And so, one of the most consistent doctrines in all of law was on broad display yesterday in Florida, as one of the fattest of fat-cats, professional propagandist-for-the-Imperium Rush “Docta Shoppa” Limbaugh turned himself in to Palm Beach, Florida police for photographing and fingerprinting as the first step in his kabuki-plea bargain for a charge of defrauding doctors into writing him multiple pain killer prescriptions, under which he will receive no jail time and 18 months probation (after which, the charge will be dropped, a standard practice for first offender White people.)

Rush’s supporters, of course, operating on the nation’s main governing principle (”it’s o.k. if you’re a Republican”) said (of the coddling sweetheart deal from a namby pamby liberal prosecutor which lets Rush continue his cushy, bogus “treatment”) this is just the sort of thing that “ordinary” people have to work through. Hence, Rush skates on a charge that, if he were not rich, and especally if he were not White, would send him to the slammer, especially in Florida, where this disparity also has a wonderful salutory effect on Election Day (helpin’ the White folks maintain their all important votes. ) One is reminded of the poker game variation of “New England baseball” suggested by the Tom Hanks character in the film Volunteers: threes, nines and one-eyed jacks are wild… for White men.

What’s interesting here is that, forgetting for a moment the obscene unfairness of how “criminal justice” is administered in this country (and especially in its regressive little neo-third world backwaters such as JEB Bush’s little fiefdom) and the peculiar unfairness of our drug laws, this is probably the right result. We’d save billions as a nation if we simply treated drug addiction as what it is, a disease, rather than as a “crime”. (Next thing you know I’ll be suggestin’ terrorists is criminals and should be dealt with as such…) Anyway, Limbaugh is simply a weak and pathetic human being who can’t get through the pressures of the ordinary day of being a fabulously successful celebrity with access to all the power, money and sex he could ever want (and the adulation of a carefully screened audience of sycophants) so he needs, you know, a little help every now and again in the form of multiple pain killers every few minutes. It sure beats taking control of one’s diet and exercise habits, or you know, doing actual work toward resolving life’s little difficulties.

So, Rush fell down a bit, and needed a little, you know, boost. Could happen to anybody, really. Any poor schmuck out there. Any old feminazi or liberal creep, for example. Or, you know, Black or Latino person, for whom Rush himself would be advocating the death penalty (or at a minimum hard prison time) for shoplifting or, say, docta shoppin’ for pain killas…

But when will we learn? It’s not what you do: it’s what you say, and who hears it. Oh… and who says it. And being a rich White man with high Arbitron ratings never hurts either.