The Story of Carol in Pensacola

RUSH: George in South Windsor, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Yes. Republican daddy dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: I remember the Friday before you left on vacation, Carol called, last caller of the day, big Steelers fan, and unfortunately she wasn’t in a financial situation to go, and impromptu like you always do, and as generous as you are, you ended up finding a way to get her tickets to the game. I’d love to know how she made out. But then, you know, I kind of compare it to the woman at the press conference yesterday, who I think is a plant. Now, I feel bad for her situation, and I think there are millions of people like that, but, you know, Barack gives her a kiss on the cheek for patronizing reasons. He wanted something —

RUSH: By the way —

CALLER: — out of that.

RUSH: — did you watch this or did you just read about it?

CALLER: I saw it on TV.

RUSH: Did you notice when you were watching on TV, when Obama goes up to give Henrietta the peck on the cheek, the woman in the background mouths ‘I love you, Barack.’ Did you notice that?

CALLER: Yeah, well, I didn’t know what she said, but you could see —

RUSH: Yeah, it’s ‘I love you, Barack’, or I love you, Obama, she was swooning.

CALLER: And, you know, again, that was calculated, as far as I’m concerned. What you did for that woman, Carol, was genuine, it was impromptu, and everything that he does is so calculating and for such a reason, and to tug at someone’s heartstrings or, you know, just victimize people again —

RUSH: You may have a point here. That whole town meeting in Fort Myers, Florida, looked like the Oprah show. This is the kind of stuff Oprah does, bring in the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, people who have been victimized by evil Republicans and then give ’em what they don’t have, and everybody starts crying. (crying) ‘Oprah!’ And then everybody’s happy ’til the recipients find out they have to pay the gift tax or the imputed income tax and they give it all back, you know, because —

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: Because Oprah doesn’t go all the way. Remember she gave away all those cars and the people gave them back because she wasn’t paying the sales tax on the cars and there was imputed income, which is what got Daschle in trouble. At any rate, let me tell you the story about Carol. I appreciate your kind words. Let me tell you the story about Carol, ’cause it ended up famously, but it almost never got started. It was the last call of the day on a Friday before the Super Bowl. I had my call screener computer display here to my left, and we’re in the middle of a break, and I looked just to get an idea who’s coming next, and Snerdley has Carol from Pensacola, and I don’t remember the subject line, it was about the Super Bowl, the Steelers, and we had spent most of the hour talking about that so I would wrap up with that. I turned back to the computer to do even more show prep even though there was only two minutes left in the show — I never stop — I turned back, and Snerdley has switched on me, and he’s moved to a caller at the bottom of the list, I don’t know who the caller was.

Now, normally I follow Snerdley’s instincts on this. For some reason, on the IFB, I said, ‘Why did you switch the caller? I want to take the woman from Pensacola.’ So he switched her back up there, I had no idea what she was going to say, and it turned out she had been out of work, she was from Pittsburgh and had been out of work for a year, 58 years old, living with one of her kids, son or daughter, trying to make ends meet and she was very complimentary of me. She said, ‘Even more than seeing the Steelers, I’d love to meet and talk with you.’ She was very sweet and very nice. Well, I had an Internet chat line open with Kathryn who was working the Super Bowl, and she was listening to the program, and she said, ‘I could get a couple tickets in the lower end zone.’ I said, ‘Carol, we could get you a couple tickets. How many do you need?’ ‘Well, I’d like to get five but I wouldn’t dare ask for that many.’ ‘We can’t get five,’ Kathryn said, ‘but I could get two.’

And then the next note, Carol is now starting to cry, and I said, ‘Carol, guess what, we could get you a hotel room for you and your son.’ ‘Well, that’s great, but I don’t think we can afford to –‘ ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that.’ It turned out that she drove down and we compensated her and her son for the gasoline. So they came down, and I had a bunch of clients over there for the game, and on Saturday night the clients hosted Carol and her son. So Carol and her son spent Saturday night with my guests over there, and just had a ball. They went to the game and so forth. It worked out perfect. She got to see her Steelers win one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played. She sent me a great thank-you note. If it hadn’t been for me, if I’d have left it up to Snerdley, the call would have never made it on the air.