My ex-boss Carolyn pops up in this space every so often. She’s a native Fort Wayner who left our sleepy burg to be metro editor in Palm Beach, where every day is an action-packed opera of ammo and weirdness and pedophile priests and what-have-you. Not quite Miami in the ’80s, but news-wise, Florida does not disappoint.
Of course, like most days, Carolyn was busy. Big story breaking down Palm Beach way. Turns out one of the locals is a pillhead. Oh, what a day it was to be a Democrat.
Rush Limbaugh is an Oxycontin junkie with feet of clay? Knock me down with a feather, why don’t you. I highly recommend the Enquirer piece, quoted liberally here. A snippet or three: "There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which broke the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant – never mind a man."
Please, people! Hold the fat jokes! The man has lost a great deal of weight! I liked this part, too: It started after her husband, David, hurt himself in a fall, and Limbaugh asked how he was. "He asked me casually, ‘Is he getting any pain medication?’ I said, ‘Yes – he’s had surgery, and the doctor gave him hydro-codone 750,’" Cline said. "To my astonishment, he said, ‘Can you spare a couple of them?’"
Typical junkie weaseling. Honey, can you spare some heavy-duty narcotics? Oh, but I don’t wish to gloat, even though I think a story like this can be worth a 24-hour open-gloating period. A man is addicted to drugs. A man discovers it can happen to anyone, not just inner-city crack moms. Does man modify his highly lucrative, simple-minded stance on drugs and addiction? Atrios has the goods; keep scrolling — there are several transcripts. (The one-second answer? No.)
But now I’m wondering if anyone will pick up on an intriguing second-day story, which I picked up through the comment thread on MetaFilter. We all know Limbaugh suffered a rapid-onset hearing loss a couple years ago, which led to him getting a cochlear implant and probably a few tiresome lectures about the quality of American health care for filthy-rich guys who suddenly go deaf. But did you know that rapid-onset hearing loss has been linked to painkiller abuse? One of them, Lorcet, turns up in the Enquirer story. Hmm. Isn’t that interesting? I think so.
Upside for El Rushbo: His next time in rehab, he might run into Elle Macpherson.
The day’s other dog-bites-man story: Arnold gropes women. Duh. You’re kidding. I don’t know about you — I’m certainly no canary of the Zeitgeist — but I think the story will have the shelf life of organic field greens (which, in case you’re wondering, would wilt by Oct. 8). Is anyone surprised by this? Disappointed? Thinks he was a better man than the butt-squeezer tattled on by six anonymous women? I mean. Although it’s not a bad read. The best single anecdote is at the end:
One woman who says she was deeply offended by Schwarzenegger’s words was a waitress at the now-defunct Bicycle Shop cafe on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles, where the actor used to hang out with about half a dozen friends on Sunday mornings in the late 1980s. … One Sunday, she said, she was pouring coffee at the table when Schwarzenegger beckoned her to his side.
"I bent down to listen to him," she recalled. "He said, a little louder than a whisper, ‘I want you to do a favor for me.’ I thought, OK, maybe he wanted more bread. And he said, ‘I want you to go in the bathroom, stick your finger in your [vagina], and bring it out to me.’ "
She stood upright. "I was thoroughly disgusted" but said nothing to Schwarzenegger, she recalled. "There was drama in the silence of it," she said. "He looked up, and it looked like I was threatening [him] with the coffee pot."
Everyone at the table then glanced over at the restaurant owner, Andre Driollet. He wagged his finger at the waitress, she said, apparently fearful that she was going to dump the coffee on Schwarzenegger. … What Schwarzenegger had said "was above and beyond what was acceptable. I think he should have had hot coffee poured in his lap."
Yeah, me too. That tends to take care of the problem, lickety split.
Ah, me. Winter arrived today, two months early. It’ll pass, we’ll have our Indian summer, but once the heavy coats come out, it’s only a matter of time. I took the bus to school today, because it was not bike-riding weather –34 degrees at 8:30 a.m. I sat behind a woman with safety-orange hair, who spent the trip reading the liner notes on a Tracy Chapman CD. Closely.
One final note: Alex Jokay, frequent contributor to this site, will be contributing to his own from now on. He doesn’t have a lot up yet — some funny sketches that are worth a look — I wish him luck upon luck as a blogger.
Me, I wish a peaceful weekend. And you, too.