RUSH: CBS News. This is from Dyer County, Tennessee, actually from the Charlotte CBS, I guess, TV station or bureau.
“A high school student was allegedly suspended after breaking a class rule of saying ‘bless you’ after a classmate sneezed. Kendra Turner, a senior at Dyer County High School, said bless you to her classmate who sneezed and the teacher told her that the term was for church. ‘She said that we’re not going to have godly speaking in her class and that’s when I said we have a constitutional right,’ Turner told WMC.
“When she defended her actions, the teacher told Turner to see an administrator. The student said that she had to finish the class period in in-school suspension. The girl’s parents were told by school leaders that their daughter shouted ‘bless you’ across the room and that it was a classroom distraction. School officials told her parents Tuesday that the teacher claimed that their daughter was aggressive and disruptive. But Becky Winegardner, Turner’s youth pastor, disagrees with the school’s actions of in-class suspension.”
Believe it. I mean, it happened, and they’re backing it up. “Bless you,” these people don’t even know what the root of it is. They don’t even know why. Do you know why you say “bless you” to somebody who sneezes? Do you know why, Snerdley? (interruption) Well, your heart actually stops during a sneeze, and you’re being blessed that it kicks back up and goes ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom again. It doesn’t really stop, not in the medical sense. But it is rooted in that. This is the left with their control of the curriculum and political correctness and all that.
RUSH: Back to the phones we go. This is Donna in Worcester, Massachusetts. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Listen, I’m calling in support, 100% in support of your previous comment about the indoctrination of the kids in the public schools. I have a quick story for you, and it just happened this morning. First of all, I’ve been a part-time adjunct professor for 24 years at the college level. I am an advocate of education reform, and I served on the school committee. So my daughter’s taking an AP class coming up this fall, and she has three books to read for AP English. Now, emphasizing English. She has one classic —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying an AP class or EP class?
CALLER: AP class.
RUSH: AP.
CALLER: Advanced placement class.
RUSH: Advanced placement. Okay. Okay.
CALLER: For the brightest of the bright, supposedly. So she has to read three books this summer. Now, we’re talking English, and I just want to keep emphasizing “English.” One book is a Hemingway book, which is a classic English book. The other one is an economics book, The World is Flat, and the third book is another economics book, which is called Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
RUSH: Oh, no. Don’t tell me they’re making her read that?
CALLER: Just listen. Rush, I am very, very —
RUSH: Hold it a second. Wait, wait. Are you telling me that she’s required to read that?
CALLER: Yes, and she has no previous knowledge of economics. Now, people that read that book on a college level, because I teach college —
RUSH: That book has been exposed. The author has even released his own revision. In fact, the author, Thomas Piketty — this is this French socialist that the left loved — has had to reissue so many corrections, he’s gonna have to write a whole new book because of the errors have been found. The book is an absolute… It’s just totally wrong about economics. It’s pro-socialism. It’s totally anti-capitalism.
CALLER: Rush? Rush? Rush, I know this, but just listen to what I have to say. So I asked her last night about the beheading. I was afraid to ask her, because to me it’s very traumatic.
RUSH: How old is your daughter?
CALLER: She’s 16.
RUSH: 16.
CALLER: I said, “Honey, did you hear about the beheading that happened in the Middle East?” And she said, “Yeah, Mom, I did. I read about it in my economics books.” And I said, “Well, what did you think?” Rush, she said to me, “America is the problem.”RUSH: There you go.
CALLER: There you go. I mean, how can we…? I mean, it’s —
RUSH: Do not doubt me, folks.
CALLER: Rush, listen. I am working my butt off in Massachusetts trying to expose these things. I have her out there and we are all over the place helping out the people to learn the truth in Massachusetts. It’s just an uphill battle.
RUSH: Hold it just a second. Slow down ’cause I want to understand. These three books, one of them by Thomas Piketty and the other one is a Thomas Friedman book about global warming and the world. It’s just…
CALLER: He’s a journalist. “The World is Flat.” He’s a journalist, and he’s writing about economics.
RUSH: But that’s my point. What class is this?
CALLER: This is for English, and it’s gonna be taught by an English teacher. It’s not gonna be taught by an economics professor.
RUSH: Okay, so that’s the point. An English class is assigning three economics books.
CALLER: No, two economics books. Two economics books and one by Hemingway.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, the Hemingway, the Hemingway.
CALLER: The Hemingway, yeah.
RUSH: Hemingway, yeah. That’s so overrated, I can’t even… But I shouldn’t go there. That’s the wrong place to go, but nevertheless.
CALLER: It proves your point this morning. I just called because it was exactly what you were saying.
RUSH: Well, it is but I’m not making this stuff up. There’s no point in making it up. I don’t even have to read those three books to understand that liberals are educated and believe America is the problem. The military is the focus of evil. America is not the solution. That’s how you get people like a former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, suggesting that it’s not good for the US to be the sole superpower because there needs to be somebody to keep us in check. See, we’re not the good guys.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: We are not the good guys, and the Soviets weren’t the good guys, either, but they were better than we are. The Soviets and us, as competing superpowers, kept all of the bad parts of us in check. I mean, it is convoluted, perverted, even. But they do believe it.
CALLER: But I needed parents to know: You have to watch out what your kids are reading, and you have to see the politics in what they’re reading.
RUSH: Let me just tell this again. This is exactly, exactly why I got so excited to do these children’s books on American history, to tell the truth at an early age, in a fun way, so that kids learn historical truth and get a foundation of love and respect for this country, despite our flaws — and there are some. No question. Nobody’s perfect. No thing is perfect. This is exactly why there’s the Rush Revere time-travel adventure series with exceptional Americans. This is exactly why, and I’m glad you got through, Donna.
Thank you so much. Good luck with your daughter.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The second book — The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century — is a book by Thomas “Loopy” Friedman of the New York Times. The other is Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty. Anglicized, it’s P-i-k-e-t-t-y. But that book… The UK Financial Times and a number of other people have just ripped that book to shreds. Here. Back on May 23rd there was a story by Chris Giles:
“Some issues concern sourcing, definitional problems, some numbers appear simply to be made up… But according to a Financial Times investigation, the rock-star French economist appears to have got his sums wrong,” meaning he added up and got wrong answers. “The data underpinning Professor Piketty’s 577-page [book], which has dominated best-seller lists” in Boston and New York and San Francisco “in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings.”
UK Daily Mail: “The Left’s ‘Rock Star’ Economist? Thomas Piketty is a Woman Beater, Says Former Lover.” Ha-ha-ha-ha. Don’t you love that? Well, a War on Woman guy. Thomas Piketty. Anyway, the book is so distorted, Piketty has had to issue corrections on a website and they’re thinking maybe they’ve gotta redo the book. But the left… I’ll tell you something else. Most of the people who’ve bought the book haven’t even read it.
It’s one of these books you buy and put on your coffee table to show how smart you are, to show how worldly you are. Liberals do this routinely. Symbolism over substance. They don’t even read it. But they know everything in it, because all they think it says is that capitalism and wealth is inherently evil and unfair because it’s nothing more than institutionalized theft.
It’s the 1% continuing to steal everything from everybody else and getting away with it. And they think that Piketty has exposed all of these people for the world, discredited them forever. So this woman was calling, saying that her advanced-placement daughter, 16, in an English class has been assigned this and Friedman’s book to read, because it’s a… It’s not education. It’s propagandizing, and it’s the way it happens.
That’s why her daughter, when asked about the beheading of James Foley, says, “It’s America’s fault. America’s the problem.” Her daughter believes it. It’s what her daughter’s hearing in the schools. (interruption) Yes, Mr. Snerdley? A quick question. (interruption) No, I didn’t… No, I just I think Hemingway is overrated. (interruption) Hemingway’s a… (sigh) Let’s just put it this way.
I myself have had moments of erudite literary intellectual application. I never read this stuff formally. When I was assigned to read it, I didn’t do it ’cause hated having to be there. After they told me that Beowolf was classic, I said, “This is? Nobody could understand this. This is absolute drivel and BS. Beowolf?”
“Oh, that’s one of the earliest literary efforts.”
“Well, nobody knows what it stands for and nobody knows what it could possibly mean,” except the teacher who thought she did trying to tell us. Yeah, I had a literary or an English high school class. I don’t remember what it was. It was something about English literature or something. Just to show you, the teacher got her doctoral thesis on the 535 minor characters of Shakespeare.
So that’s what we were dealing with. I mean, the 535 minor characters of Shakespeare! So that’s how deep we were, and I was already in my rejection mode. Not rebellion, just rejection mode. But I hear people assign lofty status to people in all fields of endeavor, and I have just I found that it’s all a game. It’s all part of the… I don’t know. Not trick. It’s just it’s all part of the…
I’m trying to say this in as least explosive a way as I can, ’cause it doesn’t matter. But I always thought it was part of the rigged game that force-fed what certain people wanted everybody else to think was the best and elite and so forth. Believe me, I have found a whole bunch of great writers. I have found a bunch of great economists that are never taught, precisely because they’re conservative.
Burke, Hayek, any number of ’em.
They’re laughed at and… Well, not laughed at. They’re sneezed at, bless you, in certain circles. But Hemingway? I don’t know. I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it. It’s like I, one day… I shouldn’t admit this, but I will tell you just for the fun of it ’cause I’m a practical joker, and I’ve always had fun poking holes at pretense, at pretense sophistication and pretense erudition, at pretense elitism.
So I’m with some people from the early days of the founding of this program in New York City, at a fashionable, had-to-have-a-coat-and-tie restaurant. On exhibit at this point in time in New York at the museum is an exhibit by Matisse. And the host and hostette are regaling us at the table with all of the wonderful aspects of Matisse and so forth. I said, “Who is Matisse?” Very loudly.
“Who’s Matisse? I’ve never heard of Matisse!”
They looked around, got embarrassed.
“Oh, my God. You know. Yes!” Loud enough for others to hear. “You know who Matisse is. You know.”
They were so embarrassed to be with somebody didn’t know who Matisse was and was proud to say he didn’t know who Matisse was, ’cause it was just syrup after syrup after syrup. It was like drinking Log Cabin instead of my cocktail listening to these people go on and on about Matisse this, Matisse that. So that’s just kind of the way I’ve reacted to people who start talking about Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare, really? Come on, the guy was a drunk communist! What are you talking about?” (laughing)
That just sends ’em into orbit.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have just been informed I had verbal dyslexia again and said that Shakespeare was a drunk communist. He wasn’t a communist. I was talking about Hemingway. I think, if you’ve ever plotted — well, nevermind. One of the attractions to Hemingway — nevermind. You know? There’s nothing to be gained going there.
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