RUSH: Roseanne in Greensboro, North Carolina. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, you’re the scapegoat of our generation, and people who follow you — well, not ‘follow you,’ because I don’t follow anybody — but people who listen to you — and we don’t listen to you because we follow you; we listen to you because we don’t feel like we’re the only ones in the universe who can think our way out of a paper bag when we listen to you — we’re the scapegoat of our generation, too. I went to a class beginning this semester, I sat in one class. The second class the professor yelled at me for asking too many questions. You represent people who think, who think independently, who can think and have their own ideas, who remember history. And they don’t like that so they turn you into an emotional sound bite. I sit in class, and I use your name as a way to weed out the ones who don’t think. I say, ‘I love listening to Rush Limbaugh.’ If people have an emotional response to that statement, I don’t associate with them.
RUSH: Uh, you caught me in the midst of tea and honey. That’s one of the nicest things somebody has said to me since Saturday night. (laughing) You’re right, I appreciate that. Do you realize, all this means — all these other lame talk show hosts getting their digs in, Washington Post, and the TV people, they’re just… (sigh) I believe in this thing I read not long ago: ‘Those who hate you wish they were you.’ We pose a threat. Thoughtful, thinking people, are the worst thing that can happen to liberals, by the way.
CALLER: There’s an article in the one classroom that says… It’s about law school versus master’s degrees, and people are talking about how they went to law school to be — learn to be critical thinkers. You’re supposed to learn how to do critical thinking prior to going to law school, but what you see in politics is they don’t want us to think. They want us to have emotional responses.
RUSH: Right. Or they just want us to accept, but you’re right. Somebody that examines what they say, thoughtfully so, and posts it on a bulletin board and says, ‘You know, this isn’t right. They’re changing…’ They do — you do — become a threat to them, but that’s what makes this fun.
CALLER: Do you realize the hypocrisy of it, though? It’s the generation that had an emotional response to their parents’ authority. I read an article when I was a real young girl in my teens. It said the sixties was conformity within their own ranks. Their uniforms were the blue jeans and burning your bra. This is the generation that was supposed to be independent thinking of their parents. That was their battle cry, allegedly, and they’re the biggest oppressor of independent thought that there is.
RUSH: Yeah, in fact, contrary to rejecting and throwing their parents overboard or under the bus, they were profoundly obedient in the final analysis. They didn’t reject anything. They just decided to take the easy way out, and instead of debating people who have different ideas, they tried to destroy or discredit them or what have you. Very perceptive of you out there, Roseanne. One of my problems that I’m having with my voice is, is I cannot speak fast and because I cannot speak fast, my mouth cannot keep up with my brain. My brain’s racing a mile a minute here, and you don’t know how frustrating that is not to be able to say everything I want to say because I can’t. But you did a great job, Roseanne. That was fabulous. You’re right on the money, and I’m glad you called.