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Rush to Judgement (Part II) With marks from the leather restraints still fresh on his wrists, Rush is rushing back to the airwaves on Monday. Apparently, there are just too many sober, left-of-reactionary Democrats in the primaries begging for hackneyed insults for him to refrain any longer. Limbaugh concedes that recovery from addiction to prescription painkillers will be a lifelong process, as will be recovery from being a hypocritical blowhard. If you’re like me, you can hardly wait for those first words of wisdom on how liberals are ruining rehab centers all across this great land of ours. Bob Grant, the 150 year old talk show host with a heart so rotten cholesterol avoids it, was quoted earlier this week as saying Rush doesn’t owe any apologies. Not for the drug addiction, anyway. I will admit that occasionally, Limbaugh makes a fair observation. Even a broken conservative talk show host is right twice a show. Far right. But the truth is, Rush Limbaugh is not a conservative. We’ve almost never heard him admonishing his listeners about the ballooning federal deficit, the runaway trade deficit, or the lack of free market conditions in the telecommunications industry. George Will is a conservative. William F. Buckley, Jr. is a conservative. Pat Moynihan was half a conservative. Every one of us who chooses to kill the pain with two aspirin and a Coors Light is more of a conservative. Rush Limbaugh is less of a conservative than a simpleton. I once unwittingly tuned in to hear him rant and rave about how people out there fail to understand that in their job, they make what they deserve. Where was Limbaugh and his big Cuban cigar on 9/11, explaining that same lofty concept to firefighters and cops searching through rubble for their fallen peers? Though we now know Rush is far more adept at perceiving the psychotropic nuances of Lortab versus Vicodin, even a big fat idiot knows the world is replete with exceptions to moronic rules of thumb like that one: teachers, nurses, emergency room physicians, clergy, hospice workers, Federal Reserve chairmen, family court judges, school counselors, and perhaps the biggest exception of them all—conservative talk show hosts. Rush Limbaugh’s own income is less a reflection of his intrinsic worth than of his listeners’ unchecked appetite for Avacor, Levitra, and Gold Bond Triple Action Medicated Body Powder. Rush, if you really want to find out what it’s like to become conservative, have kids. On second thought, keep popping those pills. Ironically, Rush made a name for himself by co-opting the cause of the little guy. Still more ironically, like the hallucinogen-ingesting characters in the Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit,” Rush himself often became smaller than a 5 mg extended release OxyContin tablet beckoning him from the night table. Science is changing life for everyone, and somewhere, Aldous Huxley is either laughing or crying. While dopamine-triggering drugs can render you impotent, there is also the option of swallowing online generic Viagra like they were Pez to counteract it. In the 21st Century, this is what we call a balanced diet. But there is another kind of balance that is not only universal but also timeless. For Rush, going deaf was just his conscience’s way of telling him to shut up. A cochlear implant, developed in the 1970s by a bunch of Australian research scientists worth much more than they were paid, bailed Rush out of that one. Right now, Rush Limbaugh should say a little prayer that when his conscience kicks in once and for all, he fares better than Lee Atwater. Click here to rant back. |