BIGMOUTH LIMBAUGH CAUGHT OUT

Rush Limbaugh is America's Big Mouth. This scourge of all men, ideas and
things liberal has been spewing vitriol on talk radio for two decades. His
show is broadcast by 600 stations across the nation and his fans and
followers number over 20 million. He earns $200 million a year.

His show, interspersed with commercials, some of which he does in his
booming voice, is broadcast most days of the week and is an unending
harangue against the liberal victim or idea of the day. During the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, Limbaugh, whom his fans calls Rush, attacked Clinton in
the most lurid language, urging Congress to impeach him. Much to Rush's
regret, Clinton survived, but so sick was the president of the abuse thrown
at him by Rush and his phone-in listeners, that he complained about it
publicly, something sitting presidents seldom do. This gave Rush more
ammunition to blacken Clinton and heap even more abuse on him.

Limbaugh's views on the world beyond America can only be imagined. He never
has a nice thing to say about any Third World country. If he had the power
or the ability, he would just do away with all those teeming millions and
their far-flung habitats whose capitals have unpronounceable names and
whose languages do not sound like English.

Rush is a great favourite with the Bush family. The elder Bush as president
invited him to spend a night at the White House and had the Lincoln room
opened for him to sleep in. Could a greater insult have been done to Old
Abe? I don't think. Rush was the loudest, the most persistent advocate of
invading Iraq and destroying Saddam Hussein and his regime. He celebrated
that one-sided war as a great and glorious chapter in the nation's book.
The chosen target of this human rant-machine in days preceding the invasion
was France because of the principled position it had taken in the Security
Council. He insulted and abused everything French, including French fries,
which are not French but American, someone should have told him. There are
no French fries in France, only frites.

And now Bigmouth Rush is down. He who sat in judgment on everything and
everyone who did not meet his approval is sprawled on the ground, flat on
his face. He has confessed that he, Rush Limbaugh the Thundering Prophet of
the Right, is hooked on pain-killing drugs. He has gone off the air and is
in a rehab centre for a month. He has also confessed that he has been in
rehab twice before with nothing to show for it. He got found out to the
great delight of his victims when one of his former maids told a tabloid,
in return for some greenbacks of course, that she had been procuring huge
quantities of pain-killers for the great man for years. The quantities
mentioned were mind-boggling. What was he doing with all that? It now turns
out that this matter was under FBI investigation for more than a year
though not a word of it leaked out.

The drug that Rush says he became addicted to because of his severe and
chronic back pain is OxyContin, often called Hillbilly Heroin. Dr Drew
Pinsky, an addiction specialist, told CNN that if Limbaugh is addicted to
OxyContin, "We're really talking about opiate addiction. The withdrawal is
miserable and painful and it takes a long time to recover." The disease is
insidious, Pinsky said. "It's a progressive disease, and when it
progresses, the house of cards falls." Still, he said, "I've seen miracle
recoveries."

In a 1995 interview, Limbaugh said that "too many whites are getting away
with drug use. The answer is to find the ones who are getting away with it,
convict them and send them up the river." He may find that his advice is
being finally taken. Limbaugh's fans are known as 'dittoheads'. Wrote Joe
Conason in an online publication, "I hope he and his dittoheads might learn
something from this and their hardhearted attitude might change as a result
of seeing someone they care about in trouble."

It also proves that the Biblical advice 'judge not that ye not be judged'
remains as valid today as when it was given. I hope the pontificators of
our Mullahdom learn something from Rush's fall, adopt humility and refrain
from sitting in judgment on the rest of us.