RUSH: Steve in Fruitland, Maryland. I’m glad you waited, sir. It’s good to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Rush.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Mega dittos from the home of Delmarva and the land of pleasant living. I have a point I wanted to make, and I wanted to give you a special thank you, too, when I get done with that. Doesn’t what Ed Asner said about Obama prove exactly what you said about Donovan McNabb?

RUSH: Let me see. Asner said that he didn’t want to be critical of Obama because he didn’t want to be thought of as anti-black.

CALLER: Isn’t that exactly the same thing that you said?

RUSH: Well, what I said about McNabb was that he got special treatment from the media because they didn’t want to be critical of a black quarterback.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: So you’re saying that what Ed Asner said about Obama is pretty much what I said about McNabb, except Ed Asner’s getting all kinds of accolades and credit for it?

CALLER: Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget, Ed Asner played an editor on TV.

RUSH: (laughing) He did. He was a journalist.

CALLER: It was back in the old days.

RUSH: He was a journalist on TV. Asner said he didn’t want to feel “anti-black.” Part and parcel of that was, he didn’t want anybody thinking he was anti-black.

CALLER: Yeah, but the thank you I wanted to give you is every year you talk about Normandy, about D-Day.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: My father hit the beach at daybreak on D-Day — and, in fact, for 25 years after he was there, he still had shrapnel coming out.

RUSH: Was your dad at Omaha Beach?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: First wave.

RUSH: Have you been there?

CALLER: You know, I haven’t. I’d like to go someday. I’ll tell you a little story. We were stationed in Germany. He was a career military, and we were stationed in Germany in the early sixties.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: You know, I think I was like 12 years old. I’m the same age you are. I said to him one day, “Dad, don’t you want to go to Normandy while we’re this close?” And he looked at me real seriously and he said, “Son, I spent enough time there,” and I said, “Okay.” I never brought it up again.

RUSH: You know what happened there, obviously, and that had to be a traumatic prospect for him to go back there.

CALLER: Oh, yeah.

RUSH: Even though the ultimate outcome there was victory, that was a day that the survivors… Nobody wants to relive that.

CALLER: He never talked about it. Never.

RUSH: Well, you know, my dad flew P-51s in World War II in what was called the China-Burma Theater, and my brother and I would ask him about his experiences. He would not tell us how many enemy planes he shot down. He wouldn’t even tell us that he did that. That’s what you did in a P-51. I mean, you weren’t joyriding in one of those, and he wouldn’t talk about it, and neither would any of his friends in our little town when they came back. I mean, growing up in the fifties, World War II was not that long ago. They wouldn’t talk about it just like your dad. They didn’t brag about it. They didn’t want to share any details other than when they spoke of the horror of it.

CALLER: Sometimes we used to watch a show. Remember that show Combat?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: We used to watch that together, and he’d just sit there and laugh, and say, “Boy, what a bunch of baloney.”

RUSH: What about Saving Private Ryan? Have you seen that?

CALLER: No, he’d already passed before then. My brother and I went to see that. My brother has passed away, too. We went to the matinee. We were the only ones in the theater, my brother and I.

RUSH: Well, it’s said that that’s been the most accurate reproduction of what it was like.

CALLER: Yeah, and I’m sitting there with my brother, and after about the first 10 minutes, I looked at him and said, “You know, we’re lucky to be here.”

RUSH: Well, Steve, I’m gonna tell you something. If you ever have a chance to go there, you should. This was really moving for us. We went to the cemetery, the American Cemetery, hallowed ground. It’s the quietest place that you’ve ever been. We went to Omaha Beach and we went to Pointe du Hoc where the Rangers climbed up the mountains. But you especially, if you ever find yourself in Europe, in either Britain or France, you should go and just see where your dad was and what happened. I know you know about it, but there’s nothing like seeing it, Steve.

CALLER: Yeah, I’d like to go.

RUSH: That is huge. The beach is huge, Steve. You would not believe the ground they had to cover even before they got to the Germans, and the German guns were able to hit them. It’s just incredible what those men did in that invasion. It embodied true American greatness, exceptionalism. I’m in awe of it more so as I get older. I’m glad you called. I appreciate it. I hadn’t even made that comparison that you did. I appreciate it.