David McElroy

My name is David, and I’m a sugarholic.

I’ve battled for decades with an almost uncontrollable craving to eat sweet things at times. For the most part, I make a joke of it, simply because that’s the easiest way to deal with it. If I can’t get it under control, the least I can do is get a laugh about it, right?

I guess so, but I’ve been thinking about addiction a lot lately — of various kinds — and it’s really not funny. We can make an alcoholic into a joke in movies at times. And I can turn my “sugar addiction” into jokes. It’s a good way to deflect attention from the subject. It’s a good way to laugh about the battle that sees my weight go up and down, depending on what’s going on in my life. But it doesn’t do any good in the long run, because laughing about it isn’t filling the need that created the addiction in the first place.

As I’ve started talking about this more publicly, I’ve come to find that a substantial percentage of the people I know suffer from similar addictions. Everybody knows about alcoholics, because alcohol abuse is the most common addiction in the public mind. Fortunately, I never had to deal with that one. I’ve seen alcohol abuse in plenty of other people. I know of at least four people in my family who have had problems with it. When I was a teen-ager, I decided that the potential benefits of alcohol were tiny compared to the potential risk, so I never even started drinking. I think it’s a smart decision.

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Those of us who believe in liberty — both economic and social — hope we can count on conservatives on economic liberty and progressives on social liberties, because their rhetoric at least agrees with us in most of those areas. But many in both camps disappoint us — as they make it clear that their objective is to attack people they don’t like, not fight for consistent principles.

Allred said Friday that she’s asking a county prosecutor in Florida to investigate conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh for called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” on the air. There’s an old Florida law that says anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastit” is guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor.

Although Allred is apparently still a practicing attorney, you have to wonder whether she’s ever heard of — much less read — the case law surrounding the First Amendment.

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