harming conservative hard-ass Rush Limbaugh is angry with the American media's harping on his admission of painkiller abuse this week, claiming the focus on his addiction stems from the media's attempt to promote a white Republican drug addict.

Limbaugh answered accusations from reporters with his trademark, "You know how liberals are…" before launching into his defense. Addressing reporters by telephone from a minimum-security rehab facility, the talk show host and political pundit, irrelevantly 52, claimed the story was exaggerated.

"You know how liberals are. They run the media, of course, we all know this, and there's nothing they love more than bringing down white people. They were behind such evil as the Clinton presidency, the success of Donovan McNabb, and my leaving ESPN. Though, frankly, those SportsCenter guys were starting to get on my nerves," announced Rush, following quickly with the proclamation he had lost 5 pounds during the statement alone.

The revelation of illegal substance abuse, or let's say misappropriation of not-quite-legal pep pills, come at a bad time for Limbaugh, who quit sports network ESPN after statements he made about the unearned success of quarterback Donovan McNabb sparked controversy. The media, the tubby conservative claimed, engineered his exit by blowing his words out of proportion, stupid as they might be, and they were trying to further humiliate him by taking his usage of thousands of Oxycontin and Lorcet pills over the years out of context.

"You know how liberals are," said the husky speed addict.

"Common sense allows us to put things into perspective. These are prescription pills, they're just not prescribed to me. It's not like I'm doing blow or shooting heroin into my eyeballs. I'm not some ghetto crackhead. I'm a popular Republican talk show host, and the media loves to see conservative white guys get the book thrown at them for trivial infractions. If I was not famous and just a regular white guy, like a federal judge or CEO of a major multinational, I would just have this reduced to a fine and no one would care. But because I'm outspoken and everyone knows me and I'm always right, the liberal media wants to stick it to me, just to erase stereotypes."

Limbaugh, a former fat man now in a modestly chunky man's body, did not find much support with former colleagues at ESPN following the leak of the investigation.

"We are all shocked, it's as best as we can put it," said ESPN spokesperson Robert Fulgham. "We hired Rush three weeks ago. Knowing his history of working in talk radio and making light of liberals, democrats, feminists,
radicals, and basically all non-white people, we thought him to be a terrific sports analyst and commentator who would make broadcasts more lively. The last thing any of us at ESPN ever expected was this kind of insensitivity. When it comes to a quarterback in the year 2003, color is simply not an issue."

Fulgham was politely reminded the issue at hand was actually concerning Limbaugh's use of prescription pills before continuing.

"Oh, yeah," said Fulgham. "Everybody knew he was a big fat pill popper. Did you think he was exercising to kick that ass into shape? C'mon. He would chew handfuls of hydrocone in between five or six Baby Ruths. He had intravenous
coffee intake. It's not really a secret if you work with the guy. You don't want to get me started on those SportsCenter guys and what they do around the place."

ccording to U.S. and French researchers reporting in the science journal Nature last Thursday, the universe is shaped like a giant soccer ball, patched together out of a dozen spherical pentagons. No, really.

Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a device the researchers insist is made entirely of tapioca, has indicated that the universe is finite and symmetrical. The probe maps background radiation left over from the Big Bang, the interstellar genesis event that occurred over 20 years ago, according to researchers.

The same researchers also indicated that regularly ingesting expensive sugar pills will cause your cock to grow big and hard like a redwood. Other revelations discovered by the researchers last week: grizzly bears are terrified of clowns, nobody can see you if you have your eyes closed, and if you stick your tongue against the railroad tracks in February, no way will it get stuck there.

The argument for a dodecahedral universe, made up of twelve pentagons forming a sphere, is a radical departure from earlier theories. It would also seem to end the fierce debate in the scientific community over whether or not God likes soccer. Previous suggestions about the universe's shape, from Boellinger's Taco Theory to Neumann's assertion that the cosmos is shaped kind of like an abstract pelican, have been proved absurd by this latest data.

"We were just shitting you when we said last year the universe is shaped like Lon Chaney's dong," admitted researcher George Ellis. "It's actually shaped like a soccer ball. Scout's honor!"

Fellow researchers Jeffrey Weeks and Domar Segui, still high from the rush of their groundbreaking discovery, greeted Ellis' announcement with a sustained jag of scientific giggling.

"Totally!" agreed Segui. "A big-ass soccer ball, filled up inside with galaxies shaped like blueberry muffins."

"Oh yeah!" remembered Ellis. "I almost forgot about the muffin galaxies! Most of them are shaped like that, except the one that's shaped like a high-heeled shoe and is made of braunschweiger."

"And candy!" nodded Segui, choking on a licorice whip. "The stars are made of candy and Mars is made of chocolate and nougat!"

"And the Milky Way was douched out of the vagina of the giant space-goddess in 1942!" shouted Weeks above the cacophony, which quickly died down. "Okay, that was going too far," admitted an embarrassed Weeks.

It's no surprise there's few major news stories this week, given the death of Ronald Reagan is still permeating the national consciousness. Sure, there's some minor events that warrant attention—the death of a major Iraqi puppet leader and the complete personality change in the next-in-line to the White House, but it's how we start to move on from our grief. Slowly and with small tidbits of newsworthy items.

My respect for Reagan knew no bounds, unlike those restraining orders his administration filed against yours truly. Sure, we were adversaries—I disrespected his policies and found him insincere about his vision of a better America. A diplomatic cowboy, a fascist of the religious right, and merciless eradicator of the working classes and impoverished. Sure, given a gun, a single bullet, and a fair shot, I might have offed him myself—but I respected the man, and that's what counts.

It's no secret I'm a liberal, good sir, and I like to wear ladies' undergarments. At least it's not since I wrote that. But just because we differed politically, and my spite for the man was limitless, doesn't mean I can't recognize he was a premiere statesman and a beloved icon of America. Even if I hated him with every fiber of my being, even if he exemplified everything immoral and base and uncivilized about America, and laid the groundwork for the quagmire of foreign policy we currently practice that has turned us into the world's public enemy number one, doesn't mean I can't offer some small praise for the things he did right, should I ever discover any. When he passed on, I didn't dance—not very long at all, sir. A week, tops.

I bring this all up because the commune received some very unkind letters from readers this week about our previous edition's coverage of the Reagan story, and by that I mean him being dead and all. Now, I didn't read the mail, I have people for that. Lefty read some of it and gisted it for me, and she said some people liked it and some people didn't. Some people felt we were unfair to the ex-president and some people thought we were giving him too much news coverage. Some thought we were hot, some thought we were cold, but no porridge was just right. People, can you do me a favor and just get one opinion before you all go writing all that drivel to me? It's hard to keep track of more than one opinion, besides my own.

My point is: Quit your bitching. We had to cover the Reagan news in-depth, it was a huge story. In fact, it still is—what else is going on? Sure, the murder of a major Iraqi official, the Vice-President's filthy mouth, all of that stuff, but what else, tell me that? Hostages and terrorists killing people, of course, what else is new? There's that Jack Ryan thing in Illinois, but that's just another—

Jack Ryan? Wait, let me re-read the story for a second. Isn't Jack Ryan the Hunt for Red October guy? CIA super-spy and all that? Well, it's probably not the same one. And it's just another Democrat sex scandal with—

Holy shit! It says here this knob's a Republican! What the fuck is up with that? A Republican sex scandal? What did they do, have sex on the desk and then slash welfare?

Shit on a cracker! Sex clubs? Those are my favorite kinds of clubs! And his wife was not ordinary cloth coat kind of Republican wife! She's that hottie from Melrose Place and Star Trek, the one who wore the skin tight outfit and had Warp 9s out to here. The guy was running for Senator, too, no pissant Congressman from the House! Wow, this is the kind of conspiracy that really gets me going!

I call a do-over. Is it too late to scrap the front page?

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