Pubdate: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 Source: Lowell Sun (MA) Copyright: 2003 MediaNews Group, Inc. Contact: http://www.lowellsun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/852 Author: Michael Goldman Note: Michael Goldman is a consultant to Democratic candidates and a Tufts University professor. Focus Alert: http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0279.html 'H' IS FOR HYPOCRISY, DITTOHEADS You're Rush Limbaugh and you wonder how it went so wrong so quickly. Just two weeks ago, your "dittoheads" were lined up at the altar of your ignorant utterances, yelling amen to every skewered fact you uttered. And on weekends, you got paid a boatload of bucks to show the rest of the world that you knew even less about football than you did about public policy. Life was good, you thought. No, life was great! Now you look around and you can't believe what you see. First, you win the "Trent Lott Foot-in-Mouth Award" for saying that a pro-bowl quarterback, who happens to be African-American, was overrated because of the bias of the "liberal" sports media. Yeah, like John Dennis, Jerry Callahan, and Fred Smerlas. And no sooner did you get kicked out of your weekend gig than you got caught in the kind of scandal that would help win you the "William Bennett Award for Hypocrisy" over Bill himself. You lie in your $2,000-a-night drug rehab hospital bed and think of all the comments about drug sellers and drug users you spouted over the airwaves. There is nothing good about drug use," you said over the air. "Drug use is destroying the country," you said over the air. "If people are violating the law by doing illegal drugs, they ought to be arrested, convicted, and sent up," you said over the air. "The answer is to go out and find out who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them down the river," you said over the air. I don't buy the disease part of it," you said over the air. "We are rationalizing all this irresponsibility and all the choices people are making themselves and we are not blaming them," you said over the air. It is not our responsibility, but the drug user's," you said over the air. And time after time you said the words over the air that haunt you most today, "Whatever happened to personal responsibility?" You're Rush Limbaugh and you've just hired Roy Black, the same guy you crucified for getting William Kennedy Smith off in that Florida rape trial. Soon he'll be earning his paycheck by humanizing and humbling your persona. He'll have you blubbering vapid apologies next to Oprah or Barbara Walters or Diane Saw yer. He'll have you talking about the pressure you felt trying to figure out how to spend the $285 million your contract called for you to earn for making fun of other people. Maybe he'll have you roll over on some bigger players, maybe "out" a celebrity or two who shares your weakness for perscription drugs, all to divert attention from yourself. No doubt your big-bucks attorney will also have you offering to talk to school kids and promising to do public service announcements about the dangers of drugs. Poor old Rush, he'll have them saying, a victim of his success. And you'll pay his enormous fee, because you know he's worth every penny. Meanwhile, you also know a lot of the dittoheads will hang in there. Remember these are the same dopes you got to both despise Bill Clinton, because you told them he was morally unfit to be president; a baby killer because he supported a woman's right to choose; and a deviant for supporting gay rights and yet love Arnold Schwarzenegger even though he, too, supported choice and gay rights, and made Bill look like a choirboy when it came to the babes. You spoke, they listened. And if you could get your old pal, George W., to do a post-treatment photo op, that would be great. Compassionate conservatism, he'll call it. And when W. is asked why he still opposes the right of medical doctors to prescribe marijuana to women suffering from nausea due to chemotherapy treatment, he'll give his half smirk and say he's not prepared to travel down that slippery slope, not yet anyway. Hypocrisy 101. You're Rush Limbaugh and you've had a great run, made a ton of dough, and now find yourself the punch line in Letterman and Leno monologues. As the old Rush Limbaugh would have told you, while chortling over the pain, embarrassment, and humiliation you were suffering, "look in the mirror, knucklehead, and you'll see the person who made it all possible." - --- MAP posted-by: Josh