BASHER'S BACK

Limbaugh Spins His Return To The Airwaves

"There's more honesty to come," Rush Limbaugh promised on his first day
back on the air after five weeks in drug rehabilitation.

"More" implies that there has been some honesty, but we must have missed
it. Perhaps he meant with himself; his references to his drug treatment
ordeal indicated it must have been insightful for so cocky a person as he.

That's about as close as he came to apologizing to his audience. His return
was vintage Limbaugh, as mean-spirited and narrow-minded as ever. There was
no acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of his being exposed as a drug-abusing
addict after having harshly criticized public figures tainted by illegal
drug abuse in the past. He was in fact defensive on that score, asserting
that he's never been "phony" or "artificial" on his program because "I
avoided the subject of drugs on this program for the precise reason that I
was keeping a secret."

The question of whether Limbaugh should even be back on his old show, as if
nothing happened, apparently didn't occur to him, his network or much of
his conservative audience. His defenders argue that prescription drugs are
different than illegal drugs like cocaine or heroin. They say Limbaugh
suffers from severe back pain uncorrected by spinal surgery and is not a
recreational user seeking a "high."

But prescription drugs are legal only with a prescription. Close personal
associates claim he was buying illegal black-market pain pills - an offense
that, if true, is certainly on a par with other street drug purchases. And
he all but admitted Monday that he enjoyed the way the pills made him feel.

Some hoped that his exposure and rehabilitation experience might cause him
to show the same degree of empathy and fairness toward his political foes
that he received. It would have redemptive to hear him crusade for
less-harsh punishment of first-time and non-violent drug offenders, and for
more and better drug treatment facilities.

Apparently, fame in conservative circles means never having to say you're
sorry. Limbaugh signed off by warning liberals, "The party's over; I'm back."

Let's hope the state attorney's office in Palm Beach County, where Limbaugh
owns a $24 million oceanfront mansion, isn't quite as willing to sweep this
drug investigation under the rug as Rush and his "ditto- heads" are.

If there's really "more honesty to come," it should be in fully cooperating
with law enforcement authorities investigating illegal pill trafficking
rings, not playing coy with listeners about "a whole lot of stuff I can't
tell you yet."