Rush a Drug War Victim?
Here is a roundup that the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution just published, concerning
allegations that Rush Limbaugh was hooked on OxyContin and purchased his pills via the black market.
I quit listening to Limbaugh's show several years ago, after he had made one comment too many in support of the Drug War. Limbaugh has long styled himself a champion of free enterprise, individual rights, and limited government. His hawkish positions on our middle-eastern military adventures abroad, and the Drug War at home, however, contradict the very principles he claims to espouse. As I said to myself back then, if I want hypocrisy and bombast, I can click to C-SPAN and not have to deal with commercials and heavy-handed product placement.
These days, I hear Rush only a few seconds or minutes at a time, while flipping around the AM dial looking for something else. I almost never catch him saying anything that makes me want to stay with him. The eclectic, often bizarre programming choices of the local pirate or high school radio stations are far more appealing (and mind you,
my hometown pirate station was playing a loop of silence punctuated by someone coughing, over and over, the other day -- even
that kind of thing is more interesting than Limbaugh).
I may start listening to El Rushbo again, though, to see how he handles this OxyContin flap. I wonder if he will make excuses, or more contemptibly, assert some kind of indvidual right to his "little blue ones," even while continying to deny that the user of, say, marijuana, cocaine, or ecstasy, has any similar right.
Will Limbaugh take like a man the punishment meted out by those who conduct the Drug War he has supported? Will he try to weasel out (e.g., turning state's evidence in exchange for immunity)? Or will he become a born-again Libertarian? Will he suddenly discover and trumpet the right of an adult citizen to ingest whatever the hell he chooses (while all the time remaining responsible for actions taken under any intoxicating influence)? Will he realize and broadcast the truth that the Federal government far oversteps its constitutional authority in prosecuting the War on Drugs? One can only hope. Let's all gather around the radio again tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for another thrilling installment of, "As the Rush Turns."
Then again, I heard that they'll rerun a favorite "silence and coughing" show episode on the pirate radio station. It'll be a tough choice.
