Even though the criminal investigation into Limbaugh's pill purchases may explain his current position, I don't have a problem with his hypocrisy. My problem is that Rush is wrong twice, swinging all the way from punitive to forgiving. Drug use is incredibly nuanced and confusing — even alcohol required two constitutional amendments and a fight between "Tastes great" and "Less filling" that has never been adequately settled. Limbaugh used to portray all drugs as equal, whether they were painkillers or marijuana or heroin — which is not only stupid but also a really poor business plan if you're considering becoming a dealer. I had never tried marijuana until a friend left me some lovely brownies a few years ago, and not once since that experience have I been nervous about spiraling into harder drugs, unless there's a pusher with cocaine Rice Krispies Treats.
But to suggest any distinctions — that the use of some drugs should be legal while others require counseling and still others imprisonment — isn't acceptable in the conservative community. Gray isn't welcome on any subject in the land of Rush. I found that out the hard way this summer when I filled in as the host of the Mike Gallagher Show, a conservative radio show with 2.5 million weekly listeners, broadcast on 175 stations. The listeners didn't seem to like me very much. This was only partially because I was really bad at it. Basically, they thought I was a liberal, even though I didn't say one liberal thing. I had invited a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on to talk about cockfighting, of which I'm an advocate. Yet just having the PETA woman on the show made listeners think I was a liberal. A caller said the PETA rep was a terrorist, which I agreed with, since the organization totally disrupted last year's Victoria's Secret fashion show. Then he said she was the same as Osama bin Laden. I questioned that, mostly because PETA hasn't killed anyone. He said that all terrorists were equal and that parsing out evil made me a sympathizer. I questioned his epistemology, at which point he called me a "stupid liberal kike," which caused the switchboard guy to hang up on him. That switchboard guy ruined all the fun.
Even though I filled in for Gallagher for only one day, while Treason author Ann Coulter subbed for two, I got three times as many emails from listeners about my show as she did about hers — nearly 900. That made me really happy until I found out they were almost all negative. "A conservative can spot a liberal a mile away. You are, or you ain't," Gallagher told me. "It's not just an ideology or a philosophy. We have an ability to cut to the chase. Black and white isn't a bad thing. Liberals gravitate toward the gray to muddy the waters, to muddle people's thinking. I had a liberal on the air today defend Michael Jackson." I almost made the liberal mistake of defending the guy who defended Michael Jackson.
When I sat down to host the show, playing with all the dials until I realized the producer had wisely taken away all my powers, I was startled by the intro. It was a quote from Al Pacino in The Recruit — which not only scared me but also impressed me with the willingness of Gallagher's research department to sit through the film. Pacino yells, "We believe in good and evil. And we choose good. We believe in right and wrong. And we choose right. Our cause is just. Our enemies everywhere. They're all around us." That's when I knew that I wasn't one of them, that I believe everything is a continuum, that the real world is filled with gradations of good and evil, asceticism and pornography, sobriety and addiction. Denying that seems a dangerous path to self-righteousness. Plus it's kind of boring.
So if I'm forced to choose, I guess Gallagher's listeners are right, that deep down I'm somehow a liberal, regardless of where I stand on the issues. Not only because I like the grays but also because declaring myself liberal will increase my chances of getting a newspaper op-ed column.