Don’t Rush to judgment

It is understandable why so many of us would like to kick Rush Limbaugh while he’s down. Isn’t that how he operates? Isn’t he the guy who once called a young Chelsea Clinton “homely"? Wasn’t it Rush who said toss all drug abusers in the slammer and throw away the key? Isn’t Limbaugh the loud-mouth who condemns all human weaknesses just to bolster the ratings for his long-running talk radio show?

Yes he is. But Limbaugh’s recent admitted addiction to drugs should not be used to condemn the man. He should not be thrown in jail, like the nearly half-million other Americans currently serving time in U.S. prisons for drug-related offensives. That would do nothing to free those poor souls.

Limbaugh’s forced admission—it took a grocery store tabloid to reveal the truth—simply proves that Limbaugh has typical human frailties and lives in a society that promotes drugs as the answer to life’s challenges. Count the number of prescription drug advertisements now aired on nightly television. They are as common as automobile ads. Drugs, we are told, will eliminate pain, anxiety, heartburn and erectile dysfunction. And we run from doctor to doctor to get our fixes. Some of us are addicted to legal drugs, others to those medicines not mass produced by pharmaceutical companies. There’s little difference.

The best we can hope for is that Limbaugh and his ilk will come to realize that drug addiction is a disease and not a crime. But don’t count on it—there’s no pill yet to cure the foolishness of the millions of dittoheads among us.