragement has been one of my greatest assets.
And I wrote him back and said, look, pal, you did this.
I didn't even know that you had composed an album, much less recorded it.
You did it on your own.
You show up at 16 on the billboard chart to open.
You did it.
He is the second member of our family not to go to college.
Second member, I'm the first, second member not to graduate in college.
So he and I have a kindred relationship.
And just like my parents were worried to death what that might meant for me, I counseled his parents many a night saying, don't sweat it.
He's going to be fine.
Just look at me.
That did not comfort them.
Well, it did, but it didn't.
But I mean, this is great.
So, congratulations to Stephen III, LP is Pants, 16 on the Billboard Classical Chart.
Here's Debbie in McLean, Virginia.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hello, Lush.
I love you so much.
I just wanted to mention, I was watching Marshawn Lynch this week, and I just got to thinking, what if our conservative Republican candidate could react that way to the media?
Like, because I think about how Mitt Romney got trapped with the contraception question.
And if our candidate, whoever he or she is, could just say, you know, these are the three things.
I'm not talking about that right now.
The social issues are off the table.
The most important things.
It is an intricate national case.
It's an intriguing thought, Debbie.
Now, we wouldn't want a candidate doing it the way Marshawn's doing it.
Sure.
But your whole point, just don't give them anything.
Yeah, well, you always say don't accept the premise.
And it's like, you know, they're injecting something that we weren't, you know, I mean, right now, I think.
You know, you raise a good point.
I tell you what happened with Romney.
Here's Stephanopoulos.
And out of the blue, asked Romney this question about what was a contraception.
He comes out of blue.
Nobody's talking about it.
Nobody's thinking about it.
Romney has manners.
He's a polite guy.
And after telling Stephanopoulos he didn't understand it two or three times, Stephanopoulos kept probing.
He said, Yeah, no, George, or whatever he answered.
And that gave birth to the war on women.
And it was a trick from the get-go.
And all Romney was trying to do was be a polite, nice guy.
And that's what you're saying.
Don't give them the edge.
Just say, silly question, not what we're talking about.
Not answering, George.
Move on.
Ask somebody else.
It's an intriguing idea.
I've long believed that kind of behavior is called for.
Heck, I don't talk to the media snurdily.
I have a couple of two or three maybe I'll talk to, but I don't talk to them.
That's what Kit did.
I mean, one of the many things Kit did so well.
You know, Kit was able to tell them no, but not have a Marshawn Lynch effect on him.
The Marshawn Lynch, the real problem is it's one thing to not talk to the press.
The league says the players have to.
They have to make themselves during the season, at least once or twice a week, the Super Bowl, every day.
And Marshawn Lynch makes himself available.
The reason the drive-bys don't like Marsha is because he insults them.
And he makes them he eventually conveys to them that he thinks their jobs are worthless and irrelevant and that they are just out to trip him up and make him look bad and he's not going to help them.
So his posture is that he doesn't trust them and they're this and that's why they don't like him.
It's not that he's not talking to them.
It's the way he doesn't talk to them that ticks them off.
He insults their very existence.
To Marshawn Lynch, a gaggle of reporters is the least important and relevant thing about his job.
And in his world, he doesn't need them to do his job.
They have no effect on his job one way or the other.
Talking to the media is not going to have a thing to do with how many yards he gains in a game or whatever.
That's his attitude.
It's how he goes about telling them that.
You know, you can tell somebody, sorry, I'm not talking to you.
Sorry, you're worthless.
You're a piece of excrement.
You're out to screw me.
And I'm not.
Well, they're going to not like it.
Because the sports drive-bys think the world hinges on what they do.
For example, the sports drive-bys, they will tell you that Marshawn Lynch owes it to the fans to talk to the reporters.
Why?
Well, because it's the media that conveys Marshawn's message to the fans, and that means the fans will like Marshawn and like the game.
So the media thinks that they are fundamentally crucially important to the popularity of the game.
And Marshawn Lynch is telling him, our game doesn't need you.
We play the game every day, and you people aren't on the field.
We win and lose, and you never make a tackle.
Why should I talk to you?
And you never are going to score points by telling a journalist he's irrelevant.
You're never going to score points by telling a journalist that his job isn't necessary.
And that's what Lynch does with his attitude.
Now, we do the same thing.
I don't talk to him.
That was one of the many things great about Kit.
They all loved him after he told them no.
And after he told them no, they always thought maybe next time the answer would be yes.
Marshawn Lynch, there is no hope.
There is no way he's going to change his mind.
That's the attitude that's conveyed.
That's why I tell you, you know, folks, I've made a big deal.
I still get emails from people who don't quite understand what's the big deal about saying no to people.
It's hard to do and still remain respected, liked.
And so this was one of the many things Kit was just brilliant at doing.
I mean, all these people he's telling no to liked him.
They started off not liking me to begin with or resenting me, what have you, because of political differences.
But they all loved him, every damn one of them.
Had all kinds of respect because he always took their call and he always politely told them no.
And sometimes he'd tell them, look, I'll work on him, meaning me.
I'll do what I can.
I wouldn't hold out any hope.
He just doesn't see any value in it.
But there's an artful way of doing it.
And Marshawn just doesn't care about the artful.
He's a blunt force running back.
You're in his way.
He's going to mow you down.
Whether you got a camera, a microphone, a notepad, or you're wearing a uniform with number 54 on it, middle linebacker.
As to the game, here's the conventional wisdom on the game from the sports drive-bys, the expert analysts who have, at least the ones I've had time to read.
And I just did that this morning.
Today is the first day I get into it.
It seems that no matter where you go, in New York Post, New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, whatever you – the uniformity in the sports drive-bys is like the uniformity in the news drive-bys.
If one news drive-by says that the choice of Dick Cheney brings gravity, then all 75 journalists will say he brings gravity.
Well, same thing happens in sports drive-bys.
And the conventional wisdom, the key to the game is Gronkowski.
Number 87 for the Patriots.
The key to the game is if Gronkowski catches seven or eight balls for minimum 85, 90 yards, Patriots win.
It means the Seahawks haven't been able to stop him.
How the Seahawks stop him?
They've got to jam him at the line.
They've got to make sure the guy does not get into his route.
Because you take Gronkowski away from Brady and you have taken 30, 40% of the Patriots' offense away from him, and that's how the Seahawks win.
That's one bit of conventional wisdom.
The other bit of conventional wisdom is that the Seahawks are not going to be able to stop Gronkowski, no matter what kind of technique they employ.
If they try two or three jamming at the line of scrimmage, get him off his route, or if they double or triple cover, that isn't going to work because it'll leave Julian Edelman or Danny Amendola open, and Brady can hit him all day long.
And there's a sentimental choice I've detected in the drive-bys for Brady.
Russell Wilson is young, and Russell, he won last year.
And if Brady wins, he could be the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls since Joe Montana did it.
And Joe Montana was the first quarterback to do it since Terry Branch.
Bradshaw and Brady, Bradshaw, Montana, the only quarterbacks with four Super Bowls, wins.
And Brady could become the third.
It'd be a great, great achievement, capsule career, and all that.
It's a sentimental choice.
There's Brady.
Russell Wilson, he's got a sentimental favoritism attached, but he's young and he's going to be back many, many times.
See, what else conventional wisdom have I?
The Legion of Doom, the defensive backfield for the Seahawks, could be impacted by the birth of Richard Sherman's child.
Richard Sherman's fiancée is Pregers.
And it is unknown what Sherman will do if his fiancé goes into labor on Sunday afternoon.
Sherman has not answered definitively whether he would go to the hospital to be present for the berf or whether he would stay and play in the game.
Now, you and I both know what Sherman's going to do.
Sherman is going to play in the game.
And Sherman has already, in a press conference, he's already said that his child, still in the womb, already has the decency and sense of manners to stay in there until after the game.
That is almost a quote.
No, it's not his wife, his fiancé's, his girlfriend, is pregnant.
Now, on the Patriots side, the way that the Seahawks can win is to get Brady.
And the key on the Seahawks defense is Michael Bennett.
Keep a sharp eye on the sometimes plays defensive and sometimes outside linebacker, Michael Bennett, who is perhaps the best pass-rushing defensive lineman, outside linebacker in the NFL today by reputation.
And if Dan Connolly and Vollmer cannot keep Bennett away from Brady, then it's going to be academic.
The Seahawks will win.
So this is the conventional wisdom thinking on both sides.
Now, the outcome of the game is not conventional wisdom.
Some expect a low scoring game because the defenses are powerful, hard-hitting, and aggressive.
And I haven't found anybody.
I haven't seen anybody who expects a blowout.
And I found very few reporters who even expect a high-scoring game.
Most of the reporters I've read think it's going to be in the teens, like 19, 15, 16, 13.
Some say one team might score in the 20s.
I guess if I, and I haven't read them all, but it seems to me that the, well, the sports drive-bys I have read the majority.
I'm picking the Patriots to win.
And that's pretty much it.
I don't, that's just what the analysts that I've read think.
I haven't applied my own thought to this.
And I think it's the first Super Bowl, and I don't know how many years where that's happened.
By the way, Stephen Limbaugh is with a PH.
Stephen with a PH, not a V in there.
And his album, Pants, it's an Amazon iTunes.
I forgot to mention that.
Now, on the Super Bowl, folks, I'm going to give you a cliche, but it really is true.
In predicting the outcome of this game, it really is no more complicated than saying the team that plays better is going to win.
And that is inarguably true.
You hope that it's a great game, and you hope that both teams show up and perform at their peak potential.
That would give you a great game.
But if one of the quarterbacks isn't throwing well, well, then if one of the running backs has a tendency to drop the ball, if there's a turnover differential that favors one team, that's going to affect the outcome of the game.
And that's going to come down to how well these teams perform.
On paper, it's a great Super Bowl.
On paper, you really do have the two best teams in the league playing.
On paper, it's a dream Super Bowl.
But on any given day, you never know if everybody on a team is going to be performing at peak potential, peak level, at their optimum.
Brady's got a cold, for example.
You just don't know if that's going to have any impact.
If the Seahawks' pass rush is anywhere like the Giants' pass rush, the last two Super Bowls where the Giants played the Patriots, then the Seahawks are going to win this thing.
That would come down as the offensive line of Patriots.
Are they going to have a good day?
And these are the things that you can't predict.
You can't predict karma Or any of the things that determine whether or not athletes are going to be playing at their best.
Now, when guys, experts start handicapping and predicting winners, you'll note that even though they don't say so, they're all doing it on the basis that both teams are going to show up and be their best.
And normally, in a Super Bowl, there's one team that is usually acknowledged better than the other.
So that if that team shows up and performs at its peak level, it's no doubt they're going to win, barring unexpected turnover.
But that even impacts whether they're playing their best.
This is pretty evenly matched.
The way these teams score points is different, though.
Patriots do not have a running, scrambling quarterback.
Brady pretty much locked there in the pocket.
Russell Wilson, totally opposite, totally different.
Look at that game between the Seahawks and the Packers.
The Seahawks didn't show up for the first 55 minutes.
If the Packers had just kept playing as well as they had the first 55 minutes, they would have won the game.
But something happened.
And the coaches will tell you they have no idea why momentum shifts.
If they can coach that, then they would never have heart attacks and they would never get fired.
But you can't determine what's going to shift momentum.
You don't have a home crowd in a game like this.
So that's also a factor.
So it's really when both teams evenly match like this, it's hard to predict it.
It is going to come down to which of these two teams blows it or which of the two teams just outperforms the other.
And that's Belichick's point.
Previous experience doesn't matter.
It's who play.
Belichick's got this trick pregame that he plays a horse race for his team and he stops it at every turn and takes bets.
Players bet who's going to win?
He stops at a halfway point, takes more bets.
Stops at a third turn, final turn before the final, one more round of bets.
And then it's over and he wins.
And he says, do you raise what we just did didn't matter?
Didn't matter who was in first place at the first turn.
Didn't matter who was in first place at the third turn.
None of that mattered.
What mattered is who was in first place when it was over.
That's how he motivates his guys to play the whole game and to stay focused on what matters and what doesn't.
Just a game like this with even matchups like this, it should be a good game.
You're hoping it will be.
Well, no, there's also no way of factoring if the Patriots are going to get away with cheating in the Super Bowl.
So that's another factor, too.
I mean, people are going to be thinking about that.
I mean, you can't, I'm not accusing them of it.
But I guarantee you, some of the fans by the, you know, first hour of tailgating, sufficient adult beverages consumed, are going to be thinking about nothing but that.
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