RUSH: Mark in Fort Worth, Texas. Great to have you. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: I’m great, Rush. Christmas came early this year for me. I’ve been a listener for 29 years. This is the first time I’ve gotten through to you. This is the best.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

CALLER: You’re welcome. Hey, I have a possible solution to this whole thing with the NFL. I saw LeBron James this morning on TV and he’s gonna be even more vocal and use his platform —

RUSH: Okay, I need to you slow down. Whoa, whoa, please slow down a little bit so I can keep up with you.

CALLER: I’m sorry. So LeBron James was on TV this morning said he was gonna use his platform to speak out further about these issues. And of course he’s been a big proponent for Black Lives Matter, so I’m suggesting as a possible solution, and use your platform, to challenge LeBron James to lead the way. Sell his mansion in Brentwood, move his family to his old neighborhood in Cleveland. Build a home there, move there, invest in his neighborhood, invest in businesses to create jobs, invest in low-income housing, even offer free housing.

Maybe invest in some schools. Put his children in school in his old neighborhood, and he recently became married as well, so set an example and give back to his community and then lead the way and then encourage other athletes to do the same. Put money back into their own neighborhoods. They make this money, but he’s spending his money in Brentwood these days.

RUSH: Well, this is something that I have always avoided for professional and programming purposes. I do not engage in personal feuds or challenges or causes like cutting up your credit cards and sending ’em to Exxon. I don’t know that LeBron James doesn’t spend some of his money on his neighborhood in Ohio. I don’t know. I’m not gonna assume that he doesn’t just ’cause he lives in Brentwood. And to challenge LeBron James to do something is just not my style. I don’t think it’s effective. It might make a great media show, but it’s not the way I choose to go about these kinds of things.

I don’t look at LeBron James as somebody’s mind I can change. I’m not gonna change LeBron James’ mind. Like Scalia told me once, he’s not gonna change Stephen Breyer’s mind on anything. He doesn’t even try. And I wouldn’t waste my time trying. But the same people who to listen LeBron James might listen to me or vice-versa. He’s now put himself in the arena of ideas, which is where I live every day. He’s gone from the basketball court to the arena of ideas. And so I just choose to deal with this in a different way.

My target has always been what I call the audience, the people, the population. I don’t waste my time challenging Algore or Tom Steyer or Leonardo DiCaprio or any of these people because it’s showbiz, and half if not more of what they’re doing is showbiz. They really don’t know what they’re talking about anyway half the time. They’re engaged in emotional appeals. Do you remember when Boko Haram first kidnapped whatever number of girls it was, 300, what was the country? I’m having a mental block, what country in Africa did it happen? Doesn’t matter.

Okay, let’s just call it Nigeria. It could have been Namibia, could be Nivea. Whatever Trump calls it is what we’ll call it. Well, he got the name of an African country wrong the other day, and the media just went nuts with it. He called Nambia Namibia or something like that. But let’s say it’s Nigeria. Here’s what happened. So 300 girls got kidnapped by a bunch of terrorists. And what was the U.S. reaction? Michelle Obama cut a video that then showed up on Twitter and Facebook, and she was holding a sign: #bringbackourgirls. A Twitter hashtag, #bringbackourgirls.

What did old El Rushbo do? Pointed out the folly. What are we gonna do now? We expect the Boko Haram terrorists to see the hashtag, #bringbackourgirls and start quaking in fear and return them? And then I said, obviously Michelle Obama is engaged in something other than getting the girls back here. Well, the reaction to that ranged from, “Have you no heart? Are you so cold-hearted and cruel that you have no soul?” because I had dealt with something not emotionally, I had challenged an emotional play.

All it was doing was making the people doing the hashtag feel better. They weren’t accomplishing a single thing except making themselves feel like they were involved and making them feel like they mattered and making them feel like they were making a difference. They weren’t making a difference, they weren’t involved, and what they were doing didn’t matter. And I, in pointing that out, I was scorched by dummkopfs who had not the ability to understand that what they were doing was meaningless and in fact was probably being laughed at by the very terrorists who had kidnapped the girls.

It’s a long answer here, Mark, but that’s why I don’t engage these people doing emotional things, ’cause it’s a total waste of time. All that’s gonna happen is that you upset the very delicate emotional place they created for themselves, where they think they’re doing God’s work. They think they’re doing the Lord’s work. They think they’re mattering. They think they’re making a difference, and I come along and point out that a hashtag is probably about as effective as not saying anything. And they can’t handle it. I became public enemy number one for about five days, maybe five hours. It didn’t bother me. Don’t misunderstand. But it doesn’t accomplish anything except a media show, and I just have never rolled that way.

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