Perhaps one of the only joys I get out of going to work Friday afternoons is not the hour-long drive to McKinney.
It is that much of that hour is spent listening to the Rush Limbaugh show on WBAP at 1 p.m.
I never thought the day would come when I would say I am a student enrolled in the “Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies” until the night of Nov. 4, 1999.
That was the night Dallas based KDXA channel 5 news anchorwoman Jane McGarry said shortly before the 10 p.m. newscast that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush Jr. failed his first political exam.
The exam was given by Andy Hiller, a political reporter for Boston based WHDH-TV, who asked Bush the name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.
According to an article by the Associated Press in the Nov. 5, 1999, edition of The Dallas Morning News, Bush scored 25 percent on the quiz, getting only one question partially correct. The question was to name the leader of Taiwan. Bush said it was “Lee” referring to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.
I didn’t bother to find out that night what the channel 5 story was about. I knew, just as Limbaugh did, that this was just another bold attempt by the liberal press to bash a conservative presidential candidate and I was right.
Limbaugh immediately went on the offensive the next day and I enjoyed listening to every minute of it. I got to admit it. The guy makes sense at what he says. Bush failing a political exam was not news.
“Are you a journalist or a reporter,” the talk show host asked his “loyal listeners” but addressing, those liberals currently in the journalism profession and those planning on pursuing it.
Limbaugh continued saying Hiller fit his definition of a journalist defining him as someone who creates news for his own “self-aggrandizement.”
Hiller was not, in Limbaugh’s terms, a reporter which he defined as someone who goes, covers a story and reports what happened.
“The Doctor of Democracy”, a title Limbaugh goes by, was right on the money when he said if people are going to judge Bush’s intellect because of this quiz and say he is unfit to be president, then perhaps we ought to develop a whole new system on the way people apply for jobs.
Limbaugh suggested starting with Hillary Clinton who is running for senator of New York.
New Yorkers, for example, should ask her such questions as where Yankee Stadium is and how do you get there? How many people reside in the state of New York and how many of those citizens are registered voters? What the crime statistics for New York City over the past five years?
Such questioning, however, shouldn’t just apply to those running for political office. If someone applies to be a manager of a computer support helpdesk, the interviewer should not be concerned on whether the person managed a call center before that had a hold time of less than three minutes.
The interviewer should ask he/she such computer related questions as what do the letters “PC” stand for? What is a print queue? What is a mini hub? How do you go about setting up a store’s credit/debit card system?
The future manager of a computer support helpdesk doesn’t have to know how to unlock a store’s computer that has only a cursor on the screen. He or she has over 40 helpdesk personnel and supervisors who can address that problem for them.
It is not the president of the United States’ job to know who the world leaders are. He has advisors and researchers who do that for him.
It’s a good bet Hiller himself didn’t know who the leaders of those four countries were before he asked Bush. Chances are he had to look them up in a magazine or previous articles. If so, does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be a reporter? Does the fact Bush didn’t know the answers mean he can’t run the country? Of course not.
“I know what I can do,” Bush said in an interview with Time magazine Nov. 15, 1999. “I’ve never held myself out to be any great genius, but I’m plenty smart. And I’ve got good common sense and good instincts. And that’s what people want in their leader.”
That suits me just fine. I am more comfortable with Bush’s statement than I am that Democratic Vice President and presidential nominee Al Gore knew the answers to all four quiz questions.
For the record, those of you just dying to know the other three answers to Hiller’s questions, the president of Chechnya is Aslan Maskhadov. The prime minister of India is Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the general in charge of Pakistan is Pervaiz Musharraf.
Then again, how many of you reading this blog really want to know the answers to those questions? No one? Not one of you out there really gives a rat’s behind.
That’s how pointless the quiz Gov. Bush took was.
The only ones who gave a damn about it and made a big deal out of nothing was the liberal press.
©1/10/2000
It is that much of that hour is spent listening to the Rush Limbaugh show on WBAP at 1 p.m.
I never thought the day would come when I would say I am a student enrolled in the “Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies” until the night of Nov. 4, 1999.
That was the night Dallas based KDXA channel 5 news anchorwoman Jane McGarry said shortly before the 10 p.m. newscast that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush Jr. failed his first political exam.
The exam was given by Andy Hiller, a political reporter for Boston based WHDH-TV, who asked Bush the name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.
According to an article by the Associated Press in the Nov. 5, 1999, edition of The Dallas Morning News, Bush scored 25 percent on the quiz, getting only one question partially correct. The question was to name the leader of Taiwan. Bush said it was “Lee” referring to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.
I didn’t bother to find out that night what the channel 5 story was about. I knew, just as Limbaugh did, that this was just another bold attempt by the liberal press to bash a conservative presidential candidate and I was right.
Limbaugh immediately went on the offensive the next day and I enjoyed listening to every minute of it. I got to admit it. The guy makes sense at what he says. Bush failing a political exam was not news.
“Are you a journalist or a reporter,” the talk show host asked his “loyal listeners” but addressing, those liberals currently in the journalism profession and those planning on pursuing it.
Limbaugh continued saying Hiller fit his definition of a journalist defining him as someone who creates news for his own “self-aggrandizement.”
Hiller was not, in Limbaugh’s terms, a reporter which he defined as someone who goes, covers a story and reports what happened.
“The Doctor of Democracy”, a title Limbaugh goes by, was right on the money when he said if people are going to judge Bush’s intellect because of this quiz and say he is unfit to be president, then perhaps we ought to develop a whole new system on the way people apply for jobs.
Limbaugh suggested starting with Hillary Clinton who is running for senator of New York.
New Yorkers, for example, should ask her such questions as where Yankee Stadium is and how do you get there? How many people reside in the state of New York and how many of those citizens are registered voters? What the crime statistics for New York City over the past five years?
Such questioning, however, shouldn’t just apply to those running for political office. If someone applies to be a manager of a computer support helpdesk, the interviewer should not be concerned on whether the person managed a call center before that had a hold time of less than three minutes.
The interviewer should ask he/she such computer related questions as what do the letters “PC” stand for? What is a print queue? What is a mini hub? How do you go about setting up a store’s credit/debit card system?
The future manager of a computer support helpdesk doesn’t have to know how to unlock a store’s computer that has only a cursor on the screen. He or she has over 40 helpdesk personnel and supervisors who can address that problem for them.
It is not the president of the United States’ job to know who the world leaders are. He has advisors and researchers who do that for him.
It’s a good bet Hiller himself didn’t know who the leaders of those four countries were before he asked Bush. Chances are he had to look them up in a magazine or previous articles. If so, does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be a reporter? Does the fact Bush didn’t know the answers mean he can’t run the country? Of course not.
“I know what I can do,” Bush said in an interview with Time magazine Nov. 15, 1999. “I’ve never held myself out to be any great genius, but I’m plenty smart. And I’ve got good common sense and good instincts. And that’s what people want in their leader.”
That suits me just fine. I am more comfortable with Bush’s statement than I am that Democratic Vice President and presidential nominee Al Gore knew the answers to all four quiz questions.
For the record, those of you just dying to know the other three answers to Hiller’s questions, the president of Chechnya is Aslan Maskhadov. The prime minister of India is Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the general in charge of Pakistan is Pervaiz Musharraf.
Then again, how many of you reading this blog really want to know the answers to those questions? No one? Not one of you out there really gives a rat’s behind.
That’s how pointless the quiz Gov. Bush took was.
The only ones who gave a damn about it and made a big deal out of nothing was the liberal press.
©1/10/2000
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