WHAT DO RUSH LIMBAUGH AND NARCO NEWS HAVE IN COMMON?

A pair of media-related surprises left me slack-jawed last week.

In the morning, journalist Al Giordano announced that the Narco News
Bulletin (www.narconews.com) would cease publication. In the afternoon,
Rush Limbaugh admitted being addicted to pain pills.

I was startled by both the developments, but more so by the Narco News
announcement. I'd been reading the site since its inception. On the other
hand, I'd been listening to Limbaugh only for a week. Still I was
convinced, as I wrongly predicted in this space last week, that Limbaugh
would continue to avoid comments on his own personal drug scandal while
waiting for the controversy to dissipate.

Instead, Limbaugh took the most politically correct path he could -
straight to rehab. He spoke with a seemingly forthright tone, but he
disingenuously tried to distance himself from fellow celebrities who had
checked themselves into treatment after being caught up in nasty
drug-related publicity.

"They are said to be great role models and examples for others," he
declared. "Well, I am no role model."

Thanks for clearing up the confusion, Rush.

He'll be gone for 30 days, but sadly, Narco News will stop growing
indefinitely. Giordano, the publisher of Narco News, will continue to
update his weblog, Bigleftoutside.com (which offered a typically subversive
take on Limbaugh in a post titled "Of Course Rush is a Junky... He's an
American!"). And, fortunately, the Narco News archives will remain online.

But Narco News itself will not be updated after tomorrow, three and a half
years after it started disseminating news that few in North America had
ever seen. From the beginning, Narco News tackled subjects beyond drug
policy, and the more than 800 articles at the site cover a wide variety of
topics. There was a common theme, however. The stories always aimed to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, striving toward the
difficult standard established for newspapers by journalist Finley Peter Dunne.

I learned a lot about the world which I would not have known without
reading the site, but drug news junky that I am, it was the drug corruption
stories that kept me coming back. Narco News dug under the superficial
surface that the mainstream press report as the drug war. What it revealed
was embarrassing for those in power.

Narco News showed how heads of state in different countries have ties to
the illegal drug trade; how narco-dollars run through the American economy;
how the biggest banks in the world profit from drug money laundering.

Power sometimes pushed back, as it did when Giordano was sued by banking
giant Banamex for distributing well-established reports that the company
was involved with drug trafficking. Narco News stood its ground, and not
only won the trial, but emerged with a legal precedent elevating free
speech rights for internet-based journalists.

What freedoms has Rush Limbaugh won for anyone lately?

But Narco News and the Rush Limbaugh Show do share some similarities. The
proprietors of both entities are unapologetic about their use of the same
dangerous drug - tobacco.

More importantly, they both offered an important lesson about drug
prohibition to their respective audiences: Many who passionately condemn
drugs hold a vested interest in that which they denounce.