RUSH: Let’s get to the barbecue business, because I’ve been promising this and the air-conditioning stuff. If I don’t actually make time to do it in the midst of all this other stuff, I’ll just keep procrastinating it, putting it off and putting it off. Let’s go ahead and do it. There are two stories here, actually. No, three on this now. The first is from website called IAmATexan.com. “‘If this resolution passes, we would be forced to close or move. It would destroy Austin barbecue.’ says Aaron Franklin, owner of FranklinÂ’s BBQ in Austin.
“Austin, Texas has long been a destination for Americans of all stripes in their quest to find the best barbecue in the nation. However, if the Austin City Council gets their way, food tourism may soon be a thing of the past. Austin City Council members passed a preliminary plan in April to put restrictions on smoke from barbeque restaurants. Some Austin residents complain of the barbecue smoke saying they canÂ’t enjoy their homes they purchased before some of these restaurants moved in.
“The city councilÂ’s current proposal will require smoke diffusers and will also limit the amount of time that restaurants can smoke,” i.e., cook. “These restrictions will require at least $100,000 in extra investments for most barbecue restaurants as they will be forced to buy extra smokers along with severely expensive diffusers, and in some cases will have to lease or purchase more property.” Now, why would they have to lease or purchase more property? In hopes of containing the smoke on their property, in hopes of containing the aroma of the smoke on their property.
Can you see a bunch of these owners building windmills that aim the wind back at the restaurant in order to comply? And then the global warming crowd gets into the act. Would they be happy about that or not? That’s a long shot, because the global warming crowd is not actually about working toward a cleaner environment. That’s a typical leftist move. They come up with a cause that’s noble like clean air, clean water, but that’s not what it’s really about. Just like abortion is really not about women’s rights and equality and all that, like they tell you it is.
At any rate, “Austin City Council members passed a preliminary plan in April to put restrictions on smoke from barbeque restaurants. Some Austin residents complain… “One business expert told council members that these restrictions will certainly kill all but the largest barbecue restaurants in Austin. It is effectively a ban on barbecue restaurants in a town known for its barbecue. Of course, these regulations are par for the course for a liberal city. Liberals claim to hate Big Business and love small businesses, but then they love to place so many regulations on the little guy that the environment becomes toxic to entry level entrepreneurs” that just want to get started.
“The ultimate consequence of these policies is that large corporations and governments are the only entities permitted to operate,” because the little guys can’t afford all the regulations. And the little guys can’t afford all the restrictions. What kind of absurd requirement is this anyway? So you have some homeowners who moved in, and apparently were in the neighborhood before the restaurants opened, and it was just fine, and now they don’t like the smell of barbecue because they’re offended or probably just like the anti-perfume crowd, claiming it makes them sick, this kind of thing.
Why would it not be incumbent on them to go out and get some air pressure differentials and keep outside air from entering their house until it’s been processed and cooled? Look, folks, this has happened in my own domicile. You know I happen to smoke cigars, and there was a time when other residents in the house didn’t like the smell. Was I gonna stop? Hell, no! So I called an HVAC expert out and said, “What can be done about this?” I had one particular room where I smoked and my orifice. He said, “This is simple. This is simple. I’ve had to do this in office buildings on floors where there is a kitchen next to the dining room.
“The people in the dining room don’t want to smell the aroma of the kitchen, so we just create an air pressure differential so that the air in the kitchen does not escape. It will draw air in from the dining room.” So what we did iw, we created an air pressure differential so that the smoke-aromated air in my office never escaped it. Did that mollify the anti-smokers in my how? No way. Because the purpose was not to get rid of the smell. The purpose was to get me to stop smoking cigars. I wasn’t about to, so I stood up for it.
The air pressure differential is an easy way to do it. Now, that’s large-scale like a restaurant. But all of this misses the point, ’cause these guys at the IAmATexan.com website have it exactly right. This is an attack on small business. (interruption) What, are you gonna hit me with some vegan stuff here that you don’t want to have to smell the aroma of charcoal and beef? And then what? (interruption) Who doesn’t like the smell of barbecue, for crying out loud! It’s a magnet? Who doesn’t like it? That’s what I was gonna say: We all love the smell of barbecue. What in the world…? Do you realize how odd this is?
Well, I know, I know. If the homeowners were there first. But I guarantee you that there’s nothing in the purchase agreement for the property that guarantees the new buyer to be free of barbecue smell. (New castrati impression) “Yeah, that’s right, Mr. Limbaugh. But the new owners, I mean, the homeowners were there first, and they have dibs on the kind of smells in their neighborhood. Right, right, yeah. Well, I imagine there’s all kinds of other smells in this neighborhood, too, that these homeowners probably don’t like. What are you gonna do about them? Like all the stray animals running around?
What are you gonna do about them?
What about the drunk and the homeless who are vomiting all over the streets? What are you gonna do about that aroma? Folks, this is the incremental, so-slow-you-barely-notice-it loss of liberty and freedom that’s happening right before everybody’s eyes, and the anti-smoking crowd has tried this before. I remember in a suburban county outside Baltimore some woman — that’s right, it was Montgomery County. How could I ever…? Good old Montgomery County. Some woman lived in an apartment.
And she claimed that a guy smoking in his apartment 200 yards away, with all of her doors and windows closed, and all of the smoker’s doors and windows, she claimed she could smell his cigarette smoke, and it made her sick. And the whatever county government is called there, tried to establish you-can’t-smoke-in-your-house ordinance if anybody could smell it in like 300 yards. I will guarantee you there’s no way that this busybody, inside her apartment 200 yards away, could smell a guy smoking a cigarette in his apartment 200 yards away when both apartments were sealed.
But she didn’t have to prove it.
All she had to do was act offended, and the offended get what they want.
So, anyway, that’s the Austin, Texas, version of the story.
From National Review: “A self-identified male ‘feminist’ wrote a more than 1,000-word piece about how much he hates that he loves to grill because he is ‘uncomfortable with the pleasure [he takes] in something so conventionally masculine.'” Now, do you think…? Let me just ask you a question here. Do you think there is the slightest possibility that there is a connection here between barbecue and manliness and current day madcap feminism? Should I say white guilt and white privilege? Could there be the slightest connection that barbecue is associated with something guys do conventional, and therefore it’s verboten?
“‘I take food prep a little too seriously, curtly brushing others out of the way when I step up to the kitchen counter,’ Jacob Brogan writes in a piece for Slate ,” which is a home to left-wing nutcases. ‘Am I shoving others out of the way because it makes me feel like a man? Have I become some sort of monster?’ Yes — he’s worried his enthusiasm for grilling may make him a ‘monster.'” Lest you think Brogan is overreacting, he offers a lot of reasons for why he’s so concerned about liking to do something so totally normal.
“One of them: Advertisers portray grilling as a form of male bonding, or, as he puts it, ‘enable what scholars call homosocial contact, a kind of same-sex intimacy that deflects the supposed danger of sexual contact between men but allows them to confirm their masculinity by excluding women.'” This is what this guy thinks of men sitting around grilling burgers and hot dogs and steaks, that it is somehow an act of patriarchy and male domination, getting close to homoeroticism while excluding women!
That’s what barbecuing is to this guy.
Let me read his own words: “‘Grilling, in other words, allows these characters,'” these men, “‘to cozy up to one another while still maintaining their understanding of themselves as truly manly men.'” Do you want me to translate that? Two guys grilling allows them to cozy up to one another but not look gay. Yeah, grilling guys can hang around at the grill or the barbecue pit and maintain their manliness and not be accused of being gay. That’s why he hates to grill, because it’s “so conventionally masculine.”
He actually loves to grill but hates loving it because of what it means. “Male Feminist: ‘I Hate That I Love to Grill’ Because It’s ‘So Conventionally Masculine.'” He “also worries that since grilling happens outside, and other forms of cooking happen inside, the fact that grilling is seen as a ‘man’ thing perpetuates the idea that women should stay inside” in the kitchen, because women don’t grill! Women don’t barbecue. Men reserve that for themselves so they can hang around with each other and prove they’re not gay while getting close to one another.
And they keep the women in the kitchen, and it’s another thing this guy says he hates about grilling. Now, do you think this guy came out of the womb thinking this stuff? Where in the world does somebody go to get their mind this corrupted? (interruption) Well, yeah, it could well be this guy’s like every other normal guy of his age wants to get close to women, and to do that he took a lot of women’s studies courses, and this is the kind of crap that he was inculcated with. “‘Unlike most other traditionally “feminine” forms of domestic cooking, grilling typically happens outside, and hence in the public sphere,’ [he] writes.
“‘The putatively masculine quality of grilling may derive in part from the old public-private gender split,’ he writes. ‘In that sense- it shares a common cause with the belief that women belong in the home.'” So this guy, Jacob what’s his name… Jacob Brogan. This is a damaged mind, and somebody damaged it. At one point, I’m sure this guy was a completely… Well, that may be a stretch. But how does this happen? By the way, folks, again, I just want to caution you: 25 years ago, 30, we’d have run across this.
And we would have the most fun laughing about this and we would have come up with great satirical bits and parodies and so forth — and we did. The problem is, they bought it! These people actually believe this stuff, and they’re not as small a minority as you think. Somebody has to think this crap in order to write it. And then after somebody wrote it, somebody had to think it was good enough to publish it. And then after it was published somebody had to think it was interesting enough to read it, and the progression begins.
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RUSH: There’s another relevant question, and it is: “Who would want to barbecue with that guy anyway?” I mean, who would want to stand out there and male bond with a guy like that anyway? Which may be one of the problems. He can’t find anybody to barbecue with. After all, if they know anything about the guy, why would they want to?
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RUSH: Now, let me go to the phones. Austin, Texas. Joey. Joey’s been waiting awhile. I appreciate your patience, Joey. Great to have you here. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you for having me. South Austin Barbecue Society’s man on the street dittos, Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: Great to have you here, Joey.
CALLER: I was listening yesterday and was very intrigued to hear this. I’m hoping you get back to the topic today about this barbecue situation in Austin. I have to say that I agree with everything that you’ve already said about it. But there is, of course, more to the story, and I think it’s important what that more to the story is, because it further illustrates how inept and dangerous liberal government can be.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: So if I may?
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: Specifically, it’s not that they’re trying to ban barbecue. It’s that there’s three restaurants — they’re brand-new restaurants — were permitted by the city. Out of the hundred of barbecue restaurants that have been in the city for a long time, these are the three that are generating complaints. Now, I don’t have to go too far, unless you want me to. The complaint about the smoke is fairly — or really — legitimate. It has to do with the geography of Austin. The houses are literally right next to these 15-foot-tall chimneys and the chimneys are about five feet from the door.
RUSH: Joey, hold your thought there. I have to take a time-out. That’s an interesting place to break, that the complaints about the smoke is legitimate. Joey could be a seminar caller. We’ll find out here in not too long.
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RUSH: Back to Joey in Austin. Okay, three new restaurants, and there might be a legitimate complaint here about their smokestacks and the amount of smoke that they’re emitting. That’s where we left off.
CALLER: That is where we left off.
RUSH: Okay. So you pick it up from there.
CALLER: You can hear me, I assume.
RUSH: Yeah, I hear you fine.
CALLER: Okay. To illustrate further the abject failure of liberal government, these permits for these restaurants never should have been issued in the first place. But rather than the city council saying, “I’m sorry,” or the city staff saying, “We’re sorry we issued the permits, let’s fix it,” they wrote a whole new piece of legislation requiring every restaurant to install these smoke scrubbers. Somebody says, “Wait. We’ve been here for 50 years, and no one’s complained. Why do I have to pay a hundred thousand bucks?”
So rather than say, “We’re wrong,” they assume they’re right and add more legislation on top of the existing legislation. They write a law to fix it, write a regulation to fix it. So I have to agree with everything you said on this subject and point out that it gets even worse from there. It’s just the ego and pride of these liberals to not be able to say, “We’re sorry. We’re wrong for issuing the permit to put this smokestacks five feet from the windows.”
RUSH: Now, Joey, at that point I gotta step in. I don’t think it’s ego and pride that prevents liberals from admitting they made a mistake. I think they see an opportunity here. Okay, so maybe they made a mistake in extending the permits to these three restaurants, building smokestacks 15 feet high for barbecue restaurants. You say the smoke in the neighborhood is a problem, and they should have never been granted the permits, and then they saw the opportunity is, “Okay, what do these three have to do to be in compliance?”
And then some bright-eyed liberal saw the amount of money and power and control that could be available to them if they mandated every barbecue restaurant to have these smoke suppressors. That’s power, man! That is control. And don’t think there isn’t money changing hands on the extending of these permits and what have you. I mean, the regulation — the local regulation, zoning and all that — of American society by the American left is one of the greatest economic engine killers there has ever been invented.
And there is so much graft going on with this stuff, there’s no question. As you describe it, there’s no logical reason to force these other restaurants that have been there forever to have these suppressors when there’s never been a problem lodged. But if they needed one lodged, they could take care of that, too. But this is classic. It’s not about them not wanting to admit a mistake, although they don’t want to do that. This is rather, I think, they saw an opportunity.
CALLER: Well, I am humbled, of course, by the teacher. I definitely can see that angle. After all, this is a city council that, like you mentioned yesterday, did attempt to ban Uber. And even though we’re the live music capital of the world, they have put in some very restrictive noise ordinances in town. So I didn’t see that angle. I’m going to have to admit my humility and take the lesson greatly from the master.
RUSH: Right. There you go: Ban Uber. We were talking about that just yesterday. Ban Uber. Why ban Uber? What in the world is Uber doing to Austin?
CALLER: I don’t know. I think as the second Silicon Valley now — and I believe portions of that program were rolled out by South by Southwest — it’s only made sense. It’s the exact reasons you stated yesterday. It is because they’re in a cabal with the three taxi companies, and the taxi companies are complaining.
RUSH: That’s right. They don’t control Uber. And there’s, of course, more to it than that, too, but nevertheless. (interruption) Yeah, this Uber thing. Well, the reason Uber is bad for these liberals is because the original mistake that people have made is — I’m talking about the Millennials in the past. The Uber passengers, the customers, automatically think they’re a great liberal outfit just because they’re young and hip and cool and you use your smartphone to interact with them.
So they gotta be left, or “progressive.” Yeah, “progressive.” And then this all of a sudden, here come these big-city liberal Democrats that these people all support, wanting to put their favorite company out of business, and it doesn’t make any sense, ’cause they think they’re all big one happy family. And that’s why it’s a teachable moment. They’re learning about what it’s like when the city’s in business with a cartel that keeps prices up and extinguishes competition and so forth. It’s a great teachable moment.
As I guarantee you, most of these Millennial kids are not learning this kind of economics lesson in the classroom. But it’s a tremendous teachable moment.