No Blue Jeans for El Rushbo

RUSH: ‘Dear Mr. Limbaugh: How is it that you never wear a nice pair of worn-out jeans? I think you’d look fine in them. Levi’s, preferably, I do care much about politics. We’ve got a very excellent guy here in Kansas.’ Signed, Karen.

I’ve answered this question over the years, countless times. I’ll answer it again. I have a political aversion to blue jeans. I’m biased against them. I really am. I’ve been forced over the course of my life, I have been forced by certain people to try a pair of jeans. So I’ve gone and I’ve tried ’em on, and I hate ’em. They’re not comfortable. They just are not comfortable. I hate wearing anything that makes me feel like I have it on, and blue jeans make me feel like I’m wearing burlap. But more than that, ladies and gentlemen, more than that, back in 1968, ’69, when I was in my second or third year of my broadcast career, I was a deejay working two hours before school, two hours after school, and there was a little university in our town of Cape Girardeau, Southeast Missouri State University. I happened to attend there one year before deciding that a required PE course, ballroom dance, taught by a former drill sergeant in the WACS, was not for me. I said, ‘If this is college, if I have to take this, I got better things.’ So I moved on.

While I was there, the Vietnam War was waging. I was busy trying to become part of the establishment. I was trying to show myself and the adults that I hoped to impress along the way that I was serious. I took myself seriously, and my life seriously, and I wasn’t going to run around blowing up banks, and I wasn’t going to join protest marches, and I wasn’t going to get tear gassed or any of that. I looked at the people doing all that, and they were wearing tie-dyes, T-shirts, blue jeans, long haired maggot infested types, I said, ‘It ain’t going to be me.’ It became a uniform. It just stuck. I don’t do anything outside that requires jeans. I wear golf slacks and shorts. I really don’t find them comfortable. Those are the two answers.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Chris in Northampton, Pennsylvania, I’m glad you waited. You’re up, sir.

CALLER: Rush, how the heck are you?

RUSH: Oh, I’m great. Thank you very much.

CALLER: I’m doing better than I deserve. In fact, I said that to a customer on the phone the other day, he said, ‘Hey, you sound like Rush.’

RUSH: (Laughing.)

CALLER: I said, ‘Well, you’re sort of close there. He says, ‘having more fun that I should be allowed.”

RUSH: That’s right. Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. You’re saying you’re doing better than you deserve, the same thing.

CALLER: Happy anniversary, mega dittos from one of the country’s five percenters. I wanted to comment on your blue jean comment.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: You’re going about this the whole wrong way, you know. You gotta get ’em just a little bit baggy, not ground draping baggy like you’re in some kind of a gang or something, and you can’t wear underwear with them.

RUSH: Yeah. Right. Well, that would make them even more uncomfortable.

CALLER: No, you gotta try it, and I’m not a hippie from the sixties.

RUSH: Come on, let’s face it. It’s like a Volvo or a Saab, or Prius, it’s a liberal status symbol. Jeans are liberal status symbols.

CALLER: Ah, I don’t think so.

RUSH: At least they were. I know everybody wears ’em now. It’s another battle we’ve lost.

CALLER: Absolutely. They used to be a status symbol.

RUSH: Compromised our sartorial splendor, then we run around looking like a bunch of hippies, and I’m not going to do it.

CALLER: Well, just wanted to call and wish you a happy anniversary.

RUSH: I appreciate that, Chris, thanks much.