RUSH: I’m going to play you some audio sound bites because these warmed my heart when I heard these today. Yesterday on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Steve Scully, the host, the topic is: Return to Fairness Doctrine? They were bouncing off the latest National Review cover story on the Fairness Doctrine. I gave an interview to Byron York for it, and they put a funny picture of me with duct tape on my mouth on the cover of National Review. Scully takes a caller from Port St. Lucie, Florida.
VOICE: I strongly disagree with the Fairness Doctrine. I think it takes away our freedoms. And as far as Rush Limbaugh, I listen to Rush when I can, and I think Rush is a great American. He’s a patriot. He’s got traditional values. He speaks a lot for the grassroots of this country that Hollywood and Michael Moore and people like that don’t portray. And, you know, you ask any conservative an opinion about a subject, and they’ll give you an answer pretty much right away. These liberals kind of have to hide who they are. And I think a lot of people like Rush because he’s articulate and he expresses himself.
RUSH: And then Scully said to the Florida caller, ‘Let me ask you based on that, how often do you listen to Rush Limbaugh, by the way?’
VOICE: I listen to him a couple days a week. I have flipped around to some liberal stations, and I really can’t handle it because it’s like putting a dark cloud over me. It’s so depressing hearing these folks bash America. There’s only so much you can hear about it, then it gets nauseating about how negative. That’s what I like about Rush, positive and upbeat about America, you know, and talk radio, it’s not about hate when it comes to conservatives. It’s about vision and the future of America.
RUSH: And later on in the program, Steve Scully took a caller from Gaithersburg, Maryland.
VOICE: The major point to me that was never brought up is that Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are entertaining, they’re funny. You don’t hear that brought up by the left because they think it’s all hatemongering. It’s not. It’s entertainment. It’s funny.
VOICE: Let me just remind the audience we were talking about that because of Byron York’s piece in the National Review on efforts to so-call hush Rush.
RUSH: I love it when people on these shows who actually listen to this program and who understand it and get it, so I want to thank those two people — and I know they’re listening. That guy that says he listens twice a week, that’s okay. But we could use more. So could you. So could the country.