For Rush's Cousin, It's All Relative

Almost all her life, people have been asking Julie Limbaugh if she’s related to Rush. It’s a vexing problem for a teacher at a very liberal high school, but she doesn’t deny the connection. “He's the relative you don't see much,” she writes for Salon. “He's that one over there with the cousins singing rowdy Christmas carols around the piano. The guy holding a humidor. He's Cousin Rusty, and he's OK.”

But Cousin Rusty has caused her no end of grief. She’s been hassled at airports and libraries, judged by teachers, classmates, and students—“Do you do drugs too?” asked one new co-worker when introduced—and once, at a family gathering, she was forced to be nice to Ann Coulter. Relatives ask if she’s becoming liberal “like it’s a disease,” she says. No one seems to understand “that you don’t have to agree with your family to love your family.” (More Rush Limbaugh stories.)