Here are a couple of excerpts from Rush's transcript:
Then everybody started sending me pictures of how it was all shaping up. The crowd started arriving at three o'clock at Landreth Park in Joplin, and I had decided only on Friday to go in and be with people there, and I asked if I could speak for a short period of time. I was not on the original agenda there, and they were very gracious, the Joplin mayor, the parks department were very gracious, and our affiliate, our great affiliate radio station people there found ten minutes for me to appear between two bands, two country bands, and I asked, "What's the time limit here?" "Whatever you want to do. I mean, you're Rush Limbaugh. Ten minutes would be great." I said, "Okay, I could do ten minutes." So I left here at five p.m. to fly to Joplin, four o'clock in Joplin, I ended up arriving at Landreth Park at about 7:15 or 7:20. I met the mayor, and I met some of the officials, met the security people, a lot of the police and I met the guys from the country bands from Nashville, and they were just a hoot. These guys were just great. They let us spend some time in their air-conditioned motor home that they had driven to the event in. We sat in there and one of them had watched The Haney Project and wanted to know all about it. So I'm talking about The Haney Project with Joe, the leader of the country band.
Now, I could just tell, the mayor, the parks department people, they were nice as they could be, but I have to tell you something. (laughing) They were scared to death of what I was gonna say. (interruption) Well, here's what they're trying to do in Joplin now. They're trying to take a day off from their misery. You know, they got racked by that E5 tornado. And, by the way, television does not do that justice. We flew in there and landed, and I asked if we could get permission from air traffic control people to kind of take a tour at about a thousand feet, 15,000 feet over Joplin before we landed. I've been to a war zone in Afghanistan. I've not seen devastation like this. It's incomprehensible. But they wanted a night off. There were no Red Cross booths. There were no fundraising booths for the rebuilding, none of that. It was a pure party, just a pure Fourth of July celebration with a bunch of food and music, dancing, chatting, fireworks, all that, and our truckload of tea, as it turned out.
and
By the time I got there, there were maybe 50,000 people who had shown up. So finally it's my turn to speak, and the local affiliate morning show introduced me. They had a huge stage to handle all the equipment for the country bands, and I went out, and I did ten minutes of pure Fourth of July American independence, revolution, what it all means. I'll play you portions of it here. The point is there was not one political word in it. I did not utter the word liberal once. I didn't utter the word conservative once. I didn't say Republican once. I didn't say Democrat once.
I simply talked about American, what it means to be an American, why we're great. You've heard me delve into this on the program before. I talked to the people of Joplin about who they are and how they define the greatness of this country. They are the kind of people who make this country work. When this is all over they are going to show how you build a community. In their case they're going to show how you rebuild. It was 100% uplift. There was no separating people out. There was no identifying people group-wise or any of that. Folks, I gotta tell you, when I finished I had people telling me how wonderful it was. And I was doubtful because I only went ten minutes. I'm used to going two hours, with ease. And there are people that had driven in there from way out of state. By the time I finished and was on the way to the airport to come back home and get some sleep to be able to do the program today, there were still lines of people in cars getting into the place. I said, "Jeez, how many of these people are gonna get in there expecting to see me and I'm already gone?" But I had to get out of there in ten minutes 'cause they had that second band go on and they had fireworks scheduled for when it got dark. So there was a schedule here that had to be adhered to, and I was a late add, and I sort of added myself. (laughing)
So I only did ten minutes and I always feel like I short-change people when I only do ten minutes. But this was a great crowd, and it was a fabulous time, and it was a wonderful celebration, and it was pure, 100% Americana. The people were in a festive, good mood. Everybody that I ran into -- and I had a chance to run into a lot of people -- were nice as they could be, they were in fine, fine form. They were proud to be there yesterday, proud to be Americans, proud to be from Joplin, Missouri. They were happy that the spotlight was on Joplin for a day because it's been forgotten since the tornado came and went. But they're still devastated there. It's gonna be a huge process.
The complete transcript of his speech is also at his website:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_070511/content/01125106.guest.html
________________
My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday throughout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
No comments:
Post a Comment