RUSH: Laurie, in Burlington, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh my gosh, Rush Limbaugh, former feminazi dittos.
RUSH: Former feminazi!
CALLER: Former feminazi dittos. Oh, my gosh, my gosh, I just want to say if I could steal away with you, Rush Limbaugh, there are so many things I wish I could talk to you about, but I just want to say that I agree with you that I believe possibly that the left does hate Sarah Palin maybe more than you.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question out there, Laurie.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Just in my narcissistic mode here, a little question. If you did steal away with me —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — would I get a word in? Is your desire to just tell me what you think?
CALLER: No. No. It would take hours and hours and hours. No.
RUSH: Okay, because you said there are so many things you wanted to talk to me about and I just envisioned myself sitting there listening.
CALLER: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
RUSH: Dawn is in there shaking her head. She can’t believe I asked you that. Okay, I didn’t mean to sidetrack you there. You think the left does hate Sarah Palin maybe more than they hate me?
CALLER: Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely. I am not an Oprah fan, but, you know, Rush, I remember the very day that she had Obama as a guest, and instinctively I knew she was swooning over him, and I just knew something was going to come about this. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. And when I saw this interview with Sarah Palin on her show, she just looked at her with jeers. I mean she treated her with such disdain. And if she had one of her celebrity guests on there that she was totally in love with, she would never have treated them like that. I mean, just that one question when she asked her about having Levi Johnston over for Thanksgiving dinner and Sarah Palin gave her this long answer, and then she said, ‘Okay, so is he coming over for dinner or what?’ She would never have treated the celebrities like that. She would never have given that kind of response, she treated her —
RUSH: Let me tell you a little bit about the interview.
CALLER: That’s disrespect!
RUSH: Well, I know, but what did you expect?
CALLER: I didn’t expect anything less but the American public is just —
RUSH: Laurie. Laurie.
CALLER: My mother is a liberal and my mother would never get it. The people in this country are just so ignorant, and I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of it.
RUSH: The frustration is boiling over out there in this audience —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Look, I share the frustration.
CALLER: And I love Sarah Palin. I love her. Love her.
RUSH: Now, about The Oprah, let me help out here. The Oprah’s TV ratings are not healthy. Now, TV ratings are like radio ratings, they have many vagaries and they go up and down based on how the sample is chosen and television is a little different because they’ve got those Nielsen boxes, radio is starting to get in that way. But there’s a trend downward for Oprah’s audience. You couple that with the fact that when Oprah announced that Palin was going to be on, she was deluged with opposition hate mail from her fans for giving Palin the forum.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: She wanted Palin on because she thought it would stoke ratings with Palin’s fans tuning in to watch. Instead what happened, she got scared, her own fans were just — Oprah doesn’t get that kind of response from her audience, Oprah is not used to being harassed and disliked. Her audience loves her, she’s a god, you know, she’s a New Age whatever to her audience. And she’s not used getting tons and tons of screw you, Oprah, what’s wrong with you, what’s happened to you Oprah, oh, my God you’re selling out. That kind of stuff will shake, rattle and roll somebody like an Oprah just as it would shake, rattle and roll an Obama who is —
CALLER: Yes. I used to worship the ground Oprah walked on before I was converted.
RUSH: Yeah. So if you understand that you understand the chilly nature of the atmosphere in the room while The Oprah interviewed Sarah Palin.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Now, I didn’t see it, I’ve had a lot of people tell me that there wasn’t one policy question asked.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: But when Obama was on it was all about policy, of course.
CALLER: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Well, I don’t know. I support Sarah Palin. I think she is a woman of character. I think she’s genuine. She speaks from the heart. And I think America — we’re just tired of politics. We’re tired of men who lack character. And, by the way, I know I didn’t call in about anything else except Sarah Palin, but I just want to say, a man that will stand up and be a man — and I just want a man like John Wayne, okay? Women want John Wayne and it’s okay.
RUSH: I’m reminded of that song by Paula Cole, Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
CALLER: Exactly. Real women are lying. They just don’t tell you that.
RUSH: Well, now, remember, the most recent cowboy on the scene was ridiculed constantly for being one, and that would be who? George W. Bush.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Now, I have to know because our resident sexist here, Bo Snerdley, wants me to know what it was that switched you from becoming a feminazi to being who you are today.
CALLER: Okay. Well, that’s a real long story, but first I’d have to —
RUSH: Well, just remember this. Brevity —
CALLER: It was God, but it was a lot of people in my life, and, you know, I want to say that it was a friend of mine, a radiologist whose name was Terry Kobak, and he would walk around listening to you in the office.
RUSH: So it’s me, that’s what we’re getting at, it was me and God.
CALLER: He was a nice southern doctor from North Carolina and he would walk around with a cigar and he would listen to Rush Limbaugh, and he would talk about current events and talk about you all the time.
RUSH: Obviously a real man.
CALLER: Well, yeah, he was. (laughing) Yes. We do, we like real men, and a woman is lying if she doesn’t say that deep down she wants a hero, she wants a John Wayne in her life. It’s true.
RUSH: I don’t know.
CALLER: It’s true.
RUSH: You’re stuck down there in North Carolina. You know, head up to New York or Washington and you’re not going to find those babes —
CALLER: Well, they can only go on for so long, and, by the way, my son wants to be in the NFL, and if he wins the Super Bowl, his mother is going to get out there and say, ‘I don’t want to go to Disney World, I want to meet Rush Limbaugh,’ that’s what I’m going to say.
RUSH: Laurie, look, thanks for calling, I appreciate it, I’m glad you got through.
CALLER: Thank you so much Rush and just keep on with it.
RUSH: By the way, travel to Washington sometime, you don’t even have to do that, just wait ’til you see Janet Napolitano on TV and ask yourself is she looking for a John Wayne in her life?
CALLER: Rush, one more thing, can I just tell you one more thing?
RUSH: Oh, of course.
CALLER: My 23-year-old is a Rush Baby, and she is working on Capitol Hill.
RUSH: Stealth?
CALLER: Concerned Women for America.
RUSH: Concerned Women for America. Okay. Good group. All right.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Laurie, thanks. I mean the feminazis hate that group. That is great.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, Snerdley, do you watch Mad Men? Have you ever seen Mad Men on AMC? Dawn, have you watched it? Brian, I knew you wouldn’t have watched it. Mad Men, I just discovered it this season. I went and got the DVDs and watched it. It’s an amazing show. They just finished season three and it’s on AMC and it’s about Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early sixties. They’ve got all those old IBM typewriters in the advertising agency, all the old refrigerators, all the old cars, the clothes, the wardrobe, it’s right out of that era, and I know because I grew up then.
There is a character, the hunk star of the show is a guy named Jon Hamm and he plays a character named Don Draper. And Don Draper is the brilliant, creative advertising guy at this fictional advertising agency. I visit blogs where people post their reviews of this program because it has people fascinated, and the reason it has people fascinated is because it is a dead-on accurate portrayal of America 40, 50 years ago in the male-female, husband-wife relationship, the male-female relationship in the office. Every office has four or five bottles of booze, they drink all day long, they go out to lunch, the three- or four- or five-martini lunch with the clients and so forth, it’s just-dead-on accurate. But one thing I’ve noticed on these blogs, and it ties in to what we’ve been talking about today, this character, Don Draper, is a man, cowboy, man, whatever. There’s nothing sensitive about this guy, there’s nothing New Age about this guy.
His wife has just left him, by the way. In the season finale she’s on the plane to Reno to get a quickie divorce because she’s fallen in love. This guy is never home; he’s always working; he does have affairs on the side and so forth. But women who post on this blog talk about how they love this character and it kind of dovetails with a call we had a minute ago about this woman saying every woman wants a cowboy. Secretly they might not admit it but secretly they want a cowboy in their life. I get amazed, I really do, at the way people get into — I like the show, but I don’t attach any reality to it. It’s a depiction — but I get amazed at reading the blogs of people who watch this and post. It’s as though the show is real. They get immersed like people get immersed in movies. We live in an age in which nothing seems real. Everything seems fake and phony. The news is fake and phony. Our leaders are fake and phony. And a show that accurately depicts America 50 years ago has several million people in this country captivated because of the characters in it. Depending on your age watching this show, you have never seen men the way they are and were in that era and you’ve never seen women the way they are portrayed. You’ve never seen it.
If you’re under 30, if you’re under 40, you have not seen it. It is scary. This is the point. And when I see these posts from women, ‘Oh, I just love the Don Draper character. He’s a real man.’ He’s 50 years old. He’s a portrayal of men 50 years old. And, look, the guy is flawed deeply. But he’s get in, get it, and get out, he’s not governed by anything New Age. Everybody smokes all day, they got that right. It’s just everywhere, in bed, in the restaurants, in the bars. It looks like the fun people used to have, and they all are having fun, and they love what they’re doing and nobody is wringing their hands worried about how they’re thought of and does this person like me? Draper doesn’t care, for example, whether anybody likes him. He’s just got his job to do.
They even treated the Kennedy assassination on this show a couple episodes ago or three ’cause it happened, this show purports to happen in real time. So if you have any interest, I’m not pushing it, but it is out on DVD. It’s out on Blu-ray too, if you have Blu-ray, and if you’re fascinated to see a pretty accurate portrayal of America 50 years ago, when, by the way, a very sophisticated time. I mean Draper drives a giant Cadillac with the huge fins, like the St. Louis Cardinal baseball players. Kenny Boyer used to drive one. I remember seeing him in the Busch Stadium parking lot after games. Just everything was bigger than life, including the people. Mad Men, Madison Avenue men, is what it’s all about.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, about Don Draper, every woman on the show loves the guy, and he treats them not well. Not a sensitive nineties kind of guy and they love him. It’s a look back at America as it once was.