RUSH GETTING TREATED TO SORT OF TOLERANCE HE RIDICULES

BOSTON -- After all these years, I have finally come up with the definition
of a liberal wimp. It's someone who feels sorry for Rush Limbaugh.

Here is a man who has kept 20 million dittoheads on a closed loop of
right-wing rhetoric for three hours a day, five days a week, for 15 years.
Here is a man for whom the word "bombastic" was invented.

Imagine what he would say about some "feminazi" caught popping 30 illegal
pills a day. Imagine how forgiving he would be to an "environmental wacko"
scoring OxyContin while tree-hugging. Or any liberal who had to be outed by
the National Enquirer before he took "full responsibility for my problem."

This is a man who created so many petards over the years, it's hard to know
which one to hoist him on. How about the title of his book: "See, I Told
You So." Or how about one of his many tirades against druggies: "The answer
is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them
and send them up the river too." It's Rush, after all, who complained,
"We're becoming too tolerant, folks."

But everytime I rev up a rant, I imagine the demi-god of ditto heads
skulking around a Denny's parking lot to get his fix. I imagine the man
waiting, surely, for his housekeeper/drug dealer to drop a dime. I imagine
a lonesome, 275-pound guy who apparently never even told his wife when he
went into rehab and relapse twice. A man so hooked he may have sacrificed
his hearing to his little blues.

And I, gulp, feel sorry for him.

This is the curse of liberal wimpathy. Conservatives talk of right and
wrong. Liberals talk of strengths and weaknesses. The right thinks of drug
abuse as a moral failing; the left thinks of it as a medical illness. When
one of ours goes bad, they jump o* him like a churchyard dog. When one of
theirs goes bad, we tend to ... understand.

Conservatives have shown fancy footwork in defending Rush. Former Bush
speechwriter David Frum said, "I don't think any less of him for having
ordinary frailties." Gary Bauer, president of American Values, made a moral
distinction between getting addicted in order to get high and getting
addicted to kill pain. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, defended him
to Don Imus because Rush never claimed to be a victim.

Meanwhile opponents, like this wimpette are restrained to the point of
gentility. Even Al Franken, who wrote "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot,"
said, "I don't wish that (drug addiction) on anyone." And Howie Kurtz, the
media voice of a favorite Rush target, The Washington Post, wrote, "I
suspect most people, even those who can't stand the guy, will see a man
struggling with his personal demons and be careful about condemning him for
his weakness."

Does being a member of the righteous right mean never having to say you're
sorry? The closest Rush came to an apology is saying "Well, I am no role
model" for going into rehab. But his fans give him a prayerful pass.

His opponents, however, are members of a left which has always been touchy
(and feely) about value judgments. The worst charge that a liberal launches
at the personal misbehavior of a Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh is one of
"hypocrisy!" Gasp. Last time I looked, hypocrisy wasn't even on the waiting
list for additions to the Ten Commandments.

Limbaugh once described himself as an "epitome of morality of virtue, a man
you could totally trust with your wife, your daughter and even your son in
a Motel 6 overnight." We have yet to see whether the police agree. But in
the court of public opinion, the voice of the angry white man, who once had
his bags carried into the White House by George Bush the First, is being
treated with the sort of tolerance and forgiveness he disparages.

So call me a wimp. When bad things happen to bad people, I have trouble
going for the jugular. Wimpathy by another name is empathy. And
willy-nilly, Rush gets a slice of mine.

In his statement, Limbaugh asked us to pray for him. Well, I'll pass. But I
will hope that while big Rush is in rehab he learns to walk a corridor in
somebody else's shoes.

ELLEN GOODMAN writes a column for The Boston Globe Newspaper Co.