Rush talks about William Raspberry

In the four years or so that I've been listening to Rush I don't recall him every referring to the Raspberry effect, but maybe he did and it just went over my head.

RUSH: Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, a friend of this program passed away, William Raspberry. He was a longtime columnist for the Washington Post. He passed away at age 76, and he's survived by his mother, who is 104. He also has a couple kids and his wife of 45 years. But he's survived by his mother, 104 years old. William Raspberry in 1993, very famous columnist for the Washington Post and very famous, highly respected liberal, he was one of the last of the breed of liberals that could still be reasoned with. You can't reason with liberals. They're revolutionary radicals. They don't have a moral core today. They have no belief except in their own indignant righteousness. You can't reason with 'em. The same reason you don't negotiate with Al-Qaeda.

RUSH: Bill Raspberry was the last of a breed of liberal who could still be reasoned with. He was one of the last of the liberals with an open mind. I don't say that just because way back in 1993 he admitted that he was wrong about me. We even created a term to describe it. It's called the Raspberry Effect. But it's a good example.

He's probably the last liberal who would ever admit being wrong about anything. Back in 1993. I think he was probably the last liberal to admit ever having been wrong. Now, he wrote a column back in 1993 in which he implied that I was a bigot. He had not listened to me. He had heard comments. Well, he said he had heard snippets when he was driving around in other people's cars, but he had not sat down and actually listened. Instead, his buddies had told him that I was a bigot.

This served to rile up a lot of his regular readers around the fruited plain who actually listened to the show, and they knew better. They knew that I wasn't a bigot, and they wrote him. A number of his regular readers wrote him mail, letters, to tell him that he was wrong. So, to his credit, Raspberry wrote another column where he admitted he had never heard the program, except accidentally. He had based his column on what other people had told him about me.

And to his infinite credit, he decided to listen to the show and decide for himself. Naturally enough, after listening awhile, he realized he'd been misinformed. And he even apologized. Now, he didn't say he liked me, and he didn't say he was a fan. He accurately described me. He said (paraphrased), "This sounds to me more like a guy having fun on the radio that's poking holes in sacred cows that nobody else pokes holes at." He never admitted that he would be a fan.

He didn't say that he agreed with me or anything. But he had to conclude that I wasn't a bigot. I wasn't a racist. I wasn't any of these rotten things that were being said about me. Now, this phenomenon -- having your mind changed by actually listening to the show -- is what we have called ever since the Raspberry Effect, in honor of William Raspberry. So maybe today might be a good day for people in the audience who know people who think they hate me to ask them to listen to the show for a week or so.

So they can make up their own minds and give the Raspberry Effect an opportunity to work on these otherwise closed-minded, ignorantly righteous, revolutionary radicals who cannot be reasoned with. It's worth a try anyway. I would like to think that Bill Raspberry was not the last (and his friends called him "Bill"). I like to think that Bill Raspberry was not the last liberal who was willing to open his mind and admit that he could be wrong, but maybe he was. It was in 1993, almost 20 years ago.

That's right. We may have to go back 20 years to find the last liberal who could admit that he was wrong. In any case, the world of politics is a worse place without him. I think what we'll do is we'll probably post his column that led to us calling it the Raspberry Effect. We'll post it at RushLimbaugh.com. (interruption) Raspberry's mom is 106? I thought I read yesterday that she was 104. Anyway, he's survived by his mother.

So our condolences to the family of William Raspberry.