RUSH'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 die-hard
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.