RUSH: Newt Gingrich has lit a firestorm out there with his comments on poor kids and work. Yeah, he has. It’s predictable, too, that it would happen. We’ve got the sound bites. Yeah. He said, we need to have kids getting up with a sense of purpose, get up, go to work, get paid; find out what this is like rather than…

The only time these kids in poor sections of the country are working, it’s illegal. We gotta do something with the child ladbor laws. You get up, get ’em go to work, get paid, find out what that’s all about. Everybody is having a cow over this. This is all predicted by me, El Rushbo, over the past 23 years. It’s all been predicted. From not keeping score in little kids’ football and baseball games, to little Johnny being told two plus two is five is correct because he’s trying, to giving awards to kids that don’t deserve it so that you don’t humiliate ’em, we’ve created a young bunch of skulls full of mush with self-esteem classes. Everybody thinks they’re special for not doing anything! As kids they’re treated with kid gloves. 2 + 2 = 5?

“That’s right, little Johnny. Until you learn it’s four, that’s good. You’re trying. We don’t want to humiliate you, if you think 2 + 2 = 5, keep it up little Johnny. That’s wonderful.” We’re not gonna keep score in kids’ softball games. No losers. It’s unfair that somebody should lose. By the same token in those same sporting events everybody gets a trophy for being a Valuable Player even if there are fat slobs sitting on the bench waddling to first base, they still get a trophy. The problem is they grew up and they entered the real world and they found out the real world isn’t anything like that. You don’t get a trophy for doing nothing, there are winners and losers, and there is right and wrong — and when that reality hits you, and you haven’t been prepared for it because you’ve been raised as a baby by a bunch of other babies, you join Occupy Wall Street.

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RUSH: I mentioned earlier that Newt Gingrich is in trouble because of his comments on poor kids. This was in Des Moines yesterday at a campaign event.

GINGRICH: Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. … There’s no habit of staying all day. There’s no habit of, “I do this and you give me cash,” unless it’s illegal. You have kids who are required under law to go to school. They have no money. What if you paid them part time in the afternoon to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they came in? What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian? And I’d pay them as early as is reasonable and practical. … What if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom, and you paid ’em?

RUSH: Oh, folks, do you know the firestorm that’s erupted here? (interruption) No, not the janitor thing. It wasn’t any one thing. It was the notion that they should work, because it’s none of Newt’s business and he’s making discriminatory statements about circumstances he doesn’t understand. He’s putting down a whole group of people as basically worthless idiots that don’t work, and he’s calling attention to it, and who is he? It’s a similar reaction I’ve always gotten when you talk about the homeless. “A lot of them should go get a job,” and people say, “Well, easy for you to say!” You think he’s not catching on? What do you think Occupy Wall Street’s all about? Occupy Wall Street is made up of the kind of people that Newt’s talking about here.

Let me review for you very briefly here some points made over the years by me on this program. I remember every — we’re talking about kids. I remember, for example, when I first heard — and I think it was in Florida — that they weren’t gonna keep score anymore in Pop Warner Football because there was a team so much better than all the others that it was embarrassing the other team. They were winning 72 to nothing, and so the first thing they did was penalize the better team like minus-36 before they started. They were 36 points in the hole, and then after that didn’t work, then they thought, “You know what? We’re just not gonna have any winners,” and then that picked up to all kinds of kids’ sports.

No winner in softball, no winner in football, no winner here. Then everybody made the team, everybody had to get an at-bat; then we went to T-ball because it was being too dangerous if some kid got hit by a pitched ball. So we continued to sissify, wussify, and chickify. We refused to let any kid lose at anything because it was too humiliating and the parents didn’t want to deal with the tears and disappointment. Nobody was allowed to be the most valuable player because that meant none of the others were valuable if somebody was the most valuable. So if somebody got an award, everybody got an award — and I remember pointing out on this program this is not good because that’s not life. They’re not gonna encounter this kind of baby-fied culture when they grow up.

When they leave home and they go to school — when they get out of school and go to work — they’re not gonna have any preparation for it. They’re not gonna have the slightest idea. Remember, we couldn’t even grade papers in red for a time because red was an intimidating color, and then we didn’t grade papers — and then Little Johnny had outcome-based education. Do you remember? Outcome-based education. If the little kid thought 2 + 2 = 5, it was 5 until he figured out it was 4. They were never wrong. They were applauded (clapping) for trying. They were applauded for effort. There was no separation in school of the bright kids, the average kids, and the slow kids. Everybody was put together, and the fast kids were dumbed down.

Just like the left wants to do with income: Rather than elevate those at the bottom, they want to decapitate the top of society and lower everybody to the lowest common denominator. There were all of these, and we did parody after parody after parody of this stuff. Then we had the whole chickification of culture anyway.

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RUSH: We had the Oprahfication of women. Little Johnny praised for 2 + 2 = 5. So all of this happening, and where are we now? Now what we have. Those kids are now adults, and they are at Occupy Wall Street, and they are the ones who run around and look at life’s winners as criminals. They’re no longer getting awards for doing nothing. They’re no longer being picked to be on the team (i.e., get a job). They weren’t prepared for it. Liberalism has doused the hopes of another generation, is my point.

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RUSH: Okay, a couple of quick sound bites here and then back to the phones. I want you to hear media reaction to Newt saying that these poor kids — and I don’t know why it has to be just “poor kids,” but get these kids a job. Get them accustomed to getting up and going someplace, getting paid, the whole thing. This is something that’s foreign to them, and there are media catcalls to this. The media is outraged over Newt suggesting that young people be taught the concepts of work and compensation. We have a montage here of a bunch of media types (most of this MSNBC, some are Fox) up in arms over Newt’s comments about the poor kids.

SHARPTON: (screaming) Newt Gingrich goes after poor people! The Republicans’ presidential front-runner blames poor children — again! This one’s a shokka, even for a heartless Republican Party!

F. CHUCK TODD: Quintessential Newt, making broad assertions.

SCARBOROUGH: Newt Gingrich has never looked into these single moms’ eyes. Newt Gingrich has never seen the struggles that happen every day in the Bronx, in South Central LA, where the truly disadvantaged live.

GREGORY: On Sunday, it will be 17 years that he was talking about disadvantaged kids going into orphanages.

ROLLINS: Newt has a tendency — hes’ a very smart guy — he thinks out loud sometimes, and he makes statements that he doesn’t realize make more impact than just the words.

JANSING: …talking repeatedly about putting little kids to work.

CAMERON: Seem to suggest that poor kids grow up unable to make money without breaking the law.

RUSH: There you have it. So you see? Now, this is where we are in the culture. My… (sigh) Gosh, I hate this. You know, when I was young I said, “I’m never gonna grow up and be an old fogy, and I’m never gonna say, ‘When I was young, I walked to school in ten feet of snow with no shoes!’ I’m not gonna do that like my parents,” but I have to. I’m sorry. I have to remark on that. Newt Gingrich was blaming teachers. He was blaming parents. He’s not blaming the kids. He was not being cold-hearted toward the kids. If anything, Newt is worried about the culture. You have Al Sharpton saying, “Going after poor people, blame the children again”? He wasn’t blaming the kids. He wants to help. This is an example of compassion. Work in the old days was something honorable.

To want to get a job… I shined shoes when I was 13. That was my first job. I made $50 in three months shining shoes at a barber shop, and my dad was beside himself with pride. He was excited. Yeah, and even when I was growing up, people said, “But the Limbaugh kid doesn’t need the job.” That was out there, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I’m 13. It certainly wasn’t a stigma! It wasn’t something I was doing wrong, and the people who encouraged me to work were not SOBs. Now, look. Somebody tell me what is wrong with wanting to teach somebody the concept of work and being paid for it. What’s wrong with it? Particularly if they are poor. What is the route out of poverty? It ain’t the Democrat Party. The route out is not endless benefits. That’s merely a way to sustain one in poverty, but it’s not a route out of it. (interruption)

Well, that’s it: Newt dares to suggest that the parents have a role in raising their kids. That’s the government’s job now, don’t we understand — and that’s where Newt’s off the deep end. He doesn’t understand anymore. “It’s the government’s job to pay for those kids, the government’s job to make sure those kids do whatever they do and have whatever they have. It isn’t Newt’s. Who the hell doesn’t think he is?” But this is where we are. When you suggest something genuinely helpful and educational to people, to poor kids especially, you get castigated. You get raked across the coals for insensitivity, cold-heartedness, extremism, heartlessness, all of those other adjectives. So last night on ABC’s World News Tonight, Jacob Tapper interviewed Newt and said, “Another concern is your propensity to make outrageous, interesting, whatever remarks, like child labor laws being stupid and so forth.”

GINGRICH: Young children who are poor ought to learn how to go to work. It would be great if inner city schools and poor neighborhood schools actually hired the children to do things. Some of the things they could do would be work in the library, work in the front office. Some of them, frankly, could be janitorial.

TAPPER: But Democrats could very easily take that comment and say Newt Gingrich wants inner city kids to become janitors at age ten.

GINGRICH: Right, and the correct answer is: That’s a lie.

RUSH: Right. So, yeah. Democrats could very easily take the comment and say Newt Gingrich wants inner city kids to become janitors at ten. Doesn’t make it true. Who cares what Democrats say? Democrats are the problem. Work is not the problem! Lack of jobs is the problem brought to us by the Democrats. Who cares what they say? I don’t, frankly. I don’t have any problem with standard, decent, good old, traditional values. None whatsoever. Besides that, janitor is a union job! It’s SEIU. The SEIU represents janitors. Folks, I’m telling you this is how we end up with kids in Occupy Wall Street. Adults defending doing nothing, adults criticizing people who are trying to come up with helpful ways to get certain people out of the doldrums that they’re in.