Am I Being Too Upbeat If I Know American Cities May Never Be the Same?
Aug 17, 2020
RUSH: I was going to lead the program with something today, but I’ve now been forced because of the confluence of events, things that have happened since yesterday when I was deciding the content of today’s show…
You know, I’ve been warning everybody that I can for months that it ain’t gonna be the same ever in major American cities — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. It’s not gonna be the same because of what people are learning. For example, you don’t have to live in New York City to work there. You don’t have to live in New York City to do a bang-up, stellar job there. If you are a company, you don’t need to rent out a bunch of floors in a skyscraper to put employees in because your employees don’t need to be there.
As a result of that, the restaurant industry is forever changed in New York. Broadway is not gonna open until next spring at the earliest. Do you realize that many New York restaurants literally make over half of their nut selling pre-Broadway show dinners? You’d be amazed. When I first got to New York, I’d show up at 5 o’clock thinking I’m getting into the restaurant where there’s nobody there. It’s jam-packed. The reason it’s jam-packed is ’cause everybody in there is going to the theater.
So they serve, they get ’em in, they get ’em out. It’s a massive amount of business that restaurants have lost. They’re never gonna get it back. And how can they stay in business with nobody in business through next spring? And who’s in charge? The one thing that hasn’t been attached to any of this is any accountability for the mayor of that city or the governor of that state.
But look, it’s a lot more detailed than that. And what it really involves is — you know, here, let me tell you what got me started on this. Sal Scognamillo is the owner/chef at Patsy’s. Patsy’s is one of my all-time favorite restaurants, period, and certainly one of my all-time favorite restaurants in New York, Neapolitan Italian. Just the greatest people. Everybody has their favorite restaurant and the thing that makes everybody’s favorite restaurant their favorite restaurant is the people that own it and operate it, and certainly it’s true of Patsy’s.
I went in there every night practically after Rush Limbaugh, The Television Show. Half the audience was in there. And Sal is one of these people, Patsy’s has been affected by Broadway being shut down, by a number of other things. The whole restaurant industry in New York, the hot dog carts. You know, Lincoln Center, the museums, shut down ’til next spring. You can’t find a hot dog cart anywhere. They’re gone. Are they ever coming back? Probably not. This is major, major stuff here.
I’ve been trying to warn people about it for months. And Governor Cuomo has ignored me until recently, and the mayor, even if I was talking to him face-to-face he still wouldn’t get it. So I got this email from Sal, who said, “Boy, it’s so great to listen to your show. You’re so upbeat, it makes me feel better.â€
And while that was nice, I began to ask myself a question. Does Sal Scognamillo have anything to be upbeat about? His restaurant business, his pre-theater business, they’ve set up some tables on the sidewalk, but they can’t open because of COVID-19. They can’t do any business inside. So I was asking myself all day yesterday, have I done the wrong thing by being upbeat? Look, it’s my natural tendency, don’t misunderstand. And I’m a preternaturally optimistic person.
But have I been preternaturally optimistic at the expense of dealing with the reality that a lot of people find themselves in? It can’t be easy for Sal Scognamillo and millions, or thousands of other restaurateurs like him in New York and in Chicago. You know, wherever Democrats are running the show, folks, it is an absolute nightmare.
So I’m asking myself, have I — not let people down, but have I not shot straight with people on the circumstances that they find themselves? Don’t misunderstand. I mean, I was very flattered to get Sal’s reaction to the program. But he talked about how uplifting the experience was because there’s so much despair out there. And it got me to thinking, am I making a mistake by not focusing on the hardships that people are experiencing? In other words, does it sound, has it sounded like I’m out of touch?
Now, I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve not been falsely attached to a reality that doesn’t exist. I mean, I haven’t done that, but still, it’s a question I was asking myself yesterday and last night. Now, I know the immediate reaction. “No, no, Rush, you gotta say upbeat. People need inspiration right now.†But what if inspiration doesn’t quite get the job done?
What if, for example, Sal and other restaurateurs like him, what if he’s never gonna be able to return to his business the way it was. And if that’s the case, how long can he hold out? Next spring? Broadway shows next spring? We’re not even into the fall yet. That won’t happen ’til September 21st. So it got me to thinking about all of the different changes that I have warned people about that New York City is undergoing right now.
And I don’t think whole lot of people have actually — because they’d rather stay in the upbeat, “We’re gonna beat this thing, we’re gonna beat this virus back, we’re gonna return,†everybody wants to return to normal, as do I. There is nobody that wants to return to normal more than I do. And nobody wants to return to normal more for other people than I do.
So I have been thinking about this, and this was gonna be what I was going to lead the program off with. Now, it turns out I have led the program with it, but now I’m gonna put it off to the side and come back to it. All of the things in New York that have changed and maybe forever. For example, do you know how many college students are there in New York on a weekly basis in New York?
How many college students? (interruption) It’s 600,000 — 600,000 college students who are not there. They’re doing remote learning. Now, just think of the ancillary impact of 600,000 students just not there. Buildings not open, education not happening, teachers not doing whatever they’re doing. And that’s just one tiny little slice of the eight million or so people the city swells to during your average workday — 600,000.
So education. What’s gonna become of education in New York? Are those universities ever gonna open up again? You might say, “Oh, yeah, Rush. At some point we’re gonna have vaccine. We’re gonna have therapeutics. We’re gonna…†Well, you would think so. But the longer this goes, the more people are going to adapt to how they’re getting things done now.
And the longer it goes and the longer it takes to adapt, the tougher it’s gonna be to change and go back to what was because people are going to adapt. This is what human beings do. We’re adaptable, and we are going to find ways to adapt to the things we can’t do because we want to do them. So we’re gonna find ways to get them done, and those ways are gonna be the ones that pass the test of time and experience.
And then one day, magically we’re gonna be told, “Okay. Virus is beat! Virus vaccine! Virus therapeutics,†maybe. “We can now go back to the way it was.†It just isn’t gonna be like throwing a switch and everybody going back. Because, folks, now people have learned that you don’t need to spend $4,000 for one half of a closet to live in in New York. You can live in your hometown of 20,000 people and have a huge place for half of what it was costing you in New York.
You don’t have to be in New York. The business owners don’t have to rent all the commercial real estate to house you and give you a place to work, ’cause you ain’t gonna be there anyway — and then what happens to all the restaurants that depend and all of the bodegas and all of the cultural centers that exist because they’re populated by people, various pockets of the city.
I think Cuomo is just starting to get an idea of the dramatic and major impact of all this. But I want to run through it by subject or by area — like education, food, restaurants, culture, any number of ways that this is gonna have an impact. And some of the change may end up being good. I don’t want to be misunderstood. Change happens all the time. Change is constant.
Even when you don’t think things are changing, they’re going to if they haven’t, and people adapt. Especially the ones who are flexible and open to it adapt first and sooner than others do. You’ve got some other people that resist the change, ’cause they were dialed in and they had it made. They had it figured out, and that’s what they want to go back to.
And they may not be able to. So are they gonna be able to adapt? And this is true of Silicon Valley by the same token. You know, Apple just finished building a gazillion-dollar, spaceship-type building, and they earned a profit during their second quarter during a pandemic with nobody in the building! They don’t have to ever send people back if they don’t want to.
Now, they obviously will at some point send some back. But there any number of things that took place before the pandemic hit that we are learning were not necessary. We were spending money out the wazoo because we had it. The United States is an economic super engine, and it was creating wealth in ways that people… This is what so frustrates me about listening to Democrats now.
They haven’t any concept of the wealth that this country creates when it’s devoted to capitalism. Instead of that, we turn it over to Black Lives Matter and Antifa and so forth. We were creating and producing so much wealth that we were able to extract huge sums of money from people for their education, for their rent. If they wanted to purchase something, we were able to extract that money from them.
We might have called it student loans, we might call it FHA loans, but we were still able to get the money from ’em. By “we,†I mean, the culture, the society was able to extract. But now people have learned or in the process of learning that it really doesn’t cost as much as they were spending for a lot of things.
