Dear Rush Limbaugh:

Oh you poor, poor man. First you lose your lucrative ESPN gig last Fall (for being a racist idiot and letting the bigotted remarks slide past your lips), and then your vindictive ex-housekeeper revealed your long-running prescription-drug addiction (*more about these drugs in the extended entry). If you believe a woman named Wilma Cline, Rush, you would drive three miles from your $23 million Palm Beach, Fla., estate to a Denny’s parking lot so that she could hand over a cigar box concealing dozens of tiny prescription painkillers. Each of these pills has a street cost of approximately $80 ($1 per milligram). 4,350 of these pills in one 47-day period, if Wilma’s ledger is to be believed. Thousands and thousands of dollars of pills at a time.

Dr. Frank Fisher, a leading authority on pain control who is in the late stages of soundly defeating one of those prosecutions, commented, “This seems like a whole lot more pills than Rush would need if all he wanted to do was get high, but it is within the range that might be used to treat chronic pain.” Fisher also noted, “The large numbers the story talks about getting diverted from a pharmacy lends credence to the idea that much of the overall diversion of pharmaceuticals does not come from bad doctors running pill mills. Think about it. If you were a desperate patient willing to be treated at a pill mill, do you think you could find one?”

One of the spouting heads on CNN last night was a DEA agent named Joe Kilmer, claiming Oxycontin is “four to five times as strong as heroin.” I thought that sounded like bull, and Dr. Fisher confirmed for me that my instincts were on target. “Milligram for milligram,” Fisher wrote back, “oxycodone and heroin are of similar potency. Heroin is essentially morphine, and the conversion factor when switching from one to the other regards oxycodone as at most twice as potent, depending on whom you ask.” [Source: StopTheDrugWar.com]

Quite frankly, I don’t have a problem with your drug abuse. I don’t care if you were taking it for pain, for addiction, or for fun… that’s none of my concern, I’m a legalizer, and I firmly believe that if you (Rush) or anyone else wants to abuse oxycontin or any other drug, it’s none of my business and it’s not the business of the criminal justice system, so long as you don’t violate the safety or property of other people. However, when you get behind the wheel of a car, that changes everything. Wilma, your housekeeper, said she wore a wire during her last two deliveries and gave the tapes to authorities. Yet, you’re still not sitting in prison as anyone else caught dealing that many pills or that dollar amount in illicit drug activity would be. Why is that? Are Florida prosecutors so incompetent that they don’t know how to bring your case to trial more than 8 months after their investigation was revealed to the public? Or is it the fact that you are rich that is keeping you out of jail? I daresay that if you were poor, you would find your cyst-infested ass behind bars right now.

And in what seems to be a serial tragedy, you’re now headed once again for divorce court. What is this, #3 or #4? Ah, number three, you say. Quite the success record, if I do say so meself. Didn’t you meet Marta online, on CompuServe? Wasn’t she married to someone else at the time? “Marriage is about raising children. That’s the purpose of the institution,” you once said. What’s that, Rush, you have no children from any of your failed three marriages? Hmmm… while you clearly know how to ‘talk the talk’ of the traditional, “God-fearing,” family-values-oriented patriotic American conservative dream, isn’t it strange how you’ve repeatedly failed in ‘walking the walk.’

I’ll tell you what I don’t understand, Rush. What I don’t understand is why anyone would pay your hypocritical ass, which carries with it the stench of dishonesty and deception, to sit there week after week mewling and blubbering your ignorance over the air waves. You’ve led alot of Americans down the golden road to BushBorgville, and you’ve made a very handsome living off of spreading the hatred of various groups of people in your hypocritical way. You’ve verbally attacked a lot of people who were and are morally superior to yourself. I just wonder when you’re going to have to face that and pay the price for it.

Sincerely,
The Evil Queen

# Hydrocodone

Anti-cough agent and painkiller similar to morphine. Side effects include anxiety, poor mental performance, emotional dependence, drowsiness, mood changes, difficulty breathing and itchiness.

# Lorcet

Brand name for the combination of Tylenol and hydrocodone, prescribed for moderate to severe pain. Side effects include dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, decreased appetite, dizziness, tiredness, muscle twitches, sweating and itching.

# OxyContin (oxycodone)

Potent time-release medication for relief of moderate to severe pain, known as hillbilly heroin because of black-market popularity in some rural areas. Side effects include drowsiness, dizziness, sweating, muscle twitches and decreased sex drive. A large dose can be fatal.