Now, you know, I was prepared to debunk this until I saw Jane Fonda this morning. Jane Fonda was being interviewed by Rita Cosby on PMSNBC about the new women’s talk radio network. By the way, we have the stations that that network will appear on. They’ve got four stations: WNAG, WCRY, WFEM and WPMS. They’re working on a fifth affiliate, WBI-ITCH, but they’re having to get FCC approval on those call letters because it’s too long. You’re allowed three or four, and they can’t figure out how to put WBI-ITCH in the call letters (actually three after the W). But nevertheless, Rita Cosby is talking about male talk show hosts and just asks her specifically — we’ve got the audio of this coming up; Cookie is working on it now — “What do you think of Rush Limbaugh?”She got this sour look on her face and she turned away from the camera and just was so pained, and said, “Oh, toxic! Toxic! Are you kidding? I worry about the future of my country. I worry about my children and my grandchildren.” This from the woman who sat atop a tank over in North Vietnam! Yeah, Hanoi Jane Fonda is worried about the future of the country because of me. You know what the smart answer would be? — and, folks, this is not ego speaking. You know what the smart answer would be? Here are these babes trying to start a talk radio network, right? She gets a question about me or anybody else, say, “You know, it’s amazing the success that they’ve had, and we hope to duplicate it.” Just say something like that and be done with it.
Oh, no! (Paraphrasing Fonda) “Women aren’t listening to talk radio. Why, women don’t like talk radio. Why, women don’t like combativeness; they don’t like argumentation.” (chuckles) Really? “They don’t like conflict. They don’t like confrontation! Women are more nuanced than men; they don’t like black and white all the time. They get into more gray areas out there.” Really her opinion of women was demeaning. Women don’t care about the fate of the country so much — you women that listen to talk radio, you’re supposed to be leaving in droves. It makes it sound like conservative talk radio is on its last legs and they’re going to be there to pick up the pieces. Anyway, until I heard her with this goofball answer, I was prepared to lampoon this study on men being smarter than women, but how do you explain that?
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RUSH: All right. Michelle in Albany, we’ll take a quick phone call from you as we get going here today on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just gotta let you know that Hanoi Jane does not speak for me and it’s just another left-wing kook elite who’s out of touch with the mainstream.
RUSH: Isn’t it amazing how these women come along, these liberal woman (and they’ve always done this), trying to speak for all women?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: The NAGs tried to speak for all women. Now Jane Fonda is speaking for all women — except when Paula Jones or somebody like that comes along then we reject them because they’re too bourgeois, too lower class, to middle class.
CALLER: Oh, of course.
RUSH: That’s why the left hates Wal-Mart, by the way, because the middle class loves it.
CALLER: (Laughing.) I just want you to know that I’m a rabid female Dittohead, stay-at-home mom. I change diapers to the sound of your lovely voice in the background.
RUSH: Well! (Laughing.)
CALLER: And I live for a lively debate and welcome the opportunity to conflict with those delusional pacifists of this country.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, did you hear what Jane Fonda said?
CALLER: No, just from what you’ve said.
RUSH: Well, I’ve got the audio. We’ve got two sound bites. You want to listen to them with me?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: And then you can offer cutting-edge analysis, as a woman, because she’s speaking for you here on all of this.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Rita Cosby says, “What do you specifically think about Rush Limbaugh?”
FONDA: (laughs) You’ve gotta be kidding. They make me feel, um, worried about the future for my grandchildren. This is not — these are not voices — that I want to invite into my brain. I feel like they’re toxic to myself — to my soul and to other people’s souls. Life shouldn’t be like that. We women want thought-provoking, friendly, trustworthy, funny. They want a [sic] laugh, informative talk radio. And 75% of them, and we did a lot of research, said they would come back to women’s talk radio if they could hear what they want to hear, and we hope to provide it for them. We know what they want and we think we can give it to them.
RUSH: All right, what do you think of that?
CALLER: Rush, she’s the nuts. She’s completely insane. I want to talk about real issues, seriously, and the reason I want to do that is to protect my children. You know, this country is just not going to be the same if we continue to appease the terrorists, appease governments that support them, and I want to do something about it in my little small way (laughing) with my four-year-old and my one-year-old.
RUSH: That sounds great. Let’s now talk about me.
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: Seriously, seriously. She said that “we women want thought-provoking.” Is this program thought-provoking to you?
CALLER: It keeps me mind so sharp. I can’t even tell you. The fact that I, you know, rarely get out to talk with adults, it’s hard for me to do so with little kids.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I do it to keep my mind sharp.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: You just keep me thinking and talking about, you know, real-world issues.
RUSH: Okay. She said that “we women want friendly.” This program friendly to you?
CALLER: It’s friendly to me because you want me to live. You want this country to survive. To me, that’s friendly.
RUSH: All right, and trustworthy? Do you consider this program trustworthy? I mean, when you listen to this program do you feel you’re being told the truth about things and the host is dealing with you in honesty?
CALLER: Absolutely. I feel like you look at all the issues. You have good researchers behind you, I’m sure, that give you the news of the day, and you give a thought-provoking, realistic view of those issues.
RUSH: That’s a great answer except for the fact that I don’t have researchers.
CALLER: Oh! Okay. (giggles)
RUSH: Now, do you think the program is funny and you laugh when you listen to it?
CALLER: Oh, all the time. You have a very irreverent, very dry sense of humor.
RUSH: All right. So you have just disagreed with everything Madam Fonda has said, and she is speaking for you.
CALLER: She’s just out there. She’s delusional. I think that the fact that what she did during the Vietnam War completely discredits her besides the fact that she’s a Hollywood elite. They’re just out there completely out of touch.
RUSH: Michelle, thank you very much. I appreciate that. You’re very kind. It continues to amaze me. Radio is so horrible. It’s so mean. It’s so rotten. We can’t wait to get in it! Radio is so mean-spirited. It’s toxic! We can’t wait to get on the radio! All of these libs are convinced — and I wonder why — that the only way to really change opinion and move public opinion in this country is via the radio today. I wonder why that is. Anybody have a guess?
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RUSH: Here’s the next Jane Fonda bite from PMSNBC this morning with Rita Cosby. The question: “Look, Jane, folks like Rush and others are widely successful.”
FONDA: You know, they represent maybe 30% of the American public.
COSBY: And a third of those listeners are women, of conservative talk. Are you surprised at that number?
FONDA: I — I didn’t know that a third of —
COSBY: Yeah, a third of today’s talk radio listeners.
FONDA: — because not — you know, there’s — women used to be a big portion of radio talk show listeners, and they’re not anymore.
RUSH: I’ll get to that in just a second. Fonda says, “You know, they represent maybe 30% of the American public.” Jane, if that’s the case… You know, these people are in denial. They have no chance of success. They don’t even understand the business they’re going into, and they’re not even going to be honest with themselves about why they’re doing it. If we only affected 30% of the American public we wouldn’t be a problem, wouldn’t be a threat. They wouldn’t have to come up with all these efforts to counter us and defeat and us; they wouldn’t have to come up with their own feminist radio network. For only 30% we wouldn’t matter — and then Cosby says, “Well, a third of that audience is women.” I — I — I — I didn’t know! And then Fonda says, “Well, women used to be a big portion of radio talk show listeners, and they’re not anymore.”
Now, this could be real ironic, because I am an expert in this business — maybe nothing else, but I am an expert in this business — and she isn’t, and if you want to know when the greatest percentage of women listen to talk radio is (interruption). Mr. Snerdley, you’re a student of this business. What were the shows, what types of shows were they that attracted the largest numbers of women to talk radio in the past? I’ll give you a name. Bill Balance had a talk show in LA that had nothing but women call in and discuss their sex lives in great detail. It went through the roof. The other shows that did well were shrinks (psychiatrists, psychologists) where people could call in and whine and moan about their problems — until this show came along, when women were treated with respect!
This program — I, your host — do not look at the audience as Men and Women. I look at you as Americans, and I look at you as all interested in caring in the future of the country in substantive ways because of your children and your grandchildren and your own lives as well. I have the utmost respect for you people and your intelligence, otherwise I wouldn’t do the highbrow show that we do here, and never once do I sit down and say, “You know, I can’t discuss that. The women in the audience won’t like it or the women in the audience won’t understand it.” Look, you know I have adolescent, stereotypical-male humor at times. I’m a man; I’m a boy; I’m a guy. Yippee! But this audience, you people, are treated with the utmost respect in terms of your intelligence and your knowledge.
And this program, according to Pew Research Center, indicates that you are the most knowledgeable audience in all of broadcast media, including television that deals in news and cultural and political issues, and I would be a fool to look at it otherwise. Now, if Jane Fonda is really serious, and these babes are real serious about going out and attracting more women than ever, and if they look at history, you know what’s the most important thing? Well, I can’t say it that way. Let me give you a little anecdotal evidence. There are women in this audience who send me things all the time, in terms of ideas. They send me articles from their local paper; they send me things they see on the Internet, and it is amazing — and men do this, too. Men do this, too.
I never, ever get a story sent to me by a male that has anything to do with male-female relationships or babies. The closest it would get is education, but there are women who send me nothing but that. Now, clearly there are differences between men and women. TIME Magazine discovered this in the last decade, and relationships are very important things to women. Can you imagine? If they really want to go out and attract women who are not interested in the kind of things we discuss here, what are they going to have to do to do it? They’re going to have to go out and talk about all the things as feminists they attempted to impugn and rebuke! “Relationships should not define a woman. Happiness in a relationship should not be the sole thing. In fact, a woman who engages in that and has that as her primary desire in life is setting down the sisterhood.”
You remember the early days of the feminist movement. These people don’t even know the business that they are getting into, and they don’t even know the first thing about success, which is having respect for the audience and trying to connect to it on an daily basis, but they’re libs and the reason that they had this attitude is they look out across the country and they see idiocy. You know, I have said for the longest time that liberalism is nothing but arrogant condescension: a bunch of elitists who think they’re better than everybody else looking down on everybody else through their snooty noses and feeling very condescending to people.
George Will uses the term today in a column he writes about Wal-Mart. It’s a great column, and he’s done a lot of research, and he nails why liberals hate Wal-Mart, and it’s not unions. I mean, the unions are part of the money reason. They’re trying to influence Democrats with their contributions, but he said even without the unions, liberals would hate Wal-Mart because they look at Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart customers with condescension, and they look at them with condescension because these people that go to Wal-Mart and work at Wal-Mart are actually the people liberals think can’t do anything on their own and need liberals to guide them through life, making proper judgments, having enough money to live and so forth.
When these people actively, happily engage in middle-class pursuits and middle-class activities, the arrogant condescension of liberals prevents them from embracing them because they don’t want to be known as Wal-Mart people. Liberals don’t want to have to go to cocktail parties and say, “Yeah, I saw you at Wal-Mart the other day.” When is the last time John Kerry was in a Wal-Mart do you think or Teresa or Joe Biden? When was the last time they were in there? They wouldn’t be caught dead in there — except maybe in a campaign trying to point fingers at them for not hiring good union people and so forth. But they look at Wal-Mart shoppers, “Oh, my gosh! I can’t be associated with these people. What will people think of me?” They look at the middle class like that.
I’ve been trying to tell you for 18 years the way liberals look at people. They look at average people as helpless, dependent. They want them that way. That’s how they derive their power, and when middle-class people show they don’t understand liberals, why, guess who their biggest enemies become? Liberals! So they’re trying to shut out Wal-Mart, trying to harm it, because you people that go to Wal-Mart and you bourgeois, middle-class, ungrateful types are shunning these great liberals in exchange for taking care of yourself — and that is a crime against liberalism. So these pursuits of yours must be dealt with. Well, Jane Fonda, Rosie O’Donnell and whoever the hell else is involved, Gloria Steinem, are the same way: a bunch of elitist liberals with condescension and arrogance.
I will guarantee you that the women who do like conservative talk radio will be demonized, may be portrayed as brainwashed or what have you. It’s clear as day. What was one of the big issues of the nineties? Sexual harassment! All office VPs, presidents, executives, males, they’re predators; they have the power, and they are subjugating their female assistants and subordinates and making them provide sex for promotions and so forth and so on — and then along comes a woman and says, “Okay, this was happening to me,” her name was Paula Jones, “and I was sexually harassed by Bill Clinton,” and who turned on her first? The NAGs! The feminazis! The women who built their whole existence and their reputations on the notion of protecting women against this kind of boorish, predatory behavior.
But see, Paula Jones gave them a problem because she was from Arkansas. That’s bad enough. Then she came from a trailer park! “We cannot possibly embrace Paula. Why, what would Molly Yard think of us from the grave? What would Betty Friedan think? Embracing trailer park trash in the name of sexual harassment? Plus, Bill Clinton is our guy. He can sexually harass anybody and we won’t say a word about it.” It’s not about the issues that liberals bring up; it’s always about something else, and in this case it’s class. Paula Jones just wasn’t of the right class. Wal-Mart shoppers are not of the right class. They’re bourgeois. “They are middle class. They’re dirty. We just can’t be seen associating with these people!” The only way that liberals will embrace the middle class is when they’re on food stamps or some other liberal-created dependence program, and voting Democrat, and being good, obedient middle-class slaves.
Other than that, liberals want nothing to do with it. So here comes Ms. Fonda and her cohorts trying to set up this network based on wrong assumptions, lack of understanding of how the business operates, and not even correct research on why talk radio is successful. Besides this, these are the people that say, “We should all get along. We have too much arguing in this country, too much partisanship,” and what are they doing? They’re only going after women. They don’t care about you men — and I know you wouldn’t listen to it anyway so they’re smart in that regard. But still, who is it that’s being divisive? Does this program say, “Women, you’re not allowed. We’re going to do things on this program to offend you so you don’t listen because we don’t want you here”? Does this program do that? Nope.
Are they going to do that? Liberals don’t stand a chance in the mass marketing, folks, I don’t care what the business, be it talk radio… They’re even having trouble in Hollywood now. They don’t stand a chance. Look at every business that they demonize, a successful American business. They don’t stand a chance because they can’t mass market; they can’t make themselves appeal true cross-section of Americans like Christians or any other group that you want to say exists in the mass. They can’t because they have resentment for so many of them. They have resentment for Christians, resentment from Wal-Mart shoppers, resentment for the middle class, resentment and arrogance and condescension toward all kinds of people. It’s impossible — it is structurally, institutionally impossible — for them to mass market, including political ideas. Why do you think they don’t tell us what they really believe? Because they know when to dare, because what they really believe is cutting and critical and condescending toward the people they’re trying to trick into voting for them.
RUSH: Mariel in Tampa, Florida, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello Rush. Rush baby dittos. The last time I talked to you was 13 years ago, and I’m 24 right now.
RUSH: Twenty-four. So, wow, you were 11 when you first talked to me.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: What did we talk about when you were 11 years old?
CALLER: I think Newt Gingrich was on MTV, and they just disrespected him, and I was enraged about it because I love you.
RUSH: At 11 years old!
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: God love you, Mariel. You didn’t grow out of it. That’s tremendous. Welcome back.
CALLER: Thank you so much. I was just so upset about Jane Fonda’s comments, and I was absolutely amazed that she wants to start a radio network and has zero idea that you are the most popular talk show on radio. That just floors me as a businesswoman that she wouldn’t even have a clue.
RUSH: Well, there’s the arrogance and condescension that I am talking about. The last thing they would do is model themselves after me. There are two sides to this too, by the way. There is the programming side which is what you hear; there is the business side, — and that’s what all these liberals are missing. (sigh) The fact that it’s a business and they don’t have a business plan or business model. They just think they’re going to go on the air and attract all these people, it’s no different than Democrats. Democrat honestly believe that half the country or more hates George Bush and can’t wait to get to the polls and express the same hatred for Bush that they have. There really isn’t a better word or phrase to describe these people than arrogant condescension. The people who are succeeding all around them, like Bush — take anybody who’s succeeding where liberals are failing — and what’s the liberal attitude? The liberal attitude is, “Hmm, we should study this”? It’s not that. The Liberal attitude is, “They’re cheating, or they’re poisoning people’s minds or they’re brainwashing people or — or,” and they’re projecting. That’s what they think they have to do to win. It’s fascinating to watch this. Watch. If the Rasmussen poll gets widely reported, if the number is 47%, the early stages of a crackup will be visible very, very, very soon because this is a news template that they’re unable to control. Mariel, thanks for the call. Julie in Boise, Idaho. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: Good. I just called. I was listening to a comment by Jane Fonda and I think I have their problem all figured out. Their whole thing is she started off with “I feel,” and the rest of us don’t always act on what we feel. I think the conservative population acts on what is right, not on what they “feel,” and that’s kind of where the whole Hollywood-liberal line comes down. They do what feels good to them, not necessarily what’s right.
RUSH: That’s very astute of you. Liberals are governed by their feelings and what they think others are going to think of them, and their feelings is how they make themselves feel good. They say things to make themselves feel good. We think about things — and that’s what helps us come to what are hopefully correct conclusions.
CALLER: Well, I have to tell you, as I tell everybody, because they’re just amazed that I actually listen to Rush Limbaugh. A woman that listens to Rush Limbaugh! But as I’m driving along listening to you, I am just laughing my head off about half the time. I mean someone driving by must think I’m crazy, but I find you quite entertaining.
RUSH: Thank you. These people that are amazed that you listen to this program, have they ever listened to this program?
CALLER: Oh, no! No, no, no, no. They haven’t, and when I ask them, they just kind of shake their head. You know, and it’s usually a bunch of women.-
RUSH: You ought to tell them this. “You know, you’re questioning my intelligence. But I actually listen to it. You never have, and you think you know what it’s all about.” I’d turn this whole intelligence thing right back on them.
CALLER: Oh, I do turn it on them. I say, “What don’t you like about this show?” “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t listened to it.” “Well, then how in the world can you judge it?” So I do, and I enjoy every minute of it. (chuckles)
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Look, Julie, thanks so much for the call. I appreciate it. You know what, I don’t have enough time to take a call because with the calls we have on the board here all have nothing to do with Fonda and women’s talk radio, which is good. We have exhausted this. We’ve put this one to bed. The women’s talk network, what else can I say about it? This is the thing. We thoroughly discuss things on this program, and I’ve told you why and who they are, and there’s nothing else to say. We have put the women’s talk network to bed, absolutely right. By the way, Mr. Snerdley had a great idea just a moment ago during the commercial break. I said they’ve added a new station. They’ve got five stations now that are lined up. In addition to WNAG, WCRY, WFEM and WPMS, Snerdley says they’ve add WDYK.