Rush Limbaugh - Sex Tourist
I know it was only yesterday that Rush Limbaugh was held for having Viagra without a prescription, while making his way through customs at Palm Beach airport. And I know that the last thing anybody wants to think about first thing in the morning is Rush Limbaugh with an erection. But, as Todd and Ian point out, Rush has been rather hard on medical marijuana users and people who bring drugs into this country. So I’m disinclined to avoid speculation where Rush in concerned.
Besides John points out over at Americablog, it feels like there’s something missing from the story. I’ve been waiting for someone to point it out; ask the obvious question. What was Rush doing in the Dominican Republic? Why was he returning from a country known for its thriving sex trade, with a bottle of Viagra that didn’t have his name on it?
According to his Wikipedia profile, Rush is a single man at the moment. He’s between girlfriends and divorces at the moment, so as far as I’m concerned he can do what he wants. (And, as the American Street points out, he’s very generous with his affections.) While I’m inclined to wonder how a guy like Rush gets laid at all, my guess is that money, power and celebrity help a lot where personality and other characteristics (basic humanity, compassion, etc.) fall short. And there’s still the question of what Rush’s right wing supporters, and the great moralizers among them, have to say about an unmarried man even having a prescription for Viagra.
But all that’s beside the point. Even if, as PZ Myers points out, Viagra is "not a threat," and not illegal in and of itself, there’s still the question: what was Rush doing with it, whether he went there to get it or took it there with him, in a country described back in 2001 as a place "where the pimps roam free"?
Evidence of the sex trade is everywhere as men in shorts and sandals duck into rent-by-the-hour "love motels" with Dominican women in bright dresses.
"There is always a demand for sex," said one Dominican prostitute as she lounged at one of the town’s waterfront bars. "Men will always pay for it, especially in here … where they can get anything they want, any age, at a discount."
Indeed, the Dominican Republic is one of the biggest sex tourism destinations in the world, thanks in part to Internet sites that extol the country as a "single man’s paradise."
What was Rush doing with a Viagra prescription in a country that one christian aid organization described as having the highest number of people working in the world working in the sex trade, including children? What need did Rush have to get an erection in a country which the U.S. government cites as having rampant prostitution— including child prostitution — and as one of the worst offenders in the trafficking of women and children for forced labor as sex-workers?
Was he helping a religious organization rescue people from human traffickers? Possibly, but that still doesn’t explain the Viagra. Not unless he was posing as a pimp.
These are not nice questions, which is why most people won’t ask them. But Rush is not a nice guy. And when a pundit whose party pokes its noses into people’s private affairs as a matter of policy is caught pocketing pills to pump up his penis, on his way back from a country plenteous with prostitutes…
Well pardon me if I’m compelled to prod and ponder why this public personality required a prescription for his penis in that place, and where he put it while he was there. |
