THE LEFT'S GLOATING IS TACKY, MISGUIDED

Rush Limbaugh should be ashamed of himself. And you know what? He probably
is.

Proud and successful people who end up going into rehab under a cloud of
scandal pretty much always feel shame. That Rush Limbaugh has condemned drug
use over the years and called for the punishment of illegal drug users
probably makes Limbaugh feel even worse. Handing your enemies the noose is
never a pick-me-up.

Limbaugh's detractors are having a grand time at his expense. Garrison
Keillor noted that Limbaugh's addiction explains how the talk show host
could manage to listen to himself all these years. Don Imus, a former
cocaine addict, declared with characteristic nuance, "Rush is a fat,
pill-popping loser." Imus continued: "Suck it up, fatso, and stop taking 100
pills a day or whatever."

Democrats are already wearing out the treads on the joke that not all of us
have Rush Limbaugh's maid to give us prescription drug coverage.

Har, har, har. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

I don't think any of this stuff is very funny. But it's certainly revealing
that it comes from folks who normally talk about how addiction is a disease.
Compassion comes easily when it's for people you like.

But Rush Limbaugh never pulled any punches either. I may agree with many of
his views and I may even subscribe to his hard-hitting style from time to
time, but I can't muster a huge amount of sympathy or surprise when it comes
to the beating he's receiving.

Yes, I think the gloating at the man's misfortune is tacky. Yes, I think
getting addicted to pain medication after being prescribed it is different
from going out and scoring some heroin (or are all of these anti-Limbaugh
titterers going to start denouncing JFK as a "junkie" too? He was hopped-up
on all sorts of drugs while playing nuclear chicken with Moscow). But
Limbaugh is a big boy and getting grief from your enemies comes with the
territory.

Where I do have sympathy for Limbaugh is the ordeal he's about to go
through. Taking shots from liberal gadflies, he's used to. What lies ahead
of him is new and terrifying territory.

He's off to a good start. His statement last Friday was humane, mature,
humble and pitch-perfect. He's right: he's not a role model for seeking help
and he's not a victim either. He made at least a few terrible mistakes and
he's now trying to rectify them.

It sounds to me that Limbaugh realizes he's got more to worry about than
whether Al Franken is making a jerk out of himself again. And being a
bazillionaire will make recovery easier for Limbaugh than for lots of
people.

But what drives me nuts about this story is how universally misguided the
coverage has been. When word came out that Limbaugh had admitted to his
addiction, the networks, the newspapers and the countless one-man-band
outlets on the Web immediately scurried to find examples of Limbaugh
condemning drug use. Aha! He's a hypocrite!

So what?

The coverage made it seem as if Limbaugh's crime or mistake was his
hypocrisy not his drug addiction. That certainly makes sense in a
journalistic culture incapable of condemning most inappropriate behaviors
(racism being the only major exception).

But this is batty. Would Limbaugh really be a better person if all along
he'd been telling the world, "Go ahead, take lots and lots of drugs. It's
your own business"?

Hypocrisy is often a bad thing, but not always. Certainly saying the right
thing while privately doing the wrong thing is still better than both saying
and doing the wrong thing.

So let's get this straight: Rush Limbaugh was right when he told people
addiction is bad and so is buying drugs illegally. He was wrong when he got
addicted and started buying illegal drugs. His mistake was the drugs, not
the hypocrisy.

To argue that every conservative must be perfect before he or she can offer
an opinion is to say that conservatives can never offer their opinions. No
conservative I know said conservatives are perfect.

But now many proponents of legalization, from the libertarian right to the
nanny state left, are trying to take advantage of Limbaugh's plight. They
want Limbaugh to come out in favor of legalization - to "strike a signature
blow for liberty" in the words of columnist Jim Pinkerton. Again, they
believe Limbaugh's error was his hypocrisy not his drug use.

I would have a lot more respect for Limbaugh if he stuck to saying what is
unpopular: That he was right all along.