Posted on 02/18/2005 3:28:52 PM PST by goldstategop
RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. We have three bites from Ann Coulter here from Washington Journal on C-SPAN today. C-SPAN caller tells Ann Coulter and Brian Lamb that he divorced his wife because she didn't want him to listen to me. She said, "Me or Rush." The caller picked me.
C-SPAN CALLER: Let me ask you a question about talk radio. I remember when talk radio first hit the airwaves around '88, when Rush Limbaugh came on, and it was really a breath of fresh air hearing somebody that finally agrees with what I've been thinking and not daring to say because, you know, of all the liberals out there. In fact, when I started listening to Rush Limbaugh, my liberal wife couldn't stand him to the point that she gave me an ultimatum. It was either the marriage or Rush, so I picked Rush Limbaugh. I'm single now.
BRIAN LAMB: Wait a minute. Are you serious that that actually--
C-SPAN CALLER: I'm dead serious. She told me that I had to choose between Rush Limbaugh and her and I wanted to listen to talk radio. I said, "This is a free country. I'll listen to anybody I want to," and she said, "Fine. You want to listen to Rush Limbaugh? Then the marriage is over," and the next thing I know, I get a letter saying that I have to go get a lawyer because she's divorcing me.
RUSH: (Laughter) I wish I knew who this man was. This is an example of loyalty that is above and beyond what anybody would even imagine, and Lamb, Brian Lamb then asked the guy, well, was it worth it?
C-SPAN CALLER: It certainly was worth it --
COULTER: Of course. How can you ask?
C-SPAN CALLER: She told me that Rush Limbaugh was a has-been and would never amount to anything. She's gone. He's still on the air, and is growing more and more in popularity, so I'm better off without her.
RUSH: (Laughing). I love this. Brian Lamb turns to Ann Coulter and says, "What do you think of that?"
COULTER: Rush has quite a loyal group of followers and I'm not at all surprised that a man would dump his wife for Rush Limbaugh. I think if I were in his shoes, I'd have done the same thing. He hinted at what was -- I mean, he is evidence of what was so big about Rush Limbaugh, and why he is so hated by liberals, and that is, you had all of these right-wingers out in America but they had no way of knowing that any of the rest of them existed. This vast majority, the famous silent majority, you know, all were driving along in their cars thinking, "I'm just a right-wing lunatic. I better not say what I really think," and Rush gave them a forum or started listening to him and knew that there were apparently 20 million others of them.
RUSH: You know, this is the thing the left has never understood and it's one of the first seeds of their own undermining, and that is, they believe that you people in this audience are a bunch of mind-numbed robots, that I'm a Pied Piper. I came along, you were good old-fashioned independents or Democrats, but I have such powers of persuasion and I put things so simply, simpleton-ish, so black-and-white, that I got into your thick skulls of mush and converted you and made you mind-numbed robot conservatives, when the fact is, Ann Coulter is exactly right: You already thought what you thought, believed what you believed, but you never heard it echoed anywhere in the national media. What you always saw and heard was what you believed made fun of, laughed at, impugned, ridiculed, and so forth. The program started in 1988 and finally somebody was on the radio saying what a whole host of Americans thought and believed. And it inspired them, gave them confidence, so the growth of this program is a direct opposite reason or result of what its growth is assigned to by the left. The left cannot assume that people would actively disagree with them. They cannot assume or believe that people would actively depart and leave them. So it has to be something else. It has to be you are so stupid that you can be maneuvered by slick marketing and packaging and simpleton-like reasoning. It's the same way they explained Reagan's 49-state landslide in 1984. "A triumph of marketing and packaging," they said.
"A triumph of selfishness over greed," or "greed over selflessness," or whatever. A triumph of greed and selfishness, they said. That's why Reagan was elected in a 49-state landslide. These people, I'm telling you, they have been delusional and denying reality for years, long before 1988. It's just that nobody came along and nobody at a national level was focusing attention on it. Everybody knew that there was something odd and weird and unnatural about these people. But, you know, you got together with your little groups and so forth, you agreed, but if you got too loud someplace, some liberal would come shoot you down, laugh at you or what have you. And they still try to do that but now you all have plenty of confidence out there and you're able to run rings around them intellectually, because it is they who actually are the mind-numbed robots, if there are such things in American politics. It is they who are governed totally by fear. It is they who are governed totally by emotions, not thought. It is they who live in a veritable world of panic. It is they who tell themselves negative story after negative story after negative story. It is they who see nothing exceptional about their own country -- quite the opposite, and so the chickens have come home to roost. Which is why, ladies and gentlemen, not only am I happy to see the disintegration, the implosion of the American left, I am happy to have had a small role in causing it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: El Rushbo, the cutting edge of societal evolution, your host for life, here on the EIB Network. I just went to the e-mail, to see what is lurking in the subscriber super-secret account box. "Dear Rush, this past summer, my liberal fiancee ended everything because I listen to you. It was fine by me. You've earned my loyalty as well. Far better to chase her off than to have a horrible marriage. Thanks, Fred Thompson, Charlotte, North Carolina, ex-Strategic Air Command missile leader." "Dear Rush, my ex-wife hated that I listened to you and it contributed to the end of a 17-year marriage. I still listen to you. I don't have to listen to her anymore. I got the better part of the bargain. Stewart Dale Spencer, San Marcos, Texas," and then this from a subscriber down in Boca Raton named Bruce. I love this. "Hey, Rush, I got a new slogan. Instead of a man, a legend, a way of life, how about a man, a legend, a better pick than a wife." (Laughter). This is good. This is too good.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have on the phone Victor, from Silver Spring, Maryland, the C-SPAN caller today, who dumped his wife and chose this program. Victor.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Welcome. Hi. Welcome to the program. How would are you, Victor?
CALLER: I'm 57. I'll be 58, and it's the other way around. She dumped me.
RUSH: Oh, she dumped you.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But you didn't care?
CALLER: I didn't care at that point, because I wanted my freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
RUSH: It is amazing your wife gives you an ultimatum. I mean, she doesn't have to be in the room when you listen to the program and yet she forbade you to listen to the program. I mean, that's tough.
CALLER: She said you were "extremely dangerous." You were like Hitler, and she was ashamed to be married to me because she didn't know what to tell her friend Hillary and Bill.
RUSH: You know, this is sad. It's typical. Here she was embarrassed because of what you were doing, because of what her friends would think of her. That is just a sad, sad situation.
CALLER: It really is that she would not tolerate anybody else's point of view but her own, and the feminist agenda and the homosexual agenda.
RUSH: Where is she now?
CALLER: I don't know and I don't particularly care.
RUSH: My kind of guy. How long were you married?
CALLER: I was married to her for over 22 years, and I grew more conservative and she stayed in the 1960s-type liberalism and I just -- even though I'm blind, I saw some things that were going on that, you know, rubbed me the wrong way. People complaining about why the rich should get all the money and we don't, and stuff like that. I admit, I don't make that much money, but I save what I can, so I don't have to depend on others to help me in life.
RUSH: Well, sounds like she had a lot of resentments and it could not have been comfortable being around that all the time. I mean, sounded like she was never happy about much of anything.
CALLER: She was never happy about anything, especially toward the end of the marriage, and she just finally told me one day that I had to choose, and I preferred, like I said at the beginning of this conversation, that I'd rather have my freedom of speech and my freedom of thought. I don't need the thought police.
RUSH: And you haven't regretted this?
CALLER: No, not one bit. In fact, she told me that you were a fly by night, that you would probably be on for another month or two before you would go off the air. It's now I guess 11 years later --
RUSH: Sixteen years, yes.
CALLER: -- and you're still on the air. You're growing more in popularity.
RUSH: Well, thank you for that. Did you have any kids?
CALLER: No. She hated kids with a passion.
RUSH: Well, you know, all things considered, that may have been a blessing, given the way things ended.
CALLER: It has because I remember what my father told me when I was growing up, that even though I'm blind, I was going to have to work three or four times harder to prove to people that I could do things, and I was to expect to get my feelings hurt with the so-called political incorrectness that's going on. I don't care if people say blind, look, see. It's part of the English language. I remember the joke you told on one of your shows about the homeless advocate, and I told one of my friends, I said, "Rush will probably want me to braille the orange peels and the apple cores for the blind homeless."
RUSH: (Laughter) Well, braille the orange peels. That's not a bad thought, actually. It would be compassionate among the homeless advocates. That would be a compassionate thing to do. You could get a humanitarian award.
CALLER: See, one of the final straws in the camel's back was her cousin came over and I was depressed and he decided that I should start, you know, doing more for myself and not depending on her, so he went around the house and he brailled the microwave, the stove, the washer and the dryer and showed me how to work the appliances so I could do more for myself. That got her mad because I wasn't as dependent on her.
RUSH: Got her mad?
CALLER: That got her mad yes.
RUSH: Well, I don't understand that.
CALLER: Liberals want you to be dependent.
RUSH: Well, I know that, but, I mean, they want you to depend on government, but women -- I mean, that -- marriage, this is -- I mean -- I mean, I don't understand it.
CALLER: I don't either but she got really mad at her cousin for doing that.
RUSH: Well, I guess maybe she just -- you know, what it was? It was fear that you weren't going to need her anymore and in her mind, she'd be worthless and needless to you and then she's probably blaming me for all this or you for listening for to me.
CALLER: Yeah. I'm still listening to you and I will continue to listen to you and WMAL.
RUSH: Let me ask you this, Victor: Have you been blind since birth?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay. So you've never seen?
CALLER: I can see a little bit. I had too much oxygen at birth, and the only reason why I have any sight at all is because I kept knocking off the oxygen mask.
RUSH: Damn! Well, can you give me a description of what your sight is like? You say you can see a little. Do you sense light? Do you sense, can you see shadows?
CALLER: I can see some colors. I can see objects. As I tell my female friends, I say, "The only way I can see you is if I get close enough to see you, you'd slap me."
RUSH: (Laughter). Well, have you found a way to pick the good-looking ones?
CALLER: No. I just go by voice.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, I've done that in the past.
CALLER: Every time I talk to a woman and she says, "What do you like?" I say I like listening to talk radio and as soon as I mention you, she says, "Oh, I hate him." (Laughter).
RUSH: Stick in there.
CALLER: I am sticking in there.
RUSH: I mean, they are more plentiful out there than you can possibly imagine. You just need to start traveling in different circles. One of the problems is you're in Silver Spring, Maryland. I mean, it's going to be tough to find a conservative anything there.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Other than you. Let me ask you -- I don't mean to insult you here, but I'm just trying to gather information because -- do you have the ability to use a computer?
CALLER: I don't have a computer. I just never really got interested in them.
RUSH: Okay. So here's what...
CALLER: So I just have the telephone and I like taping the people.
RUSH: All right. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you a stash of stuff from the EIB Store, so I want you to hold on. I'm going to send you some EIB golf shirts, I'm going to send you an EIB cap. This way people won't have to ask you.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: If you listen to me. They'll know from across the room. You can broadcast it, and we'll send some other things that will be appropriate from our store for you, okay, Victor?
CALLER: Okay. Thanks a lot.
RUSH: Now, thank you. This has been an incredible day hearing your call on C-SPAN today, and it floors me. But it's the loyalty of people like you that have generated and defined the success of this program and we all love you out here for it. I love all of you, and people like Victor are irreplaceable, so sit tight, Victor. We'll get all the information we need to stock you up.
Based on this guys conversation, I think Rush was just as excuse.
She got mad at the cousin for braileing things so he could function on his own.
Personally, I can't see myself marrying somone who feels the need to have that kind of control over me.
I highly doubt this guys wife made only one, and one demand.
I see nothing wrong with making sacrifises for ones family, and your right, family is the only thing that matters. That said, family should be about many wonderfull things, not control.
I think it is pretty disturbing to have somone try and control what you listen to and what you think, not to mention get upset that you can operate the microwave on your own.
Do you think things are a bit heated in our country or what?
Sounds like Hillary. (shudder...)
I might understand if you were a liberal and married a liberal and then saw the light and left the dark side to become a conservative. You might still want to preserve your marriage. But being a conservative since birth, I would never date a liberal woman, much less marry one.
I cannot believe anyone would put Rush before their marriage. Did anyone try counseling or maybe getting away for the weekend? If Arnold and Maria can make it work, (and Carville and Matlin), you can, too. Sometimes we all have to go along to get along. We can't win every fight, you have to pick your battles, (you give me this, and I'll let you have that). By the way, this is not funny.
I heard this caller today. I can't believe that woman....he got mad because his friend put braile on various things in his house and he no longer needed her!!
Apparently you didn't hear that call:
CALLER: See, one of the final straws in the camel's back was her cousin came over and I was depressed and he decided that I should start, you know, doing more for myself and not depending on her, so he went around the house and he brailled the microwave, the stove, the washer and the dryer and showed me how to work the appliances so I could do more for myself. That got her mad because I wasn't as dependent on her.
RUSH: Got her mad?
CALLER: That got her mad yes.
RUSH: Well, I don't understand that.
CALLER: Liberals want you to be dependent.
RUSH: Well, I know that, but, I mean, they want you to depend on government, but women -- I mean, that -- marriage, this is -- I mean -- I mean, I don't understand it.
CALLER: I don't either but she got really mad at her cousin for doing that.
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Tell me if a woman like THAT is worth being married to?
I meant SHE got mad....
I heard this today, what a hoot!
My wife is not interested in politics at all, but we share conservative values.
Libs don't even know what values are.
It just would not work, and did not with my first wife of six years.
Been with this one for 25 Years in June.
When I'm dating I weed out smokers, dopers, heavy drinkers and, of course, liberals. Not only do I want someone with similar values, but I also want to be able to engage in intelligent conversation.
Sounds like Rush.
That's really not the situation. The wife gave the husband an ultimatum. The ultimatum was absurd. But there are only two reactions possible to ultimatums; capitulation or combat. Ultimatums require action.
The husband took the only action he could to remain an adult. And now he's happy.
Ultimatums and marriage do not mix.
yeah we don't talk politics - it is a gap in my life - BUT she is a strong woman - outstanding mother and I am glad to call her my wife.
Would I let a scumbag politician or entertainer side-talk me out of my relationship - no - that is ridiculous.
Do I wish I had married a conservative - nope - I married a great woman. She is filled with empathy and is smarter than every other woman I have met - except for mom :-)
You can call me AHHNOLD - heh
I can't imagine such a thing, Amelia. Marriage is like eternal, you know what I mean? ;-)
I can't imagine such a thing, Amelia. Marriage is like eternal, you know what I mean? ;-)
Why does that remind me of that Meatloaf song? You know the one, Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
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