A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself … WILLIAM SAROYAN, “THE HUMAN COMEDY” The revelation in 2003 that conservative provocateur Rush Limbaugh had maintained a secret addiction to the painkiller OxyContin carried a deep political irony. This arch critic of liberalism, social indulgence, and big government’s coddling, a man who extended Reagan’s ideas and who had wailed against President Clinton’s “I feel your pain” rhetoric, had treated his own pain liberally and to excess. Many commentators at the time remarked on Limbaugh’s political hypocrisy, casting him as a conservative double standard. Limbaugh had once said about drug users, “Go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river.”1 On its face, the Limbaugh episode was a puzzling contradiction. If excessive “bleeding heart” liberal compassion had produced a crisis of dependency and learned helplessness, then what are we to make of the conservative provocateur’s long-term addiction to the most famous painkiller of his day?
