RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m fascinated by cultural evolution. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time. You know how each generation grows and how they end up being defined — how they define themselves — and the things that they reject from their parents and grandparents. All of that stuff fascinates me. For example, the Millennials, you just heard our last caller, they… (snorts) This is a different generation, folks, in a lot of ways. They don’t like cars. They don’t want to own homes.
They have an active aversion to things like golf. They don’t want any part of it — which, of course, many in you in this audience probably would applaud. They are on board with the idea that men are too masculine as represented in previous generations. My cousin once removed out in California — the noted composer and musicologist, Stephen Limbaugh III — keeps up with this. He’s a Millennial, but he wishes he wasn’t, like I wished I wasn’t a Baby Boomer. I was embarrassed by a lot of people in my generation.
Every generation has those people. I mean, not everybody in every generation is aligned. But he sent me this link to a story about some guy named Justin Baldoni. Now, apparently, Justin Baldoni is an actor; he appeared in… What did he appear in? Orange is the New Black? Black is the New Orange? Oh! Jane the Virgin. He appeared in Jane the Virgin. Did you see that show on the CW, Jane the Vir…? (interruption) Nor did I. But to tell you they made a show out of a woman that was still a virgin as though that’s odd.
I guess. Anyway, he’s one of these guys that thinks we totally need to redefine what masculinity is, that masculinity is way too manly, the old masculinity. It’s not good, too manly, too forceful, too brutish, so I printed out the link. Apparently, this guy is gonna have a TV talk show starting soon (that I guess will be streamed) that will delve into this subject. And this troubles me, this whole definition and watering down masculinity. These guys are only gonna end up hurting themselves. And I’ll tell you why.
What they think they’re doing — and this is true of men in every generation. And it establishes my belief that in civilized society, it is women who really hold the cards. It is women who really wield the power, especially in this regard. It is women who are the objects of pursuit. Now, if that offends you, I’m sorry. It is the way we’re made. Now, I know that women can pursue men too. Don’t think I live in an isolated view here. I’m talking about the on-balance human nature. There are exceptions to everything, but the rule is that women are pursued.
It’s women who say “yes” or “no” in such circumstances, and therein lies a lot of power. Now, because it is men who are pursuing women, women have the power to define what men have to do to achieve the pursuit, and it changes generation to generation. In my generation, if you wanted to pursue a liberal woman, you want to become an expert in what she thought of rape. You had to read the rape books, Susan Brownmiller. You had to be conversant in it, and you had to almost act like you were guilty being a man.
In other instances, there were jokes made that men in this constant quest to find women wouldn’t know where to go to meet them. “Do you go to a church, go to a bar? What do you do?” The joke was, “Go get Cosmo and find out where you’re supposed to be and go there. Go to the section on where to meet men, find out where you’re supposed to be hanging out — where these women are told to find you — and go there.” Well, what’s happening now is that for some reason (and I think it’s all rooted in militant feminism) there is an attack on manliness and masculinity.
Those are two separate things, but they’re connected. And it has manifested itself with all of these baseless, erroneous, false charges of rape happening everywhere, such as the Rolling Stone article that had to be retracted and there was a lawsuit claiming rape at some university that never, ever happened. Same thing at Columbia University, woman running around with a mattress on campus claiming she’d been raped. The Duke Lacrosse case. That was a case where the Duke Lacrosse players supposedly hired a stripper and then took advantage of her.
None of it was true. None of it happened. But the feminists are behind all this, and they have been since the late sixties. They are behind the notion that men are barbarians and brutes and predators. And since these women have ended up being teachers and professors at universities where now a majority of the enrollees have been women, they’ve been teaching this stuff for a couple of generations. Such as Catharine MacKinnon, who was teaching her students at the University of Michigan that all sex is rape, including the sex of marriage.
So you had a succession of women being exposed to this insanity, this lunacy. But they’ve been believing it, and it’s manifested itself now by this attack on masculinity and this attack on manliness. And it has given us the phenomenon known as the Pajama Boy. It has given us men who are doing everything they can to not appear masculine because that appears to be barbaric or similar nature to that of a predator. It is women, feminism making all this happen. Which is why I’ve always said that it’s women who really hold the power.
And those who know they hold the power, those are challenges to deal with, those women. Not every woman that is self-confident, realizes this. But the ones who do, they will own you, if you let them. How’s this thing gonna play out? I’ll tell you exactly how it’s gonna play out. Women in real life do not want wusses. They’re out there saying they want to get rid of masculinity and they want to get rid of manliness and they want to get rid of the outward signs of barbarism.
But when it comes time to seriously hook up under the premise of marriage where you think you’re hooking up for life, they’re not gonna hook up with the Pajama Boys. Maybe the women of Washington will, but that’s a different universe and a different world, and they’re gonna end up being forever disappointed.
They are going to try to strip the male population of much of its identity and they’re gonna succeed because men will do whatever it takes to get women, and the women eventually are gonna be very unhappy with the end result. They’re gonna be running around claiming, “I can’t find a decent guy to marry. They’re all a bunch of wusses.” Well, babe, you made it happen.
And the evidence of it is right here in this story. “A New Men’s Talk Show in the Works Will Challenge Gender Norms,” and the notion of masculinity. And this is how these things happen. Some of the other things that Millennials have been accused of killing — this is a MarketWatch story. Some of these things we have chronicled, like I became aware some years ago that Millennials were not interested in owning cars, going to auto shows. This has been something that you talk about standard operating procedure tradition, young men and cars, it’s a rite of passage in growing up.
But the Millennial generation could not have cared less. It’s why something like Uber comes along and works. It doesn’t matter what you ride, it doesn’t matter what you drive, and it doesn’t matter what you own. In fact, it’s better not to. A lot of this is rooted in the fact they can’t afford anything because their college degrees are in worthless fields, they have student loan debt out the wazoo, and I predict as they begin to earn money, all of these things will change.
All of a sudden they will want a car and all of a sudden they will want to buy a house, and some of them may even join country clubs. But in their late twenties and early thirties still living at home, these things are not possible, so it becomes things that they hate. The nine-to-five workweek, focus groups, dinner dates, these are these Millennials frown on and don’t do. They don’t do cruises. They don’t like being cooped up on a boat. Ready for this? And this is all survey data.
Most Millennials, 86%, do not use napkins. They prefer paper towels. Running, jogging, they ain’t doing it. It ain’t a big deal. Nike is in trouble. Golf. Millennials despise it. My tech blog people, they write openly of their hatred for golf. They talk about going to tech conventions, and the last thing we would ever imagine doing is meeting on a golf course. Those are the stuffiest, stodgiest, phoniest people. There’s no way. We would never, ever do it. Of course they can’t afford to, either.
Relationships, marriage, vacation. All these different things that have seemed to be normal generation to generation are no longer accepted as normal among Millennials, according to what Millennials themselves say. And I do repeat that I think much of it depends on their economic constraints. What good is it to openly profess your love for automobiles if you can’t see yourself ever affording one?
So the way to talk about it, “I don’t need a car. I don’t like cars,” rather than run around and say, “Yeah, I’d love one but I can’t afford it.” So you openly express your disgust. The minute you can afford one, you’ll go buy one, I predict. All these things may change. It just may take a little longer in the Millennial generation for their economic fortunes to materialize, which will be, of course, assisted by the Trump administration and economic policy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Johnny Donovan sent me an email earlier this week. He happened to be at the movies. Johnny Donovan goes to the movies. Now, he sent me a note that somehow in the theater he was in, Algore’s latest movie came on. I don’t think Johnny Donovan went to see Algore’s movie. It must have been a trailer. It must have been. It must have been a promo or trailer, ’cause he wouldn’t go to see it. Johnny is one of the earliest cord cutters. Johnny is a 75-year-old cord cutter.
There’s no way… He told me that whatever he watched, whether it was the movie itself or the promo for Algore’s latest movie, he said, “I felt like I was watching a Shanklin parody. I couldn’t stop laughing. I was laughing out loud in the theater.” He said, “The thing was, nobody got mad at me, and nobody told me to shut up.” He said, “This is crazy,” ’cause he lives on likelihood. He was thinking if he goes in there starts laughing at Algore, that the crowd’s gonna get mad at him and tell him to shut up. But he said, “Nobody did.”
There’s one other Millennial bit here and one other topic. Well, we don’t do topics, but there’s one other subject I want to bring up that I know you think that I’m mis-analyzing, but I’m gonna do it again today and I’m gonna add even more of what I think is evidence. But first, this is just adorable. I’m telling you, it’s just adorable. Would you believe me if I told you that Millennials, because of their cord cutting, because they hate cable TV, and because they’re beginning to resent the high costs of streaming…
You know, they thought streaming video would be the answer to the exorbitant fees that cable companies charge. They hate cable. Folks, I’ve never seen anything like it. They literally do, and they’ll say they hate Comcast, and they proudly call Comcast the most hated company in the world. They hate it. So they’ve gone out and got the HBO GO app or the HBO NOW app or they all go out and they get Showtime, UPS, TBS, whatever it is. And all those things add up. Well, last year a Millennial wanted to watch the Super Bowl, and he was shocked at how much it was gonna cost him to stream it to get an app or something.
Somebody suggested to him “rabbit ears,” and he did not know what they were talking about. They said, “Yeah, you go down to Radio Shack and for 20 bucks you get some rabbit ears and you get your local HD signal from the station broadcasting the Super Bowl. You get it that way.” (interruption) Well, after he said, “What’s Radio Shack?” he said, “Is that legal?” He didn’t know. He thought it was illegal, or he thought it might be illegal to “steal the signal” (chuckling) out of the air. This is just fascinating. These kids, they’ve grown up with streaming and cable, wired connections to everything that they pay for.
They have become accustomed to the glitches — the buffering, the freezing, the lost connections, the skipping. You know, all the characteristics associated with streaming video. The idea… See, Cable TV is what was original theft of the signal. The TV signals in the old days were free. They were over the air. You had an antenna at the top of the house if you were rich. If you didn’t, you had rabbit ears and you put tinfoil on ’em trying to get the signal better and you’d position the rabbit ears. But you couldn’t get a perfect picture in most places.
It was ghosty or something. Cable came along stealing the signals out of the air and then transmitting it to you over the wire, over the cable and you paid for it approximates. That’s been going on for so long that Millennials think that it’s illegal to steal the signal out of the air when that is the essence of broadcasting. It’s totally free, and these rabbit ears cost 20 bucks. The Millennial was just jazzed because there was no buffering. The signal didn’t drop. It was picture-perfect HD. It’s digital, so there’s no ghosting like the old analog signals were, and he was stunned.
The history of this is “federal legislation in 2009 forc[ed] broadcasters to switch from analog signals to high-definition digital transmissions [and confused people of all ages,” as any massive switchover like this was. So they allowed for grandfather periods, and they allowed broadcasters to broadcast in both analog and HD for a time. But the moment of truth came where they had to make the switch to HD and analog was dropped, and people at that time in their fifties, sixties, and seventies were clueless. They didn’t know what any of this was about.
They had not the slightest idea. “HD? Analog? What are you talking about? I just want to watch TV!” TVs became obsolete. Various antennas became obsolete. Everybody had to upgrade and modernize. So now 70 years — and what people back then who didn’t like cable even then did is they went out and got rabbit ears that received HD signals and it was remarkable. There was no ghosting. It was a perfect picture because it’s digital. It’s like satellite. You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t get it, it pixelates, but there’s no snow and there’s no ghosting.
It’s either there or it isn’t. And if your rabbit ears pick up your local HD signal, it’s as clear as anything you can stream or clear as anything you’ll get on cable and maybe better. “About 70 years after TV antennas were invented, rabbit ears are slowly making their way back into the homes of millennials, many of whom are shocked to find broadcast television is accessible for free.” Stop and think of that. They can’t believe it’s free, and when they first hear about this, they ask (impression), “Are these rabbit ears legal? Are you sure I can do this? Is there no way that they can monitor me?
“Surely these rabbit ears have some kind of send-back signal. These people know that I’m stealing the signal, right?” No. No. Rabbit ears are at a selling 7% increase this year. “Dan Sisco, an MBA student in Utah, discovered the limits of online streaming when he invited his friends over to watch the Super Bowl in 2014 — only to miss out on the advertisements. He invested in a $20 antenna and told the Wall Street Journal: ‘I was just kind of surprised that this is technology that exists. It’s been awesome. It doesn’t log out and it doesn’t skip.'”
This technology exists? (chuckling) This is the technology! The original technology was over the air, and was it free, and that’s why there was advertising. It was the cable companies that were stealing the signal. (interruption) Wait a minute, now. Don’t anybody get mad at me here. I’m just talking about the actual thing that happened. I remember going to the movies as a kid and the theater owner had aligned with the local TV station. They were running commercials and PSAs trying to get us to not vote for cable in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
“Fight pay TV!” I’ll never forget it. They’re accusing the cable companies of stealing their signal and then bringing it to your home via the wire that you were gonna have to pay for. You didn’t have to pay for it now. They feared it was gonna keep you at home watching movies instead of go to theaters, and the broadcasters feared that it was gonna harm them in various way. You know, in most systems now, the broadcasters actually just run a cable to the cable company. The cable company is no longer taking it off the air.
The local stations just provide ’em a pipe now. Local cable company. Satellite’s a different thing. I just found it fascinating. Is this legal? Are these rabbit ears legal? Are you sure there’s no way that they can track me? (laughing) Didn’t know this technology existed. In other words, they don’t understand over the air broadcast — even though they listen to radio, but they may not do that over the air. Stream that or what have you.