RUSH: You have the Rush Hawkins Singers standing by, Mike? I was telling you all the other day about the movie Secretariat. I saw it on Friday night. It came out over this weekend, and it’s a good
She doesn’t know anything about the business. In a quirk of fate, she ends up with this baby horse, Secretariat. She’s told by people how great this horse’s potential is. At one point she’s offered $8 million for the horse. She owes $6 million in estate taxes. She doesn’t have the money. Nor does her husband or her family. She refuses. She wants to honor her family business and her father. She wants to make a go of this horse because she’s been told this horse could be worth three times what she was offered. So she sticks with it, and this is all about finding people who will go in with her. Now, there are a lot of people in this movie. Fred Thompson is in this movie. He plays one of the prominent characters at the beginning of the movie, and there’s also a point early on in the movie. There is a song. I think one of the reasons…
In fact, as I think about it, one of the reasons that the guy at Salon.com and so many of the mainstream so-called entertainment press have panned the movie is because it does have Christian references in it, and that I think as I look back on it, is why the dislike. They’re not prominent, and by no means preachy. They’re just there. I look at this and it could be one of the reasons the left just despises the movie. They feel threatened. This is the thing that got me. There’s no harm in this movie. This movie does not threaten one person. But somehow a bunch of leftists in the entertainment business feel threatened by this movie, threatened by the era. It takes place in 1973. I had forgotten the horse. I was 22, and I had just left home a couple years earlier. I was living in Pittsburgh, and I was starting on the trail that would eventually lead to radio stardom and all this.
I was singularly focused on that. I remembered Secretariat winning a Triple Crown. I knew none of the backstory. I had even forgotten that Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31-1/2 lengths. That’s a feat and a time that has never been duplicated since. So a lot of this was new to me. There was nothing in it that was threatening. Yeah, it was ’73, and this woman’s kid — she’s got some kids — one of them is a longhaired, maggot-infested dope smoking, peace and love, let’s go to Woodstock-type babe, and they acknowledge that. But there is no mention of Watergate. There’s no mention of Vietnam War, which a bunch of leftist reviewers don’t like. Well, it wasn’t about the Vietnam War! There were a lot of things going on in ’73 besides Watergate, a lot of things going on besides Vietnam.
Clearly they were front and center. One of the things about sports, horse racing is definitely that, it’s a distraction. It’s a way to get away from all of that. It’s a way to take a break from the humdrum. That’s one of the great things about sports. It’s a repository. You go there for a couple hours and forget your problems, fantasize, pretend that you’re part of that world. That’s one of the attractions. But nothing in the movie was threatening. I mean, even the values of the day which were hard work, stick-to-itiveness, don’t quit, never give up. What is threatening about that? I’ll tell you what’s threatening about it to people on the left is that it brings back judgment. If you’re going to have those kinds of values, you’re going to have judgment. You’re going to have clearly defined morality, right and wrong.
These are a bunch of perverts obviously don’t want to live under such circumstances. They’d rather have the chaos and the unpredictability and the seeming nothingness and meaninglessness of so much of today’s culture ’cause they find solace and comfort in it because there’s no reason to stand out; there’s nothing remarkable. You don’t have to do anything remarkable to get known or to achieve anything in this culture today. Fame is its own reward, whether you achieve anything to gain it or not. The song that came on was a spiritual. I played the song on the radio. (interruption) You have the original tune? Well, go ahead and start it. It’s got a long post on it. This is 1969, and this was a hit.
EDWIN HAWKINS: Oh, happy day.
CHORUS: Oh, happy day!
RUSH: We played this in my hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. It’s the Edwin Hawkins Singers. I mean it was number one in New York that year. It was a popular hit called Oh, Happy Day, and I’m sure this is one of the elements that the leftist entertainment people were offended by.
EDWIN HAWKINS (AND CHORUS): Oh, happy day. / (Oh, happy day!) / When Jesus washed… / (When Jesus washed!) / Oh, when he washed… (When Jesus washed!) / When Jesus washed… / (When Jesus washed!)
RUSH: Now, I sit tight, folks, because Edwin and his singers are gonna kick it up here in just a second. And they’re gonna let loose.
EDWIN HAWKINS (AND CHORUS): He washed my sins away, Lord! / (Oh, happy day!) / Ah, it’s a happy day. / (Oh, happy day!) / Oh, happy day. / (Oh, happy day!) / Oh, happy day. / (Oh, happy day!) / When Jesus washed… / (When Jesus washed!) / Oh, when he washed… / (When Jesus washed!) / When Jesus washed… / (When Jesus washed!) / He washed my sins away!
RUSH: And so that’s a taste of it, Edwin Hawkins Singers and Oh, Happy Day. It’s five minutes long. We’re not going to play the whole thing. Affiliate program directors will go nuts. They’ll start shouting PPM to me and so forth. (chuckles) At any rate, the song plays in the movie on the radio. Somebody’s got a little transistor radio sitting by, and — and Diane Lane, the lead character, plays Penny Tweedy Chenery, the owner of the horse and the horse farm, inherits the farm from her dad, and the song just happens to play. It’s not a focal point, but it’s just there. That song, the Edwin Hawkins Singers inspired the Rush Hawkins Singers 30 years later.
(playing Thank the Lord Rush Limbaugh’s On)
Hang in here, folks. Hang on.
(continued playing of song)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, the guy who wrote the movie Secretariat is a guy named Mike Rich, and he is a devout Christian. I think that was probably known by some in the leftist entertainment critics. He also wrote Miracle, which was about the 1980 US hockey team beating the Soviet Red Army in the Olympics. So he’s patriotic, too. Oh-ho. A dangerous mix for the entertainment left.