Jefblog

Ellis Henican

Another public moralist had been caught in a personal jam. And Rush's words were coming back to haunt him.

The constant digs at Bill Clinton not inhaling.

The heartless shrug when Jerry Garcia died.

"'When you strip it all away," Rush had said of the Grateful Dead guitarist, "Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks."

Rush Limbaugh isn't the first prominent finger-pointer to eat his own words. It wasn't so long ago that Bill Bennett was explaining how an anti-vice crusader could also be a degenerate gambler.

And Jeb Bush, the president's brother and Rush's governor, was pleading for leniency and privacy when his daughter got arrested for drugs. Yet he'd been happily sending other Florida youngsters to long prison terms for similar crimes.

Typical

Actually, the thing about Jerry is that he did not destroy his life on drugs. He actually seemed to have a pretty good time, both as a musician, and on drugs. Not always, but quite a bit.
What he really did was to destroy his health in a fairly All-American way. He smoked, he was sedentary and did not exercise, he ate a crap diet, he was obese, and he did not deal with the resulting diabetes very well. He struggled with the discipline it takes to be healthy in American society, where we are all encouraged to make unhealthy choices on a daily basis.
Jerry's use of cocaine weakened him, I'm sure...but what killed him was the same thing that kills many "typical" Americans, and ruins the health of many more.