Host Scolded for Scolding the Staff

RUSH: Let’s start on the phones with Shelly in Louisville. Nice to have you on the program. You’re up first today. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you. Hello. Rush, I listen to you to be well informed, and I feel I am well informed because of you. I trust you, and I believe in you. But I am sick and tired of you coming on so often bawling out the people who work with you. It doesn’t sound very good. It makes me think of Arthur Godfrey, and I’m that old that I can remember Arthur Godfrey, and it bothers me a great deal to hear you putting down someone as often as you do, and it strikes me that you must have an awfully good group of people working with you who produce such a good program.

RUSH: Oh, I’m sorry that you’ve interpreted my helpful guidance and my staff the way you have.

CALLER: I don’t interpret it any differently than it sounds, and you sound like the kind of boss that —

RUSH: What in the world spawned your call today, what happened?

CALLER: When you came out hollering at Mr. Engineer or something, you often put these people down. Perhaps they know you well enough that they don’t feel that they’re being put down, but it comes across to the audience as if you would be some kind of an ogre or something to work with. Now, you may pay them well, you may give them all kinds of wonderful benefits. I don’t doubt that you do, but I just simply do not think — if you have problems with them, take it up with them during a break or after the program or before the program, don’t come on bawling them out. It just doesn’t go over well.

RUSH: Shelly, would you mind if I put you on hold for just a second?

CALLER: I really would. I have waited long enough. I’m not complaining about waiting, I cannot wait any longer —

RUSH: No, no, no, it won’t take long. I want to continue the conversation. I gotta do something, though. I’m distressed that you have this reaction. This staff that I have is among the best treated, the most respected staff of anybody in major media today.

CALLER: I don’t doubt that, Rush. I just think it doesn’t sound that way when you come on yelling at someone, ‘Did you bring that music from home?’ or just things that you say that sound so arrogant, and I just think it — I’m sorry to hear it, because I really count on you to keep me informed. I think I’m about as well informed as anybody that I know that I associate with.

RUSH: I appreciate that. I applaud your perceptiveness on the fact that I do my job well here, and that —

CALLER: You do it well.

RUSH: I appreciate that, yes.

CALLER: You do it well.

RUSH: You know, one of the things that happened at the beginning of the program today, and you may not — see, I’ve got a camera in here. I don’t know if you watch the program —

CALLER: No, I do not, no.

RUSH: Well, I’ve got a Dittocam in here, and I’ve got hundreds of thousands of people watching the program today, and when it started today, I turned on the microphone, and I started to greet and welcome the audience, and it wasn’t on. And the broadcast engineer panicked, and I see him in there — I thought I had a technical problem — and then I see him panicking in there and he throws a switch and activates my microphone. There’s no union proscription here from preventing me from turning on my microphone like there is in New York. He simply forgot. So I was just teasing him.

CALLER: Rush, this may be, and if this were the only time you did it, I would not have felt so compelled to go to the telephone. I said to my husband, ‘I am so sick of him bawling out the people that work with him because they must be doing a good job.’ I don’t know how many have worked how long, but obviously —

RUSH: I’m just telling you, we’re coming up on about 19-and-a-half years —

CALLER: I know how long you’ve been on, but —

RUSH: Okay, but I want to tell you in all of those 19-and-a-half years three people have left the program.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: I’m talking about on the other side of the microphone people.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: They have all gone on to what they thought were going to be steps up in their careers.

CALLER: Right. And I understand that, and if it were the first time or the second time. But maybe you don’t realize it’s increasing in frequency, and I just think it does not speak well of you to do it. I know you’re bound to have problems, what boss doesn’t, but can’t you take care of it later on, and not make these remarks that, I don’t know maybe with my temper I wouldn’t have taken it that well.

RUSH: You know, we’re a family here. These people know me like a father, like a brother, like an uncle, like a son.

CALLER: I’m sure. And I want to keep listening —

RUSH: I certainly don’t think this is a reason for you to abandon the program.

CALLER: I don’t, either, but it just burns me up, because I know about a boss who humiliates you. Thankfully I did not have more than one, but one is enough.

RUSH: Well, I’ve had ten.

CALLER: I know you’ve been fired —

RUSH: A whole lot of times. If you knew how my staff were treated, you would be embarrassed that you are bawling me out this way.

CALLER: Right. And, as I said, I’m sure you pay them well, I’m sure you give them many benefits. Just don’t belittle them on the air. Okay?

RUSH: All right. Thank you. Thank you, Shelly. Snerdley, if you waste time on this program again, there will be a severe price to pay. Do you realize the e-mail I’m going to get now? The first phone call today after a substantive show open is about how you and Brian and Dawn are treated. It will not happen again. Stop laughing in there. They don’t even take me seriously on this stuff.