I see that you practice selective reading too, similar to your conclusion about proper definitions, you don't look at the entire picture before forming or writing an opinion. The article was an attack on liberals, what else is new? That is all Coulter can do, and she uses Rush as just another opportunity to grind her ax. The fact is that nearly all media in this day and age is about money, ratings, subscriber-ship, sensationalism, etc., not a political bias. This attempt by the conservatives to brand the media biased is nonsense, the media's only real bias is toward making money. Ownership of major media is by corporate America (see NBC and GE, ABC and Disney, ABC and ESPN, Time Warner, etc.) who have a bias toward profits over morals, political party, etc. The media would have been all over any self appointed moralist preach who was a liberal, if their private life could be sensationalized via a drug scandal or blatant hypocrisy. Oh wait, liberals and democrats don't preach religious based morality to the masses, do they? So the media, who covers Michael Jackson, Madonna, Brittany, etc. and their every faux pas, wouldn't try to make money off of a scandal the proportions of Rush, simply because the guilty party was democrat or liberal? The firing of Rush by ESPN was covered because it was news and related to racism. If Dusty Baker had been fired by the Cubs for his racist comments about whites in the outfield on a sunny day, the media would have had a similar firestorm, as it was that event was very controversial and drew lots of attention. Rush deserves everything he gets, because of his elevated hypocrisy, and Coulter's attempt to blame the media, Clinton, etc. only underscores how indefensible Rush really is. The article was not about the media, nor really about Rush.
Do you know how many cocaine addicts, alcoholics, heroin addicts, pot heads, etc. start out planning on becoming an addict? Addiction is nearly always inadvertent. Most try drugs and alcohol when they are young, and become addicted chemically and socially. However, how they become addicted is not nearly as important as the fact that chemical addiction is real, and very powerful. For years Rush denounced addiction as moral weakness, and thus his hypocrisy is great, that hypocrisy enhanced because of his unending moral preaching, when he was sinning against his own code of judgments levied on others all the while he himself had a chemical dependency issue. Many many people do become addicted to pain killers....but most do not, do they? Why do most people who take pain medicine eventually recover, and not become addicts like Rush, so addicted that he had to purchase these drugs illegally? Is it moral weakness on his part? Was it moral weakness to buy these drugs illegally? If the addiction is an excuse for his illegally buying these drugs, then shouldn't that excuse be extended to all addicts? Whether or not someone is addicted to any drug or mind altering substance, the fact is that addiction is a disease, not a moral condition....and hopefully Rush can go into recovery and come out a champion for recovery from all addictions, preaching education, recovery, and not punishment, moral denouncement, or incarceration.
Yes, but you are missing the point here. The idea behind moral weakness and drug addictions stems from the fact that people who are weak in general tend to solve their problems through dependency of some sort, whether it be income redistribution, the granting of special rights and special treatment, or they just turn to alcohol or drugs. The point I am making is Rush did not turn to drugs. They were prescribed to him but his doctor. Most young people in this country do not have pot prescribed to them, nor heroine, nor crack. They have to actually go out and seek it. In many cases they have to risk their lives to attain it. They are seeking these substances because on some very unconscious level what they are really seeking is self destruction. A slow painful death versus slitting their wrists in a bathtub. Rush did not go out and seek this drug based on any kind of weakness he had. It was given to him by a doctor. I'm sure he had no idea what the hell Oxnycontin was. But he took it because the pain from his surgery was unbearable. How can you relate this to young people whose only goal in life is to get high. Or who turn to substance abuse because they just can't deal with their own reality so the choose to create an alternative reality through drugs or alcohol. And like most addictions, he had no idea he was addictive until it was too late. This is the case with most people. In fact I am quite certain that while he was popping those pills and talking about the moral weakness of drug users, he probably never once for a second realized the road he was going down. Like the old saying goes, most people don't realize they are an alcoholic until they hit that tree going 60 mph. Then it hits them real fast.
And should we not forget Rush's attempt to silence his supplier with a bribe? Surely if it is not as bad to be addicted to pain killers, and therefor not as morally reprehensible as being addicted to crack, than where does buying one's silence rate on the morality scale?
You know what, if I had a 300 million dollar contract and I was hated by the media, I would pay that housekeeper a damn good bribe to keep her mouth shut. Does that make me a bad person? No, it makes me a smart business man. I wouldn't want to to be tried in the court of public opinion every night on the news before I got a fair trial in a court of law. Come on, why do you think the judge filed a gag order on the Kobe Bryant case.
Does it make you a bad person? You must be pulling my leg. Because to buy one's silence in such a matter is the epitome of moral bankruptcy. Plain and simple. End of argument.
Listen, you better get the facts straight. He didn't buy her silence. What he had with her is what 99% of the stars in Hollywood have which is called a privacy clause. Would I have it too, sure I would, like I said you would be an idiot not to. What it is, you hire a housekeeper to watch your estate, the last thing you want is that housekeeper selling stories to the National Enquirer. Almost every famous person I know of has this clause with people who work inside their home. Will you give this a break, it's the freaking media who spin this around into a bribe. She had a contract with Rush like most people do that are close to him. You want to see what Bill Clinton's contracts looked like? Why are you trying so hard here? Take your liberal elitist self somewhere else.
Standard "Confidentiality Clauses" do not cover illicit and illegal activities. To hush up household staff who repeatedly procured controlled substances usually requires a bribe. And bribes are thought of as immoral where I grew up. My guess is that the thinking was the same in your hometown.
Man you are really spinning this thing. Confidentiality clauses cover anything. Do you remember your old buddy Jack Kennedy? He had everyone sign them. Do you know how many women he brought into the white house? Do you know how much coke he sniffed? What do you call that? Everyone around him signed a contract. Yes, I understand these contracts are not created for the specific purpose of covering up illegal activities but that does not mean that they are not included under that umbrella. You can keep calling it a bribe but the fact of the matter is she has worked for him over 10 years and got paid very well to do so. She signed a clause like everyone that works for him does. I'm sure when he hired her he wasn't thinking, oh, I better make sure she signs this contract in case I get addicted to prescription pain killers. Come on. Everybody and I mean everybody I know that has a vast fortune has these contracts. They are not interested in coming home from work at night and seeing their nanny on the evening news telling the world about some young girl that spent the night at your house last night. I am not saying I condone these activities I am just trying to explain to you why these clauses exist. Take your moral high ground somewhere else. Do you wish to start a conversation about the morality of your former favorite President Clinton?
You're close. It was an opinion piece on the liberal press. Can you refute point by point Coulter's historical accuracy in the article?