"The man is Ted Baxter."

That's Rush Limbaugh's nuclear take-down of Bill O'Reilly, in this interesting and non-jeering New York Times Magazine profile of Limbaugh.

"The man is Ted Baxter." Oh man, that's gotta hurt.

Here's something unexpected and to me, great, about Rush:

Unlike many right-wing talk-show hosts, Limbaugh does not view France with hostility. On the contrary, he is a Francophile.

This part, though, was very, very strange. Limbaugh is talking about his drug addiction, and coming to terms with it in a rehab center in Arizona:

In the studio the day we spoke, Limbaugh was more emotional. "I thank God for my addiction," he told me. "It made me understand my shortcomings."

Being Limbaugh, he said he believes that most of these shortcomings stemmed from his inability to love himself sufficiently. "I felt everyone who criticized me was right and I was wrong," he confided. But, he says, he left his insecurities behind in Arizona. "It's not possible to offend me now," he said. "I won't give people the power to do it anymore. My problem was born of immaturity and my childhood desire for acceptance. I learned in drug rehab that this was stunting and unrealistic. I was seeking acceptance from the wrong people."

So Rush Limbaugh got strung out on drugs because ... he didn't love himself enough? Hoo boy. That's not conservatism, that's Stuart Smalley-ism.