RUSH: Don in Morgantown, West Virginia. Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s cool it talk to you.
CALLER: Got a question for you.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I’m only partly being cynical, I don’t know the answer. Why don’t you have a Democrat counterpart? Why is there no liberal El Rushbo?
RUSH: There is, except it takes about a hundred people. There’s CBS, there’s NBC, there’s ABC, there’s MSNBC, there’s CNN, there’s New York Times, there’s the Washington Post. There’s all kinds of them out there. It takes all of them to equal one of me and I don’t think they even get close. But if you’re asking why is there no liberal talk show counterpart to me.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Well, you know, to answer that I’d have to give away broadcast and performance trade secrets.
CALLER: Hmm.
RUSH: I’m not afraid of that because I don’t think even if I gave away the secrets they could execute them anyway. But let me ask you. You’re a listener in Morgantown, West Virginia. Let me ask you, what is it about this show that you like? What is it that you judge when you listen to this show that makes it stand out, what makes it the best?
CALLER: Well, Rush, I’m an American, I’m a patriotic American. I love this country and I kind of like what the Founding Fathers had in mind in the Constitution. I’m a big fan of it. And your message is generally a hundred percent — it’s not necessarily Republican, but it’s consistent with that American thing.
RUSH: Right. That would mean conservative.
CALLER: Hm-hm.
RUSH: As opposed to Republican. I agree with you. Okay, so content, you’re saying content, content, content is what I hear you saying.
CALLER: Essentially — well, you know, there’s other entertainers out there that are well versed and, you know, but they haven’t done what you have done.
CALLER: Huh-uh.
RUSH: And all the experts said that every product Apple makes will fail; said the iPhone was going to be a major failure; the iPod would be a failure; that the Mac computer would never amount to anything, and yet everything Apple does turns to gold and is redefining a lot of high-tech. And this guy concluded, the writer of the story concluded, it’s the product, stupid. They make a good product. It is just that simple. People get caught up in thinking, ‘I gotta market my show, I gotta market my product, gotta have a good PR agency, gotta spin this, I gotta go do a lot of TV.’ Make the product! It’s the product stupid, or in my case: content, content, content. Now, there are a number of other factors that go into this. I think one of them is talent, and I think most of the people on the left, in broadcasting, do not look and have a proper starting point as to where they are. They look at themselves as just another branch of politics. They don’t look at themselves as business people in the business of radio. They look at themselves as a branch office of either John Podesta think tank or the Democrat National Committee or whatever, and it really matters what your motivation is and what your purpose is when you undertake to do anything.
Now, I understand fully what I do. I know exactly who I am. I love myself. I love myself when I do what I do. I do not aspire to something I’m not. I do not pretend to be something I’m not. I am in radio. I understand radio as well as I understand liberals from a business standpoint, and I understand that if the business aspects are not met and satisfied, then all the content is academic. But it’s a fine line, because the content ends up being part of satisfying the business aspects. But there’s a lot of business of this show that nobody is aware goes on. We never talk about it because it’s not part of what we do, but every business has aspects of it that you never see, that have to be done and have to be done well and have to be done the best if you’re going to be the best in addition to what happens publicly, that everybody hears.
So it’s just knowing the business and loving it and appreciating it and understanding what it is and not making more of it than it is and not trying to make it more than it can be. Just realizing what it is and mastering it. It’s an attitude, it’s preparation, it’s knowledge, and it’s passion. I don’t think anybody on the left really has this for it. I think their passion is winning elections and defeating Republicans. I think their passion is knocking me off. I think their passion is not oriented at all in a positive, business oriented way about what they’re doing. Most of the people on the left on radio think of themselves as fundraisers. They can’t even exist under a traditional private sector business model. They have to ask for contributions from NPR all the way down to Air America, to whoever. If they had to make it in the world on their own without handouts or positioning themselves as nonprofits, they’d be lost. They couldn’t do it. And then finally there’s this ingredient that is relevant, too, and it’s called talent, and they just don’t have much.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, there’s one more thing I would like to explain about liberalism versus conservatism on the radio. And to do this I will involve television, bring it into it and describe two types of listening. There’s active listening and there is passive listening. And then there’s emotional versus intellectual listening. Now, television largely, because of pictures provided, results in passive viewership. You have the TV on and you can do something else, the sound, you listen to it, but you may not be totally occupied, focused on what’s happening on television because you’re not using all your brain. Half of your brain’s function is being provided for you with the picture. Now, radio, if somebody on the radio is good they’re painting the whole picture for you, and if it’s a spoken word format like this is, if it’s a good show, the type of listening will be active, people will be devoting 100% of their sensory perception to it. Which is why advertising on spoken word formats works so well.
Now, liberalism, it’s not an intellectual pursuit. Liberalism is basically the most gutless choice you can make. It’s nothing but emotion and feeling. They see a homeless person, ‘Oh, I feel so bad. Oh, look, I feel so bad, because I have sympathy I’m a good person.’ Conservative sees a homeless person, ‘What are we going to do about that, that’s not good, this is not good for the country. We need to find a way to make that person productive.’ ‘Ah,’ the liberals say that’s not compassion. But conservatism is an intellectual pursuit and people that are turned on and inspired by conservatism will be active, intellectually involved in the program and liberals just cannot ascertain this active participation, active audience participation because there’s no intellect involved in liberalism, it’s purely emotion based.