RUSH: Hi, folks, and welcome back. It is a sheer delight to have you with us. I’m Rush Limbaugh, America’s Real Anchorman. A Real Anchorman. I do the job that most anchormen ought to be doing. I tell you what’s going on out there that you don’t know about. I’m not into advancing an agenda here, and certainly not the Democrat Party’s agenda. That’s all the news media is. There isn’t any media anymore. Do you realize that? It isn’t even media! I sent a friend of mine a fairly long treatise.
If I were a doctoral candidate, this would be my thesis: “There is no media anymore.” I was watching the gaggle of reporters seated in the White House pressroom awaiting a press briefing last week. It might have been Josh Earnest coming out, or Obama; I don’t remember. But it was a side view of all the reporters sitting there in their chairs in the White House pressroom waiting for the people to come in. It just struck me. (It’s not anything new, by the way, this realization.)
But they’re not media.
We call them the media, and they work for companies everybody assumes is media. They work in media, but they’re not media. They’re not news reporters. Nobody’s digging things up anymore. Everything’s a result of a press release sent via fax or e-mail. Everything is the daily soap opera, the narrative that’s established by somebody every day, somewhere. White House, New York Times, or what have you. But there really isn’t any media.
In terms of the White House press corps or the Washington press corps, there really isn’t any media. It’s always struck me, and we just accept it because it’s what it is and there’s no way to change it. But we have the Republicans and the Democrats, and isn’t it routine that on no matter what issue, no matter what piece of legislation’s being debated, no matter what is being talked about, the media — understandably and people accept it — is always referred to as an obstacle for the Republicans?
Everybody admits it. Everybody knows that the media is yet another obstacle for the Republicans to overcome. Well, how in the world can that be media? This is not about the media being biased, which of course it is. That’s too cliched. The fact of the matter is, there really isn’t media. They just call themselves that, and they get to live off the idea that they’re reporters. They get to live off the idea that what they tell us is news, but it isn’t.
What they tell us is designed to shape your opinion about things, not inform you. Now, that may be cutting it a little too close because shaping your opinion does include informing you, but they inform you of certain things a certain way. It’s all designed to get you thinking and concluding things. It’s not about informing you and letting you make up your own mind, and I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish and Civics 101 about it.
It’s more a pet peeve than anything anyway, but they’re not media. They are something else. They are a branch office of the Democrat Party, they’re the steno pool for the Obama administration, but they’re not media. We don’t have a media, when you get right down to it. We have pockets of it. I mean, you probably have some media in your local town digging up stories on sewage problems and stuff, or how to bake a carrot cake recipe for the holidays, but even that is a stretch.
There really isn’t any media.
Now, the reason this is important is because so many people on our side are still waiting for the moment when the media all of a sudden becomes fair. They’re not going to ever think positively about themselves, and they’re not ever going to think that we’re winning, until the media sees it our way. And the media’s never gonna see it our way ’cause they’re not about seeing it our way! They’re not us. I’ll tell you another way this manifests itself.
My good buddy Andy McCarthy had another brilliant piece on Saturday at National Review Online, on stopping Obama. Now, he’s written a book on impeachment, and he’s made the case that impeachment’s a political thing, and you can’t proceed until the political circumstances are right in the country. It’s not so much a legal or constitutional proceeding. Rather, it’s a political thing.
The Republicans have judged that they have no prayer of ever succeeding, so they have said publicly that they’re never going to do it. They have announced that impeachment’s off the table, which, as far as Obama’s concerned, is a license to do whatever he wants to do whenever. Because he’s just been told that his political opponents have no intention of stopping him. Now, why aren’t the Republicans going to proceed with impeachment?
It’s not because of Obama’s race.
It’s not because of Obama.
The Republicans are not proceeding with impeachment because of one thing: The media. It is the media that’s gonna call ’em racist, it’s the media that’s gonna try to destroy them, it’s the media that’s gonna make mincemeat of ’em, it’s the media that they’re afraid of. Therefore, we’re not dealing with media here. We’re dealing with something else, but it isn’t media. And it’s not journalism, by the same token.
Media and journalism have come to mean the same thing, but they’re not. The media, journalists, are every bit the enemy and opponent that Obama and the Democrat Party are. In fact, the media has more to do with paralyzing Republicans than the Democrats do. Do you think the media need the Democrats calling Republican racists to do it? No. The media will do it themselves. That’s not media, folks. That’s not journalism. That’s something else.
That something else is its own political entity that is itself the Democrat Party or a branch office of or what have you. Now, they try to tell us they’re media. There are people just like them on the right. I’m one, for example, but I don’t pretend to be media, and I don’t pretend to be a journalist. I’m an activist, in a sense. But more than anything else, I’m an advocate. So are they. They are not media. They’re advocates. They are advocates for one side.
But they never, ever admit that. They hide behind the fact that they are “The Media,” and it is an absolute joke to watch these people seated in the White House press room… (interruption) Yeah, it was Obama and David Cameron coming out. It was gonna be a joint press conference. It’s an absolute joke to think those people are actually there to try to ask incisive, burning questions, given who the participants are. Now, if it were a Republican president they would become media all of a sudden.
They would be doing everything they could to prove the Republican president’s full of it and is lying, and they would try to take down powerful people like we’re told the media’s job is. “Speak truth to power” and all that. But I looked at this gaggle of people sitting there and the last thing they were is reporters. The last thing they were there for is to find out something that people didn’t know about what Obama and Cameron were gonna do and report it. The only reason they were there is to protect Obama.
Now, that’s not media.
And when you have an entire political party paralyzed because of the media, that’s also not the media — and that is really, really quite telling — and I think we do. We have a Republican Party, in certain, ways that’s paralyzed, in other ways they don’t disagree with Democrats. But still there are enough areas of disagreement that, like impeachment or whatever. They just will not voice what they really think about a whole bunch of things. Not because of what Obama’s gonna say about it, not because of what Harry Reid’s gonna say.
It’s what the media is gonna say. Again, the media doesn’t need to wait for what Obama says in order to call Republican names. They can do it themselves. A classic example here is what’s being done to the movie American Sniper. By the way, I don’t think this is any big revelation. To me, words mean things. The definition of words mean things. I must also say, I’m having greater and greater trouble communicating with people just in a day-to-day basis. I communicate primarily by e-mail and text, ’cause I hate the phone.
I don’t mind FaceTime audio; I can hear that. But I’ve gotten to the point where, when I’m telling people things, I have to not only say what I want to say. The next sentence I explain what I mean, and I send it to them twice ’cause I’m finding out people… Like I help a lot of people with their problems on their iPhone, or their iPad or their Mac. You know, I’m the guy in my group of friends and family that I have the answers.
I’m the go-to guy if you need something fixed. It’s amazing how many times I have to explain one thing. It is amazing. I’ll write, “Here’s what to do.” I’ll be as expressly clear as I can, and I’ll wait for a question that has totally ignored what I’ve written previously, and I’ll have to explain it again. Communication is a very difficult thing to pull off. And then trying to understand what other people are saying?
Somebody sent me an e-mail today, and I had to write her back three times to ask, “What are you really trying to tell me here?” It took me three times, ’cause I didn’t want to assume what she meant. It was about the Muslim call to prayer at Duke. So words mean things to me. I mean, it’s a very big, big, big deal. (interruption) I am a literal guy. I am the mayor of Realville. I am profoundly literal, and most people aren’t. That’s not a criticism. It just puts me in a frustrating circumstance a lot.
I say exactly what I mean, and as clearly and as directly as I can. And then to have to repeat it two or three times because it’s glossed over, not read carefully, or not understood kind of frustrates me. But that’s no big deal. That’s personal stuff. My point here is to me, “media” is a word that means things. “Media” means they’re in the news business. They’re in the business of gathering news that nobody knows about, in the process they tell us things that we don’t know, and that’s how we become informed.
That’s not what they are. But yet that’s how they’re looked at. It’s really important. Most low-information people, they watch the news thinking they’re watching the news. They’re not watching the news. They’re not watching media. They’re watching the daily Democrat Party devotional or whatever else you want to call it. The reporters seated in the pressroom eagerly writing down what is said? They’re not reporters. They’re advocates. They’re not interested in informing people what they don’t know.
They are only interested in shaping people’s opinions about what happens to be in the daily soap opera script that particular day. Today what everybody’s doubled down on is Obama’s tax cuts that are gonna be announced in the State of the Union show and why they’re being announced and what their purpose is. There isn’t any real information being provided. There’s no digging into this. There is simply “the media” bending and shaping and flaking and forming and reporting all this in such a way as to accomplish two things:
Smooth sailing for Obama.
“Boy, it’s great that he wants to do it! It’s compassionate, it’s fair, it’s equal!”
And the other half of it is that no matter what the Republicans say, “It’s mean-spirited, extremist, and benefits the rich.”
That’s how it’s all being prepped today. So even before the Republicans say a word in response, the media today is telling consumers, “The Republicans oppose it because they favor the rich. They like the rich getting rich. They like the rich staying rich. They don’t like the rich having to give up any money. They don’t want you to make any more than you have. They love income inequality!” That’s part of the quote/unquote “reporting”?
No! They’re shaping the story to help Obama.
The reason why is Obama now is faced with a Republican House and a Republican Senate, and in the normal ebb and flow, Obama’s proposals don’t stand a prayer. So it’s time to shame the Republicans and go out and find the weak-kneed, linguine-spined Republicans and shame them and embarrass them for defending the rich and maybe turn them. That’s what’s going on here. There’s no reporting. There’s no news. There isn’t any media taking place here. They’re not media!