My Conversation With Rush Limbaugh by Scoobie Davis

UPDATE: Check out the list of Rush Limbaugh links at the bottom of this page.

Original Post: Here's a transcript of my October 3, 2000 conversation with Rush Limbaugh minus any disfluencies (e.g., "you know" and "I mean"). I called in as James from Los Angeles:

[Bumper music]

RUSH: Back we go to the phones, on this, the most-listened-to talk
radio show in America. It's James in Los Angeles. James, hi, how are you?

SCOOBIE: Hi. Great. Surferdude anti-dittos from Los Angeles.

RUSH: Surferdude, way to go. Nice to have you, sir.

SCOOBIE: Yes, yeah. I'm a big fan of Al Gore because really I think
there's no other person in this country who has the blend of total
experience, not only legislatively but in terms of the executive--and
then not only that but the integrity to become President.

RUSH: Integrity?

SCOOBIE: Precisely.

RUSH: Bill Clinton is the greatest President in the history? The man
who claimed he created the Strategic Petroleum [Reserve]? The man
who-- the man--he can't tell the truth--integrity?

SCOOBIE: Oh, oh, you know Rush, the whole thing about calling Gore a
pathological liar--

RUSH: Hold your thought there. I've got to take a break. Hold your
thought. Don't lose your place. We'll come back and continue after
the bottom of the hour.

[Bottom of hour break]

[Bumper music]

RUSH: We'll go back to Los Angeles. James, the self-described
surferdude, welcome back. I hated to interrupt you but I had to. Okay,
my comments on Al Gore's pathological lying?

SCOOBIE: Yeah, for example, if the case is so clear-cut, why do you have
to make things up against him? For example, on September 30, you said
that Gore had said on Larry King Live that for the past 24 years that
he had supported McCain-Feingold and then you called him an idiot and
a liar. You were saying that's absurd and all that. But actually, Larry
King had thought that Gore had said that he supported McCain-Feingold
since 1976, which he didn't. Rather, and Gore corrected Larry King and
told him that it wasn't McCain-Feingold that he supported but rather
public financing of federal elections. [see appendix at the bottom of this
post] And the thing is, calling Gore a liar like that and other things is dishonest on
your part. And the internet journal, the Daily Howler has pointed that out, how it's so much the critics of Gore's so-called
lying are so much dishonest--more dishonest than they claim Gore is himself. For
example, the whole Love Story thing. Now when Eric Segal wrote the book, he
based the main character upon Al Gore and his roommate Tommy Lee Jones. Now
the only thing Gore got wrong in that whole thing was that Tipper Gore was not
the lead character. He based that upon a newspaper report. And then
you and others act as if Gore had based the whole thing out of whole
cloth, which is certainly not the case. and I think that's--

RUSH: Those are minor--

SCOOBIE: No, no--

RUSH: They are. They are. Still it's true. He still tried to make
people think that he was the subject--that he and Tipper were the
subject of Love Story--

SCOOBIE: He was--- [almost inaudible]

RUSH: And public financing of campaigns. Do you realize that the
current campaign laws that we have date to '74 and '75 right after
Watergate. For him to be thinking of public financing of campaigns
in '76 or '75. We just got a new set of campaign laws following
Watergate. I think it is a little questionable. The Buddhist
fundraiser. Was it a fundraiser? It was. He knows it. He knew it. He
had memos saying so. If you want to sit there and actually try to
defend that, then--

SCOOBIE: You missed the point, Rush. The point is that you mischaracterized
his so-called lying and that's the important point of it--

RUSH: No, I'm not mischaracterizing at all. We're losing the language.
We don't call liars liars anymore. They misstated it--[garbled due to
both talking at the same time]

SCOOBIE: Al Gore reads the newspaper and sees that somebody in the
newspaper says that Tipper Gore was the basis for the Love Story thing.
Al Gore says that and then Al Gore becomes a liar for repeating a
newspaper story that is erroneous. And Eric Segal, when he was
confronted with these facts, he said that Gore's characterization was
correct and that Gore was not lying when he said this. But you people
on the radical Right, you make it seem as if Gore is a pathological--

RUSH: Thank you. I'm glad to be called radical again. I thought I lost
my touch. I used to be called radical but they don't call me that anymore.

SCOOBIE: Yes, certainly, the hard Right, what I call the--

RUSH: I haven't been called that either. Thank you. Hard radical Right.
Good, to be back home.

SCOOBIE: But the whole thing is what about George W. Bush's so-called
lies, his embellishments? You know when George W. Bush first ran for the Congress in 1978, he portrayed himself as a big Texas oilman.
Well, the only oil George Bush saw at that time was the oil that he put on
his salad. This guy didn't do anything except hang around his Daddykins's
rich friends--

RUSH: James, James, I think you're giving yourself away here.

SCOOBIE: What?

RUSH: As who you are, what you are. If you really say, do you want to
try to genuinely, honestly say that Al Gore is no different than George
W. Bush when it comes to telling the truth?

SCOOBIE: Oh, and he's no different than Ronald Reagan--[laughs] the guy
who talked about liberating the death camps in World War II when the
closest to Europe he got was Southern California. Gee, it's called
being a politician.

RUSH: When did Ronald Reagan say that he liberated the death camps?
He never said that.

SCOOBIE: Yes, he did. Simon Wiesenthal and others said that he said that.

RUSH: He never said that. He never got anywhere saying that because it
didn't happen.

SCOOBIE: I know. Precisely. He made it up out of whole cloth just as he
did when he talked about those fighter pilots who--it was actually in
a movie--it wasn't something in real life and he portrayed it as
something in real life and [laughing] I have to just laugh at that,
Rush, it's just funny. And then you go around--

RUSH: You can laugh all you want but you're talking about one of the
most respected and beloved Presidents in the nation's history and
that's something Al Gore is never going to attain.

SCOOBIE: Well, we'll bet on that.

[IMPORTANT NOTE: From this point on, whenever I talked, it didn't make
the airwaves. Either Rush or one of his henchmen muted me so I could
not be heard. So essentially, Rush was talking to himself. What a pussy!]

RUSH: But you still--you know what this is--thank you [inaudible].
You're right out of the seminar--you guys. I open it up to Gore callers
and so the campaign headquarters’ screech goes out: Hey Limbaugh's
opened up the lines to us so call up and let's get out propaganda
machine spun up and that's what you're doing. You still can't tell me
after about seven or eight minutes what it is about Gore that makes
his experience qualified, his history, qualified to lead. All you can do
is call here and run down Reagan and George W. Bush and come up with
irrelevant defenses of Al Gore. If you can't intellectually admit that
the guy has a pathological problems with the truth. It's not just the
purpose of lies. He's got pathological reasons for it. Then, what
you're saying is that your mind is made up and you're on a mission
here to try to change the subject so as people don't think about the
negatives associated with Gore but rather you got to get them out
there think Reagan, Gingrich, or whatever in order to get votes for Gore. But
you can't call here and tell us why people ought to vote for Gore.
That's what I [inaudible]. Anyway, James, back to the surf.
Don't forget the Uggs [Shoes popular with surfers].



Appendix: What Gore Actually said on Larry King Live 8/28/00

A. Gore: The first day in office, the first bill I will send to the
Congress if I'm the entrusted with the presidency is the McCain-Feingold
campaign finance reform bill.

King: As written.

A. Gore: Absolutely. And then I want to go beyond that, and establish a
democracy endowment that takes all private money out of federal
elections. I think we need to give our democracy back to the people and
I'm serious about this, Larry. I fought for this for 24 years. When I
first went to the Congress in 1976, I supported this measure.

King: There was no McCain-Feingold then, right?

A. Gore: No, I supported full public financing of federal elections to
get the special interest money out of it. But McCain-Feingold is the
logical first step, and if you are for some more ambitious plan, save
that for later, because we have the chance to really pass McCain-
Feingold.

The Next Day (9/29/00): On Limbaugh's radio show, Limbaugh falsely claimed that on Larry King Live the previous night, Gore claimed that he supported the McCain-Feingold campaign
finance reform bill for 24 years. Limbaugh then called Gore a liar--saying that it was only a recent bill and that neither McCain or Feingold have been in Congress 24 years ago. Of course, as the Larry King Live transcript clearly indicates, Gore did not claim to have supported the McCain-Feingold bill for the last 24 years. Just another example of Limbaugh's lies.

Addendum: Rush Limbaugh Links
1) Media Matters for America monitors Limbaugh and has an updated page on Limbaugh.
2. I have several informative posts on my main web site that give a lot of information about Limbaugh: 1) A compendium of hateful statements by Limbaugh; 2)I have posts on Limbaugh's virulent racism, here and here; 3) My article on Limbaugh's drug problem.
3. Limbaugh denigration of veteran's military service: 1) Around the same time that the 2000 Bush campaign was orchestrating the whisper campaign that John McCain's POW experience made him mentally unbalanced, Limbaugh has a parody of The Caine Mutiny casting John McCain was the paranoid Captain Queeg; 2) Limbaugh's denigration of Iraq veteran Paul Hackett, who was running for Congress as a Democrat: Limbaugh called Hackett a "staff puke" who "to pad [his] resume." Here's Hackett's apt response to Limbaugh; 3) Limbaugh denigrated John Kerry's military service even before the Swiftboaters were formed. Of course, during the 2004 campaign, Limbaugh supported the smears of the Swift Boat liars; he even interviewed John O'Neill and said that he was doing "God's work"; 4) Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" smear against members of the US military.
4. Limbaugh's paranoid Clinton-bashing almost leads to a fatality.
5. Journalist David Neiwert's series on Limbaugh, "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.
5. I have the transcript of the infamous on-air conversation Limbaugh had with "Greg from Orlando" in which Greg confronts Limbaugh about his reasons for not fighting in Vietnam (here is Snopes.com on the matter; also, Joe Conason has an article on the flap).
6. In addition to the previously listed posts on Limbaugh's racism, there are other sites that have chronicled Limbaugh's hatred against minorities: 1) Media Matters on Limbaugh's racism against Barack Obama; 2) Jeff Cohen and Steve Rendall on Limbaugh's racism. Here's an informative article on limbaugh's "Barack the Magic Negro" flap. Ironically, despite Limbaugh's racist rantings, he has accused Democrats of being racist for criticizing Al Sharpton and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Here's another Limbaugh false charge of racism. 1/2008 UPDATE: Limbaugh compared Bill Clinton to segregationist "Bull" Connor.
7. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) did an analysis of Limbaugh's claims on his radio show in the 1990's that infuriated him.
8. During the Clinton presidency, Limbaugh, along with Roger Ailes, was one of the top Vince Foster conspiracy theorists. Even though numerous investigations has shown that Foster committed suicide and not murdered, Limbaugh has not apologized and continues to suggest that anyone who crosses the Clintons will face a similar fate (click here and here).
9. Limbaugh caught truncating a quote by Bill Clinton to give it the exact opposite meaning--Keith Olbermann reports. This is hardly surprising.

Other Useful Links:
1. Here's an on-air conversation of me and Sean Hannity over the issue of Republican sexual hypocrisy and GOP election fraud. This post also has a large list of Sean Hannity links. I have another conversation with Hannity in which I confront him about Pat Robertson's religious bigotry and Jerry Falwell's victimization of his flock and his political dirty tricks. The sidebar on my main blog has a list of talk radio phone call transcripts with such luminaries as Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Tammy Bruce, and Matt Drudge.
2. Brave New Films on Michael Savage's hate speech.
3. I have a blog that addresses cult leader Sun Myung Moon's pernicious influence on American politics (including a post on a Moon operative working for Mitt Romney's campaign).

Bonus: Links to informative sites about Sean Hannity:
1) Media Matters for America monitors Hannity: Click here for the latest on Hannity; here are additional Media Matters resources on Hannity.
2) Here is an article by Ben Fritz on Hannity's intellectual dishonesty in his book Let Freedom Ring.
3) The Center for American Progress has two informative articles about Hannity's dishonesty: click here and here.
4) Wikipedia has information about Hannity's mendacity--e.g., Hannity tried to portray an anti-troop protest by fundamentalist hatemonger Fred Phelps as being the work of the left (quick note: Fox News' Oliver North took the same tack).
5) I have several blog posts documenting Hannity's mendacity: (1) Hannity plays dumb when it suits his purposes; (2) Echoing the Moonie-owned Washington Times, Hannity intentionally truncated a John Kerry quote; (3) Hannity uses deceit to try to link Kerry with Jane Fonda--also here; (4) If you watch or listen to Hannity regularly, undoubtedly you've heard Hannity speak about how important it was for Americans to come together after 9/11. Don't believe him for a minute. Even as as the twin towers were still smoldering, Hannity was part of a Moonie Times smear campaign to distort a speech by former president Clinton to give people the false impression that Clinton was blaming America for the attacks. Read about it here and here; (5) Hannity is one of the usual suspects who used Sudanese propaganda to smear Bill Clinton; (6) Here's a blog post on the problems with the Hannity & Colmes show; (7) My article on Hannity's hypocrisy regarding Ann Coulter's denigrating comments about the 9/11 widows.
6) An article from The Nation about Hannity's relationship with white supremacist Hal Turner (Hannity was one of Trent Lott's biggest apologists after Lott defended Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat presidential run).
7) ThinkProgress article in response to General Motors' (GM) decision to hire Sean Hannity to be spokesperson for GMÂ?s "You're A Great American" Car Give-Away.
8) Article on Hannity's friend Hal Turner by Dave Neiwert. Here's another article about the Hannity/Turner connection by Max Blumenthal.
9) Every since I whipped Hannity's ass on this program and on another occasion, Hannity has made sure that competent opponents don't show him up. Here's some revealing empirical evidence that Hannity is a total wuss [NOTE: if this link does not work at first, refresh it or click here for a truncated version--also I reprint it in the addendum of this post--scroll down to the end]. Hannity has also chickened out of debates with Ed Schultz and Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson.
10) Hannity's vicious attacks on crime victim Abner Louima (also here).
11) Notice how Hannity criticizes people opposed to Bush's ineptitude in Iraq with the canard that they are undermining "the troops in harm's way and undermine their commander in chief while they're at war"? Here are some quotes by Hannity at a time in which we had a president who knew how to use the military.
12) Hannity, of course, defended Ann Coulter's Moussaoui-like attacks on women who lost their husbands on 9/11.
13) Al Franken has an entire chapter on Hannity and Alan Colmes in his book Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
14) Campus Progress has an informative article about Hannity.
15) Watch this video of Howard Dean slamming Hannity and Fox News on live TV. Dean mentions Robert Greenwald's excellent documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism:
15) Media Matters on Hannity's conspiracy-mongering regarding the death of Vince Foster on his Sunday television show on Fox "Hannity's America":(here, here, and here). this isn't surprising considering that Hannity's boss Roger Ailes has engaged in Foster conspiracy-mongering. Also, more Media Matters on Hannity's intellectual dishonesty--here, here, and here.

Addendum: Talk Show Radio Accessibility--Follow-Up Survey Results
Research 2000 thought it would be an interesting endeavor to find out how six nationally syndicated talk radio programs handle incoming calls among individuals who wish to engage in the live talk show over the air. The our original April ‘06 ‘Talk Show Radio Accessibility Survey Results‘ were interesting enough to report in the hopes that “ALL” talk radio hosts and formats in the future will make it less restrictive and more accessible for potential call in guests regardless of whether or not they have a differing point of view.
Findings:

* Ed Shultz “as the easiest to get on the air with regardless of the caller’s “view point for the simple reason that the show is the only format of the six that does not ask the caller what they want to discuss.”
* Sean Hannity comes in last place with “none” of the callers “with a different view point” getting on the air.
* The “one caller of five dissenting view points” allowed on Limbaugh’s show “went through three screeners before getting on the air.“
* Ingraham, Miller and Rhodes showed “no significant differences” in terms of getting on the air “if one had a dissenting view point.
* In all cases, callers with dissenting views were able to get on the air with the host.

Methodology:

While the following survey results do not possess the standard 95 percent confidence level or 5% margin for error which is standard within the scientific polling community, Research 2000’s follow yielded almost identical results.

In August and September, we examined the same six nationally syndicated talk shows we did back in April which are heard in the Washington DC ADI five days weekly between August 21 through September 19, 2006. Three liberal: Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes and Ed Shultz. Three conservative: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh. Back in April, each program was called ten times (5 with a point of view compatible with the host and most of the callers and 5 that were not). In the August-September follow up survey, we called each show 15 times with a point of view which was not compatible with the host and most of the callers. We decided not to do any calls with compatible view points because the April survey showed that those callers with compatible views with the host and most of the callers were able to get through and on the air between 15-30 minutes with each of the hosts.

The rank order below is based on how accessible it was for one to get through to the host with both a liberal and conservative point of view.

Once again, there was no significant differences between the Laura Ingraham, Stephanie Miller and Randi Rhodes shows in terms of getting on the air if one had a dissenting view point. In all cases, callers with dissenting views were able to get on the air with the host. The wait on hold was longest for the Laura Ingraham show and that averaged 40 minutes to one hour and fifteen minutes. For Miller it was 35 minutes to one hour and for Rhodes it was 30 minutes to 40 minutes.The difference between number 2 and 4 are slight and the rank order is based purely on the amount of time one was on hold. Both Ingraham’s and Miller’s wait on hold increased slightly from April, while Rhodes had a slight decrease.

Only two callers of fifteen dissenting view points was successful in getting on the Rush Limbaugh show. Both callers went through three screeners on the show before getting on the air with the host. However, the other thirteen callers with dissenting view points were told politely that the host would not be taking calls on either the subject matter or a dissenting point of view.