RUSH: Scott in Fulks Run, Virginia. Great to have you. How are you doing, sir?

CALLER: Oh, I’m doing pretty good. Mega dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I wanted you to know I started listening to your show in 1991. I was depressed, and your show brought me out of depression, and I will always appreciate you for it.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Well, you’re welcome. My 12-year-old son absolutely loves your Rush Limbaugh books, the Rush Revere books.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: And he just is a big fan. Unfortunately, he’s at school today so he wasn’t able to say hi to you himself. But he’ll be tickled that I was able to say hi to you for him.

RUSH: Well, I’m really flattered. I sincerely mean it. Thank you very much. And him too.

CALLER: You’re very welcome. My question really kind of goes to the equality of the matter, and the idea is, what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if it was a male invited up to the apartment and it was the female that came walking out of the shower? Would the reaction be the same? Would the outrage be the same in society?

RUSH: Well, let’s explore this. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of this. Do you have any names you want to use in your hypothetical story?

CALLER: (laughing) Well, let’s just go with Charlie Rose. What if he was invited up and some girl —

RUSH: No, no. Name the girl. No, no, no. We gotta name the female news person that’s asked Charlie Rose up, so who you thinking here, Barbara Walters?

CALLER: Christiane Amanpour.

RUSH: Christiane Amanpour. Okay, so Christiane Amanpour — let me take a break here, because this is gonna go a little bit longer than I have here. So, folks, when we go to the break I want you to create a mental image here. I want you to think of Christiane Amanpour at home doing work and she’s got male assistants, and Charlie Rose is one of them, and we’re gonna rejoin the story with Christiane Amanpour walking out of the shower nude, dripping wet, approaching Charlie Rose, and Scott here wants to know what would happen and how it’d be reported.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hey, we find ourselves back now with Scott in Fulks Run, Virginia. Be real careful how you say that. As a highly trained broadcast specialist, I make it a point to pronounce every letter in that word so as to avoid any scrutiny.

All right. So we’ve got Christiane Amanpour at home, she’s hiring Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose works for her, he’s up there doing work in her home, she comes out of the shower naked, dripping wet, parading around while Charlie’s doing work. And you’re wondering what would happen and what the reaction would be if people found out about it? Is that right?

CALLER: Well, yeah. What if he didn’t want these advancements, would he react the same way, say, you know, five, 10, 30 years down the road as we’re seeing right now?

RUSH: Would he react today the same as he would five or 10, 30 years ago, you mean?

CALLER: Well, no, the way that women are reacting to this situation, would men react the same way? Because I think most of my guy friends would be high-fiving each other even if nothing even happened.

RUSH: Okay. So let’s cut to the chase on this. What you’re saying is if you had the good fortune to be invited to your female boss’s home and she got out of the shower and started working and walking around you totally nude, you wouldn’t be offended, you wouldn’t consider it abusive, and you’d be flattered?

CALLER: Right. Or if I didn’t want her attention, I would just excuse myself.

RUSH: You mean, you wouldn’t make a big deal of it, you wouldn’t call anybody, you wouldn’t claim abuse? Are you trying to say that men are not as offended as women are by the same treatment in reverse?

CALLER: Yeah. I think so. And not to diminish the situation. You know, sexual harassment’s a big deal, but just simply to say that going to the point of equality, you know, men would not treat that situation the same way women treat that situation.

RUSH: Why not? I mean, sex abuse is sex abuse. You’re saying that men would not regard this as abusive if a woman did it?

CALLER: Well, not the guys I know. I mean, I suppose there are some fellows out there that would screech and squeal and run out of there with their hands over their heads, but —

RUSH: Yeah, but you’d have to look very hard for ’em, right? You think most would not do that. Do you think it’s possible for women in power positions, women, female bosses, to abuse and bully, sexually or otherwise, male employees?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Do you think it’s possible for a male employee to be stalked and harassed in that way by a female employee?

CALLER: Oh, certainly.

RUSH: Okay. So in your scenario, where the woman in your scenario could fire the guy, you still think he might be high-fiving and going, “Wow, man, this is cool. My boss is out of the shower naked and walking toward me.” Or do you think he’d feel pressured to act in a way that didn’t offend her so that she wouldn’t fire him?

CALLER: Well, that is kind of a hard thing to walk through, isn’t it? Honestly, I think that if the job was at stake, that might be a different situation.

RUSH: Well, that is exactly what this is.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: The stereotypical, entertaining way to look at this is what you said. You know, how many guys dream of a woman walking out of the shower nude wanting them? And so if it happens to you, you tell your buddies down at the five and dime, and they all high five you.

But if you throw the circumstance of work into this and you’re subservient and you can be fired if you do the wrong thing in that circumstance, then it takes all of the stereotypical — look, we’ll all admit here — well, we won’t all admit. But some universal truths. And that is that the number of men who would be offended as opposed to intrigued by a woman presenting herself nude, I mean, men and women are different, and a lot of men would find that flattering and exciting, and they would brag about it and so forth. There’s no question about that.

But you throw employment into it, you throw being paid into this situation, it changes it. It takes the stereotypical male role play, female role play totally out of this. It takes the romance out of this. This has gotta be shocking. I don’t doubt that it is infuriating, that it is unnerving, that it just ticks these women off and scares them. I don’t have any doubt that they feel violated or stalked or any of this. And offended.

The very thought that this old codger thinks that he would be the dream in their eyes, all of that would just have to unnerve them. I totally get it, being stalked by people like this and having your job held up depending on how you react to this. I think this is perverted, reprobate behavior and it’s about time some of this has come to the surface.