Out on a Limbaugh-- A Rush update

   
"Hey, kid-- got any pills?" Rush "Monobrow-in-Broadcasting" Limbaugh, from arguably happier days in his alter ego as the dashing Jeff Christie.

Give his handlers their due, they have kept continuing news of Rush's personal and professional crash and burn to an absolute minimum. (His attorney is Roy Black, who defended William Kennedy Smith on rape charges-- at the time, Limbaugh said on-air that the Kennedy family knew Smith was guilty, which was why they hired Black to represent him.)  Back from a gruelling 30-day detox at a place that uses yoga and horse-assisted therapy, Limbaugh is back on the air acting like nothing ever happened, and won't. Unfortunately, he's probably right about the last part.

Still, the story is too colossal to bury completely, and a few tidbits have surfaced since his return. Besides his continuing legal woes (narcotics traffiking, money laundering), he's now being investigated for "doctor shopping"-- from one pharmacy alone, Rush got 2,130 pills in a five-month period. Almost as soon as that news hit the fan, a memo from his network was leaked to the New York Daily News concerning how to put a happy face on the Limbaugh mess, the better to protect their #1 cash cow. Even his filthy rich Palm Beach community has been in the news regarding their celebrity neighbor, and they don't like being made to feel  guilty by association. And this week it was reported that Limbaugh and his lawyers are trying to keep his medical records sealed, so the world won't know exactly how depraved his drug use really was. Personally, I can't wait for the next episode of this soap-opera, which I like to call Rush to Hell.

(One bit of news that has been overlooked is that Rush made the top of the list for the new annual award, Yutzes of the Year. Click here to listen the inner thoughts that won him the honor.)

Ann Coulter's idiotic statement that liberals now have a drug user that they can hate (they already had one, Ann: George Bush Jr.) can, I think, be turned into an intelligent question for Limbaugh's fans: Why is this guy worthy of  sympathy, forgiveness and freedom, but others who committed his crimes-- and according to the way you people vote, you consider his behavior criminal-- should be scorned and thrown in prison?  To use an expression that Limbaugh himself has used to justify all his bigotries and lies, where's the intellectual consistency there? (Pretty high-falutin' words, by the way, coming from a guy who flunked out of college in his first semester.)

Those of us who despise this phony asshole are already fuming over how he will undoubtedly walk away scot free from all of this, avoiding jail sentences that have been doled out to millions of others over the past 20-plus years, the majority for offenses less than his. Most of the people in U.S. prisons are there for breaking drug laws, and I'll bet that a lot of guys in those facilities would love to meet Rush.
 
We can remind ourselves, however, that even if Limbaugh evades incarceration, the life he's led for the past several years must have been smaller than any actual jail cell. I wonder if he didn't suffer from the same guilt over the despicable things he's said and done that Lee Atwater apparently did at the end of his life. So he turned to hard drugs to kill the pain and became as hooked as anyone ever has, and the chances are good that he's probably already taking them again, rehab be fucked.

Now, branded as a hypocrite and criminal, facing one possible prison sentence after another, and-- worst of all-- of no use to the political powers to which he sold his soul (in order to get, ironically, the life he has now), his world will become even tinier, and the loneliness and self-loathing he'll feel will be even worse than when those feelings drove him to dope in the first place.

Good.