RUSH: ‘Five years after Washington residents voted to ban smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes in public places, King County wants to add one more thing to the list: Electronic cigarettes.’ Wait until you hear why. ‘The 2006 state law banned smoking in bars and restaurants on the basis that secondhand smoke causes cancer and other diseases.’ Secondhand. It doesn’t. That’s not to say it doesn’t make people uncomfortable. Of course I think it’s largely in people’s minds, but I don’t even want to go there because I’m not gonna win that argument with people. You get it in your head that somebody’s smoking a cigarette 25 or 30 feet away from makes you feel bad I’m not gonna be able to talk you out of it. I’m not a shrink.
It’s a way for people to quit smoking tobacco. They ought to be hailed. They should be hailed and applauded by these people on the left who are so insistent that we stay safe and stay alive and don’t die. It’s like Michelle Obama cares so much about what your kids eat that YOU cannot be allowed to make the decision. ‘We can’t leave such important matters up to the parents,’ she said. Well, same thing here. Public health officials in the state of Washington say that e-cigs are ‘so similar to the real thing that they make tobacco enforcement difficult and often prompt smokers to think it’s OK to light up in public. And that leads to secondhand smoke,’ which means we gotta ban e-cigs. Let me translate this for you.
A guy lights up an e-cig in public place. A cigarette smoker is so stupid and so idiotic, he says, ‘Whoa, maybe you can smoke here!’ and brings out his real cigarette and lights up. People start dying left and right because there’s secondhand smoke, where there otherwise wouldn’t be. So we’ve got to ban e-cigs because they look too real. Yes, the e-cig user is a conspirator to a crime, in essence, that doesn’t exist. You know, I use these things occasionally and I’ve had some funny experiences with them. Last year I was judging the Miss America Pageant out in Las Vegas, and I loved getting on the elevator with all the other judges and some of the Miss America Pageant officials and pulling the thing out of my breast pocket, my jacket pocket, and start puffing.
You could hear some people muttering. I’d always be in the in front of the elevator with everybody behind me. You could hear the gasps, hear the whispers. ‘He’s smoking a cigarette! What do we do? He’s smoking a cigarette! Oh, my God, what do we do? He can’t smoke. It’s elevator!’ I hear all this and I keep puffing away, and I turn around and I say, ‘Did you see me light it?’ I pulled it out of my pocket. ‘Here, let me show you. It’s an e-cig, it’s just water vapor,’ and I blow some very near somebody’s face. (sniff, sniff) ‘Oh, I don’t even smell it.’ ‘That’s right it’s not a cigarette,’ and I let ’em in on the gag. ‘I just love pulling the thing out in an elevator and freaking people out like I just did you,’ and they all start laughing like they’re in on the joke.
I will do this in a restaurant, much to the chagrin of Kathryn simply because (laughing) she knows I’m taunting people. (interruption) No, nobody else fired up. No, nobody else fired up. In fact, nobody… Well, this past September I was out in Hawaii on the Big Island, and after shooting an episode of The Haney Project — by the way, we’ve got six of those in the can now, and there are eight. We’ve got two to go. The last portion of the last episode was shot Saturday in Hilton Head at a great, great place, Palmetto Golf Club. Not Hilton Head Island. It was about 54 degrees and raining all day long, and it was a great day. This is gonna be great.
For ten minutes, total freedom, and then the general manager came up. He was very sheepish, embarrassed, but he had to do his job. ‘Mr. Limbaugh, I — I — I — I — I know you’re aware that there’s no smoking allowed in public here, and there are people eating over there,’ and there were people eating about 20 yards away, outside. I looked at him and I said, ‘It’s not a cigarette,’ and I unscrewed the nicotine cartridge and I showed him the battery. These people think it’s cigarette because the end of it lights up. It looks like a cigarette at the end when you take a puff on it. It’s actually the battery indicator. When it flashes three times, the battery’s dead. So I said, ‘It’s just water vapor,’ and I explained and I exhaled some water vapor near him so he could smell it.
There wasn’t any smell. He said, ‘Ohhhh, that’s fine! Okay, fine.’ So I continue to smoke. He came back a short while later and said, ‘Mr. Limbaugh, we’re still getting some customer complaints.’
I said, ‘Why?’
‘Well, one woman says you look like you’re enjoying yourself so much and it could be setting a bad example for the children that are here with their parents. You’re looking like you really enjoy it, and it might be tempting children to want to smoke.’
I said, ‘Who said this?’
‘Oh, Mr. Limbaugh, I — I — I don’t want to say. It’s one of our female patrons.’
So I said, ‘Well, I’ll keep that in my mind. I’ll keep that in my mind,’ and I put it down for a while and started looking around. ‘Cause, you know, I have been trained now over these many years. I can spot those who are staring daggers to me. So I did. I let some time go by. I did not look at the crowd gathered after the general manager left. In fact, I looked a little ticked off as part of the act so that whoever it was that was complaining would feel good. ‘Ah, we succeeded! Limbaugh’s ticked off.’ So after about ten more minutes, I started looking around, and I found two or three really good suspects who it could have been. I found two or three. You recognize a genuine smile, you recognize a smug stare, and you recognize daggers. You just do. It’s a matter of learned security procedure.
So when I thought I had figured out these top three (they were in different areas) I picked it back up and took a puff facing each direction. Just to let them know that their happiness was temporary, and the GM never showed up, didn’t come back or anything, and then we left I guess another half hour later. We were there an hour and a half so we left about a half hour after that. And of course all my buddies, there’s nine of us there, and they’re all in on the joke. I even gave one to Hartley. Hartley started puffing on one, so that ticked ’em off even more. I just know that did it. I didn’t see it, nobody came up and said so, but I just know it. Folks, it’s just me. You know, these nannies, these people who want to butt their noses into my life. I wasn’t hurting these people, I wasn’t harming anybody, I was minding my own business.
But they had to go and get the management and insert themselves into my affairs. Fine. You do that, I’m gonna behave a certain way. Now, if I was breaking the law, if it was a cigarette, I woulda never lit it up in the first place. We all know you can’t smoke in public. I don’t smoke cigarettes anyway. I would not have lit one — or lighted one, whatever the correct way to say it. But here we are now in King County, Washington, they’re gonna ban these things all because it might send a signal to real smokers that they can light up, and that will create secondhand smoke. Co-conspirators to a crime not taking place. King County: The place in Washington where you steal as many votes as you need if you’re a Democrat, where they have more votes than voters, but don’t dare light an e-cig.
It’s like everybody is all bent out of shape over that Jets coach, that Jets coach who tripped the Dolphins player. By the way, he’s been suspended for the rest of the season and fined $25,000, which is a big number for him. An assistant coach at most will make a hundred thousand dollars in the NFL, at most. So that $25,000 fine is a big hit for that guy. He’s not a player. Everybody is just outraged. ‘Oh, how could this happen? This is horrible!’ Nobody gets as outraged over voter fraud or ACORN or anything else. So now this. So life is what it is, folks, and you gotta take moments like this and make them as much fun as you can, and there’s no more fun than just taunting the left. I mean, just hoisting them on their own petard. I just love it!