RUSH LIMBAUGH'S 'FANS' SAY LOYALTY HAS LIMITS

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

As president-elect of our local Rush Limbaugh Fan Club, I've been
deputized to write this letter regarding your recent legal problems.

Here in Gopher County some of your loyal followers are upset about
what they've been reading and hearing in the media, which (as we all
know) is run by a bunch of liberal pansies (except for your radio
show, of course!).

Anyhow, we were all real sorry to learn about you being a dope addict.
Naturally we didn't believe a word of the story until it came from
your own lips.

Seeing how you've been so hard-core against drug users on your radio
show - saying that they ought to be locked up with murderers and
rapists - it must've been hard on you to sneak around all those years,
pretending like you were some straight-up, sober citizen.

According to Palm Beach prosecutors, in only six months you got about
2,000 painkiller pills from pharmacies in your neighborhood (and
that's not including what you scored on the sly from your maid).

When you do the arithmetic, that works out to at least 11 hits of
opiate-based analgesics a day - enough to put any lily-livered liberal
in the emergency room, yet it didn't even slow you down!

Speaking on behalf of your devoted radio listeners, most of us never
suspected that you were ripped to the gills. You always made perfect
sense to us.

Still, we were sympathetic when you explained that you'd been popping
pills because your back was hurting and then your eardrums were
hurting, and I forget what else was hurting.

Hey, it's a hard job, sitting in front of that microphone. You don't
get much exercise, except for the jaw muscles.

Admittedly, we got worried when you went into rehab, since the concept
was pretty much invented by mushy-hearted liberals who wanted to help
drug users instead of punish them. Thank goodness you were still a
diehard conservative when you came out!

But that, Mr. Limbaugh, is when the trouble began.

The authorities in Palm Beach have been investigating a drug ring that
allegedly supplied some of your pain pills. However, instead of
cooperating with law-enforcement officials, you've recently instructed
your attorney to stonewall.

To those who have followed you faithfully, it's mighty confusing.
You've always said that you were pro law-and-order, ranting about
criminal suspects who complained that their constitutional rights were
being violated.

Yet that's exactly what you're doing now, and you haven't even been
charged with anything.

Prosecutors want your medical records in order to make sure you didn't
scam overlapping prescriptions from different doctors, which is
illegal. You say the state attorney's request is an invasion of
privacy, and you want the medical files sealed permanently.

It sure is strange to hear you talk about privacy as something so
important. Remember all the laughs you got out of Monica Lewinsky's
situation?

Imagine what would've happened if the special prosecutors had listened
to her pleas for privacy. There would have been no impeachment of Bill
Clinton, and America would have been deprived of hours of your laser
wit and acid commentary.

Speaking of Ken Starr, why didn't you hire him to be your defense
lawyer? A solidly upright, uptight ultraconservative. This Roy Black
fellow might be one of the country's best trial attorneys, but are you
aware that he has represented murderers, thieves, drug kingpins and -
worst of all - one of the Kennedys! You can't get more liberal than
that.

Now, you and Mr. Black claim that the authorities in Palm Beach are
persecuting you because of your political beliefs.

"The Democrats still cannot defeat me in the arena of political
ideas," you said on your radio show. "And so now they are trying to do
so in the court of public opinion and the legal system."

Whoa.

Even for the most dedicated Limbaugh listeners (and here in Gopher
County we've been steadfast), this is too much to swallow.

All of a sudden you're the innocent victim of a vast, nefarious
political conspiracy - for God's sake, you sound just like Hillary!

Next thing we know, you'll be telling us that Dick Gephardt spiked
your Lipitors with Xanax. Or that Howard Dean got you hooked on those
OxyContins he is a doctor, right?)

Please, Rush, don't go down this slippery slope. With every passing
day you act more like the "whiny wimps" you've been ridiculing all
these years.

Here in the land of the right-wing and the righteous, we're loyal but
we have our limits.

We can forgive you for being a pillhead - but never for being a
liberal.