Gene Lyons: Faults, falls and the price of fame

[CatWoman]

In a momentary fit of pique, I sent an e-mail to a pal the other day
announcing my plan to write a column urging Rush Limbaugh to confess and
Charlie Hustle to shut up and go away. "Don’t you have that backwards?"
he responded. Upon reflection, I realized he was mostly right. The bombastic
star of rightwing talk radio can’t confess any more than he already has without
risking serious jail time, while the unrepentant baseball player Pete Rose has
no sins left to admit except betting against his own team, which few who saw him
can imagine he ever did. What the two have in common besides grandiose egos,
however, is that neither knows the meaning of shame.

So let me amend my wish: They should both shut up and go away. Fat chance.
Of the two, Limbaugh’s playing the more dangerous game. After spending most
of his career preaching self-reliance and personal responsibility to his gullible listeners,
he admitted his addiction to narcotic painkillers and did a stretch in rehab. Lately,
however, he’s been blaming his troubles on political enemies who have somehow
infiltrated the criminal justice system.

"I’m not whining about it," Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
reported having heard him whining on his radio program. "My friends, it is,
and has been, obvious to me for the longest time that all these leaks were
an attempt to try me in the court of public opinion. The Democrats in this
country still cannot defeat me in the arena of political ideas, and so now
they are trying to do so in the court of public opinion and the legal system."

Almost needless to say, Limbaugh idolized Kenneth Starr, leaker extraordinaire.
But because he rarely takes calls from informed listeners and cuts off skeptics
who bluff past his screeners, there was nobody to ask how federal prosecutors
under Attorney General John Ashcroft have fallen under the spell of left-wing conspirators.

http://www.bartcop.com/010704lyons.htm

[TacticalPeek]

1. Thanks for posting this.

"Now Charlie Hustle has a new book to hustle, admits he lied and,
like Limbaugh, wants us to feel sorry for him. He whines that 'baseball had no fancy
rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts'."


Like, maybe all the slots were taken up by minorities. Whatta creep.