Month: October 2003

“About Rush. I was very much addicted to Oxy – not by prescription – and it took me two years to finally quit – it’s been a year this last July. I never want to go through that again. It’s true. It starts out as one or two and can easily escalate up to 10-20 pills a dose depending on the mg. In the ’80s I did a lot of powder and was able to just stop when it came time to do so w/out a hitch. But the withdrawls from this pill are the worst and from what I read and experienced the closest thing to actually being on Smack. Odd that being in possession of 1 doobie is deemed worse than having a bottle of this serious drug. Of course you get high. After you take your dose fix for about an hour or two the feeling is an intense sense of euphoria and you are so verbal and happy and warm. Your whole aim is to keep that wonderful high. It’s when the drug stops it happy moment that things get ugly and you start planning your next dose.
I, too, have been thinking of what Rush was doing, thinking, and feeling during those broadcasts much like I used to think of what events were going on simultaneously while Clinton was behind closed doors no doubt discussing cigars. At this moment Rush is hating life and he can’t sleep, think or eat. All he wants is that good feeling to return. Remember that scene in “Riding Cars with Boys”? The guy forget his name tells his wife Drew Barrymore, after realizing that he can’t kick the habit, that he has it all figured out. His eyes are all glassy and he’s happy and on top of the world. ‘I just want to take enough to get by’ and then all will be well. Excellent example of what’s going on.
I’m counting on Rush to be more sympathetic to those whom he’s lambasted all these years. A toned down more humble Rush. If he doesn’t, then not much has changed, really. I used to look down on those people as weak, and selfish. Not anymore. I’ve been there.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE BBC CORRECTS: They now credit the United States with actually separating conjoined Muslim twins, after a bunch of emails from you and others taking them to task. Here’s the email from the Beeb:

Thank you for your email. We have now updated this story to make it clear that the operation took place in America. We did report in the fact box at the side of the page that the boys had flown to Dallas for the operation. Our further coverage of this story did mention the location of the operation. – see links below [here and here]. Thank you for your interest in the BBC News website.

Blogs get results! Keep at it.

ASNER UPDATE: Earlier this week I linked to a first person account by one Kevin McCullough of a conversation he had with Ed Asner. Since it was a first person account, I trusted it. McCullough has now withdrawn the gist of his claim about Asner’s reverence for Stalin. It appears he distorted Asner’s remarks; and has now partially retracted. He says he misquoted even himself. I apologize for linking. You can read the actual interchange here. McCullough has a radio show. Let’s hope he doesn’t distort things as readily on the air as he does in print.

“But the BBC’s Orla Guerin says it is not clear whether the easily identifiable convoy was deliberately targeted.” – from the BBC. Even Arafat is quoted as condemning “this ugly crime targeting American observers as they were on a mission for security and peace.” The BBC – finding more excuses for terror than Arafat.

I’m no real baseball fan, but that Cubs game was devastating. I used to think the curse was hooey. Now I’m not so sure.

HALEY BARBOUR’S PHOTO-OP: With the nice folks at the Council of Conservative Citizens. Nice to see that, after Trent Lott, the Southern G.O.P. is no longer cavorting with white supremacists, isn’t it? Barbour says he “knows nothing about the Council.” Who does he think he’s kidding?

Don’t miss Jill Stewart’s post-mortem on the Los Angeles Times’ attempt to destroy Arnold Schwarzenegger by any journalistic means necessary. Here are money quotes from someone Stewart calls a “longtime, respected Timesian involved in the Schwarzenegger coverage”:

Toward the end, a kind of hysteria gripped the newsroom. I witnessed a deep-seated, irrational need to get something on this guy [Schwarzenegger]. By Wednesday before it was published, I counted not fewer than 24 reporters dispatched on Arnold, and this entire enterprise was directed by John Carroll himself. Carroll launched the project with the words: ‘I want a full scrub of Arnold.’ This was fully and completely and daily driven by Carroll. He’s as good as his word on being balanced and trying to make this paper more balanced, he really is. But not when it came to Schwarzenegger. Carroll changed completely. It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn’t care what it was. The air of unreality among people here was so extreme that when they did the office pool, of something like 113 people who put in a dollar to bet on the outcome of the recall and on who would be chosen governor, only 31 bet ‘yes’ on recall and ‘yes’ Schwarzenegger to win. All you had to do was read a poll to know how wrong that was, but inside this place only about 25 percent of the people could see the recall coming… The mainstream press critics like those published on Romenesko are asleep as to what has happened here. They are defending the L.A. Times in every way. There should be no defense by media critics of what happened here. One woman did not sleep for two nights after a Times reporter showed up at her door, with the thinnest evidence, demanding to know if her child was Arnold’s love child. It never panned out, it was untrue. Why has the L.A. Times become a tabloid, knocking relentlessly on people’s doors for tabloid gossip? And would John Carroll have run a front page Love Child story if it had been true? Could we sink any lower?

It was worse than we thought. Which is a good rule of thumb in liberal media outlets. Recall what we now know about the Raines era at the NYT. Then consider what we don’t know about what’s going on now.

WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? USA Today says it’s looking for a conservative editorial writer. Here’s what the ad said: “Looking for a conservative who ca (sic) work to achievie (sic) consensus with a diverse editorial board.” Special attention to bad spellers and masochists.

MOORE WATCH: He seems to be leaning toward the notion that 9/11 was a government conspiracy:

MOORE: I’d like to ask the question whether September 11 was a terrorist attack, or was it a military attack? We call it a terrorist attack. We keep calling it a terrorist attack.
But it sure has the markings of a military attack. And I’d like to know whose military was involved in this precision, perfectly planned operation. I’m sorry, but my common sense has never allowed me to believe since that day that you can learn how to fly a plane at 500 miles per hour. And you know, when you go up 500 miles an hour, if you’re off by this much, you’re in the Potomac. You don’t hit a five-store building like that.

What on earth is he getting at?

I’ve been mulling over this question after the Rush Limbaugh pain-killer drug story. The truth about these drugs is not just that they alleviate pain, but that they give you a real high. (That’s why the spin about Rush being somehow different from recreational drug-users strikes me as a little strained.) I was prescribed Vicodin once and experienced some of the high. Apparently, Oxycontin is even more intense. All this leads to a simple question people have so far avoided: was Rush actually high during his broadcasts? Given the enormous amount of drugs in question, given their addictive quality, I’d say that the odds that Limbaugh was high when he was broadcasting are pretty good. Some might argue that you need to have your brain on drugs to say the things Rush said. But I’d argue the opposite. In fact, it might be true that Rush was a better broadcaster because he was high. His particular blend of self-mocking, lacerating, funny and fluent commentary reminds me in a way of people on a kind of high. Or maybe this attitude is actually hard to sustain for so long at such a pitch – and so the drugs helped him endure the slog of daily broadcasting the way drugs can enhance athletes’ performance. Either way, the drugs may well have helped him do his job well. Obviously, he got addicted in a major way – which is the mega-down-side of such meds. And he may have lost his hearing because of enormous abuse of the pills. But it behooves us to notice the upside as well: that these drugs, far from impairing his ability to do great radio, may have helped him. If there were a way for Rush to use the drugs in moderation without getting addicted, why would that be a bad thing? And how would that differ in a deep way from people on anti-depressants who aren’t clinically depressed? Or casual pot-smokers? Or old-time columnists who used to write brilliant columns while under the influence of a triple scotch? (I recall one of my early days on Fleet Street when I asked a brilliant columnist how he could write such stuff after several strong whiskeys in the afternoon. “My dear boy,” he replied, “The real question is how I could write without the whiskey.” Somehow, I get the feeling these permutations won’t be fully developed in our puritan culture. But they should be. There’s a reason Rush enjoyed these rushes. And conservatives benefited.

HOPE IN IRAN: Hoder gets excited about Shirin Ebadi’s return. The photos are here.

Another classic story in which the Beeb goes out of its way not to credit american medicine. They really hate the U.S. over there, don’t they?

NPR CORRECTS: A summary of NPR’s corrections about the Middle East in the past two years finds something remarkable for being unremarkable. All but one correction rebutted a slander against the Jews or the Jewish state. Hmmm.

MY DOG, ADOLF: Weird story about a dog called Adolf who was trained to give the Nazi salute. Ian Buruma told me a story once about an old Jewish lady in Vienna, if I recall rightly, who similarly called her dog Hitler. But she did it for reverse reasons: she got some pleasure from ordering Hitler around for a change. “Come here, Hitler!” “Sit, Hitler!” “Beg, Hitler!” No word on whether she actually grew to love the little Nazi.

More ad hominem insults from the black left.

It seems to me that the anti-Bush crowd has been missing the real story, as usual. Instead of attempting to parse the administration’s arguments before the war, they’d do better to focus on the Pentagon’s massive incompetence after the war. Two things spring to mind: why weren’t forces directed to secure all possible WMD sites immediately? And why were troops not sent to secure Saddam’s conventional weapon sites immediately? The Baathist resistance is now fueled primarily by those weapons. The fate of WMDs is unsure – a critical reason for the war in the first place. Did Rumsfeld even think for a second about these post-war exigencies? Why were these objectives not included in the original war-plan as a whole? I have no idea. The pre-war and the war were executed as well as we could hope for. The immediate post-war was a disaster. Shouldn’t someone take responsibility? It seems to me that since the left is so hopeless at constructing rational criticism, some of us pro-war types need to get mad and ask some tough questions.

He’s now closer to the Islamists than the Pakistanis. Let’s hope the “Goddess” saves him.

Another poll shows a consistent up-tick in Bush’s approval ratings. Gallup thinks that greater optimism on the economy is behind it. Who knows? I think the administration’s spirited defense of its Iraq policy – long, long overdue – might have something to do with it. So you ask yourself: what does the future hold? I’d say the economy is headed for strong growth next year (it should after all the money being thrown at it); and that Iraq in a year’s time will probably look a good deal more successful than it does now. (I could be wrong about that, of course.) Bottom line: Bush looks remarkably strong at this point – certainly stronger than either Reagan or Clinton at the 3 year-mark.