So many of you are bemoaning Rush's recent half-hearted apology to Sandra Fluke. It angers you Limbaugh had to admit he was wrong for verbally brutalizing this woman. You claim that this is just Rush being Rush (boys being boys anyone?), and that liberals such as Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Ed Schultz, and others are equally guilty.
Well in one sense you are right. This is Rush being Rush. He's been out of control, spewing vitriolic hate for decades. He especially likes to attack the spouses and children of those he disagrees with, such as when he referred to 13 year old Amy Carter as the White House dog. With quotes like these:
What is it with all of these young, single, white women, overeducated — doesn’t mean intelligent.
and being on his fourth marriage, I'd say he clearly has issues with women. So what is different this time?
I suspect that the big difference this time that has got his sponsors fleeing his show was not his foul comments about Sandra Fluke's imaginary lascivious behavior, but rather this quote:
So Ms. Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch ...
Not only is this creepy, but anyone with a daughter that isn't horrified by this statement is a questionable parent.
This is where Limbaugh's comments and behavior completely diverge from that of the "liberals." Limbaugh attacks those who aren't pundits or public officials, and Limbaugh attacks to savage the person. These others have only been guilty of attacking public figures, and for the few who have crossed that line, they've been suspended and even fired from networks such as MSNBC. Rush has experienced none of that sort of push back.
But I hear you also moan that his first amendment rights are being trampled on. This is a puzzling charge by people who claim to love the Constitution so. He can still talk until he turns blue. No one is stopping him. But no one is required to give him radio time to do so.
His sponsors run companies that are responsible to shareholders. They are required by law to do nothing that would damage the brand. If they feel Limbaugh has become a liability then they are obligated to drop him. It will be interesting to see how many sneak back when things have cooled off.
Now lets get to Sandra Fluke. She is not a pundit. She is not a public official. She is a private citizen exercising her first amendment rights by testifying before congress about women's health care. What is Rush's response? He employs his usual tactic of vitriolic character assassination because he doesn't like what she has to say. There is a saying that when you can't attack the message, attack the messenger. Here are a few of Rush's choice comments:
What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke … who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.
She’s having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk
Ms. Fluke, have you ever heard of not having sex?
This isn't all. He goes on like this for hours.
And what did this woman say to enrage Limbaugh so? She simply wanted to make it clear that hormonal birth control is used for a number of women's health issues unrelated to contraception. That's it! That is the terrible thing that the Republican congress was afraid to have her say and that Rush savaged her for.
So enough of the trutheness, here are some facts.
Listen to the testimony. Nowhere does she describe the lascivious behavior repeatedly attributed to her by Limbaugh. Her testimony focused exclusively on family planning for married women and women's health care not related to sexual behavior.
Despite the shrieking claims to the contrary, no one is asking you to pay for her birth control. If insurance companies cover Viagra because it addresses a medical condition, then they should cover hormonal birth control for the same reason. Most policies already do.
Lastly, hormonal birth control can be expensive. Different types of the pill have different side effects. They can't always be interchanged with the cheap generic variety. So give up the argument that it only costs $9 a month. I've seen it cost as much as $200 per month with insurance.
As a final point, all that Rush's attack does is attempt to intimidate women from exercising their first amendment rights. Bullies like Rush only succeed when others do their dirty work by repeating the libelous attacks.
Isn't this sort of intimidation exactly what you accuse liberals of doing! You should know better!
10 comments:
Forget about Fluke and Rush and the CEO of Carbonite. Here's East Cleveland, #4 on the single parent hit parade. Here's what happens to the kids of the girls who do what Fluke does.
The politics and personalities of the issue obscures what's really going on in society. Social opprobrium is there to help the poor at the expense of the rich. If Fluke had a social conscience, she would live a life that would be an example to the people farther down the income scale. Instead, she lives the life that keeps them in poverty.
Here's another good one from East Cleveland. Dig the comment thread underneath. Where will these boys be in 10 years? Working alongside you or me? I doubt it.
It's the world that people like Fluke built.
Kelly, the progressives have stopped caring about the poor and now only care about pleasuring themselves. They lobby in favor of increases to this wage or that benefit, but at the same time they broadcast and support the behaviors that makes all of our social safety nets pointless. It's like dropping boxes of bandaids down on the survivors of Nagasaki and acting like you've done something good.
You can either be a libertine or care about the poor. You can't do both.
No! You can't just sweep the issue with Rush under the rug. You ridicule a business owner who acted in defense of his daughters. This is important because Republican members of congress fear Rush. They defer to him. He influences them. Did you know that when Rush visited George Bush the second's White House, he carried Rush's bags to his room. The president playing porter. We are only supposed to do that for our oil pushers!
And there you go again girls who do what Fluke does. How do you know what she does. She didn't say, and its not either of our places to recklessly speculate. All you know is that she completed college and got into a prestigious law school. If more girls did that they'd be far better off.
Wow! Were the hell did that come from! ... she lives the life that keeps them in poverty. You know absolutely NOTHING about her life, yet you act as if you do. There is no magic bullet when it comes to poverty. Turning back the clock 60 years won't fix anything.
If you want to throw stones, your buddy Rush isn't such a wonderful role model. Four wives, prescription drug addict, sex tour participant. Viscous bully. Likes to belittle educated women. Great role model for little girls.
And what is your obsession with East Cleveland. If you spent more time out of California, you know that countless cities/counties are failing. Go to any rural part of America, Utah, Nevada, Mississippi, Texas, in the reddest of the red states, and you'll find the same thing. Reality isn't as simple as you want to make it.
The social ills you want to blame on birth control have always been with us. I can point you to a good book on the lower classes in Victorian England. Same story, over and over again.
Then there is my father's Baptist church where he grew up and their epidemic of premature babes. Yes they were married when the delivery occurred, but the marriages didn't last and the children found themselves in the same cycle.
And there is a flaw in your logic. If these girls you claim to be so worried about actually thought about birth control, they would break the cycle of poverty that traps them and their children.
Part 2, because blogger said my comment was too long:
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[A]t the same time they broadcast and support the behaviors that makes all of our social safety nets pointless. Ok, if you are going
to rail against popular culture you need to start with FOX. Despite their ties to Rupert, they regularly broadcast some of the worst program
ming out there. I'm not interested in defending contemporary culture. To me it all looks like crap. But you know what, their contemporaries
said exactly the same thing about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Shakespeare.
You propose a false all or nothing choice. You say progressives have stopped caring about the poor and now only care about pleasuring the
mselves. First of all that description describes Rush just as well as your straw-man immoral progressives. Secondly, you completely dis
count anyone who is not exactly like yourself as being the source of the problem. That world view got us wonderful things like the inquisiti
on.
There is a whole world out there not like you. Such as my church, the Methodists, who have been progressive busy-bodies since when this coun
try was born. They fought against slavery, they fought for woman's suffrage, and they screwed up with prohibition. You can say many things a
bout them, but you can't say they didn't make a difference. I think you forget that Jesus hung out with the undesirables, not the pious, bec
ause the undesirables needed his message of hope and inclusion, not scornful finger wagging.
But all this is completely irrelevant to the current discussion, which is about women's health care and how bullies like rush terrorize the
political discourse.
Language like Rush's only undermine the political party it was meant to support. Already there is a growing backlash of smart educated an
d successful Republican women who are not interested in being told how to behave by a fat Misogynistic pig like Rush.
Oh please. This has nothing to do with name calling at all. You're being played.
Turning back the clock 60 years won't fix anything.
When I've got some time to email you, I've got a story that might surprise you. I'm "turning the clock back 60 years" in the life of a young black man right now, my friend. He's going to finish college because of it.
KT,
so what are the rules now. Can someone call your daughter a slut now just because they are angry with you and no one has a right to object? You play too fast and loose with your standards.
So by your logic because Ed Schultz is a is a pompous ass its ok for Rush to behave like a sociopath. No one has the right to have slightly higher standards?
I really give up. Clearly you're so enraged by the world today that you can't see that Rush's behavior is completely unacceptable. And the fact that you parrot it is even worse. It doesn't matter what other pundits are doing. If your child tried to get you to allow them to do something stupid just because others were doing it you wouldn't then say that its ok because others are doing it. All of your "after the fact justification" of his behavior just shows that you have no intent in being fair and are only concerned with winning.
I'm very glad that you've found a way to make a difference in a young man's life. that is a very worthy ordeal. That isn't what I meant by "not being able to turn the clock back." The genie is out of the bottle. While you can locally reverse entropy, as you are doing now, you can't save everyone. Some people will refuse to be saved. If strict Islamic societies can't resist the corrupting influence of popular culture, what can.
As for calling my daughter a slut, that train left the station a long time ago. Howard Stern. Bill Maher. The list goes on and on. Dig all the things people have said about Sarah Palin. "Slut" is the least of them.
Morality. The genie is out of the bottle. If that was the case, then morals would have declined since the time of Caligula. Things go up and down over time. It won't always be like it is today. For one thing, once our credit is tapped out and we go into Greek-style austerity, all those baby mamas are going to be reaching out for commitment because they'll need the added support to survive. Our era of fiscal irresponsibility has happened before the the cycle is pretty predictable.
What it comes down to is this. "Dad" is a job that needs to be done. It can be done by dad, stepdad, mom, police officer, corrections officer or someone like me. The best of all worlds is biological dad making a lifetime commitment to mom, hopefully before they start making the babies, but maybe not. Take married dad out of the list of options and things get really dicey really fast. The statistics and studies are irrefutable and crystal clear on this.
Fluke doesn't give a hoot about that. She's just some little law school punk who wants to get famous for getting laid. Like I said, you're getting played.
Again, forget about the politics and the personalities. Which side do you want to be on? What risk are you taking by becoming a prude? You can see what's best. It's the life you and I lived. Why shouldn't the kids in East Cleveland have that life? Use your voice to fight the powers of self-gratification that wreck the best chance these kids have to avoid drugs, prison, death.
By the by, once Laura has graduated from high school, I'm planning to join some of my Cursillo brothers and work in the local prison system. Sandra Fluke can join us if she's not too busy doing interviews on TV shows.
By the way, why all the outcry about a Georgetown law student and deliberate media celebrity being called a slut and not the girls of East St. Louis being told they ought to meet Jay Z in a bathroom stall so he can slake his lust upon them?
Some girls are more equal than others, I suppose.
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