# Rush Returns! Today! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 17, 2003, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702 "2003-11-17T15:09:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lucki\_Chaarms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lucki\_Chaarms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucki_Chaarms)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/21 "2003-11-18T13:14:53Z")
Aww, c’mon everyone. He’s just an entertainer. Yes, he is. Talking head type conservatives may see him as immensely important to what _they_ do, but most of his listeners see him as an entertainer first and foremost. Liberals who hate him take him infinitely more seriously than most conservatives do. So you don’t like the guy. Don’t listen! Why pay so much attention and devote so much energy to attacking this man? Heavens to Betsy, you mean a rich, famous entertainer was actually doing _drugs_! Surely this could never have happened if he was a liberal! OK, so it was hypocritical of him. Why do you care so much? He’s just not that important, in the grand scheme. LC ---
**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/22 "2003-11-18T13:28:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Waverly \* > \*\*They’ve sucked goats since Moving Pictures. Better forgotten than unfondly remembered, in my opinion. \*\* Oh, I dunno. I can remember a few albums after Moving Pictures that I liked. You’re right that their best stuff was earlier, though. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/23 "2003-11-18T13:34:21Z")
_Roll the Bones_ and _Test for Echo_ were both fine albums! ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/24 "2003-11-18T13:49:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eternal \* > \*\*If Rush never claimed he wasn’t on drugs it’s not technically hypocrisy (what are the chance he’d ever have to?). \*\* In that case, for his next show will he be telling us what the definition of “is” is? ---
**Author:** ![Denis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5e9695/32.png) [@Denis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Denis)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/25 "2003-11-18T14:25:40Z")
_Counterparts_ and _Vapor Trails_ are pretty damn good too! Not to mention their live performances! ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/26 "2003-11-18T14:57:58Z")
_Counterparts_ tooks some warming-up to. I didn’t care for _Vapor Trails_. It sounded like they were trying to be somebody else. ---
**Author:** ![cromulent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b4bc9f/32.png) [@cromulent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cromulent)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/27 "2003-11-18T16:14:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eternal \* > \*\*If Rush never claimed he wasn’t on drugs it’s not technically hypocrisy (what are the chance he’d ever have to?). Of course there’s always room for pointless semantic debate. \*\* Well, forgive me for getting into “pointless semantic debate,” but it seems to me that if you condemn other people for illegal drug use while not admitting that you yourself are an addict, that’s hypocricy. ---
**Author:** ![Beagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/28 "2003-11-18T16:34:41Z")
It’s his ego combined with hypocrisy on this one issue that is _seriously_ rankling me. If you get right down to it, supposed “conservative” values would allow people to make their own “personal” decisons based on their own “personal responsibility.” Here, drugs. This is not abortion, where there is another life interest at stake, maybe (whatever, no hijack intended). Quite the opposite, Rush dragged innocent people into his little conspiracy to acquire controlled substances. If drugs were decriminalized somewhat, or there were registered addict programs, and Rush hadn’t “lawyered up” like a rich man always does – with high-powered gunners – he _might not_ be a raging hypocrite. Maybe. Actually, given the oxycontin law enforcement situation, he should do hard time. When Rush is pointing out hypocrisy on the Left, he’s useful. When he’s ignoring it in his own back yard, he’s defeated whatever credibility he had. Moreover, it’s not entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Balle\_M](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@Balle\_M](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balle_M)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/29 "2003-11-18T16:54:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lord Ashtar \* > \*\*I wonder how proud of him they’d be if it was heroin instead of Oxycotin. > > I ask all these questions, but I never get the answers I want… \*\* Quite a few conservatives, myself included, are NOT proud of him at all. Does it make him a hypocrite? Personally I don’t think so but won’t argue if you do. Does it make him wrong on other issues? No. Will I continue to listen? No more or no less than I did before. I don’t know if this is one of the “answers I want” but there ya go… ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/30 "2003-11-18T17:38:53Z")
That’s it, boys. **Waverly’s** on the _short_ list. ---
**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/31 "2003-11-18T18:41:18Z")
Ooh, does this mean we can start snubbing him and whispering behind his back? ---
**Author:** ![seal\_cleaner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@seal\_cleaner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seal_cleaner)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/32 "2003-11-18T18:45:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by crazy grady \* > \*\*I love Rush Limbaugh. He’s a smart guy who has worked hard and a true professional. I agree with about 90 percent of what he says. > > I know Rush rankles most people on this board, and that is great by me. We will have one hand tied behind our brain just to make it fair! > > Go Rush! > > Grady \*\* Megadittoes! Megadit…oh, fuck it. Let’s review some conservative beliefs, see where we stand, folks. Family values - (Not applicable in California governor’s mansion) Balanced Budgets - (Not on MY watch, traitors!) Government Off the Backs of the People (What’s that you’re READING, Abdul…?) Just Say No To Drugs (for others) Just Say No to Nation-building (to be fair, we don’t appear to be doing this with any effectiveness) Strong national defense (Love to help, have a pimple on my ass…call someone else) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Zahn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e0b2c6/32.png) [@John\_Zahn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Zahn)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/33 "2003-11-18T19:08:06Z")
> [@](#): > > I wonder how proud of him they’d be if it was heroin instead of Oxycotin. My understanding is that one of the drugs he was addicting to was a type of heroin, only it was a synthetic form of it. Rush, in many of his followers eyes is respectable though, because he was an addict who could afford the good prescription stuff even though he was buying it illegally. Supposedly he became addicted to it because of back pain. Maybe. But I wonder if he just liked the feeling it gave him so much, it was just a convenient way of explaining his addiction, and still being able to get the sympathy from his loyal lap dogs. JZ ---
**Author:** ![Lucki\_Chaarms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lucki\_Chaarms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucki_Chaarms)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/34 "2003-11-18T20:40:42Z")
**JZ** - IANAD, but my understanding is that a textbook picture of opiate addiction is one that starts with back pain, or some other intense pain. The person uses the drug for relief from the pain, but gets hooked, and stays addicted for long periods of time with the excuse that they are treating chronic pain. The thing is, this is apparently not an outright lie, more like a denial construct. They continue to somehow experience their malady, but when the addiction is treated, the back pain suddenly disappears. The amazing thing is that Rush was doing more Oxycontin than he would have had access to through shady but legal channels. You’re telling me Rush couldn’t pull off having a couple of doctors writing prescriptions at the same time without any knowledge of each other? He’s a big name, too, so people would look to accomodate him. He must have been doing A LOT. LC ---
**Author:** ![Beagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/35 "2003-11-18T21:25:14Z")
Maybe we do need to break this down a little factually. I’m just going on memory here. 1. Rush had surgery, granted. Surgery, especially back surgery can cause pain, granted. Now, things begin to fuzz up a little (pun intended). 1. As some point over the last half dozen or so years, Rush began gobbling _prodigious_ quantities of opiates. AKA: “hillbilly heroin,” smack, horse, + cocaine = celebrity speedball to your grave, etc… Just the opiates can kill you. I won’t bother to list all those casualties. Let’s say “many.” He involved other people in getting him enough pills to “kill an elephant”? I believe his maid actually said that. So, if he meant what he said over the last several years, it’s fair to say the conservative movement how has it’s own Hunter S. Thompson, or truthfully, a William S. Burroughs. You cannot get around the fact that Rush has been broadcasting higher than anyone since Jim Morrison. “Rush Limbaugh Oxycontin Elephant” – my new handle for him. Or, a good set of search terms. [Listing one.](http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/305/rush.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![Beagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/36 "2003-11-18T21:54:32Z")
> [@](#): > > …I’m a legalizer, and I firmly believe that if Rush Limbaugh wants to pop oxy, it’s not the business of the criminal justice system, so long as he doesn’t violate the safety or property of other people. Limbaugh himself chimed in on the issue, apparently on the legalization side, in March 1998, as part of a response to a caller who was wondering why they didn’t go after alcohol as aggressively as states’ attorneys general were going after tobacco with the lawsuits ([http://www.ndsn.org/marapr98/legal1.html](http://www.ndsn.org/marapr98/legal1.html)). Among other things, Limbaugh replied, “It seems to me that what is missing in the drug fight is legalization. If we want to go after drugs with the same fervor and intensity with which we go after cigarettes, let’s legalize drugs.” > > Naturally this week’s incident has revived discussion of the Limbaugh legalization quotes on discussion groups inhabited by long-time drug reformers. But it has also prompted speculation amongst people concerned with the problem of under-treatment of chronic pain and the growing wave of inappropriate prosecutions of physicians specializing in pain management (a topic that coincidentally is the subject of this issue’s lead news story, as well as last week’s editorial and lead story and other recent editorials and reports). > > Dr. Frank Fisher, a leading authority on pain control who is in the late stages of soundly defeating one of those prosecutions, commented, “This seems like a whole lot more pills than Rush would need if all he wanted to do was get high, but it is within the range that might be used to treat chronic pain.” Fisher also noted, “The large numbers the story talks about getting diverted from a pharmacy lends credence to the idea that much of the overall diversion of pharmaceuticals does not come from bad doctors running pill mills. Think about it. If you were a desperate patient willing to be treated at a pill mill, do you think you could find one?” > > One of the spouting heads on CNN last night was a DEA agent named Joe Kilmer, claiming Oxycontin is “four to five times as strong as heroin.” I thought that sounded like bull, and Dr. Fisher confirmed for me that my instincts were on target. “Milligram for milligram,” Fisher wrote back, “oxycodone and heroin are of similar potency. Heroin is essentially morphine, and the conversion factor when switching from one to the other regards oxycodone as at most twice as potent, depending on whom you ask.” For good measure he sent me a conversion chart showing the equivalency rate as 1:1. It’s not surprising that Kilmer would spout such a falsehood, though, given that it was the DEA which fabricated the so-called “epidemic” of Oxycontin abuse to generate the currently prevailing hysteria over the useful pain reliever… DEA hysteria + overzealous prosectuions + Rush was taking _more_ than he needed to get high? Did. Not. See. That. Coming. _bam__crunch_ ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/37 "2003-11-18T22:08:36Z")
Limbaugh is on record as saying that illegal drug users should have to go to prison. Yes he is a hypocrite. BTW, virtually all individuals who are addicted to pain killers claim chronic pain as the reason. That’s because the “pain” is a symptom of the addiction. The brain produces phantom pain in order to get the reward of the opiate. It’s also quite common, even inevitable for tolerance to increase and for usage to escalate as the addict needs larger and larger doses to get off. Rush wasn’t popping massive quantities of Oxy for pain, he was doing it because he was a junkie. He was hooked through the bag, even he doesn’t deny that. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/38 "2003-11-18T22:24:52Z")
Rush, O’Reilly, etc. are talking heads, not policymakers. Their job is to parrot what the party thinks, to give the ideas air and to let the public react to them. The more reactionary, the better, in fact: If they can get the Michael Moores of the world to blow a few gaskets responding to them, they can go from backwater nobodies broadcasting on late-night AM to mainstream media figures on prime-time FM in multiple markets. To imagine that Rush would risk alienating his core audience (and his political backers) and allying himself with the people he wants to troll by deliberately bucking party dogma is absurd. Secondly, `too many’ to get a high? That’s a new one on me. From what I do know about addiction and building up a tolerance, people generally take more and more of an addictive drug as time goes on to the point where their buzz would be another person’s major medical emergency. Maybe I’m wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/39 "2003-11-18T23:09:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jonathan Chance \* > \*\*That’s it, boys. > > **Waverly’s** on the _short_ list. \*\* Make sure it is near the top, preferably in calligraphic script. ---
**Author:** ![Beagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2003, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702/40 "2003-11-18T23:33:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Rush wasn’t popping massive quantities of Oxy for pain, he was doing it because he was a junkie. He was hooked through the bag, even he doesn’t deny that. Right. I think that, you think that, but an expert witness that will say he was popping more than he needed to get high might know more than I do. Better, be able to convince a jury. It makes sense in a really strange way if you think about it, without going into detail that any abuser would already know. Personally, I thought the whole “pain management being corrupted by the DEA, not the doctors” angle, let’s say, was interesting. I know that when I get a root canal I like to take something far weaker than Oxycontin, and not often. When my back _really_ hurts (rarely), I sure don’t need mass quantities of “hillbilly heroin.” Although I’ve been known to alternate enough acetometaphin, ‘back’ asprin, or ibuprofin to “kill an elephant.” I’m not a pain specialist through personal experience. Knock on wood, et al. Whatever his reasons, Rush is still a hypocrite if he does not follow through on that “legalization”? rhetoric that I also quoted from the article. I knew Rush was harder edged back in the mid-1990s. Maybe he “softened” quietly knowing this shitstorm was on the horizon? Whatever, I’m not waiting for Rush to issue position papers on anything. But, since he has a bully pulpit, now would be the time to put his “talent on loan from God” to good use and argue for some rational reform to the drug laws. Or, yes, be a hypocrite. I’m not backing down on that one. OTOH, I don’t want to keep people in serious pain from enough meds. That’s _bad_ karma, IMO. A primary violation of the categorical imperative - Golden Rule. Massive toothache? I want some freaking meds, dammit! Not a bunch, just enough to get to your office. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rush-returns-today/213702.md?page=3)