The wide-angle shot of the big phallic stogie sticking out of his pie-hole just says a thousand words, don’t it??!!

October 24, 2006 @ 1:20 pm | Comment

Play it out and say he was off his meds… Fox has money to buy the meds, so he may not look like that every day, but imagine the people that don’t have access to expensive medication.

I’d rather see someone with money, not take their meds to show others what it would be like without them, rather then take the meds with the “what do I care, I’m rich, no problems for me” attitude.

October 24, 2006 @ 1:21 pm | Comment

(shaking, impersonating John Travolta circa 1975):

“Gimme drugs! Gimme druuuuugs……”

October 24, 2006 @ 3:09 pm | Comment

As to going off the meds: As of this writing there’s an addendum from (apparently) a Real Doctor pointing out that the symptoms Fox was showing were not those of Parkinson’s itself, but an effect of long-term use of the standard medication. I.e., the Parkinson’s is worse than what he’s going through.

I sort of thought that when I saw the devastating video, considering that it’s what a friend of mine went through, but then deferred to all the other people who obviously knew what was going on. That doesn’t make me quite as stupid as Rush, though.

October 24, 2006 @ 4:42 pm | Comment

I think it was Edgar Allan Poe who was fond of the Latin phrase, “nomen est omen”:

A dope fiend named “Rush.” One of those cosmic practical jokes….

October 24, 2006 @ 6:26 pm | Comment

He is OD-ed, again?

October 24, 2006 @ 7:02 pm | Comment

I agree with a lot of things Rush has to say, but not this. Then again, I rarely ever side with Republicans when it comes to issues involving religion (unless it involves the catering to other religions except Christianity).

While I believe we should be actively pursuing stem cell research, I did find MJF’s commercial to be a bit tacky, but that just goes to show how low both sides will go with their political campaigns.

October 24, 2006 @ 10:03 pm | Comment

I read the story in the Washington Post online about this and clicked through to the feature where they allow readers to comment on the piece (sort of an individualised letter-to-the-editor about the individual article.) There were 7 PAGES of comments! I’ve never seen another WaPo story with 7 pages. Pretty much all slamming Rush.

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve given meds to hundreds of Parkinson’s patients. The involuntary movements MJF shows are not typical of Parkinson’s. That disease tends to freeze movements, except for the hand tremours that typify the condition. Fox’s wide-ranging movements are more typical of a syndrome called “tardive dyskinesia” which is indeed a side effect of neurological medications.

October 25, 2006 @ 9:41 am | Comment

I used to like Rush. But then I realized, he’s a drug addict that needs to lose weight.

October 25, 2006 @ 10:43 am | Comment

That’s cute, Chip. But some of us never liked Rush at all and understood what a hypocritical blowhard vulgarian demagogue he was over ten years ago. As for bashing him for his drug abuse, that’s fair game since he’s has ranted so many times about the evils of drug abuse.

October 25, 2006 @ 11:58 am | Comment

Ivan, will you please reply to my email?

Chip, I wouldn’t say that too loudly in here, that you used to like Rush Limbaugh. Drug addiction and other flaws aside, the man is a compulsive and habitual liar.

October 25, 2006 @ 12:04 pm | Comment

I like Rush Limbaugh in the same way I like Pat Robertson: people who perpetually say things to remind me that I would never want to be associated with them in any way. It’s like a kind of self-reaffirmation for me every time they’re in the news.

October 25, 2006 @ 12:56 pm | Comment

Actually as much as I detest Rush what he is saying here is hardly evil. He’s simply trying to correct the impression that “Fox is off his meds” line left with his listeners. Fox IS off his medications (if only Rush would do the same) to show what having Parkinson’s is like. I disagree with Rush that he should not go off his drugs to show people how bad a disease it is but that is what the big fat idiot is saying.

October 26, 2006 @ 2:43 am | Comment

Michael J. Fox is wrong for using his star power to try to help the democrats. He’s a selfish man that only cares about an issue that personally effects him. What about immigration? If the democrats win big the nation-warping S-2611 may pass (doubling legal immigration). See Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post:

What You don’t Know about the Immigration Bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/30/AR2006053001181.html

excerpt:
The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as “the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history.” You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Yet the estimates do exist and are fairly startling. By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.
…..

October 26, 2006 @ 9:26 am | Comment

What about immigration indeed? Rush Limbaugh’s ancestors were f—ing Krauts, and when they arrived in America there were virtually no immigration restrictions. I swear, the Germans obviously brought their Fascist tendencies to America, and most of them slipped into the country without passing through any controls. Send them back to Germany, starting with Rush.

Oh no wait, Germany is a democracy now, one which functions pretty well. Rush wouldn’t fit in there. I got it: Send him to Beijing and he can work for CCTV!

October 26, 2006 @ 9:39 am | Comment

I won’t enter such an obscene argument. See this article to see why Rush was wrong. Though that should already be obvious to everyone. For those too lazy to click the link, here’s an excerpt:

In short, Mr. Fox’s display of the toll Parkinson’s disease has taken on him turned into one of the most powerful and talked about political advertisements in years.

Republican strategists who saw how quickly the commercial was downloaded, e-mailed and reshown on news broadcasts certainly thought so. Rush Limbaugh rushed in to discredit Mr. Fox, though he mostly hurt himself. Mr. Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, told his listeners that the actor either “didn’t take his medication or was acting.” Mr. Limbaugh later apologized for accusing Mr. Fox of exaggerating his symptoms, but said that “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician.”

Republicans cobbled together a response ad that did not mention Mr. Fox but attacked the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. It included testimonials by the actress Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and James Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ.” At least in the advance version shown on YouTube last night, Mr. Caviezel’s introduction seemed either garbled or to be in Aramaic.

The issue of embryonic stem cell research is divisive, but Mr. Fox is not. And that is one reason his advertisement had such resonance. He is a popular actor who played a young conservative Republican on the sitcom “Family Ties.” His illness was diagnosed in 1991, but he kept it secret until 1998. In 2000, he told his fans that because of his illness, he had to quit the hit sitcom “Spin City.” He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance stem cell research, lobbied Congress and made commercials to rally support for his cause.

But he has rarely looked quite as infirm. Mr. Fox was recently a guest star on several episodes of the ABC drama “Boston Legal,” and, presumably thanks to medication, his symptoms there were less noticeable.

If Mr. Fox did forgo medication for the advertisement as Mr. Limbaugh suggested, it could hardly be considered fraudulent: if anything, masking the extent of the disease’s ravages is the deception, not revealing them. (A spokesman for Mr. Fox said his tremors were caused by his medication.) It was certainly the most dramatic way Mr. Fox has to personalize the issue; he used his infirmity much the way the late Christopher Reeve did when he lobbied for stem cell research to seek a cure for spinal injuries.

October 26, 2006 @ 10:04 am | Comment

I should clarify. I used to like Rush because I honestly admit I was brainwashed at one point (perhaps stubborn would be the better word). Everything republican was good, everything democratic was bad. And unfortunately it took me a while to realize a lot of the lies.

October 27, 2006 @ 2:56 am | Comment