WHY GLENN BECK AND RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOULD STOP EXPLOITING THEIR ADDICTIONS FOR PETTY THEATRICS

Beacon Broadside / By Jonathan M. Metzl

Right-wingers craft the angry, white, male addict in remission as the embodiment of a new American conservative ideal. They're way off base.

Has addiction become the new rhetoric of the right?

Glenn Beck suggested as much in his in his recent keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Conference when he parlayed his own history of substance abuse into a critique of so-called big government. "I'm a recovering alcoholic," Beck explained. "I screwed up my life six ways to Sunday." Beck argued that his experiences as an alcoholic privileged him to critique the seemingly different "addictions" to government perpetuated by progressives and liberals. "It is still morning in America," he decried. "It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding-hung-over-vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America."

For much of the following week, Rush Limbaugh used his own, well-publicized addiction to prescription painkillers -- "Have you ever had a genuine addiction to something? Well I have and let me tell you about it" -- as a jumping off point into full-throated damnation of President Obama and his "liberal" followers. "Liberals," Limbaugh told his radio listeners, "their lives are basically meaningless, their addiction to power and dominance and control is what drives them."