And Then There’s Maude… Behar

RUSH: Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ron, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: How are you today?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: You sound very well. I was watching by channel surfing last night. I believe it’s a woman maybe off The View that has a cable show, and she had Jesse Ventura on. The point was, she was going to interview him about his book on the 9/11 stuff and so on.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah.

CALLER: You came up.

RUSH: No big surprise. I usually do.

CALLER: And she mentioned how you — which I know, didn’t — started the ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro” —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — you didn’t catch that, though.

RUSH: You’re talking about Maude Behar?

CALLER: Is that who it is? She’s annoying.

RUSH: Maude Behar, right.

CALLER: But you said something the other day, evidently. He didn’t know what it meant, and I don’t know what it meant, and it related to Massa or something like that that’s made some criticisms of you again. And she kept at him for a while going, you know, ‘What do you think?’ and, you know, he’s saying, ‘Well, you know, Rush calls himself entertainment,’ and so Ventura is trying to figure out how to answer this question, and she comes at him again. She says, ‘Rush, you know, he’s got so much influence. You know, starting the thing about ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.” Again, she mentioned it. And Ventura just kind of is still thinking, ‘What is this word she’s asking me to comment on?’ And he just finally said, ‘This is going right over my head. I don’t know what you’re even talking about.’ What did you mention that has stirred something up recently, in this week?

RUSH: Let’s listen to this. I’ll answer the question, but let’s listen to these sound bites that you’re talking about, because we have them here. I wasn’t going to use ’em but you called, and now you’re talking about this, and people won’t have seen it. I mean, nobody watches the Maude Behar Show so you’re probably the only guy who saw it.

CALLER: Oh, I didn’t watch it. I mean, I just happened to stop.

RUSH: Well, okay, but you still saw it. Okay, so you’re channel surfing, but it was still enough of a circus that you stopped to look at it.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Right. So let’s listen.

CALLER: Ventura, I kinda… He’s interesting.

RUSH: Well, to each his own.

CALLER: And that’s why I stopped.

RUSH: Okay. Well, let’s listen to the sound bites here and then I’ll answer your question what did I say. Actually, it would be less time if I just said, ‘What didn’t I say that upsets them?’

CALLER: Ha!

RUSH: But here we go. We’ve got three of these. This is the Maude Behar Show last night. She played a piece of audio from my program and then had this exchange with Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura.

MAUDE: Let’s talk Limbaugh! Rush, that is. This whole Massa controversy gave him an excuse to make a racial slur against New York Governor David Paterson. Not that Rush needs an excuse to make a racial slur. Listen.

RUSH ARCHIVE: So David Paterson will become the Massa [snip] who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa’s place. So for the first time in his life Paterson is going to be a Massa.

MAUDE: Is this satire?

VENTURA: Now, what was racial about that?

MAUDE: Well, I guess to, uh, call David Paterson ‘Massa’ because he’s a black guy —

VENTURA: Yeaaah?

MAUDE: — kind of like he referred to Barack once as ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.” It’s like the most insensitive and thoughtless —

VENTURA: S’yah, but —

MAUDE: — and stupid remark.

VENTURA: Yeah, but what does Massa mean? It means that guy.

MAUDE: But he’s doing the play words on the, ‘Yeah. Massa.’

VENTURA: It must be flying over my head, then.

MAUDE: Yeah.

VENTURA: You’re getting it and I’m not.

RUSH: (laughing) Unbelievable. This is actually on American television! (laughing) You know, it was about this time yesterday that we had that audio of poor old Harry Smith having his colonoscopy and Katie Couric sitting there saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the splash zone here, Harry,’ and the doctor said, ‘I’m sorry about that.’ ‘Boy, Harry, you got the longest colon I’ve ever seen,’ Katie Couric says she’s in the splash zone, and Larry King says, ‘Are you gay?’ talking to Massa. ‘No, I’m not gay!’ ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but you said he groped you, and you groped him. Are you gay?’ So now we got Maude Behar with me supposedly being insensitive by saying Paterson get to be a Massa. It turned out to be wrong anyway because it’s a special election and Paterson does not get to choose the replacement. But you gotta understand something out here, Ron. David Paterson is being forced out of the governor’s office in New York by a bunch of Democrats and he’s black.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: You know, you gotta listen to this program in context, and Maude Behar and none of these others do. So here you’ve got Carl McCall. They wouldn’t let this guy run for office, black, for governor. They didn’t want Harold Ford, a black guy running for the Senate in New York and they’re trying to force another black guy out. The Democrats are doing this, trying to force out David Paterson.

CALLER: At the same time she’s trying to take a word, a name, and make a racial slur out of it.

RUSH: Weeeell, the guy’s name is Massa. I’m simply saying, ‘For once now Paterson, in the middle of all this gets to be the boss, while they’re trying to force him out,’ and, of course, these people think that that’s terribly insensitive and racist. And I didn’t create the term ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro,” as you yourself, Ron, testified. A black columnist at the LA Times did that. It continued, by the way. Maude Behar and Jesse ‘The Body.’ Maude finally, finally gives up trying to convince Jesse ‘The Body’ that I’ve done something racist here.

VENTURA: (chuckling)

MAUDE: All right, but, I mean, Imus!

VENTURA: Sure.

MAUDE: He made a comment called these girl ‘nappy-headed hos’ and he got thrown off the air.

VENTURA: Yeah.

MAUDE: But Rush Limbaugh gets a pass. He’s still on at the radio. I’m for free speech —

VENTURA: Hey, it all comes down to money.

MAUDE: That’s true. He makes a lot of money.

VENTURA: Yeah, absolutely. He brings in ratings, so he’s going to get a pass.

MAUDE: Unfortunately, that’s the truth of the business.

RUSH: (laughing) No. That’s not… (interruption) Snerdley, I’m not going to waste time and energy starting to get specifically into analyzing these people as to why I’m a success, ratings and so forth. So let’s go back. Let’s go back. Just a day before, her whole panel, Maude Behar’s panel, gave Dan Rather a pass for saying of Barack Obama, ‘He couldn’t sell watermelons on the side of the road if a state trooper stopped traffic for him and sent ’em over to the watermelon shop.’

MAUDE: Of all the fruits to choose, why would he choose watermelon? There’s an orange, there’s a cantaloupe, any other fruit. Why that?

SAVAGE: If you drive through Texas in the summer, it is watermelon that is sold by the side of the road. Dan Rather is almost 80 years old, and you can hear Chris Matthews and then the other guests on that show jumping in to interrupt him like you would interrupt great-grandpa at Thanksgiving. I don’t think Dan Rather is a closet racist.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.

MAUDE: So it’s a Ratherism?

HENDERSON: Yeah, that’s what it seems like. I’m from South Carolina. And, yeah, people do sell watermelons on the side of the road.

RUSH: No, no, not at all. So Rather is running around saying, ‘Obama couldn’t sell watermelons on the side of the road if state troopers were directing traffic,’ and I say, ‘Oh, so, Paterson gets to be a Massa,’ and I am horrible and evil and insensitive (laughing) but I get away with it because it’s all about money and ratings.