Rush Limbaugh made a heartfelt public statement Friday about his addiction problem, which includes potentially significant criminal/legal issues. Rush is in serious trouble, but he doesn't appear to be looking for special dispensation from the public.
I am not making any excuses. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes.They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem. At the present time the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete. So, I will only say that the stories you have read and heard contain inaccuracies and distortions, which I will clear up when I am free to speak about them. I deeply appreciate all of your support over this last tumultuous week. It has sustained me. I ask now for your prayers.
Rush's own statement is in sharp contrast to the tone of this week's cover story in Newsweek, written by Evan Thomas with the help of no less than eleven named contributors. Thomas is almost gleeful in tone -- he and his colleagues seem to get great satisfaction from Rush's difficulties. In fact, it seems to go well beyond mere schadenfreude, and into some combination of professional envy and ideological antagonism. The latter may be the driver, given the gratuitous swipes at President Bush while supposedly providing an analysis of Rush's personality and psyche. Ugh.
Rush Limbaugh has always had far more followers than friends. Bombastic and clowning on air, shy and bumptious off it, Limbaugh could count on 20 million “Dittoheads” and talk-radio fans to tune in five days a week. But it’s hard to find many people who really know him. He was a lonely object of mass adulation, socially ill at ease, at least occasionally depressed and, for the past several years, living in a private hell of pain and compulsion.Posted by Alan at October 12, 2003 05:47 PMBut Limbaugh’s story owes more to the “Wizard of Oz” than “The Scarlet Letter.” The man behind the curtain is not the God of Family Values but a childless, twice-divorced, thrice-married schlub whose idea of a good time is to lie on his couch and watch football endlessly. When Rush Limbaugh declared to his radio audience that he was “your 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,” he was acting. He “regards himself as an entertainer who is very pleased that people pay attention to his political views,” says Wall Street editorial writer John Fund, who collaborated with Limbaugh on one of the radio host’s books (“The Way Things Ought to Be”).
Granted, Limbaugh’s act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people. With his heartland pieties and scorn for “feminazis” and “commie-symps” like “West Wing” president Martin Sheen (“Martin Sheenski” to Limbaugh), he is the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America. Former president George H.W. Bush, always eager to cover his right flank, personally carried Limbaugh’s bags into the White House when Limbaugh stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in 1992. After the Republicans won control of the House in 1994 for only the second time in 50 years, lawmakers called to personally thank Limbaugh and made him an honorary member of Congress.