Merritt Tierce, who's first novel Love Me Back was just released, told the Dallas Morning Star that after she received two separate $2,000 tips from Rush Limbaugh while serving him in a high flying Dallas restaurant, she donated the money to the TEA Fund.
Tierce used to get some high rollers at the restaurant, including conservative talk show mogul Rush Limbaugh. Tierce waited on Limbaugh twice (both times he came in with Al Michaels, who was in town to call Cowboys games). Both times Limbaugh left her $2,000 tips on modest-size checks, once with twenty $100 bills. “That was like blood money to me,” says Tierce, who does not share Limbaugh’s social views.
Tierce was also executive director of the TEA Fund, which provides money to women who can’t afford to get abortions. (She’s still active in the abortion rights world; you can read her recent New York Times Op-Ed piece on the subject here). So she did the only logical thing with Limbaugh’s cash. She donated a sizable chunk of it to the TEA Fund.
“It felt like laundering the money in a good way,” she says. “He’s such an obvious target for any feminist or sane person. It was really bizarre to me that he gave me $2,000, and he’s evil incarnate in some ways.”
And that’s how Rush Limbaugh came to donate some of his riches to the cause of abortion rights.
Everybody knows that veteran sportscaster Al Michaels is a right winger so it's no surprise these two were thick as thieves, but kudos to Tierce for using Limbaugh's money wisely since low income women have been targeted by conservatives for a long time now.
(h/t Talking Points Memo)
