RUSH: So few reporters get satire. They’re not nearly as smart as I give them credit for being, and they certainly don’t get humor. I’m kind of a little queasy. I’ll tell you what, grab audio sound bite number five. Yesterday on Reliable Sources, CNN… This is Howie Kurtz’s show, where they examine the media and how the media has been behaving in the previous week. They had a political correspondent named Keli Goff from something called TheRoot.com, and they were talking about the State of the Union, Obama’s speech. Kurtz said, “You know, if you look at the laundry list the president went through — $9 minimum wage, universal preschool, prekindergarten, creating infrastructure jobs to help rebuild crumbling highways, reducing the nuclear stockpile — with a few exceptions and some New York Times stories, there was almost no serious media coverage of his proposals, once 24 hours was up,” and this is what Keli Goff said…
GOFF: Look, I think the easiest way to answer the question of whether the coverage of — the fairly positive coverage of — the State of the Union is biased is this. Rush Limbaugh gave it two thumbs up. Now (chortles), last time I checked he’s not a huge fan of the president, but he said, “Look, it was a good speech. I don’t agree with a lot of the policy.”
RUSH: Um, I… I… (laughs) Look, I know you were all listening that day. What I was doing was pretending to be a low-information voter and analyze it. “It was a great speech! I don’t agree with much of the policy, but he’s a great president. I don’t agree much with his policies and I think the country’s headed in the wrong direction, but I don’t think his policies have anything to do with it.” It was during that riff. But nevertheless, she thought I was actually praising the speech. So anyway, I was the barometer. The reason why there wasn’t a whole lot of analysis of the speech was, “Hell, even Rush Limbaugh liked it so there wasn’t much to talk about,” is what she was saying.
What I was thinking when reading the question to you is, here’s Howard Kurtz, and he’s going through the laundry list that was the speech and he gets to the part about creating infrastructure jobs to rebuild crumbling highways. I said, “Howie, have you not heard that before? Like, five years ago? How many times has this president promised to fix crumbling highways? How much money have we, quote, unquote, ‘invested’ in infrastructure?” And here comes a State of the Union Show speech five years later as if it’s for the first time.
It’s as though he never proposed it before! So even with the Drive-Bys Obama is never attached to his policies. Obama and his policies, at least their impact on the country, is nonexistent. Anyway, there you have it. “Rush Limbaugh gave it two thumbs up. He says, ‘I don’t agree with a lot of the policy, but it was a good speech.'” I did say that. I did say that, but within of course my own brand of unique satire and put-on. But they don’t get it.
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