RUSH: The other day I happened to mention on this program the correct way to pronounce the name Brzezinski and that I had heard that Mika Brzezinski, the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski… By the way, it’s another one. His name ends in I-E-W. In Poland, that’s ‘yeff.’ Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here in America, his name is Zbig-new Br-zezinski, but a Polish friend of mine in Kansas City said, ‘You want to be accurate on this. The Polish pronounce it Brzezinski.’ Then I heard that Mika Brzezinski was mad one day telling Scarborough that I purposely mispronounced her name, when I’m trying to get it pronounced correctly! So yesterday Mika Brzezinski, the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, talked about my pronunciation of their name on Scarborough’s show, and you’ll hear during… Actually, no. It was on their radio show on WABC, and she says something about my mispronouncing her first name, which it’s Mika! I’ve never called her anything but Mika. Anyway, here’s how it went.
MIKA: First of all, what I had been saying about Rush Limbaugh is how he used to pronounce my first name, and he used to purposefully say it wrong. But, he actually has it right with our last name in terms of the Polish pronunciation, does he not?
ZBIGNIEW: (phone) Absolutely. We have to give him credit. He’s absolutely right.
MIKA: We will give him credit for that. I’m going to check that off.
ZBIGNIEW: He makes the point quite explicitly. He says, ‘That’s the way it’s pronounced in Poland.’
MIKA: (giggling)
ZBIGNIEW: And he’s right. But, for most Americans, to have RZ together —
MIKA: Yes.
ZBIGNIEW: — is hard to handle —
MIKA: It’s too much.
ZBIGNIEW: — and they don’t know that RZ in Polish, is the equivalent of ZH in this country, a kind of Zzzhhhh sound.
MIKA: Exactly. Exactly.
ZBIGNIEW: So when he says Bzhhe-zinski, he is absolutely right in terms of how it is pronounced in Poland.
RUSH: Okay, okay. I still don’t know what I ever said wrong about her first time. You’re probably saying, ‘Rush? Rush, why are you wasting time on this?’ That’s not the question. I made them waste time on me, and I’m showing you how it happened. Then after that, you know, I had played Zbigniew’s sound bites on how he’s anticipating rights based on economic disparity. That’s how bad he thinks it’s going to get and I commented on what he said and he had a reaction to that.
ZBIGNIEW: He completely misunderstands what I’m saying.
MIKA: Mmmm.
ZBIGNIEW: I’m arguing that we should be doing things to avoid class hostility —
RUSH: Get out of the Democrat Party, then, Zbig.
ZBIGNIEW: — resentments, class conflict.
RUSH: Stop the tape! Recue that. Recue it back up. Get out of the Democrat Party, Zbig, because your party is all about promoting class hostility! That’s what the Porkulus bill’s about. That’s what the mortgage bailout’s about. Class hostility. The whole Democrat Party. Where did the whole phrase class envy come from? It’s been a staple of the left. Zbig, join us, in our party. Here it is from the top again.
ZBIGNIEW: He completely misunderstands what I’m saying. I’m arguing that we should be doing things to avoid class hostility, resentments, class conflict; and there is a rising wave of anger against the people who made a lot of money on short-term speculation, and —
RUSH: Stop the tape! Stop the tape! Stop the tape! There’s a rising wave of anger against this administration, who’s picking winners and losers and choosing the losers and making the winners pay to subsidize the losers. And that anger is not long from vastly outweighing whatever anger there is at these short-term speculators, whoever they are. Here’s the next.
ZBIGNIEW: — if there isn’t some private initiative to somehow or other make people feel less deprived, less cheated, less taken advantage of, then there is going to be class conflict. And I think he misses the point when he rails against that. This is not an advocacy of a class collision. It is an advocacy of social solidarity, and that’s what we need in this society.
RUSH: I’ll trust that that’s what he means, but I think this administration is aiming for something else. Zbig, I mean it, and this is tough for me to say. I never thought that I would think the thoughts I have about any presidential administration that I have about this one. Never in my wildest dreams. My father feared it, Mr. Brzezinski, my father feared it, warned my brother and me that this day would come, if we weren’t vigilant. Some private initiative? ‘Private’ anything is under assault. The private sector, the free market, is under assault. We’ve got an affirmative action plan going on. We’re gonna get even with the achievers.
We’re gonna get even with the achievers for a long time, and we’re going to give whatever the achievers have produced on their own and give it to the non-producers, and we’re going to create chaos in the process. We’re going to take people that feel less deprived, less cheated, less taken advantage of; we’re going to make ’em feel deprived, cheated, and taken advantage of. See, Mr. Brzezinski, all this comes from a faulty premise, and the faulty premise is that the losers — the non-producers, the welfare state or whatever — is in that circumstance because of the wealthy, or because of it achievers, because the producers, somehow the producers are taking a bigger share of the pie than they are owed and than they deserve, as though the economy is a zero-sum game and if somebody takes a piece of pie out, then the pie gets smaller.
It’s not traditionally the way it works. It will work that way now with Keynesian economics and the government parceling things out, but that’s not the way the country has worked. The pie has always grown. Do you realize, Mr. Brzezinski…? Folks, the stimulus package, the Porkulus bill of $897 billion, is larger than the federal budget in total in 1982? What is this about depravity? What is this about people are deprived and people are cheated? We have spent so much money on people, we have conditioned them not to work for themselves! We finally got welfare reform, and the Porkulus bill destroys it. We do need social solidarity. We need to go back to the day where everybody in this country had a real expectation they could experience the American dream.
But who’s killed that expectation in people? Mr. Brzezinski, it’s your party. Your president to this day is running down this country’s economy. The Democrat Party has been the party of doom and gloom. ‘You can’t make it; you don’t have a prayer. Depend on us! You don’t have what it takes; you’re not competent. We need to guide you,’ and look what that’s done for the people that voted for them. The numbers of people and dependence continue to grow. They believe the Democrat Party’s going to make things right for them, and they never do, and they’re always angry and they’re always being told that Republicans are to blame for it, from Ronald Reagan to other rich guys to Wall Street or what have you.
What the Democrat Party has done to decent people of this country is an outrage: Depriving them of any hope, telling them they don’t have a prayer, telling them they haven’t got a chance because of their race, sex, religion, what have you, because of the oppression of conservatives. They don’t even try now to improve themselves. They don’t think it’s possible. They’ve been made comfortable to sit there and blame others for their shortcomings, failures, or misfortune, and then that’s why we keep electing demagogues like Obama who promise magic and miracles. People actually think that Obama’s going to see to it they get a house — and by gosh, he might! — that they’re going to have a full gas tank, maybe even a new kitchen. They show up at his town meetings and they ask for it. How do you think it makes people producing who are playing by the rules feel?