E-mails Praise Rush for Opening Up

RUSH: After our program on Friday, especially the last hour — there’s so much in that program, the phone call from Marie and then Dr. Martha from St. Louis asking me to put down on a piece of paper my list of attributes of the ideal woman. I got more e-mail on that, and I was sort of surprised by some of it. None of it was bad. None of it was negative, but a lot of, ‘Rush, it was so good to hear you finally open up about yourself. We don’t get to hear much about you personally.’ You don’t? That’s what kind of surprised me. Anyway, there were just tons and tons of e-mails from people on that. I’m glad you all enjoyed it. It was a little embarrassing for me at times, but I want you to know that at the end of the day I thought it was fabulous fun, too, and it’s one of those things where that’s what Open Line Friday is for. It just evolved that way, and that’s why we always look forward to Open Line Friday.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

All right, I have to tell you this. Go back to last Friday’s program. If you missed it, go to the website and look at it, because it was noteworthy on many, many scores, many ways. But the last call of the day came from ‘Dr. Martha.’ I called her Dr. Martha because she was counseling me on my future with women and marriage and all of this. That call generated numerous e-mails. They ran the gamut. She wanted me to make this list for the ideal woman. ‘You gotta do this, and you do it for a reason. Just list the attributes of your ideal woman, and if anybody comes along and one or two of them don’t fit, then, bam! The woman gets jettisoned. You gotta do it that way.’ You gotta put yourself first, was her point. You can’t run around trying to please everybody else by sacrificing who you are because it doesn’t work, which is true. So I’m getting all these e-mails that run the gamut. ‘You gotta make the list public. Dr. Martha was right.’

It’s mostly women writing in. The vast majority of the people commenting on last Friday’s program — in regard to that portion of the program — were women. Some were sending in their list and seeing if it fit with mine. It was fun. It was all over the place. Now, after that show, I was just checking the e-mail here in one of the breaks — and this goes to the crux of the problem. I’m getting e-mail from women on how this shirt looks good or it looks bad. The color is good. The color is bad. I realize they think they’re just trying to be helpful, but do you know how I, El Rushbo, hear this? Control. Here’s the way I look at this, folks. Every morning I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I do the old routine to get ready for the busy broadcast day. I go to the closet. I put on my clothes — happily so. I choose them, get in the car, and head here to the EIB Broadcast Complex. If I were to ever get married, the first thing that would happen is — after the honeymoon, if I survived it — the first day back, going to work, I would do all that, put on my clothes, and then I would hear, ‘Are you really going to wear that to work today?’ I know that that’s what I would hear because I’m hearing it now from women I don’t even know. I know they’re just trying to be helpful and so forth (laughing) and this goes for whatever the color is. It’s a black shirt! I mean, how can black be a bad color on anybody, especially in the Post-Imus Era’? It’s a mystery to me.

Also, people wanted a diet update. It’s about 54, 55 pounds I’ve lost. Everybody wants to know what I’m doing. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to say it one time. I’m using NutriSystem. I did it once before so I knew it worked. I knew it worked fast. I did it back in the 1980s. For the first two months, I followed it to a T. I didn’t deviate once. I started deviating since but I always go back to it and I’ve continued to lose. So I’m down 54 pounds since February 14th. My waist is now 39-1/2, down from… Well, I’ll admit it. I’m afraid to admit it. I’m ashamed to admit it. It was 48. So my waist is down from 48 to 39-1/2. I got a note from my brother last night, ‘How long are you going to stay on this?’ Well, I don’t imagine myself ever really getting off of it. That’s what’s changed this time.

I’m not going to stay on it religiously for the rest of my life, but the point is, for the first time in my life, I’m not going to revert back to a diet that’s not a diet. I’m not going to end this. Let’s put it that way. The reason it’s NutriSystem is because it’s worry-free, hassle-free portion control. You don’t have to worry about whether the label ingredients are honest about calories and various nutritional values. It’s just easy. When I tell people this, they say, ‘Well, does the food taste good?’

I said, ‘What does that matter? When you go on a diet, food has to become a background concern.’

‘Yeah, but you have to enjoy it.’

‘I do!’

It tastes fine. It tastes good, but nobody on a diet raves about the food. It’s fine stuff. My point of saying this is if people ask me, ‘Does the food taste good?’ and they think they want to go on a diet, they’re not ready. If you’re worried about the food tasting good you’re going to blow it. It isn’t going to work because you’re not ready. It’s just that simple.