Kevin Drum [*] catches Jonah Goldberg trolling for examples of people on the left making fun of Rush Limbaugh’s narcotics addiction. I don’t think he’ll find much; our side, with a few exceptions, has been remarkably well-behaved. (Due not at all, I have to assume, to my earlier plea for compassion. [*])
Rush and his defenders, by contrast, have been behaving rather badly. They’ve been pushing the line that because Rush (if you believe his account) got into the pills after being prescribed them for physical pain and was taking illegally purchased pharmaceuticals rather than white powders sold in baggies, he wasn’t really anything like all those nasty junkies out there for whom Limbaugh always expressed such hatred and contempt.
Limbaugh was rich enough not to have had to stick up any liquor stores to support his habit. That’s the only moral distinction between him and a street drug addict. He, and his friends and admirers, ought to learn something from his addiction. It shouldn’t, as my grandmother used to say, be a total loss.