Rush Limbaugh, Apologist for the ACLU?

I haven't slammed Rush for a while now, because others are doing such a good job of it. To wit, check out Al Giordano over at BigLeftOutside:

For more than a decade Rush Limbaugh has sat at his microphone and piled on drug addicts, prisoners, criminal defendants and the Constitutional rights they invoke in their defense. He's even gone after defense attorneys as a group, but mainly he's picked on people who couldn't fight back, who had no microphone, no money, no chance.

Limbaugh has never, in fact, entered a fair fight in his life. So he's in a bit over his head now that he needs his own criminal defense, his own defense lawyers, and, this is really funny, Rush now needs the Bill of Rights!...

His discourse yesterday, on the radio, is revealing....

"Why would any of us want such records made public, even if they prove our innocence? It's not up to me to prove my innocence by giving up my right to privacy. I have to give up my right to privacy now in order for the state who is, in effect, just casting a line out there, hoping to hook something. They've got to invade my privacy to do this...

"Now, as you all know, I have admitted that I was addicted to prescription painkillers. I have been to five weeks of treatment. After failing twice to get off of these things myself, I sought professional help, did so, and I continue to be in treatment now. Now, I don't know, and this is...I run the risk here. I'm not whining about it. I'm just genuinely curious. How many such people are being pursued by the authorities?

"I could give you some names of actors and actresses and sports figures, and not one of them have been pursued in this circumstance..."

When Rush asks "How many such people are being pursued by the authorities?" the operative word is "such." Because half a million Americans have already been pursued and imprisoned by the authorities for drug related crimes. A much larger number have been arrested, detained, had their homes and cars seized, lost custody of their children, been kicked out of their homes, lost student loans, been expelled from school, been beaten by cops and prison guards, been raped by other prisoners under the gleeful eyes of the guards... all this and more has happened to millions of Americans.

And Rush knows it. Wanna know how I know that he knows it? Because he's spent the past fifteen years kicking all these people when they've been down!

No, with a simple turn of the phrase, Rush refers not to all these people but, rather, to "such people" as "actors and actresses and sports figures" whom he considers to be his peers. (Wisely, he left politicians off his list, lest we remember how authorities used Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry's girlfriend Rakshita Moore to lure him to a hotel room, put a crack pipe in his hands, and film it on video from a secret camera, in a film quickly leaked to the TV networks.)

What does this tell us about Rush? He always says that when people talk about others they reveal more about them selves. What does Rush reveal about himself here?

In essence, Rush thinks he belongs - or should be considered to belong - to an elite caste along with "actors, actresses, and sports figures," who, because they are wealthy and famous, are above the law.

Read the rest here.

Apropos my post below--there's nothing wrong with giving Rush a good slam. Face it: there's not a chance in hell that he'd cut anybody whose politics are to the left of Atilla the Hun ANY SLACK AT ALL. And the rest of the neo-con, wingnut right is marching to the same drummer. They set the rules: remember when 'questions of character' became a defining chant from these folks back in the 80s? 'Character' trumped everything...

Well, the character issue is coming back to haunt the very people who made so much of it. And there's nothing wrong with payback for those who, like Rush, made so much political hay playing the 'morality card' all this time....

To that end, maybe I should ask Bill Bennett what the odds are of El Rushbo serving any time. Maybe he can hook me up with one of his buddies in Vegas. For that matter, maybe Bob Livingston can help bring the ladies...

Hypocrisy, thy name is Limbaugh.