RUSH: Here’s Bill in Detroit as we head back to the phones. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. With all of the news media coverage that I’ve watched and read about, you know, every interview is exactly the same. The people are the same, the comments are the same. I can’t believe they can’t find one black person in that town that has a different opinion. It’s pretty clear that they’re trying to portray that there’s a certain image going on here, and I think that the image is being directed. There are black people that keep them in line politically. I don’t think they care what the rest of the world thinks. And even today, in looking at some of the still photographs that they’ve taken, and some of the reporting of it, it reminds me a lot of when they report on the Palestinians. You have the young people hiding their face and they’re throwing rocks. It almost seems too scripted, and I know you talked about that quite a bit, that there’s something else here —
RUSH: You are exactly right. Let me tell you what you’ve zoned in on, Bill, very, very adroitly. That means skillfully, for those of you in Rio Linda. There is no news. You’re exactly right. You’re not watching news out of Ferguson. You’re watching politics in action, and you’ve caught it. They don’t find anybody who disagrees with the myth, not one person in that town, huh?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, our last caller from Detroit, Bill, reminded me of something that is, once again, crucially important in analyzing, dissecting, and understanding all of this stuff that’s going on. He made the point that every network — no matter which one — all look the same. The story is the same no matter where you go. In print, probably on radio locally and no doubt on cable news, it’s all the same.
Is there not one black store owner, for example, in Ferguson that (chuckles) is not down for all this? Are there not people in Ferguson, Missouri, fed up with this and wish every would pack up and get out of town? Everywhere you look it’s identical! Same pictures of the same people. Interviews of the same people. The guests migrate from network to network. The state senators, the Democrat Party officials, are all everywhere.
Everybody commenting on this is everywhere the same thing from network to network to network. It’s all the same. Here’s why that matters, in addition to the obvious. The obvious says, “Well, then maybe this is manufactured, scripted. Maybe there’s an agenda behind this. Maybe they’re not really just standing out there watching what goes on and telling us.” See, that’s the bottom line.
The reporters on this story are not in Ferguson watching dispassionately and then telling you and me what they see. Unh-uh. There is a myth at play here, and therefore there is an agenda, and there is an objective to be reached in this story. There is a good ending and a bad ending. There’s the “right” ending and the “wrong” ending, and the right ending is where they’re all slanted and headed.
In fact, that ending has already been reached! Right now it’s in the stage of, “This is what should happen.” No matter where you look the proper outcome has already been determined, based on the politics of the people in charge of this. The purpose of this is to advance a liberal agenda, the Democrat Party agenda, to turn out black votes for the November midterms.
Let’s go to back. I want to remind you of point that I made in this discussion about the Washington Redskins name change. It’s a tactic that the media and the left use. It is an attitudinal tactic. I have told you — I’ve regaled you — with stories of media people who have gone to Redskins games and Redskins practices, and how angry they’ve been when they encounter Redskins fans happily wearing Redskins gear; happily singing, “Hail to the Redskins.”
This does not set well with the media people that have gone.
The media, in presenting the story of the name change, does so with an attitude that everybody agrees that it needs to be changed, that there’s not a soul out there who supports it anymore. (translated) “Well, there might be a few, but they’re kooks, don’t you see? They’re old-fashioned, they’re racists, they’re not hip. They haven’t gotten with the times. They’re holding on to a long-ago past that can never, ever be again!
“The real hipsters, the people in the know, the vast majority of people realize that ‘Redskins’ is it horribly racist, demeaning and insulting. The vast majority of Americans realize it’s got to go.” That’s how it’s covered. That’s how the story’s presented. Each and every liberal story is that way. Everything the media covers, the assumption is everybody agrees with them. There is no longer any debate. There is no disagreement.
There is no contrary point of view, other than those Tea Party extremists who are marginalized and put over there as racists and bigots and what have you. It’s a fundamentally important technique in establishing the proper psychiatry in any movement. The objective that they seek is to make everybody who doesn’t agree with them think they’re in the smallest of minorities.
They have no chance of stopping whatever is on the agenda to change, and furthermore they’re kooks and oddballs and weirdoes for opposing it. “The smart people,” goes the thinking… The assumption has been, “All the smart people — all of the really sophisticated, erudite, reasonable people — know that the Redskins name has to be changed.” Likewise here: “All the sophisticated, erudite, sophisticated and elite people know that this cop shot an innocent black kid.
“It happens all the time and we’ve had enough of it and it’s gotta stop — and if it doesn’t stop, it just proves what a horrible place the United States of America remains and it’s why we must engage in fundamentally transformational change.” If you oppose that, you become marginalized, and the way the story is covered is to make you think that you’re alone in opposing it, that everybody — everybody, don’t you know — agrees with the leftist agenda.
Everybody supports it!
That’s the tone in reporting every story. So here we have Bill in Detroit and his observation that no matter where he looks, it’s all the same. The coverage is the same, the desired outcome is the same, the only outcome is the same, the only decent outcome is the same. The guests are the same; what the guests say is the same. The reporters, network to network, all say the same things. They all end up talking to the same people.
They all end up showing the same pictures, ’cause they’re all like-minded. In doing so an image is created that everybody thinks this way. Everybody agrees with all this, and if you don’t, you are really odd, backwards, old-fashioned, unhip, uncool, out of it, wrong, take your pick. This is exactly how it’s done. This is political correctness on the march in one sense. The news has ceased being news.
The reporters on the ground in Ferguson are not standing there with notebooks and cameras and microphones and recording what happens and then trying to be the first to tell everybody. They are all trying to find things that will fit their version of the story that already exists. They are going to find people who will give evidence of proof that the myth in all this is exactly what happened.
I have… I hope I printed this out. I’ve got a couple of stacks here. I know I did. There’s a story in all this about how the journalists have become the story, that the line of demarcation between what is news and… Here it is. Here it is. And, lo and behold, my friends, it’s a Politico story!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, criminal prosecutors often say — well, it’s not often. Criminal prosecutors do say that if several people report an event exactly the same way, it proves that they have gotten together and scripted their stories. You know the old saw that the more times you tell a story, the more it changes. Like, I would tell Mr. Snerdley something. Mr. Snerdley will tell Brian. By the time Brian hears it, it’s not quite the way I told it to Snerdley. Snerdley’s not purposeful distorting it; it’s just that he heard certain things that I say that sounded interesting, more interesting than others, or whatever, and those are the ones he emphasized. Brian does the same.
By the time Brian tells it to somebody, and that somebody tells it to somebody, it’s probably gonna be much different than the story I told Mr. Snerdley. But if people in a progression of people tell the same story, detail down to detail, and it doesn’t change, prosecutors tell you that it’s scripted. They will tell you that people have gotten together and arranged the story and don’t deviate from it. Now, if that happens to be true about, say, witnesses in a court case, why couldn’t it be true of the Drive-By Media?
I used to say back in the early days of this program, if you miss this program, you miss this program. There’s nowhere else you can go to hear what happened on this program. But if you missed CBS, no big deal, watch ABC. And if you missed ABC, no big deal. Watch NBC. If you missed all three of those, no sweat, turn on CNN. If you miss all four plus CNN, turn on MSNBC. If you miss all five of those, go to the newspapers. Try the New York Times. If you miss the five networks and the New York Times, go to the Washington Post, and so on. Whatever you do in the mainstream media, you’ll see or hear or read the same thing. You can get it all in one outlet.
You can bet that of the three nightly newscasts every night, essentially you’re gonna see the same stories, maybe in different order, but you’re gonna see the same stories, and more importantly you’re going to see the same treatment. And you’re going to see the same stories not covered, which has become as important an item in media analysis as covering what they do cover, pointing out what they ignore.
But if you miss this program, where else are you gonna go? You gotta go to RushLimbaugh.com, the only place you can go to pick up what happened here if you miss it. So if witnesses can get together and make sure their stories don’t change, why can’t the Drive-Bys do it? I’ve always maintained, the Drive-Bys don’t have to have a meeting every day, just like Obama doesn’t have to send a memo to Lois Lerner to tell her to get the Tea Party. She already knows to do that because she’s working for Obama. She knows what he wants.
Well, by the same token, the Drive-Bys are the Drive-Bys. They are hired because they already think a certain way. So it’s trusted that they are gonna report things the way it is desired. So I appreciate the call. Bill, that’s a great observation, Bill in Detroit. He hasn’t seen a thing different, no matter where he goes. Now, I want to get to this story, also from The Politico, about the media becoming the story.
But let me get back to the phones first, because I need to keep a good balance here.