RUSH: This Paul in Los Angeles. He is 18-years-old. Paul, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Mr. Limbaugh, mega dittos from California.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: All right. So I am a high school senior, and I’m doing a report on racism in the media, the mainstream news media.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You are a high school senior. You’re doing a report on racism in the media, mainstream. Were you allowed to pick that topic?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I had to argue with my teacher for a little bit but —
RUSH: Well, what did the teacher actually assign? What was the umbrella assignment? You had to do a report on something and you got to pick the topic?
CALLER: Yes, sir. It had to relate to art or justice. And this was the topic I was a little bit more passionate about.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. The teacher assigned a report that had to relate to art or justice?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: (laughing) Okay. There is no justice in art. Have you ever seen Piss Christ?
CALLER: Seen what, sir?
RUSH: Andres Serrano, a famous leftist artist, submerged a crucifix in a jar of urine, and it was highly acclaimed by the left in the media. It was put on display at museums, and that was the name of it. That’s what it was called. I’m quoting it. Don’t get mad at me. That’s what it was called, folks. I’ll say Urine Christ, but that’s what it was called. So anyway, from art and justice, then you chose something you’re passionate about, which is racism in the media, mainstream. Well, that’s cool. That’s good. So you’re gonna do that report.
CALLER: Yes, sir. And I wanted to do sort of an on-air interview with you and ask you four questions or so about your experience with racism in the mainstream news media.
RUSH: Oh. Another question. Were you, as part of the assignment, told you have to interview somebody?
CALLER: I was, sir.
RUSH: You were. Were you assigned to interview me, or did you pick me?
CALLER: Oh, no, I picked you because my teacher has some leftist leanings, and I think this would be the thing to anger the most.
RUSH: Oh, so you want an automatic F here. (laughing) Okay, well, I’m flattered. So you want to interview me; you’ve got four questions for me on racism in the news media?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Well I’m gonna take this very seriously.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: I’m honored that you chose me. Your teacher is left-leaning, and I interrupted you. You were going to say that you think this would be what?
CALLER: You mean with regards to my teacher?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Oh. Well, since he has some leftist leanings, I wanted to present the truth to him in a manner to which you would be least —
RUSH: And you have chosen a source which will have instant credibility, there’s no question about that. Me. All right, let’s do it then. What is the class? Is it an art class, or sociology class, what’s the class?
CALLER: Well, it’s a history class.
RUSH: History class where you have to report on either art or justice?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Figures. Okay. Hit me with the questions.
CALLER: Okay. So the first one is, do you think that the mainstream media has an agenda and are using race and racism as a tool to accomplish goals, or are they just sort of being racist without realizing it?
RUSH: Okay, that’s a three part question. Is that the first question or is that three of the four questions?
CALLER: That’s the first question.
RUSH: Okay. Do I think the mainstream media has an agenda and are using race and racism as a tool to accomplish goals? Yes. I’ll explain here in just a second. Or are they just sort of racist without realizing it? That, too. They are what I call “reverse racists.” The first part of your question, the mainstream media does indeed have an agenda. The agenda is the advancement of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. The purpose for this is to advance the whole concept of big government, which they wholeheartedly believe in as the best instrument for people’s affairs to be managed. The mainstream media is no different than your average Democrat. The mainstream media, individuals in it, are no different than your average liberal.
And as such, Paul, they do not have respect for average people. They look at normal people, the people who I think make the country work, look at ’em with a little bit of contempt. They look at them and see incompetence, inability, and they think they need to be managed. They have to be helped ’cause they’re not capable of helping themselves, making the right decisions in life. They have to be taken care of because most people are not capable of taking care of themselves. That’s why Michelle Obama is deigned to tell everybody what to eat, because they’re not smart enough to figure out for themselves to eat the right things. And these are people who are obsessed with power over other people. They want to tell other people how to live, because they don’t think that people have the ability to make the right kinds of life decisions themselves or on their own.
Now, the way racism is a tool here is the mainstream media looks at minorities as especially inept, especially incompetent, because they are, not have been, are continually discriminated against. The mainstream media for the most part — there are exceptions to this, of course, person to person — but by and large have people who think that all minorities are at an automatic disadvantage simply because of the color of their skin not being white. They look at all these minorities as the same, monolithic. They don’t see individuals. They see groups of victims. And since they believe people in general are incompetent and incapable, they look at minorities as especially so because they’re so discriminated against.
That takes us back to why they like Democrats and Obama and big government, because it is there they have the power to implement the things they believe. And one of the things they love to do is to punish the people who are not minorities for the way they think they are treating minorities. And they relish the opportunity to use the power of the federal government to punish members of the majority — by definition, people who are not minorities — for all of the mistreatment, for the discrimination, pilfering of their money, this kind of thing.
The truth of the matter is, that while they believe their intentions are good, and they will tell you that they are doing all this because of compassion for these poor disadvantaged people, because of their big hearts and their love, what they are actually doing — and I mean this, Paul, and Paul’s teacher as you read this, I mean this from the bottom of my heart — they are destroying these people’s lives by denying them their dignity, their individuality, and their own humanity. They are making them not individuals, but members of groups. They are treating them as members of groups, and they are not permitting these people to be all they can be as individuals. If, in the eyes of a liberal, be it a media person or other, if you are a minority you don’t have a chance in this country because this country is racist and discriminatory. So you need advantages, you need help.
CALLER: Well, that sort of answered the second one more eloquently than I ever could have possibly imagined.
RUSH: Okay, well, you’re gonna have a hell of a report here. That probably would do it right there, getting you automatic F when your teacher reads it. You hang on. I gotta take a break. We’ll come back and do the other questions when we get back, okay?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay. Be right back. Don’t go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We are back to Paul, 18-years-old, writing a report and interviewing me for it. He’s from Los Angeles. Paul, are you recording this, by any chance?
CALLER: Well, in a way. My father is a Rush 24/7 member.
RUSH: You’ll have a transcript of this that way so you’ll be able to get it word-for-word. Cool, all right.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: All right. What is the second question?
CALLER: Well, the second question you sort of answered when you answered the first, is what do you think the cause of this racism is?
RUSH: I’ll tell you what it is. The left in this country, and the media, view slavery as this country’s original sin, which, of course, you never get over, you never get over original sin. They don’t want us to get over original sin. The race industry doesn’t. Here’s the thing. Paul, I can’t think of a single conservative that I know who would not be thrilled to see the day where skin color didn’t matter a whit. We conservatives, that’s not what we first see when we see people. We don’t see groups. We don’t see sex, race, gender, orientation, any of that. We see potential. We see Americans. We see human beings, and we want the best for ’em. And the view of the people you’re asking me about, they don’t even conceive of the best. They don’t think these people are capable, not just minorities. Liberalism requires, as part of its belief, that nobody is capable of helping themselves. That’s why liberals are needed. That’s why big government’s needed. But slavery’s our original sin, and it serves a daily purpose for the American left, for the Democrat Party, which is the media. Okay, what’s the next question?
CALLER: Okay. The third question is, what do you think the effect of this racism is, and is what the mainstream is doing creating a more racist America?
RUSH: Well, the effect is to keep the country divided, purposefully. The effect is to keep Americans at war with one another, to promote division by class and by race, which is hideous. They want various classes of people to exist, and they want the delineations to be on race and income, class, and everything else. They want to divide us in these ways. Karl Marx saw history as a war between the classes. And if you can position yourself as the referee, or as the arbitrator of all of this, then you can see to it that the game never ends. You can see to it that there’s always somebody being discriminated against, needing federal action, always somebody being mistreated, requiring a big government to come in and save the day, which it never does, by the way.
All these programs and the Great Society, the war on poverty, none of them have worked. They’ve been bottomless pits of money. But the left tells you, don’t look at the results; examine our good intentions. Look at the size of our hearts; look at how much we care. Well, I would submit that they don’t care, and like I told you in the answer to number two, what they’re actually doing is demeaning people. And they are preventing people from reaching their full potential. Now, whether they’re creating a more racist America, I don’t think that is a purpose. I think they think it already is. I think they look at this country as flawed from its founding. They look at this country as unjust and immoral from its founding because of slavery, and since it’s a sin, it can never, ever end. It never goes away. Sinners are sinners. There’s no redemption for it, in their religion. So it’s really depressing to me and most people the way they constantly try to keep people antagonized and angry at each other.
I’ve gotta take a break. You got one question left. It’s up to you if you want to hold on for a little while to get to the next question. You can talk about that with Mr. Snerdley. In the meantime, we’ll be back here in just a second.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Paul, the 18-year-old high school student from LA held on. He has a project. He’s writing a report assigned by his teacher, has to be related to art or justice. His report is an interview with me on the state of racism in the media and the country. He needed to ask me four questions. He’s asked three. There’s one question left. Paul, welcome back to program. I’m glad and honored that you held on. Before we get to your fourth question, I want to share with you something. It’s just an amazing coincidence here, but it proves many points that I told you in answering your first three questions.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: There is a tweet today. I don’t know what caused it. I don’t know what it’s in response to, but there is a black CNN journalist named Roland Martin. Roland Martin is a friend of Obama’s,
Then I could cite for you the Tawana Brawley case led by Al Sharpton, that put Al Sharpton on the map. The Tawana Brawley case in America established Al Sharpton as a race leader. The Tawana Brawley case was a hoax. A woman accused a cop of raping her and then spreading feces on her, and it never happened. It never happened. It was established to be a hoax. Al Sharpton today has a TV show. Al Sharpton today leads the charge to Florida in the Trayvon Martin case. Al Sharpton has never apologized to the country for that hoax. He’s never apologized to the policeman, Steven Pagones. It was a disgrace.
I’ll give you another example. The Trayvon Martin case. The New York Times, so eager to establish that that was a racially motivated attack by George Zimmerman, the New York Times for only the fifth time in its history, referred to an Hispanic as a white Hispanic. So the media is not just culpable, they lead on this phony racism. They lead and perpetrate the hoaxes and the frauds and the phony charges. The media wants to believe these racist stories. They want to believe that there is racism in this country.
If the media didn’t want to believe these racism stories, we wouldn’t see such an endless stream of these kind of hoaxes. These hoaxes happen, Paul, because the media is willing to get behind ’em and promote ’em and report them. If the media were not supportive of these hoaxes and of these phony racial accusations, we would not see an endless stream of racially oriented stories or hoaxes. The media almost single-handedly gives life to these lies. You have one more question?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: You said you wanted an additional question, so this is it.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: What is it?
CALLER: My question is, what would a color-blind America truly look like?
RUSH: What would a color-blind America truly look like.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Well, first thing, people would be judged and accepted on the basis of their character, content of their character, as Martin Luther King said. They would be judged on their morality, whether they’re nice, whether they’re not nice. It would look like America should look. It would look like the greatest nation in the history of the world, which it is anyway. A color-blind society would end endless charges of discrimination. We would see an end to fake, phony news stories. We would see an end to all of the division that exists in this country because of race. Have you ever noticed the scales of justice, the lady on the scales of justice? She’s blindfolded.
Well, you want to know what a color-blind society would look like, imagine everybody walking around with a blindfold so they couldn’t see who it was they were interacting with, and I guarantee you, the result would be an entirely different way people relate to each other and get along with each other. Balance the scales without concern for race or nationality or ethnicity or gender or what have you. But that’s utopia. See, people are imperfect, Paul, and a color-blind society is a great objective, it’s a great goal, and something to aspire to. But because of the innate flaws and the imperfections of people, you’re never gonna get totally there. But you as an individual can live your life that way. I can choose to. And the more people who chose to live their lives that way, the better off we’d be.
When I was young, growing up, I was never called a racist in my life. Nobody ever accused me of hating anybody until I got on this radio show and announced that I’m a conservative, and then automatically the media accused me of being a racist and a hatemonger. But nobody who’s ever known me has ever called me a racist. Nobody who’s ever known me thought I was a hater or any of this. I wasn’t a racist ’til the media turned me into one, in any number of ways.
So it’s a great objective, it’s a great goal, and it’s something individuals can do. The fastest way about this would be the way you look at yourself. If you do not identify yourself by your race first, then you’re not a racist. But if you walk around thinking you’re an aggrieved, discriminated against white guy or black guy or whatever, then you are living your life racially. It’s arguable that that might not make you a racist automatically, but at least you’re living a racial or racialist existence if that’s first and foremost in your mind about yourself. If you look at yourself that way, you’re gonna look at other people that way.
Most people don’t identify themselves that way, but enough people do. That forces everybody else to treat them that way. If you’re gonna walk around and your self-image your self-identity is based on your race, then you’re gonna demand to be treated that way, and that starts the downward spiral. Some people have been trained to only think of themselves that way. That’s a shame, too. So I hope you get a good report out of this. I hope it’s been helpful to you, and it’s flattering to me that you would call and ask me for assistance on your report. So I thank you for that.
CALLER: I am honored to be here, and this has been…
RUSH: All right, Paul, let us know. Stay in touch. Give Snerdley your phone number, if you don’t mind, so that we can check in with you periodically and see how this worked out, ’cause I’m convinced that you’re running a risk here of an automatic F just by interviewing me. He-he-he-he-he.
CALLER: It’s worth the risk, sir.
RUSH: I know, ’cause of what you learned. There’s no question about it. I appreciate the honor and chance to talk to you.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: But, hey, Paul, you said your dad is a subscriber at Rush Limbaugh 24/7, right? You’re not?
CALLER: I’m afraid not. I haven’t gotten around to it. I think I’ll do it, I don’t know, maybe tomorrow.
RUSH: Well, Paul, you gotta get your priorities straight. I’m gonna help you with that, too. I want to send you a new iPad, so hold on. Snerdley will get the address to send it to you. Do you want Verizon or AT&T?
CALLER: Well, I guess AT&T would be nice ’cause that’s our family plan right now.
RUSH: All right, fine. Then you’ll have that.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Saturday delivery, you’ll have it tomorrow.