RUSH: Bart, Boise, Idaho. Next you are. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Great to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I have been calling off and on for the last 20 years on Open Line Friday to ask you this question. A quick little setup. I was living in Anchorage, Alaska, at the time. I’m a salesman, construction supplies, and I’m out on my morning route making sales calls. You receive a phone call — this is 1995. The class of ’94 had just, you know, that Congress had just come into play, and a lady had called up and asked you two questions.

Number one, what were you most proud of, what item, what piece of conservatism, what kind of educational thing were you most proud of that you were able to offer to the audience. That’s number one.

Number two was, what was the funniest phone call you had ever taken. So you answered number one, and it was baseline budgeting, ’cause up until that point I don’t think most people knew, you know, what baseline budgeting was. So when Newt was out there saying we’re gonna cut this and this and this, and the Democrats were saying, “Oh, my gosh, they’re cutting everything,” you explained that we’re just cutting the increase from last year’s budget. They’re not getting less money. They’re just getting less of an increase, right?

RUSH: That’s right.

CALLER: You explained that. And I’m listening, and during that time, you had a couple of people that would call up periodically, and they were, you know, just funny calls, and there was, you know — so it was the top of the hour. And you got done with the baseline budgeting and said we’re gonna hold her over and start it at the top of the next hour. And whenever it was, nine o’clock or whatever, I had an appointment. I mean, it was an appointment, I had been driving around the block at this point —

RUSH: You know what? I’m out of time now. I have to terminate the call. I don’t even have time to get your next question. How about a coincidence, 20 years and this happens to you twice. I am just kidding. Hang on. I do have to take a break.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Bart in Boise. Bart, we left off with you, you were asking back in 1990 what I thought the funniest phone call was to date.

CALLER: Yes. Yes. And, you know, I called off and on over 20 years. I’m not even sure if it’s that important, I don’t know if you remember it or not, it’s just it got to a point where it was, okay, I’m not giving up, I’m getting through to Rush and asking this darn question. (laughing)

RUSH: You know, I’ve been thinking about it here. When I tell you that I very seldom think back, it really is true. I’m not trying to dodge anything here, ever. It’s just when this program ends today, it’s over and I’m on to what’s now happening that I’m gonna need to address the next time I’m here. In this case it would be Monday. So when people ask me to think back, I often ask other people things they remember that have happened or consult the website.

But at the time you asked the question, the funniest phone call, I would have so much trouble answering that. Two things come to mind, but I don’t know that either one would actually be the one. We had a caller back in that era named Mick from the high mountains of New Mexico. This guy was a riot. He was hilarious. And he even showed up at Dan’s Bake Sale in Fort Collins. He was not well, and he passed away after seven or eight years after being a caller here. He was not somebody we had his number and called regularly. He was not a character. He actually existed and whenever he called and got through, that’s when we put him on.

There was another one, this deranged supporter of Louis Farrakhan who claimed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were the real focus of evil in America and that Calypso Louie, Minister Farrakhan, was actually on the mother ship circling the planet and was preparing to beam himself down and save whatever needing saving. She called three or four times, and livid, I mean, just angry as she could be. She had no idea she was a laugh riot. She called herself Rita X. Obviously a reference to Malcolm X.

But even mentioning those two, I mean, it’s almost like a brain freeze. But if somebody said name your top 10 favorite movies, I’d have trouble thinking of three. I don’t know. My memory, when something else triggers it, is unstoppable, is incomparable. But when given one of these, “What are your top 10 favorite this or five favorite songs, movies,” I blank. And so trying to remember the funniest calls, that would be an impossible — I’m sure right now people are yelling at the radio hoping that I’ll hear them and remember what they think were funny phone calls. I’m sure there were tons of them out there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tracy from Bedford, Indiana, Open Line Friday. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Good to talk to you.

RUSH: Well, thank you.

CALLER: So, I was listening when Bart called in and asked you what the funniest phone call you ever got was, and it jogged my memory, ’cause I’ve listened to you since your TV show.

RUSH: Oh, yes.

CALLER: And the funniest thing you ever did was show that clip of Bill Clinton coming out of the funeral, I think it was Ron Brown’s funeral, where he was yukking it up with people and laughing and carrying on, and then he saw the TV cameras and got real sad. You remember that?

RUSH: Oh, yeah. Exactly.

CALLER: You said you were gonna show that clip until everybody in America saw what a phony he was.

RUSH: We did.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: We used that clip every day for two weeks in a row, multiple times a show. It perfectly encapsulated who Clinton was. It was a memorial for Ron Brown, his commerce secretary who died in a plane crash, Bosnia or some such place. And they having the memorial in Washington, and Clinton’s walking into it, and he’s with a pastor, Tony somebody from Pennsylvania, and they’re just yukking it up, and they’re laughing like they’re going into a roast somewhere.

And then Clinton spots the camera and in less than a full step he’s faking tears and wiping tears from his eyes and putting his head down and acting somber. The minister has not caught on, and he’s still yukking it up and laughing as though Clinton’s telling the funniest joke he’s ever heard. So, yeah. But that wasn’t a phone call. See, that’s another reason — well, I don’t have time — that’s another frustrating thing about television too. But I’ll have to leave you hanging on that, folks, because we’re sadly out of busy broadcast time.