My classmate Tom died last year of early onset Parkinson's disease, the same malady lampooned by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show this Fall, a performance that earned Limbaugh some much-deserved scorn.

Tom and I were not close friends; I knew him only to say hello to in high school, before his family moved to another town. I remembered him as a person interesting to talk with, someone with his head together. Tom went on to a career as a marine architect, designing systems for numerous shipbuilders. He was about adapting and applying technology to tie us together with transportation and commerce.

Rush and I could never be friends. Instead of carrying his fellow human beings forward, he makes a career of anchoring them to the bottom, feeding them hard tack and political swill with no thought that they are as he, on a voyage to the unknown, doing what they can with what they have. He is about using his medium to promote the perverted golden rule: that who has the gold makes the rules.

When I met Tom again after nearly fifty years in 2004, his hands and body shook, and he had to prop himself up on a walker. Our conversation ranged over childhood, careers, and transcendence, even of issues like Parkinson's. He hardly talked of his disease, preferring to discuss technology, friends and life.

I have never met Rush, whose hands and body shook in parody of the world's infirm, propped up by greedy advertisers and specious manipulators, paid to attack the weak to protect the money and position of the strong. He continues to speak up for the powerful, preferring to emphasize the social machinery that divides us into the weak and the strong, in perpetual admiration of the powerful.

So...,

The next time you sail on a vessel that is elegant and safe and takes you to a destination you have chosen, please think of Tom.

The next time you find yourself vomiting over the gunnels of life, think of Rush.