LIMBAUGH MAY FIND IT HARD NOT TO BE HUMBLE

Rush Limbaugh really is "show prep for the rest of the media" - at least he
has been for the past few weeks.

I said some time ago that I'd say no more about the Prince of Pompous
because he was self-destructing quite well and needed no outside help.

But I thought it'd be his incessant bragging and haughty, cigar-puffing
ways that would ultimately disgust even the most ardent dittohead.

Who'd have believed "your epitome of morality and virtue" was feeding a
black-market drug habit, of all things? There's an old saying about gods
and heroes having feet of clay. There's also one about people in glass
houses throwing stones.

After first hinting that the big bad "liberal news media" were at it again
with their customary "inaccuracies and distortions," Limbaugh finally
fessed up and admitted on the air that it was true after all. To his
credit, he said he wouldn't blame anyone but himself.

Having suffered my own problems with drugs and alcohol, I can appreciate
the utter hell Limbaugh faces in his uphill fight to kick an addiction he
said started innocently enough with a bad back and eventually led to
consuming as many as 30 OxyContins daily before the National Enquirer broke
the story - and perhaps the man himself.

The irony would be breathtaking: The paper no one believes brings down a
man so many believe.

It's passing strange that when the average person does drugs, it's to get
high. But when a celebrity like Limbaugh does them, it's for medicinal
purposes only.

What really bothers me is the hypocrisy he displayed in mocking athletes,
movie actors and rock stars like Kurt Cobain for doing what he himself was
doing: drugs.

So many drugs, in fact, they're what brought on his deafness - not the
"autoimmune disease" he claimed caused it.

Scratch a braggart, and you'll find an insecure person.

Scratch Rush Limbaugh, and you'll uncover a reticent, overweight,
effeminate-looking high-school senior who evolved into "a childless,
twice-divorced, thrice-married schlub whose idea of a good time is to lie
on his couch and watch football endlessly" - as Newsweek columnist Evan
Thomas put it in the Oct. 20 issue.

His mother said he was "very quiet," kept to himself a lot, didn't care
much for Halloween and would sometimes drop water balloons from his
upstairs bedroom on the heads of trick-or-treaters below.

Limbaugh didn't get along with his father because he refused to carry on an
old family tradition and become a lawyer. The father, by the way, served as
an early role model for his son by ranting and railing at Walter Cronkrite
night after night.

He's described by friends and others who know him as "self-absorbed" (who'd
have thought such a thing), ill at ease off-mike, averse to hanging around
Washington and - surprisingly - having "few political heavyweights as friends."

Two women who dated him said they'd never do so again because "he talked
about himself and didn't seem interested in them at all."

That pretty well sums up his program: Limbaugh talking about Limbaugh. It'd
be nice if a more humble version emerges from such a humiliating ordeal.

(Richard Orr is a Herald correspondent. )