RUSH: Mike, Denham Springs, Louisiana, is that right? Nice to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Yeah, Rush, Mike. I’m on a cell phone with an earpiece. I think I’m having trouble. Can you hear me all right?
RUSH: Yeah, I hear you just fine.
CALLER: Yeah fine. This thing about Imus, I find it amusing because I was actually watching the program as it unfolded and he was describing something he was watching on TV, and he mentioned the hair and the tattoos. But when the girls all got on stage, their hair was done to perfection, and they were all wearing team jackets so nobody could see the tattoos.
RUSH: What are you doing here? I mean, not even Imus is trying to say people misunderstood.
CALLER: It’s not a question of misunderstanding. It’s a question of overlooking it.
RUSH: It’s a question of overlooking what?
CALLER: What he said. They’re talking about the H-word and the nappy hair —
RUSH: Here’s the point about this. I made this at the top of today’s excursion into broadcast excellence. Within the universe of the Imus audience, and I guess that includes you — and, by the way, kudos for having the guts to admit it — nobody raised a stink. He said what he said, and nobody said a word. The Imus’ audience didn’t go crazy. The guests on his show didn’t go crazy. They all had a yuck about it, and that was April the 4th, and this thing blew up last week. It took awhile for the ‘media watchdogs’ and the YouTubes and the MoveOn.orgs and all these people. America, who was supposedly now so outraged, didn’t even hear it. I’m not trying to be slime here but the audience for the Imus show, folks, is tiny. It’s an insignificant audience. But even those who do listen or watch it, there was no reaction to it. It wasn’t until all these other actors got in gear, and as they got in gear, they got in gear with their outrage, their mock outrage and so forth — and that’s how America learned of this.
America learned of it on YouTube. Here’s another point about this. All these other sources, they move on to YouTube, Media Matters, whatever, and all the television shows? They uttered the words that Imus uttered 10,000 times as many times as he did, but it was in the context of repeating these horrible words. ‘Can you believe this was said?’ and then they repeated what he said. I’ve got the sound bite tape of what Imus said. Do you think I ought to play it on this program? I could maybe do it to illustrate a point but I’m not going to, but they were all doing it, time and time and time again. So I think there’s a little illustration here of how this all goes down, how it all happens. Within the Imus audience universe, there was not even a blip about this. But I’ll tell you when I knew this was over. I had a big party on Saturday night, about 35 people, and I had 13 people staying the weekend at my fashionable abode downright that Vanity Fair so hates. Did you see what they did? They’ve got that green issue.
They published a picture of my house and talked about how I’m a buffoon destroying the planet with the way I live. Yeah, I have the story right here. It’s not on the Internet, but people were telling me about it. Yeah, this James Wolcott guy. It’s funny. People who know me and listen to this program and read this are going to think it’s a comedy bit but this guy is dead serious about all this. At any rate, we’re all talking about, and everybody’s got their Imus opinions and what happened to Imus and this sort and so forth, and all the opinions were all interesting. I said, ‘This was over when the Rutgers basketball team and the university, the president and the athletic director and the coach did their one-hour press conference. That was it. That’s when the advertisers are going to peel away and that’s when NBC and the suits, and at CBS, are going to say, ‘Well, we can’t do anything about this.” A lot of people thought Imus blew it going on Sharpton, and he did, but it wasn’t until the Rutgers press conference that I knew that it was just a matter of time. So you can say whatever. ‘Well, he just repeated what he saw on television,’ but I don’t think on television they used the description of that. That was his producer’s version of it. Imus made the mistake of repeating what the producer said. It’s not about him, folks. All this stuff is not about Imus anymore. You gotta understand that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Paul in Cincinnati, nice to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I think the two most important words to take away from the Imus thing is ‘public airways.’ That’s going to be a Kool-Aid by which the Drive-Bys administer us the poison.
RUSH: I’ve noticed that. Public airwaves! ‘We are in charge of public airwaves. The public can say what they want and don’t want,’ but there’s a little irony in that, too, in that the first place Imus got canned was cable, and there aren’t any regulations on cable. You can say whatever you want there. Hello, HBO. Hello, MTV.
CALLER: This does resonate, though, with the public.
RUSH: Yeah, well, I’m still… (sigh) I don’t know. Do you have a feel for how many of the American people really this worked up over all this?
CALLER: They’re being worked up.
RUSH: Well, they were, I know, but that’s my point. They were being worked up.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: But when they first heard about it, when they just first heard the news, do you think…? I mean I didn’t see protests all over the country. I didn’t see the evidence of national outrage. It took them awhile to gin up this.
CALLER: Well, it’s a constant. That’s where the power’s lying.
RUSH: All right, so is there an antidote in your mind of this public airwaves phrase that they are using? You’re right about that.
CALLER: Well, you and a few others, when you see it coming, maybe you can divert it, but this is going to be the standard phrase. I mean, it’s going to be. You tell a lie long enough and loud enough —
RUSH: I understand. I understand. Look, it’s all about ridding the public airwaves of conservative information, and they’ll do it by saying that conservatives lie, and that conservatives are racists. That’s their announced plan, anyway. This is one of their objectives is to just stop it. They don’t want to hear it. The tolerant, compassionate ones? Stalinist, folks, is what this is, and it’s all tied to liberalism in general principles, but make no mistake: the intensity of this is directly tied to the upcoming presidential race. This is all about the Clinton machine. I cannot emphasize this enough to you. The Clinton machine, the Democrat Party, the Drive-By Media are inseparable. It’s same entity for all intents and purposes.
RUSH: Tucson, Arizona, this is T J. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Yes, sir. Just a quick note. You can get an appetite suppressant at a health food store. It’s fennel. You’ve got to get the medicinal grade. But anyway, I was wondering if Al Sharpton really was sent after Imus by the Clinton team because he’s been in the habit referring to Hillary as ‘Satan’ for the past 50 days. So I was wondering if you think this was more personal than philosophical, and my other question I wanted to get to you is what do you think Al is going to get for being the hit man for the Hillary camp? I’ll listen on the radio. (hangs up)
RUSH: I read that I forget where, but I read that I think this morning. It might have been yesterday that Imus refused to have Clinton on the show — Hillary, Mrs. Bill Clinton — and called her ‘Satan’ and so forth, and somebody speculated that that’s what motivated the Clintons to aim at Imus and finally take him out. I don’t know whether that’s it. Look, all I know is this. With the Clintons, there are no coincidences, but this is speculation on something that I don’t know. I think this would have had whether the Clinton machine had sent marching orders out to anybody or not. So I want to stress this again — and I don’t mean to insult anybody here — this is not about Imus. If you keep focusing on the Imus aspect of this, you are going to be distracted from seeing what the real objective here is. Nothing against Imus saying this, and he probably would disagree, ‘It’s all about me, Limbaugh. What do you mean?’ He’s irrelevant in this, now. In fact, it’s still being talked about. Look, if it was about Imus it would be over with, but you’ve got Sharpton. ‘I got my list,’ he’s saying. ‘I got my list of who’s next, and I got this,’ and the Media Matters people? They’re all lining up to do this. This is a big notch in the belt here, and this is just the beginning.
Well, it’s not even that. This has been going on forever. This is the biggest get so far, and, of course, for people who did the get, who got the got, this is fuel, motivation, inspiration. You think these people aren’t out there celebrating, flexing their muscles? ‘Look at the power we’ve got,’ and of course what is it that gave them that power? It was a bunch of executives at CBS and NBC cowering in fear in the corners to a number of things, and the elevation of Al Sharpton and the Reverend Jackson as the arbiters of public morality and public taste. Now, you go figure that out. If somebody can figure… I know that they’ve got their positions of power because the Democrat Party has elevated them there, but there’s nothing more absurd than that. It’s just patently ridiculous, but it is what it is because the objective is the point, not whether they have any credibility doing. They don’t care about being credible when they do it. All they want is their results.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Portland, Oregon, and Brian, you’re next with El Rushbo. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s good to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Quick point here. Hillary’s going to go visit the girls basketball team, the Rutgers girls basketball team?
RUSH: Yeah, I knew that. Yeah.
CALLER: Yeah, yeah. WE all did.
RUSH: She was rained out going out there last week, and Corzine was auto accidented out of making it out there.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, yeah. But we all know why Hillary — she’s got her reasons. Quick point here. You know, I think right after that, why doesn’t she go down and visit the Duke players?
RUSH: Well… (sigh) I love all these questions. They’re great questions, but they answer themselves.
CALLER: Yeah, really, you know?
RUSH: I mean, the —
CALLER: Well, all’s fair and fair here!
RUSH: Yes, I know, but you’d have the doubting Thomases saying, ‘Wait a minute! You can’t compare these two things (grumbling).’
CALLER: No, no, I’m not trying to compare them. But, the girls, they deserve, okay, Hillary wants to go see ’em. But how about the Duke guys?
RUSH: Well, the Duke guys are already rich, elitist white guys from the Northeast, and they’re strong and they don’t need to be pandered to! You gotta understand how liberals look at their constituents: victims, weak, incompetents.
CALLER: Yeah, yeah.
RUSH: They need to be bucked up. It’s a presidential campaign. This is just pure pandering. You know the answer to these questions and so forth. See, I think these kind of realizations on the part of more and more people that don’t get expressed is a sign of progress, too.