RUSH: I want to get to these Ashton Kutcher sound bites. I want to keep things in some semblance of order and organization. This is Sunday night, the Ultimate Choice Award he got at the Teen Choice Awards. He stars as Steve Jobs in the movie "Jobs." By the way, I will be reviewing that movie. I got my official, powerful, influential member of the media copy. They even went so far as to close caption it so I can actually see the dialogue as I watch the movie. Just came in today. I'm gonna try to watch it later this afternoon. We have three sound bites from Kutcher here. The Teen Choice Awards, low-information audience. I want you to listen to this. Here's the first one.
KUTCHER: I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work. I've never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a steppingstone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job. And so opportunities look a lot like work.
RUSH: Right on. Now, don't ho-hum this, folks. This is a message that young kids today are not hearing except maybe in their homes from their parents, but they're not hearing this. They're not hearing this from Obama. They're not hearing this from presidential or political leadership. This kind of message of hard work, the traditional American route to success and happiness is what's being made fun of, it's what's being said is not possible anymore. The reason why there is a malaise, this fog of depression that has rolled in over this whole country, is because young people particularly don't think there's any opportunity for them. They don't think there's any left. They don't believe there's any prosperity out there for them.
They have been told that evil corporations and evil Republicans and the rich have taken it all from them. Do not laugh. The vast majority of even college graduates are taught this. So when Kutcher, at the Teen Choice Awards, stands up and offers a traditional, uplifting, motivational, and inspirational speech on how he became successful, it's remarkable. I say remarkable because the low-information crowd watching it is hearing it. They ended up cheering it, and they're not hearing it, except perhaps in their homes. We don't know of course what goes on with their parents, but we know that everywhere else they go, we know that the songs they listen to, we know that the movies they watch, we know that the classrooms that they attend, do not give them this message. Here's the next bite. He went on to talk about the importance of intelligence, which he says is what's really sexy.
KUTCHER: The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart and being thoughtful, and being generous. Everything else is crap, I promise you. It's just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don't buy it. Be smart, be thoughtful, and be generous.
RUSH: I find this profound. Kids watching this show, that age group, are not hearing this message. Smart is made fun of. Smart is mocked. Smart is something that's a sellout, to some people. I know, Ashton Kutcher is a Democrat, I think.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Snerdley just asked me, and we got one more Ashton Kutcher clip here to go, he said, "Where's this coming from?" I have to be very careful. I really am not familiar with Ashton Kutcher's politics. I know he was married to Demi Moore, and she is a Hollywood liberal. I know he's a Democrat. You practically have to be. I don't know if the things he's saying here from Sunday night are things that he has always believed or if they're new. I just don't know him well enough to know, or I don't know him at all, but I don't know of him. All I know is that what he said is right on. All I know is that what he said is exactly what young people in this country need to hear.
What he said at the Teen Choice Awards is not being said to kids. Again, I'm gonna hold out the possibility that some of their parents do tell them this traditional message, but in the pop culture media they don't hear this message. Hell, they're all depressed. There is a fog of depression, fog bank, fog just rolled all over this country. There's pessimism, particularly among young people, and it's because they do not think there's any prosperity left for them, they don't think there's any stuff left for them. They don't think there's any money to be earned; it's all gone. Their parents or grandparents' generation were the last ones that really had it made. And they're certainly not hearing this kind of message from anybody in politics that they vote for.
They're not hearing it from Obama. They're not hearing it from any Democrat. They're not hearing a can-do. They're not hearing America is great. They're not hearing about American exceptionalism. They're not hearing anything about opportunity equals hard work. They're not hearing the message that hard work pays off. They're not hearing the message that having a job is a great way to become successful and prosperous. They're not hearing about how one job's a steppingstone to another job, where you climb, they're not hearing this, folks. They are not hearing this. Admit it; this is one of the things that has been quietly eating away at all of us. All the things that we were raised by, all the things we were raised with growing up, they have vanished, they're laughed at, mocked, and made fun of because it's not possible anymore.
He also said he never quit one job until the next one was lined up. He said that there was no job that was beneath him. He didn't say it that way. What he said was, "I never had a job in my life that I was better than." What he's saying is, there was no work that was beneath him. Now, I'm telling you -- and I don't want to make too big a deal out of any one of these elements, and I'm not sitting here predicting that there's an undercurrent of anything effervescing, ready to boil over, but I am telling you that there are some things happening that haven't been.
Oliver Stone calling Obama a snake; I mean, that's a major thing. Bono ripping into charity as -- not ripping into it, but properly saying aid isn't going to make anybody prosperous. Philanthropy, charity, welfare is not the answer. Entrepreneurial, capitalism is the answer. Bono. I mean, these are people whose audiences, whose customers are the low-information people, the pessimistic, the young 24-year-olds who are scared by me, the 24-year-old women that are frightened by me. I mean, even some of the Millennials that we've been speaking about recently, the Millennials are just overwhelmed with negativism.
Now, I think one of the possibilities where Kushton may have picked this up, if it's not something he extrinsically believed, and I don't know that to be the case, I just don't know him. This could be his belief system for all of his life. I do know that most actors are obsessed with working, because most actors do not have steady work, and they love it. I mean, they love their job. Acting, their egos are such, they like working. And so they're always trying to find the next gig, because most actors don't make a lot of money, and most of them don't have steady work. So he could have held this belief system for a long time. But this next sound bite is Steve Jobs. And this is how he finished in his remarks Sunday night. He was receiving the Ultimate Choice Award at the Teen Choice Awards.
KUTCHER: Everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own things. You can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one, build one. Find your opportunities, and always be sexy.
RUSH: And he pointed at his head when he said, "Always be sexy." Not below his waist. He pointed at his head. He said earlier, intelligence is what's really sexy. Being smart, being intelligent, is sexy. Now, this last sound bite, one of the reasons I think that there's a tremendous Steve Jobs influence in this is because that last sound bite is Steve Jobs. That's practically a direct quote from Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs wrote and spoke often about being young, growing up, and entering the adult world. He's a little bit of a rebel now and then. And he looked at what life was.
He saw a lot of formulas, and people were living formulas and plugging themselves into formulas, and then trying to climb the ladders that existed in the various formulas. And he questioned it. And he questioned the assumption that everybody was smarter than he was, particularly older people and more successful people he claimed were smarter than he was. He said, I don't want to look at life that way. People are not necessarily smarter than you. He told graduates at Stanford this. Don't assume that everybody's smarter than you are. Most people do that. Most people assume that other people are hipper, have it together more, smarter, and Jobs was obsessed with persuading people and believing it himself, that nobody out there is any smarter than you, and it's wrong to think of yourself that way.
It's wrong to go through life subordinating yourself to others because it's either the polite thing to do or it's the proper thing to do for somebody inexperienced. Don't look at yourself that way. You only got one life. Make it what you want to be. Don't plug yourself into the formulas. One of the age-old formulas -- when I bought my first house, Sacramento, the guy, the real estate agent said, "Well, don't worry about it, Rush, they don't let you make any money in this country 'til you're 40, anyway." Well, that's a formula. And it used to be the case. You could track it. People had to become that age before they were gonna be trusted by employers with serious jobs, serious compensation. It's just the way it was. But it was a formula. And Jobs was always opining against this. Make your own life; write your own formula. Don't assume everybody's smarter than you are. They're not. The world's made up of people just like you. In fact, you're probably smarter than a lot of the other people.
Do not put yourself down, was the message. Do not rest on the realization that you can't make it because there are other people smarter than you. That's a cop-out, it's an excuse, and don't do it. Don't assume anything, particularly that you're not as smart as other people, that you're not as creative, that you're not as valid. And that's really what Jobs was talking about. Don't question your own worth. Don't question your own validity because of the formulas that society or life has built. This was not a political thing with him. With Jobs it was simply the way life was structured, and he didn't want to be in a structured life that others had written. He wanted to write his own. Now, that quote from Kutcher, I am dead certain that comes from what he learned about Jobs playing this role. To the extent that the other stuff he believes, I'm not gonna question it; he probably does. But the point is, again, that it -- well, it's important because the people that he said this to -- really, one of the things that's been eating away and bothering me is there hasn't been this kind of can-do spirit in this country. I mean, outside of this program.
I'm talking about where these kids are. They're going to school, the music they're listening to, the movies and TV shows they're watching, the stuff going back and forth on Twitter. For God's sake, wherever there are liberals, it's nothing but fatalism. It's nothing but doom and gloom. It's nothing but the world is screwing everybody. It's nothing but pain and suffering and lost opportunity and no hope, and so that's why you have to let somebody like Obama or some other Democrat or a government take care of you, because there isn't any hope for you. The Democrat Party and liberals in general have built this belief system that is rooted in and based on contempt for average people and the belief that average people can't do anything on their own.
--snip--
(Audio of segments, videos of Kutcher's Teen Choice Address and Steve Jobs' 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford all at the link above. All in all a very positive message to America's youth, they need it!)
It was interesting to learn that his name is "Chris".
I don't know much about Kutcher. The Steve Jobs movie is one I'd like to see.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:32 am
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