Elton's friends: Playing for Rush

It comes to something when even the Daily Mail can smell that there's something badly wrong with Elton John playing Rush Limbaugh's wedding.

Furnish later revealed to People magazine that John justified his appearance by telling him: 'Life is about building bridges, not walls.'

Is it, though? Sure, it's good to be generous, and perhaps make a pointed point about how you're playing the wedding of a man who believes you shouldn't have the right to get married; even taking a fee from someone who uses his platform to rail against AIDS charities, to give to an AIDS charity.

But on the other hand: that's just self-justifying rubbish, isn't it? Limbaugh believes that money can buy anything - even a gay man's conscience - and you've proved him right. The "build bridges not walls" argument could cover any sort of dealing with the enemies.

It's true that both Limbaugh and John support civil unions but not gay marriage, so on that they're not so very far apart - Limbaugh has a "they can't help it" attitude, and John fears that the idea of marriage is a demand too far. He's keen to stress that he isn't Mr Furnish: "We're not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage."

Yes, Elton, god forbid you should be treated equally if it might upset some people.

Perhaps it's this pissweak spirit of worrying more about upsetting rich bigots than fighting for civil liberties that makes John tinkling over Limbaugh's big keyboard not so surprising.

But only a fool would believe that a right-wing friend of Rush would be sat listening to Crocodile Rock thinking "you know what, maybe we should be helping fight the AIDS crisis..."

[Thanks to Michael M]