Rush’s Spirited Defense of Women

RUSH: Elizabeth in Acton, Massachusetts, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, sir. How are you?

RUSH: Fine.

CALLER: Mega-mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I just wanted to address that study you spoke of where they said men are sometimes smarter than women and sometimes stupider. I think, you know, if you study history, for several thousand years women have been using, you know, pots of boiling water to clean things and to cook, and it took a little boy in Scotland, James Watt, to look at a pot of boiling water and invent a steam engine. No offense to women. I am one. I have sons and daughters. I love them, but you know something? Men have invented so many wonderful things, probably because their wives complained and they invented something to solve a problem.

RUSH: Wasn’t it a man who invented the brassiere?

CALLER: (laughing) Yes, probably.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: You know, each time a woman gets in a car —

RUSH: Thomas Crapper invented the toilet.

CALLER: That’s right, that’s right, because women probably complained going out to that outhouse or peeing in a chamber pot wasn’t any fun, excuse me for saying so.

RUSH: You know, Elizabeth, I’m reminded of an old phrase. I forget who uttered this, some philosopher, and I’ve always cherished this for some reason. I’ve always admired it, and I’ve always found it pretty profound in its own way — and I want to warn you: If you’re a feminist, you are going to hate this. But the philosophy is very simple: ‘A man who thinks he’s smarter than his wife knows not how truly smart she is.’ (interruption) See? Dawn’s not even a feminist and she’s rolling her eyes in there at that because she understands what it means. It’s a pretty serious indictment here for Elizabeth to make. She says men are smarter. Women have been boiling water on the stove for decades, but a man had to invent the steam engine. I don’t think that has anything to do with intelligence, in defense of women. I think they’re different. I don’t know how many women inventors there are. I don’t think it has to do with intelligence. It’s like you can boil it down to the remote control unit. The worst thing you can do is have it in your hand watching TV with a woman and surf around there. Men are prone to just surf around. I used to have a car once. When I lived out in California, I had a car that had a radio that would do an auto-scan of your presets, and it would just scan the stations that were in your presets. The general manager’s secretary had to go with me somewhere to some speaking event. We got in the car and I turned on the scan and for like five minutes I didn’t stop it because I didn’t hear a song that I wanted to hear. I just kept the auto-scan going.

‘Are you going to stop that at some point?’

‘No! I haven’t got to the song I want to hear.’

I’m marveling at the technology that my car radio can do this, and she’s upset that A, it’s happening, and B, that I’m enjoying it — and she wasn’t even my wife! But that doesn’t mean she’s dumber than I was. It’s just different interests, different things intrigue. Like I have my iPhone or I have my computer. It’s not enough for me to be able to use it. I want to know how it works so if something goes wrong I can fix it, or I can describe to the tech what it’s doing wrong so he can fix it fast. Women don’t care. It better come on when you turn it on, and if it doesn’t, there will be hell to pay. There won’t be any curiosity about why it doesn’t work. There will just be anger. This is not anything to do with intelligence. It just has to be with different ways that they use their time. The feminists tried this experiment. They gave little girls GI Joe and gave little boys, what’s her name, Barbie, and the little boys still created war with the two Barbie dolls. The little girls are out there putting outfits on GI Joe. Pure and simple. It’s just different. I don’t know that it indicates any difference in intelligence. It all depends on how you measure this stuff, and then you gotta get down to: What is intelligence? You know, is it what you’ve learned, or is it simple common sense? I choose the latter, and that does lead to problems, too.