RUSH: Here’s Raj in Houston. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush, from a 20-year-listener and a first-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: Rush, I just wanted to give you a perspective, my perspective on this horrible country.
RUSH: Yeah? Yeah?
CALLER: I got here with $12 in my pocket —
RUSH: That’s about how much Obama’s half-brother has in a year!
CALLER: (laughing) Well, I had it all at one time. I was a high school dropout from India. I cleaned latrines. I dug ditches, planted trees. At the age of 50 after my second successful business, I retired and started to do what I really wanted to do and that’s become a sculptor and an artist.
RUSH: And it took you ’til you were 50 to get to start to realizing that? That was like a hobby for you?
CALLER: Yes, sir, and being what many would consider as a man of color in this country, I can tell you: having listened to you, there’s never been a day I can say anyone discriminated against me for that. I would not tolerate becoming a victim. I would not allow anybody to treat me differently or as if I was not as good as anybody else. And finally, Rush, I found out why I’m a Republican. I have three air-conditioning units in my house.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: I drive a Yukon XL and I have two homes, I hate to admit.
RUSH: You drive a Yukon XL?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: That’s big!
CALLER: Well, I’m an artist. I gotta go all over the country to different shows, haul my bronzes around.
RUSH: I don’t know why you’d be afraid to admit that. You don’t need to be afraid to admit that you drive a Yukon XL.
CALLER: (laughs) Oh, I love the gas-guzzling monstrosity that I have — and, you know, Rush, I’d like to make you an offer. I hear you being generous with people all the time. I’ve never heard anyone being generous with you. I would like to offer at no cost at all to you, to do a bronze bust of you.
RUSH: Really? Where do I have to go?
CALLER: All you have to do is have your staff send me some photographs, and I can talk to them and tell them exactly what I would like.
RUSH: Is that right?
CALLER: Absolutely, sir.
RUSH: Is that right? Well, you know, I’ve always held back on the bronze bust, you know, because they only do that for people who have passed away, right?
CALLER: Not necessarily, sir. I just did a bronze of General Walter Boomer. He led our Marine forces in the ’91 war. I did another for another Army general. I’ve also done a full-sized but — not a life-size but a full-sized — figure of General Chuck Yeager, who has actually signed his name in the bronze.
RUSH: Interesting. I always thought that those busts, done officially, were done to commemorate the passing of the great individual being busted.
CALLER: (laughing) No, not quite, sir.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALER: There are very few people who have actually had the honor of having a bust while they were still around.
RUSH: Well, that’s awfully nice. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to put you on hold, and Mr. Snerdley will get contact data from you.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. And God bless you for what you do.
RUSH: Thank you, Raj. I appreciate it. Nice to have you here.
You know, he touches on a point. I’ve had this story from the AP here today at the top of the one of the stacks, and I haven’t found the proper transition to it, and his call, I think, suffices as a means of getting to it. It is one, two, three, four pages long. It is an AP story about, from Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, ‘A Dream Realized?’ This is four pages of how nothing has changed. This is four pages of how rotten this country is to America’s blacks. This is four pages of how Dr. King would be disappointed — and he would be, by the way. This, unknowingly — by Todd Lewin, who wrote this — is four pages of an indictment of the Democrat Party, liberalism, and the American civil rights coalition, because they have gotten everything they wanted. They wanted a business based on race discrimination; they got it.
That means there can never be an end to discrimination, as far as their charges and allegations are concerned ’cause then they’re out of business. We have seen, since the days of Dr. King’s speech, the federal welfare system destroy much of the black family by replacing the father. We have seen all of these public housing projects built by concerned and caring liberals — take a look at them! Take a look at the state of disrepair. Go to some neighborhoods. You can go to parts New York City and Harlem where years ago the neighbors were clean and pristine and everything was fine and dandy and now not so in some places, while the rest of the country has been in an upward tick. How much concerted effort has there been aimed at poor black people by government agencies and programs to help them? It’s too much to count. It’s too much to tabulate.
So after all of this and all this compassion and all of this money and all of this work to try to bring about the vision of Dr. King, AP tells us after 40 years or more, nothing’s changed. Not even if Obama ends up as his party’s nominee, nothing’s changed. ‘The 45th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s most memorable speech coincides with the day when another African-American, Barack Obama, makes a historic speech of his own — accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. Is the convention’s timing merely, as Obama’s critics might suggest, political choreography at its shiniest, one more seamlessly staged performance by a ‘rock star’ candidate? Perhaps. And yet, it is also fitting: For if King inspired Americans to confront bigotry or at least dream of a more perfect union, a candidate with Obama’s profile surely seems part of that dream’s fulfillment. …
‘If the United States has entered a truly ‘post-racial’ era, why do some real estate agents still steer whites away from integrated neighborhoods, or why are qualified black couples turned down, without explanation, for an apartment rental? Why does the naming of a black chief executive of a leading corporation still raise eyebrows? ‘Everything has changed, and nothing has changed,’ on matters of race, says the Rev. Joseph Lowery, 86, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King…’ So despite progress, where it has happened, they deny it. Where steps backward have taken place, they blame the institution of America for it. It’s just amazing. I mean, you get a call from a guy like Raj, who comes here with 12 bucks in his pocket, and starts and succeeds at two businesses and retires at age 50. Yet a certain percentage of this country is told they can’t do that, ’cause they’re going to be discriminated against and nothing’s changed.