This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Obama's “street talk”
By Simon Maloy
We've reached the final hour, and Rush got it going by airing -- by popular demand -- the audio of Joe Biden joking about Obama and the teleprompter. This is not something vice presidents do, Rush said. Biden's basically saying that his boss is lost without his teleprompter.
Then Rush informed us that he's received a lot of angry e-mails from listeners and website subscribers asking him to warn them when he's going to talk about Sotomayor so they can turn their radios off. Rush says these people should know something -- this is the worst way to get Rush to shut up about something. And shut up he did not: Rush read from an AP Spin Meter article on the argument over Sotomayor's statements about courts making policy and white men and Latinas. Rush said the last paragraph of the story was key: “The problem for Sotomayor is that she went beyond the experience-is-important line. She said the Latina experience leads to 'better' decisions than the white experience. It's hard to imagine a judge getting nominated to the Supreme Court after saying white men made better decisions than black women, or Catholics better than Jews.” That's exactly right, said Rush.
Rush said he made this point on Tuesday when he switched Sotomayor for Roberts and “Latina” for “white man.” Rush explained: “What if John Roberts, the current chief justice, has said that his rich experience as a white man would render more profound and better legal judgments than Latina women? He'd be toast. If they had found that in vetting, he wouldn't even make the nomination. He wouldn't be nominated. And I've been listening to some conservatives -- this is really stunning to me. This is blatant racism. This is blatant bigotry.” Rush said this comment is worse than the courts-making-policy comment, which was just “arrogant.” Marrying the “racism” and “arrogance” together, Rush concluded: “Look, bigotry is bigotry. Racism is racism. Superiority is superiority. Contempt for people beneath you is contempt for people beneath you. Thinking you're better than everybody else is thinking you're better than everybody else. This woman has all of this.”
Then Rush aired an audio clip from yesterday's program in which he offered his interpretation of Obama's thinking: “America's unjust, it was constituted as unjust, and that unjustness permeates to this day. So now it's time to change all that, and we're gonna change all that by desecrating the Constitution. Hence, Sonia Sotomayor.” Rush contrasted that clip with a clip of Obama speaking of Sotomayor in Los Angeles yesterday: “This woman is brilliant, she is qualified, I want her confirmed, I want her walking up those marble steps and starting to provide some justice.” Rush branded this: “Street talk. This is the talk of somebody angry.” From this one statement from Obama, Rush concluded that Sotomayor was chosen for the express purpose of reflecting Obama's racial attitudes, and just as he's going to return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners, now we're going have justice against the people who stole it.
Just to sum up really quickly, Rush took this rather anodyne statement from Obama -- “This woman is brilliant, she is qualified, I want her confirmed, I want her walking up those marble steps and starting to provide some justice” -- as an indication that Obama wants Sotomayor to impose race-based justice on the nation.
After the break, Rush said he saw something on Gateway Pundit that he had missed about Obama's comments in Los Angeles last night -- specifically that Obama told the crowd, regarding the economy, that "[w]e can't rest on our laurels because we've got a lot of work to do." Rush wondered how anyone can rest on their laurels when we're losing -- by Gateway Pundit's calculation -- 16,000 jobs every day. Well, Rush, perhaps that's why Obama said it's important NOT to “rest on our laurels” -- because “we've got a lot of work to do.” Perhaps realizing that what he had just said made absolutely no sense, Rush said that only when you're propped up by the drive-by media can you even think about resting on your laurels. Ah, we get it - his sin was thinking about resting on laurels when he told everyone not to rest on their laurels. That makes a whole bunch more sense.
Before leading into the next break, Rush aired audio of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger making a (lame) joke about Rush's weight, and saying that the Republicans need to have a “big tent.” Rush was, of course, incredulous at the suggestion of a “big tent,” saying that Schwarzenegger is describing how to put the GOP together after he's blown apart the state of California. Coming back from the break, Rush switched over from Schwarzenegger to Mark McKinnon, who appeared on" the far-left, fringe TV network" MSNBC last night to discuss the GOP's current woes. Before getting to McKinnon, Rush wanted to repeat - so the media would hear it - that Obama tapped Sotomayor because she's a mirror image of his racial attitudes. Rush then aired audio of McKinnon talking about Sotomayor, noting that she was first nominated for the federal by a Republican president - George H.W. Bush. Rush dismissed the “cover” the media is trying to give Obama by noting that Sotomayor was a Bush appointee, explaining that her nomination was compromise with the senators from New York, and that Bush did not pick Sotomayor “because of her qualifications.”
Anyway, he aired more audio of McKinnon saying that there are lots of moderate Republicans who are greatly concerned that they don't see more people come to the defense of Colin Powell. Rush said he feels like he's in a dream, because McKinnon is begging the party to embrace someone who expressly endorsed a Democrat with the purpose of ruining a moderate Republican.
Before closing out the show, Rush re-aired the (still hilarious) Kim Jong-Il parody from earlier in the program, and then took a phone call from a 9-year-old girl who had written a biography of El Rushbo and had a couple of questions about her subject that she needed resolved. In the course of answering her questions, Rush revealed that in his teens he went by the name “Rusty Sharp,” which to us sounds like something that might require a tetanus shot.
And that's it for today's Wire. Be sure to join us for tomorrow's “Open Line Friday!” We're going to spend the intervening time gently weeping for America's youth, but we recommend you spend it in a more productive fashion and check out Media Matters complete and unabridged Rusty Sharp archives.
Highlights from Hour 3
Outrageous comments
LIMBAUGH: What if John Roberts, the current chief justice, has said that his rich experience as a white man would render more profound and better legal judgments than Latina women? He'd be toast. If they had found that in vetting, he wouldn't even make the nomination. He wouldn't be nominated. And I've been listening to some conservatives -- this is really stunning to me. This is blatant racism. This is blatant bigotry.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Look, bigotry is bigotry. Racism is racism. Superiority is superiority. Contempt for people beneath you is contempt for people beneath you. Thinking you're better than everybody else is thinking you're better than everybody else. This woman has all of this.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Now, I think in this byte you're gonna hear Obama lets his guard down at this LA fundraiser. He's with buddies, he's off prompter, and you listen. It's just a short byte, it's 12 seconds.
OBAMA [audio clip]: This woman is brilliant, she is qualified, I want her confirmed, I want her walking up those marble steps and starting to provide some justice.
LIMBAUGH: “I want her to start providing some justice. I want her walking up those marble steps and I want her to start providing some justice.” Meaning it ain't justice coming out of there now. “I want her walking up those steps and I want her to provide -- start provide some justice.” Street talk. This is the talk of somebody angry.
Clips from this hour
Limbaugh: “This country is failing because President Obama is succeeding”
Limbaugh: “We can't find Madoff's 50 billion and we can't find out where Obama's trillions are”