NEW YORK – For outspoken talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh, who has made a name gleefully pointing out the moral missteps of others, the disclosure of his own weakness – an addiction to painkillers and plans to spend the next 30 days in a rehabilitation center – appeared to be humbling.

“I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem,” Limbaugh, 52, told his listeners Friday, the most devoted of whom are known as “dittoheads.”

Fond of skewering liberals and Democrats, among others, with often outrageously opinionated utterances – he dubbed feminists “feminazis” – Limbaugh is credited by some for the revival of talk radio. His eight-year deal with Premiere Radio Networks will pay him $285 million by 2009. The show, carried on 600 radio stations, reaches an estimated 20 million listeners a week.

“There’s an enormous amount at stake for all of those stations that have paid huge bucks to have Rush,” said Robert Balon, CEO of the Benchmark Co., an Austin, Texas-based market research firm specializing in media.

In a poll of 500 people conducted before Limbaugh’s statement Oct. 10, Benchmark found that 94 percent of respondents said if Limbaugh admitted to a drug problem they would continue to listen to him on his return.

His three-hour daily program will continue to air with guest hosts in his absence. “WLS supports Rush Limbaugh and will welcome his return,” said Michael Packer, operations director for Chicago’s WLS-AM 890.

Having long preached the mantra of personal responsibility and spoken out against drug use, Limbaugh now finds himself in an ironic position, said Steve Rendall, a senior analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watchdog.

“I do wonder if it’s going to cause any softening in the way he perceives personal failings and weaknesses in others,” said Rendall, co-author of “The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error.”

“He has been incredibly uncharitable. He has relentlessly exploited the personal weaknesses and failings of others. He has not extended the same understanding one suspects he would like to be getting right now,” said Rendall, adding, “Some of his listeners are bound to be shaken by the fact that Rush has feet of clay.”

Maybe not, said Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine. “I think it only makes him more colorful. He’s not a priest, he’s not a pope, he’s not a president, he’s not an elected official. He’s just a talk show host.”

Greg Mueller, president of Creative Response Concepts, an Alexandria, Va.-based public relations firm that often handles conservative organizations, agreed.

“Rush, I think, has proven today that he always is honest and levels with people,” said Mueller.

“He’s honest, straightforward and genuine, and yes, he’s a human being who also has his faults, like we all do. And he’s going to do something about them, and that’s what I think is important.”

While humility has never been the style of the bombastic Limbaugh, a dose of it might not hurt his image, said Harrison. “Well, I guess he has to now join the rest of humanity and “fess up to the fact that some us are not as strong as others,” he said.

Limbaugh hardly is the first prominent conservative figure to tumble from the realm of sanctimony to shame. Once wildly popular television evangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart famously fell from their pulpits in the late 1980s, undone by admissions of adultery and addiction to pornography, respectively.

And just five months ago, former Reagan administration Education Secretary William Bennett, best-selling author of such moralistic tomes as “The Book of Virtues,” was revealed to have a major gambling habit.

In Limbaugh’s case, many felt his conservative listeners would be compassionate. “This is a beloved man to his listeners,” Mueller said.

“It will only draw them closer, like a family gets closer in a time of crisis.”

And the worst thing Limbaugh could do is return to the air in too-chastened a form, said Harrison.

Limbaugh said that he started taking prescription painkillers “some years ago,” to counter pain following spinal surgery. Calling that surgery “unsuccessful,” he said that he still suffers pain in his lower back and neck due to herniated discs.

“Rather than opt for additional surgery for these conditions, I chose to treat the pain with prescribed medication. This medication turned out to be highly addictive,” he said, noting that in “the past several years” he had twice checked himself into medical facilities in an effort to break his dependence.

Limbaugh did not specify if the medicines he abused had been prescribed. And he did not address allegations by his former maid, Wilma Cline, that she had procured OxyContin, Lorcet and other painkillers for him.

The admission, made to millions of listeners during Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated radio show, came just days after Florida authorities launched an investigation into claims by a former maid in Limbaugh’s Palm Beach mansion that he paid her to procure prescription drugs for him over a four-year period.

And it came just nine days after the nation’s most popular and highly-paid radio host resigned as an ESPN football analyst after causing an uproar by making what many perceived to be racist comments about the capability of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. Limbaugh said McNabb was given undeserved credit by a media anxious “that a black quarterback do well.”

Lisa Anderson reported from New York and Raoul Mowatt from Chicago.

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