RUSH IS STILL STONE WRONG

Pain Killer Rush is back on his day job, hastening the slide of his 30
million ditto-heads down the rabbit hole. Limbaugh is drug-free, if we
take him at his word. His word, though, is once again blaming every
evil loose in the world on either Bill Clinton or the conspiracy of
illicit liberals.

Good manners suggest that Limbaugh be offered sympathy for
rehabilitation from his maddening addiction to illicit drugs. The
fellow talk shows groan with defenders denying that their stoned idol
should be judged a common criminal and imprisoned like other addicts
whom the judicial system steamrolls. Not withstanding its illegality.
Limbaugh's addiction, they say, is an understandable pursuit, sort of
a white millionaire's benign pain therapy.

Even Rush begs for relief from this double standard.

In a typical Limbaugh ramble, edited here for clarity, the talkmeister
addressed his back ailment but denied that it's accounted totally for
his illegal drug habit. "Now, as to managing my pain," he said on the
air, "I've got two herniated disks between C5 and C6 or in that area,
and I have discovered something while I've been gone that the way I
sit at a computer aggravates it partially, but I'm also taking
medication for it called Vioxx. I was introduced to Vioxx out at the
treatment center, and it has cut the discomfort, which is
considerable, and it's primarily when I sit. It's cut it over half.
They also introduced me to a sort of a physical therapy plan."

He elaborated that surgery on his back had a 2 percent chance of
damaging his larynx so he opted to skip it. Still, the OxyContin he
spent a fortune acquiring illegally were not simply to relieve his
back pain, as his defenders argue.

"Don't misunderstand, folks, I am not saying that that's why - I took
the drugs because I liked them and I found excuses to take them, so
I'm not weaseling. I'm just saying that one of the things was that I
did not put my health first. That's one of the things about being an
addict.

"The minute that pain started I should have gone to a doctor and if it
says you're going to be out of work for four weeks or five, that's
what I should have done. But I didn't, because I liked the pills too
much. And I may have to do this, depending on whether or not I can
control the pain with other things. And I probably will have to do it
at some point. Just so you know."

Limbaugh stops short of admitting that he is a criminal addict and
that he should join those other non-violent addicts he has so joyfully
serenaded off to prison over the years.

A resort to hard drugs, whether legal or not, is a bad idea - and should
be avoided. Working-class heroin addicts on the street crawl through a
sewer to get their fix of poison for the same reason as Limbaugh: to
relieve pain.

Years ago, when I ran my own magazine, I asked activist / comedian Dick
Gregory: "Why do you believe that a heroin addict on the street is
driven to use drugs?" This former alcoholic so wise to the mean streets
of Chicago gave a salient answer that remains unimproved on.

"[The addict] is driven by various conditions in the country, various
attitudes in this sick, degenerate nation where we play a manhood
game, where we play up our heroes as being cowboys with the quick gun;
and the various kids think they can get manhood by doing various
things in a system where they watch adults drink booze 24 hours a day.

"We don't want to admit it but there is more crime committed in
America under the influence of alcohol than under the influence of
drugs, more auto accidents...If you were in an accident and were
unconscious and carried to the hospital, before they do anything with
you, they would give you a shot of dope [to relieve the pain].

"How many black folks and Puerto Ricans and Mexican young kids live in
a state of [pain] 24 hours a day? They are saying I don't need a
doctor to give me drugs [to relieve my pain]. I can go out and get my
own."

The pain that Limbaugh sought illegal drugs to relieve, Gregory
argued, is not much different from the pain that street heroin addicts
are driven to seek relief for. All too many of the non-violent,
non-white street addicts are selectively rounded up by cops, sorted by
prosecutors and judges. They are then fed to the wage-slave suburban
prison guards who earn table money by supplying them hard drugs behind
the bars of the cruel, unfair prison-industrial complex.

Those fighting harsh drug policies, such as New York State's
Rockefeller drug laws, might recruit as an ally the newly
rehabilitated Limbaugh. With charges of money laundering and illegal
drug scoring hanging over his head, Pain Killer Rush might likely view
incarceration for drug addiction in a new light.

As ditto-heads alibi for their guru, prison reformers might enlist him
for their liberal cause. It just might save Limbaugh from a stint on
the prison tier.