Emerging from a self-imposed exile in which he was treated for an addiction to painkillers, Rush Limbaugh returned to the air on Monday. And listeners who tuned in during the first few minutes of his radio show would have been forgiven if they thought they were hearing an Oprah-style self-help session.
"I have to admit that I am powerless over this addiction that I have," Limbaugh, speaking from a Manhattan studio, told his listeners. "I used to think I could beat it with force of will."
During a 16-minute opening monologue, Limbaugh, who has spoken in the past about the need to jail more drug abusers, instead borrowed liberally from the teachings of 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. Asking and then answering a question about what he had learned during a month inside a treatment center in Arizona, Limbaugh said, "You can boil it down to one real simple essence: I can't be responsible for anybody's happiness but my own."
PHOTO: REUTERS
He added, "I have thought that I had to be this way or that way in order to be liked or appreciated or understood, and in the process I denied myself who I was."
Limbaugh acknowledged that "a lot of people" had branded him a hypocrite for urging tough punishment for some drug users while not being forthcoming about his own addiction, which, he said on Monday, dates to the mid-1990s. He has said that he became addicted to painkillers after spinal surgery in the 1990s.
"My behavior doesn't change right or wrong," he said. He acknowledged, however, that for nearly a decade he "avoided the subject of drugs on this program for the precise reason I was keeping a secret." At times, he said, he even pretended that he did not recognize the names of painkillers mentioned by callers.
One of the first calls he took on Monday, from a woman identified only as Mary Jo of Montgomery, Alabama, was about a friend in trouble.
"You have a friend who's an addict?" Limbaugh asked. The caller said that she did, and wanted to know "what strengthens someone?"
"Are you ready to listen?" Limbaugh asked. "I want you to know something now. You are not responsible for what your friend does."
Though the early segments of his three-hour show were devoted to what Limbaugh had learned about himself in treatment, he still took time to practice his stock-in-trade, advancing the message of the right and lambasting the left. He took swipes at familiar liberal targets like Senator Edward Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. And he took pains to assure his listeners that he had not been brainwashed while in treatment, during which, he acknowledged, he rarely read a newspaper and watched little on television other than football.
"Many people feel and think that when you go to a rehabilitation center for addictions or other things, that the people in there turn you into a linguine-spined liberal, and that's not true," he said.
Rather, he said, he tried to incorporate what he had learned about himself and use it to psychoanalyze his opponents. Among the problems with liberals, Limbaugh said he had discovered, is that "they don't like themselves."
"You ever see liberals smile about anything?" he asked.
Limbaugh said there was only one subject he would not talk about on the air: news reports suggesting that he had acquired drugs like the painkiller Oxycontin without a prescription and that the matter was now the subject of an investigation.
"This is something I am not able to be as blunt and open about now as I'd like to be," he said. "That day will come, and it will come soon."
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
RSS