RUSH: We have Greg in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which is the home of Steven Avery, Making of a Murderer, the Netflix series. Do you know Steven Avery by any chance out there, Greg?
CALLER: Rush, no, but he was in my store once, and he bought a refrigerator and a washing machine, he paid cash, and I still have the receipt.
RUSH: No kidding. So you had contact with a star in a murder series on Netflix?
RUSH: Yeah. Is that refrigerator the one he put the body of the journalist in?
CALLER: You know, I’ve often thought of that, but I don’t think so.
RUSH: (laughing) I’m just kidding about that.
CALLER: I know. You’re not the first one that went down that road. That’s the wrong way to get put on the map, you know?
RUSH: I know, but it put Manitowoc on the map.
CALLER: It did. Oh! Before I forget I gotta say major dittos from the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan ’cause that’s where we are.
RUSH: I know exactly where Manitowoc is. I know Wisconsin. We own the state of Wisconsin except for the Packers, and I know where everything of importance in Wisconsin is.
CALLER: And that’s where we’re going right now. Your enthusiasm for the NFL, Rush, has dropped down into the gutter. I mean, it’s not there anymore. I don’t hear the environmentalist wacko picks for some of the bigger games on Sunday. I haven’t heard anything about Pittsburgh lately. And they’re doing pretty good. I have to live with the Packers. Look how they stink and I still watch ’em. Is there anything I can do, can I help you along here, or just what’s going on?
RUSH: Well, it’s actually very disappointing to me. When all of this kneeling and the protesting of the national anthem, when that began and then when the media began promoting that and making heroes of the people doing it, I just… I remember the day, I just got sad. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t get frustrated. I just got sad. I said, “Okay, now they’ve tainted football. They’ve corrupted it. They’ve interjected, they’ve politicized the NFL even more than it was off the field.” Now they’re taking the politics to the field, and it’s no longer what it was to me.
I can’t watch this game without seeing left versus right, liberal versus conservative, right versus wrong. I can’t listen to sportswriters or read sportswriters write about the game anymore, talking about the game. It’s all the social justice garbage, and it just lost — I used to have it up on a pedestal. Football was… I loved it. It was something — not everybody can play it, certainly at the professional level. And it’s just lost the mystique and it hasn’t come back. I go play golf most Sunday afternoons now.
CALLER: Hmm.
RUSH: I keep up with it. I keep up with it, but I’m not the — well, I’m not a slave to NFL games on TV like I used to be, Thursday night, Sunday night, Sunday afternoon, particularly the Steelers. I would drop everything. It’s just changed. There was also here on the program as during times of peak interest on my part in the NFL, the Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd was constantly complaining and griping at me for talking about it too much while important issues were not being discussed. So all these things came together here in a confluence of events that have made me sort of relegate the NFL over here to a different degree of importance. You miss environmental wacko picks?
CALLER: Yeah. They were always fun. Take, for instance, now — and this is an easy one for you — Green Bay is playing the Arizona Cardinals this Sunday.
RUSH: So you want to hear what the environmentalist wacko pick would be for the Packers versus the Cardinals?
RUSH: No, no, no. The environmentalist wacko pick, in the hands of an expert like me, the environmentalist wacko picks are never a challenge. Give me a game with two animals that you think would be tough to pick using the environmentalist wacko method.
CALLER: Well, I’m not sure if they’re in the same league but when you get like, you know, Panthers and Dolphins or something like that, you know, animals that everybody loves, you know, and that kind of thing. You know what I’m saying? Whether they would ever play each other, I don’t know, but the point is that’s two animals, you know.
RUSH: Panthers and Dolphins. That’d be easy. You might think this would be easy, Steelers and Chargers. This is the Sunday night game. So you think I don’t know what’s going on anymore, but I do. The Steelers and Chargers, it was a game that’s been flex — it was originally a 4:30 game but they moved it because there isn’t any other game on the schedule this weekend that warrants prime time. That’s how bad this week’s schedule is.
The Packers-Cardinals, you mentioned the Dolphins and Panthers. There’s nothing. So the Steelers and Chargers, it’s a great, great game for Sunday night in Pittsburgh. How do you handicap that with the environmentalist wacko method? First you gotta identify what the Chargers are. What are the Chargers? How would you define them? In the environmentalist wacko method, what are the Chargers to you?
CALLER: You know, that’s a good question. I’m not sure what the Chargers — I think of a Dodge right away, a car, I guess. I don’t know.
CALLER: Ah. I got it. Okay.
RUSH: So are they a bolt of lightning? Are they chargers like you charge your phone or you charge your Prius all week?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Or are they charged — they charge, they’re like the Roman legions, and they charge into battle. Where are they? The Steelers, that’s easy.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And then deciding who deserves to win and lose based on what they are in terms of the environmentalist wackos, then you add the point spread too. I know it was fun. It was fun. It was a way to combine the discussion of issues with the discussion of football and keep everybody happy. And you want to hear more football talk. This what Open Line Friday is about. This is where I get to hear the complaints and I get to hear the praise and I get to hear what everybody’s happy about, not happy about, what they’re missing.
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