Pills, Race and Rush

By RICHARD CORLISS

The king of right-wing radio enlightens his listeners--20 million a week--with what he cheerfully boasts is "talent on loan from God." Now God may want it back. Rush Limbaugh, whose huge popularity spawned a multimedia industry of conserva-talk, is in two kinds of trouble: one because of something he said; the other, potentially more damaging, because of something said about him.

As a commentator on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown, Limbaugh, 52, offered his analysis of the Philadelphia Eagles' Donovan McNabb, one of five active quarterbacks with both 10,000 passing yds. and 2,000 rushing yds.: "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team." The show's other regulars, two of them black, did not challenge Limbaugh on the racist tinge of his remark. But the flap took wings, and by Wednesday Limbaugh had, under ESPN pressure, submitted his resignation.

Then the National Enquirer ran a story about a claim made by Wilma Cline, Limbaugh's former housemaid at his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion, that for four years, beginning in 1998, she illegally supplied him with vast quantities of the prescription drugs OxyContin, hydrocodone and Lorcet. She also claims that Limbaugh went through detox twice in New York during that time to break the habit. Cline, 42, has given audiotapes and other purported evidence to the state's attorney's office of Palm Beach County, and Limbaugh is now a subject of investigation, a source close to the investigation confirmed. The source added that the voice on the tapes "does indeed" sound like Limbaugh's.

A class 3 felony for illicit possession of prescription painkillers carries a sentence of as much as five years in prison. But Florida investigators are more interested in nailing suppliers and sellers in this Gold Coast drug ring than in sending users to jail. If prosecutors did have the goods on Limbaugh, he would probably be encouraged to testify against the pushers.

Limbaugh answered the challenges with his usual mix of bluff and bluster. He refused to apologize for the McNabb jab, saying he was only attacking the liberal media, and added that he was unfairly singled out: "Sean Hannity [a right-wing spieler] could have said it, and ... it wouldn't have even gotten noticed." True enough: racial slurs and racist humor are common in the frat-house atmosphere of talk radio, whether the format is politics (Michael Savage, Bob Grant) or comedy and news (Howard Stern, Don Imus). But a Sunday morning TV sports show--on a cable network that prizes its access to black athletes--is different. "We had explicitly told the world, and Rush, that this needs to be about football," an ESPN executive says. "And for four weeks, it worked." In fact, last week's ratings were the show's highest in seven years. Adds the ESPN executive: "When he went beyond those boundaries, we had the results that we did."

Of the Palm Beach rumors, Limbaugh said only, "I really don't know the full scope of what I am dealing with. And when I get all the facts, [I will] tell you everything there is, maybe more than you want to know about this. You can believe me and trust me on that." Just in case the state's attorney's office doesn't believe him, he has hired the criminal-defense lawyer Roy Black, who got William Kennedy Smith acquitted of rape.

Limbaugh claimed he received 30,000 e-mails from devoted listeners last week. Many others, not fans, defended his right to embarrass himself. Randall Cunningham, the former Eagles star who blazed a trail for black quarterbacks, says that if he met Rush, "I'd tell him, 'Brother, you made a mistake. But keep the thoughts coming.'"

A few observers savored the irony of a stone thrower whose glass house was shattering. "Most Americans didn't fall for his ruse about kicking 'the media,'" says media analyst Ellen Hume. "He is the media. On the drug issue, we could give him the benefit of the doubt. But why give him a fairness clause that he denies others? Rush's way is to rush to judgment, regardless of the facts. Now it's his turn to be judged." And his turn to hope that the judges may be just a little bit...liberal. --Reported by Sean Gregory/New York and Tim Padgett/Miami

With reporting by Sean Gregory/New York and Tim Padgett/Miami