Rush Limbaugh should have checked with Michael J. Fox's mom before suggesting the actor was purposefully playing up his Parkinson's for the cameras when filming a series of ads touting political candidates who support embryonic stem cell research.
"She was the one, actually, when the comments were made—she was the only one who was really angry," Fox told Katie Couric during an interview airing Thursday on the CBS Evening News.
"She said, 'I can't even see straight,' " Fox recalled. "I said, 'Mom, just relax—it's okay. Don't worry about it.' But it's just not that simple. That's why we're doing this."
Fox said that his mother, Phyllis, was with him while he taped the 30-second spots and was telling people backstage that her son was "trying so hard to be still."
"The irony is that I was too medicated," the four-time Emmy winner said. "Because the thing about...being symptomatic is that it's not comfortable. No one wants to be symptomatic—it's like being hit with a hammer.
"At this point now, if I didn't take medication, I wouldn't be able to speak."
Which would do a huge disservice to others afflicted with neurodegenerative disorders, considering Fox has maximized his star power to increase awareness, raise funds and support the development of new treatments that could one day put a stop to diseases like his.
Fox, 45, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991 and started speaking out about his condition in 1998.
"Honestly, I mean, I really feel this—that you get in your life very few chances to make a difference," Fox said Thursday. "And I really feel privileged that I get a chance to do this. But having said that, it's not pretty when it gets bad. I've learned to throw vanity out the window."
That's not what Limbaugh said. The right-wing radio host called Fox "shameless" during his Monday show, accusing the Spin City star of either being off his meds or acting to exaggerate the ravages of Parkinson's disease, which affects the central nervous system.
An ad supporting Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill premiered Saturday during Game 1 of the World Series pitting St. Louis against Detroit. In the commercial, Fox reminds voters that "what you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans. Americans like me."
After Limbaugh was chastised across the board, he said that he would apologize to Fox if it turned out he was mischaracterizing the actor's behavior.
"Okay, I need to apologize," the radio personality said on the air Thursday. "I was wrong because I speculated either he didn't take his medication or he was acting."
But, "I never said the word faking. Now, if you people on the left want to equate acting with faking, I mean, go ahead. George Clooney would be a faker, all your favorite actors, we'll call them fakers. I never used the word. But I was wrong. He did take his medications. Now he took too much medication.
"The point is," Limbaugh continued, "he did something differently to appear in this ad than when he appears on Boston Legal. And that was my first human reaction... I think the reason for that is so you would really, really hate Republicans, because Republicans don't want to cure it. [Republican Senator] Jim Talent doesn't care. [Republican candidate] Michael Steele doesn't care. No one in the Republican Party cares. They don't want to cure these things. They're happy, in fact, to see people suffer like Mr. Fox is in this ad."
Same old Rush.
Fox told Couric it would have been near-impossible to plan filming around his physical high and low points.
He said that he just takes his medication "and it kicks in when it kicks in... You don't know when that's going to be."