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Feb. 2, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:36
February 2, 2015, Monday, Hour #3
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Greetings my friends, welcome back.
Your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, the truth detector, the doctor of democracy, a general all-round good guy, a harmless, lovable little fuzzball here executing assigned host duties, flawlessly, zero mistakes.
So the Super Bowl ads yesterday.
I, you know, I normally, as I said earlier in the program, I guess I never got in the habit.
I never watched them live.
I always saw them either when they leaked in advance or afterwards because I was always getting up out of the seat or never was in my seat.
I was actually just running around attending to people, guests and so forth, or as a visitor.
But when the commercials came on, it was break time.
Yesterday, I sat through them.
I watched them.
And I can't tell you the number of spots went by.
And I look at Catherine, who's this for?
What is this ad for?
The Nissan ad was.
I didn't know it was a car ad, much less Nissan, until the end of it.
Nationwide ad came on with the dead child.
I said, what in the name of Sam Hill is that?
What in the world is going on?
And then as I watched, ladies and gentlemen, I spotted what I thought was the theme of advertising this year.
I have spoken in the past on how advertising is a barometer of where our culture is.
National advertising, that if you pay attention to it, you can get a good idea of what product marketers think our culture is all about.
Because it's their objective.
It's their responsibility in advertising to relate to people in order to separate them from their money.
Well, let's face it, that's what advertising is about.
That's one of the reasons why leftists hate it, because it's capitalism on steroids.
And it's about getting you to spend money.
And they just hate that.
But in order to be successful, they got to know to whom they're advertising.
And one of the ways they do it now, there's constant research being taken.
There's focus groups.
There are polls.
I mean, there's research out the wazoo because all of this advertising costs so much that everybody's trying to get the biggest bang for the buck.
And so if you look at national advertising a Super Bowl as sort of a reflection of or a snapshot of American values and American cultural thinking at the moment in target demographics, primarily 25 to 54, then you can pretty much bank on the fact that this is how the smart money sees the country.
So Nationwide unveiled an ad last night of a little kid talking about the things he would never do.
It turned out because he was dead.
That I said, what is the message?
I know they're trying to sell insurance.
I just thought the timing was kind of bad.
Here you have the Super Bowl, which is America's party, and it doesn't lend itself to depressing ads.
But what was the tactic?
Timing aside, maybe the timing was bad.
What was the tactic?
What was the strategy?
How was Nationwide trying to separate you from your money and sell an insurance policy?
And it was guilt, guilt-tripping.
They sized up the target audience as highly susceptible to guilty plays.
Emotional manipulation was seen as a weak spot for today's parents of young children.
And people who people who grew up in liberal schools of indoctrination and people who teach in liberal schools of indoctrination, look at what they were taught.
Look at the current crop of educators and the current crop of leftist leaders were taught to feel guilty about thermostats being too high in the winter and too low in the summer.
They were taught to be guilty about the lighting they were using in their homes.
They were taught to feel guilty about the kind of cars they were driving.
They were taught to be guilty about the food they were eating.
The guilt tripping was robustly manifested in the issue of climate change and global warming.
And it was a guilt trip from beginning to end in trying to make people feel guilty for it, while at the same time providing absolution for the sin.
Look what you've done by driving that car.
Look what you've done by eating that Big Mac.
Look what you've done by using that light bulb.
Look what you've done by heating your home too high.
Look what you've done by cooling your house too much.
But here's how you can save the planet from your attempted destruction.
Here comes the ad for whatever car that the polar bear thanks you for buying, for saving his life.
Here comes the ad for an insurance policy.
That will make it all better if your child dies.
So the theme in much of recent advertising has been, we're killing Mother Earth.
A generation who would cure racism by electing a black community organizer who surrounds himself with bigots and racists is now being accused of all kinds of guilt.
So nationwide, they went hunting for customers who are suckers for guilt trips.
And if you look at some of the other ads, and I'm having trouble thinking off top, there was the Chevrolet ad, there was a Chevrolet ad I particularly liked because technique-wise, it was brilliant.
It was for the truck.
And it looked to be a blimp shot of Jiffy Pop Field.
Remember that?
And then all of a sudden there was an interruption in the feed and the picture went dark for a while.
And you thought the game feed had just been lost.
When that happens, it's like dead air here on the radio.
See?
You say, what happened?
What happened?
It perks you up.
You're telling, oh my God, if there's something wrong, you start turning the volume up.
Well, on TV, it got your attention.
And when a few seconds went by, then they hit you with the fact that they were selling you a Chevrolet truck.
Technique-wise, that was brilliant.
And there wasn't any guilt-tripping on that.
I mean, not everything was a guilt-trip, but I just thematically, it seemed to me that the ads, particularly of the products, I didn't even identify.
I didn't even know what they were for.
There was still this notion that we need to fix something.
We've been bad.
We've kind of been not nice enough to snuff.
So, something in their focus grouping.
I'm telling you, they don't do this blind and they don't do this gun gut hunch anymore.
The great advertisers of old, the madmen days, it was gut hunch.
The, uh, the what now?
Cool.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, oh.
The McDonald's.
That's that's that random acts of love by not charging you.
Go to McDonald's because randomly you could be given a random act of love, as evidenced by free meal at McDonald's.
Um, so it's highly emotional appeals.
But back in the old days, in the madmen days, they were just on the verge of computerized databases then and in the 50s and 60s, and they were just starting on market research.
But back then, the good old days of all, it was all gut hunch.
I mean, that's why the brilliant advertisers for the brilliant advertisers didn't need a focus group to devise a great advertising campaign for a client to sell the product and reach millions.
Today, nobody trusts anybody's gut.
You've got to do the focus grouping, you've got to do the product research, you've got to do the data, you've got to do the interviews and all that.
So, you can't take a chance if this commercial is going to cost us what was Super Bowl commercial cost.
I don't even know this year, okay?
So, if you're going to spend $4.5 million on a Super Bowl commercial, you had better make sure we're not going to do this fly blind.
And so, all the focus group these people did, the research must have told them that the way to separate people from their money is to guilt trip them.
That's what I concluded from some of this stuff.
You know, one of my all-time favorite products ran their first ever Super Bowl spot yesterday, Mopi.
Mopi ran their first ever, Mopi's going gangbuster, they're the external battery pack and case for iPhones and what's the other brand Samsung, that's Samsung, and some of the others.
Mopi was the first to come along with a decent-sized battery in the case that gave you at least double the battery life.
And they're doing so well they could afford a Super Bowl commercial yesterday, and their ad was good, I thought.
But some of the others, I didn't, I didn't, um, I didn't quite get and and how about Budweiser they went back to the dog and horse a second year in a row.
I mean, now, if you, if you didn't see last year's dog and horse pony show, um, I imagine the ad this year was kind of cute, but this is a replay of last year's.
And what'd that tell you?
Last year's ad was gangbusters.
It was so good.
Why risk anything new?
Let's just go back to Tried and True.
Maybe I've studied this stuff too much, but I find it I find it all fascinating.
And by the way, folks, here at the EIB network, where we are one of the most recognized and successful advertiser vehicles in all of media, we don't do a single second of focus group research because I instinctively know who you are.
I know who you are in my audience.
So we don't have to do any of that.
So our advertisers don't have to waste any spend any money in market research or focus grouping or any of that.
All they have to do is trust that I will like the product and that's done.
It's it.
It's over with.
Because they know that you are who you are, just by virtue of being here.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
Here is Dennis in Richmond, Virginia.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Well, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
Longtime listener, first time calling.
I'm just thrilled to be on with you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Same here.
Well, I'll be quick.
I was just thinking about the McDonald's situation.
And one of the most important ways to gauge your product mix, even your core value mix, is to look at your competition and to see how they act and respond to different things.
And you think that McDonald's people were to look at how Chick-fil-A responded to the left when they came out in defense of marriage.
They tried to take Chick-fil-A down.
They tried to boycott them.
And in that couple of weeks following that, you couldn't even get it to a Chick-fil-A because the people responded because Chick-fil-A stood up to the left and defended their core values.
Right, but there's another factor, and that is the existing customer base of Chick-fil-A dwarfed whatever number of protesters there were out there trying to make themselves look like they were the majority of people.
They were a barely visible minority.
And the customer base that Chick-fil-A already had dwarfed them.
Well, you would think that McDonald's and by extension the Republican Party would take a cue from those folks and see what it is to stand up to the left and defend your core values.
Well, I don't know that McDonald's even recognized that they're being attacked by the left.
That's my point.
And they might have fallen for the fact that, you know, we're living in a healthier country now.
Who knows?
The CEO might think, yeah, I got a problem in my menu here.
You know, I really do have to model my menu.
You never know what was going through his head.
But the point is, he ended up appeasing, and he created menu items at his existing customer base.
That's not why they went there.
They don't go there for a little slice of an apple in a happy meal for their screaming kid.
They go there for it's fast food by definition.
It's fast food.
It has its purpose.
Well, I never ate it at Chick-fil-A until that all happened.
I become a regular customer at lunch.
I'm on the road quite a bit.
You must like it.
I support them.
You must like Chick-fil-A.
Part of it is, I can get a chicken sandwich at McDonald's, but I go to Chick-fil-A because I support the values.
Yeah, but I mean, you wouldn't go there.
You wouldn't go to Chick-fil-A if you didn't particularly like it, would you?
Or would you, just to support them?
No, you know what?
I'm not a big fan of fast food.
But when I do decide to eat fast food, I do go to Chick-fil-A.
And it's not because of the product.
I mean, like I said, a chicken sandwich is a chicken sandwich.
But I defend the Corvettes.
So if I'm going to spend my money, I'll bolt my pocketbook in that direction.
Well, see, that's the thing.
Now, I may be a little bit different than you in this regard.
A chicken sandwich is not a chicken sandwich.
I cannot make a chicken sandwich at home that tastes anywhere near as good as what I get at Chick-fil-A or even Mickey D's, whatever they call theirs.
I just can't.
Ditto burgers, something about, I love the beef tallow French fries.
I swear, I don't know anybody who can get that stuff and use it at home.
McDonald's gave it up.
The one The signifying factor in their french fries, their signature factor.
But anyway, you're right.
Chick-fil-A had a customer base that came out in total support, as did Scott Walker's voters, and as did when Occupy Wall Street showed up someplace, Tea Party showed up and opposed them.
Why, in your case, your example, McDonald's didn't take the example or see it at Chick-fil-A.
I have no way of knowing.
I could only hazard a guess.
And that probably wouldn't make much sense.
But it clearly was an example to be seen and learned from.
You just, they don't understand that these health Nazis are not about improving McDonald's because they don't want to eat there.
They want to shut the place down.
Okay, so some emails.
What do you mean McDonald's got rid of the beef tallow in their French fries?
Now, you may not remember this because it's all the way back in 2002.
McDonald's did this.
That would be 13 years ago, almost 13 years ago.
The New York Times had the celebratory article.
New York Times, happy as it could be.
New York Times ecstatic.
The McDonald's Corporation plans to issue an apology and pay $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups for using beef flavoring in its French fries.
The action's part of a proposed settlement of lawsuits charging that the company misled consumers.
The lawsuit was based on an assumption, folks.
From the New York Times article, McDonald's said it had switched to vegetable oil to cook its French fries in 1990.
Many people assumed that the food was suitable for vegetarian diets.
Vegetable oil?
Vegetarians.
No, it doesn't work that way because McDonald's is a capitalist company, and that's why they were targeted.
They were big.
They were pleasing to young people and children.
And these literal insane lunatics were out trying to make people think that global warming and climate change was being caused drastically by McDonald's.
And I'm sure McDonald's thought, okay, let's get rid of this.
We've got a hassle.
We don't want people protesting.
So let's just give them what they want.
Fine.
And the problem never goes away.
You cannot ever appease the left.
You can't appease ISIS.
You can't appease Al-Qaeda.
There was nobody who was going to appease the Nazis.
All these people have to be defeated, folks.
The McDonald's didn't recognize they're up against enemies, not health freaks.
They were up against enemies.
And that's what I think a lot of people don't want to even go.
They don't even want to go there.
Don't want to admit that.
That requires an entirely different kind of business model.
You know, a corporation may say we don't want to get anywhere near politics, but if the people trying to put them out of business are doing so with a political agenda, I'm sorry, they're being dragged into it by virtue of the fact the aggressor in conflicts always sets the rules.
Here's Will in Bergen County in New Jersey.
Welcome to EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
19 years, 8 months, 31 days.
I finally got a hold of him.
I really, but you're counting it.
I appreciate that.
Listen, real quick.
Two iconic games have, you could actually say where the coach took a chance, and I'll only have a chance for one, but that's the 67 ice ball.
And that is Vince Lombardi today would have been excoriated if Bart Starr slipped on third down at the goal instead of taking the easy three-point field goal and sending that game into OT.
And we've got to depend on what nobody's doing trophy today.
Hold it a second.
Not entirely true.
If the Packers had gone on in your hypothetical, if the Packers had gone on to lose, then Lombardi might have taken a hit.
If they had won in overtime in your scenario, then it wouldn't have mattered.
But you're equating what the Seahawks did last night with Lombardi running the QBC.
Listen, I was rooting for the Seahawks.
I gutlessly would have given the ball to Marshawn Lynch and not taken all the slings and arrows of media criticism like Carroll's doing.
I'm not a Carroll fan, but sometimes the great coaches take risks.
And on that field, if you listen to Starr when he does the recap of that, it was slippery.
That's why he kept the ball instead of giving it off to his running back.
If he had slipped, just like his running backs did on the prior two plays, we might be talking to the Cowboys and the Tom Landry trophy at the Super Bowl instead of Vince Lombardi.
Even so, I don't get the analogy between that and what happened last night.
Don't you think he took a huge risk?
No.
Oh, I do.
Listen, today, he would be saying, why aren't they going for the three points and sending this game into overtime where you're the home?
No, they had a chance.
Wait a minute.
That's where I'm losing you.
They had a chance to win this game.
They had a chance.
So did the Seattle Seahawks.
They had 40 seconds.
That's what I'm saying.
The Seahawks, there was no way the Seahawks kick a field goal and tie the game and move on to the next one.
They had to score.
I'm going to say to you is the Seahawks, obviously, yes, they had 40 seconds and a timeout.
So what's going on?
The Packers had no time.
Rush.
The Packers had no timeout, and they went for it on third and one.
Yeah.
And really, if you were going to go for it on third and one in that situation, you might have passed to the flat and hoped for to get in there.
That way, if it was incomplete, now you kick the field goal.
Lombardi chose to go for it all on that one play, even though he had a chance.
Because everybody was freezing their butts off and wanted to get the hell out of there.
But Rush, that's not an excuse.
You know, in today's corporate coaching.
That's what happened.
Bart Starr went to the sideline.
He went to the sideline and he said, coach, the play will work.
We're just not getting our footing.
He said, the play will work.
Bart Starr told Lombardi, the play will work.
QBC will work.
We're just having trouble getting our footing.
And Lombardi said, well, then run the play.
Let's get the hell out of here.
Quote, verbatim.
There wasn't any thought of passing the ball.
There wasn't any thought of kicking a field goal.
But even that, I don't get the analogy between that, which is already in the record books is what happened, and last night, which is in the record books is what happened.
They were not contemplating a field.
You're equating a field goal potential with the Packers in the ice ball, with them throwing, the Seahawks throwing last night on second down.
They followed a script.
They failed to adapt to situational football, and they followed their script.
Okay, we got goal line.
We've got a little time left.
We got second down.
Well, they had four downs.
Now, one of those plays is going to be a pass.
That's in their protocol book.
One of their plays is going to be a pass.
Come hell or high water.
For whatever reason.
Screws up the defense, toys with them.
It's going to be a pass.
But this was not a goal line play in the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter.
It's the last offensive series they're going to run.
Uh, the risk, I don't, I've never, this is the first I've heard, and I'm not criticizing you here.
Will, don't miss, my voice is raised because I'm impassioned on this.
I'm not yelling at you.
Uh, you just happen to be on the phone when I'm yelling, but not at you.
But I never thought that what happened last night was a risk.
Uh, it may be the way it is, it, but it was a not a gutsy, risky call.
It was a stupid, unnecessary.
Why put the ball in the air and stop the clock anyway?
You're sitting there thinking, we're going to score on third or fourth down after we eat up the clock.
I don't care whatever explanation they come up with, nothing works.
Okay, so we're going to pass.
You've got an incomplete or maybe we score on it.
If it's an added bonus, we'll score if I win the game.
But again, incomplete, we stop.
Why stop the clock?
The objective here, by your own admission, is score on third or fourth down, make sure the Patriots have no time left to run a play series to get down into field goal range.
So, why you even want to flirt with stopping the clock?
Belichick had already decided not to call a timeout.
And I'm sorry, I don't care what personnel the Patriots have on defense, Marshawn Lynch and his crotch grab are not going to be stopped from the half-yard line.
Well, he does that when he scores touch.
He gets fined for it, but he does it.
I mean, the Seahawks do strange things have to score touchdowns.
They fake taking a dump on the ball or they grabbed a crotch, whatever.
But they didn't, it just didn't matter to me what personnel the Patriots had in there.
Dawn's looking at me like, what?
Didn't know this stuff.
Doug Baldwin got fined or penalized 15 yards.
Probably he'll get a fine for his guy named Irvin, a guy named Irvin.
And they started, he claims he started a fight because actually the Patriots beat up on one of his guys a play earlier or something.
That was just frustration boiling over.
That was, you know, whoever the Seahawks player hit actually looked like Pete Carroll.
Looked like the coaching staff.
That was just frustration boiling over when the Seahawks started the scrum.
But I don't care what example or excuse or reason for throwing the ball on that down they come up with.
Belichick's genius luring them into it.
I guarantee you that you wait folks, you're going to hear that.
Belichick, he's so smart.
He suckered Pete Carroll into throwing that ball by not calling a timeout and by not changing his personnel on the goal line.
He made them think they could score on a pass.
They knew what was coming.
Belichick's a genius.
Before it's all over, that's going to be the explanation for this.
Not that Pete Carroll blew it.
And by the way, I've got, I don't know, Pete Carroll.
I don't have no delight here in ripping anybody.
I just don't understand it.
I'm telling you, when I, when I, like I said, the first hour of the pro, when they did, when Belichick didn't call a timeout, I sat on the edge of my couch.
I said, all right, that's the first thing that makes no sense here.
Belichick is not calling a timeout.
So I'm thinking he wants them to score, get it out of the way, wants them to score now, knows they can't stop him.
It's Marshawn Lynch.
So you capitulate, you let him score, you get the ball back, run down with another miraculous Brady drive and get into field goal range to tie the game, get to overtime.
That's why he didn't call a timeout.
That's called capitulation.
Not conceding, but you capitulate, just don't let them score.
That's why he didn't call a timeout.
But when that, that's the first I sat up, said, this is not this is not right.
And then when I saw the formation, the Seahawks formation, and I saw Marshawn Lynch, not in the eye, but split to the, you know, at the quarterback's right.
I said, what the hell is this?
And I saw that quick two-step drop, and I saw the slant pass.
Oh, no, no.
I stood up.
I started screaming even before the ball was intercepted.
I didn't believe it.
And then I saw it was in the, I just, I can't, I was not right the rest of the night.
I just, I can't explain it.
At that moment, it didn't, I didn't think I had watched the best.
That didn't seem like, I don't know.
I better stop it.
Let me take a break.
We'll be back after this, folks.
And I'm going to tell you one more thing about this game last night.
If, you know, if it's for children, I know, but this still is a big deal.
If they hadn't thrown that pick, do you know who everybody would be talking about today?
Jerome Kurse, number 15, who made that incredible catch on his back, bobbling it three or four times.
Do you know how much that play cost that guy in endorsement money and interview?
Number 15 of the Seahawks could have had the richest offseason of anybody in this league this season.
And instead, once again, it's going to be Brady.
All because he would have been the guy.
He'd have gotten the MVP.
He would have gotten everything.
He'd have gotten the Chevy truck, whatever they gave away.
He's now an afterthought.
This just the breaks of the game.
At least, you've got to give Pete Carroll credit.
At least he didn't say he didn't find out about the call until after the game when he saw the reporters asking him about it.
That's how Obama.
If Obama had been the head coach in the press conference, Obama would, I have no idea about that call.
I didn't know that was the call until we got back here in the locker room.
I was just as mad as you are about it, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it.
Was he using a condom?
When did this happen?
You just saw it on TM.
Warren Snapp arrested for solicitation of a lady of the evening.
Inhabited Phoenix.
She's at the Super Bowl, Warren Snapp.
See, folks, even those guys have to pay for it.
They don't have babes flocking to them like you think.
You got to, it's just nothing is what it seems, folks.
Just don't be so down on yourselves.
Even those guys have to buy it.
And that's it for me today.
You have a wonderful Monday.
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