RUSH: I want to say something about Jerry Falwell. I never met him. I didn’t know Jerry Falwell. Early on — H.R., you might remember the year this happened — Falwell invited me to go give a commencement speech at his university, Liberty University, and I didn’t want to do it. I wasn’t doing speeches. I had just done two years of doing 47 speeches every year, on weekends, and I was burned out. I’d been there, done that. So we said no. He was as persistent as he could be. He kept offering more and more remuneration. (Money, for those of you who watch Channel 13 in Sacramento.) It was during the TV show so it had to be ’92 through ’96. Then he offered to send the Liberty University jet up here. At first it was thought that we were just gaming this for more money, and we weren’t. I just didn’t want to do it. It was nothing personal, had nothing to do with him. I just didn’t want to. I don’t like doing speeches now. I wasn’t talking to anybody. In fact, it was during this time somebody in Texas offered a million bucks if I would go down and make a speech. I forget who that was, but that’s how ridiculous it got, and I just didn’t want to do it. Not even for a million dollars, I didn’t want to do it. I’m not that crazy about them now. I have fun when they’re over and I have fun in the process of doing it, but leading up to it… It’s just me.
I never met him and I didn’t know him, but I’ll tell you something that you ought to note about what’s happening. The man has died, and I am not surprised when I look at the reactions to people on the left. They’re celebrating. They are throwing parties. Folks, if you want to know — if you need evidence, if you need examples of — just what kind of hate and low-rent character exists on the left in this country today, you just avail yourself of multiple opportunities out there on the Internet or probably on radio, too, and television. Christopher Hitchens last night on CNN was just brutal to Jerry Falwell. The man’s dead! All because he’s a man of God-d. Some atheists, just like liberals, are threatened by the truth. People with no faith are threatened by people that have it. They don’t understand. They gotta tear it down — and what is being said about Falwell today and by Hitchens is brutal. We might link the transcript. He was on Anderson Cooper’s show last night and it was brutal. I read the transcript earlier. I didn’t brother printing it out. I’ll tell you what, this is the kind of stuff that Falwell’s family and all his friends now have to put up with and read upon the occasion of his death.
You’re not going to find glowing tributes in the Drive-By Media. All you’re going to find is the usual criticism of the left coupled with their glee over his passing away. It’s not enough to say that it’s classless. It’s worse than classless. It is an indication of just how out of the mainstream of human decency these people can be, and in many cases are, with all of the prominent figures on the right. They tried doing it with Reagan, and they couldn’t pull it off because the American people showed up with an outpouring of love for that man that