“They Go All Wobbly”: Rush Limbaugh Instills Fear In GOP Candidates
How’s this for political cowardice? Right-wing bloviator Rush Limbaugh launches a vile attack, full of sexual insults and smarmy innuendo, against a young woman whose only offense was to speak her mind. Asked to comment, the leading Republican presidential candidates — who bray constantly about “courage” and “leadership” — run from the bully and hide.
“I’ll just say this, which is, it’s not the language I would have used,” said Mitt Romney. I wonder what language Romney thinks Limbaugh should have used to call Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
“He’s being absurd, but that’s, you know, an entertainer can be absurd,” said Rick Santorum. I doubt seriously that Fluke found it entertaining, in an absurdist kind of way, when Limbaugh creepily suggested she and other women post sex videos on the Internet. I hope and trust that Santorum wasn’t entertained, either.
As for Newt Gingrich, the cat got his tongue, and apparently didn’t return it until Limbaugh had already apologized to Fluke for his “insulting word choices.” Gingrich went out on a limb Sunday and called Limbaugh’s apology “appropriate.”
Which it wasn’t, by the way. Limbaugh’s claim that “I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke” is an obvious lie; there’s no impersonal way to call a woman a slut. His abuse of Fluke — who advocated publicly last week that the health insurance she receives through Georgetown, a Catholic university, should be required to cover birth control — was no one-time gaffe. He poured it on, day after day.
And when he decided to back down, Limbaugh apologized only for his choice of words — not for the bitter misogyny he now believes he should have cloaked in prettier language.
Of the GOP candidates, only Ron Paul seemed to notice the insincerity of Limbaugh’s regret. “I don’t think he’s very apologetic,” Paul said. “He’s doing it because some people were taking their advertisements off his program. It was his bottom line he’s concerned about.”
Why will Paul say the obvious while Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are barely willing to clear their throats? Because Paul, who is in this campaign to spread the gospels of libertarianism and Austrian economics, knows he can’t win the Republican nomination. The others, who think they do have a chance to win, are afraid of making Limbaugh into an enemy — or, in Romney’s case, into more of an enemy than he already is.
So let’s get this straight: These guys want us to believe they’re ready to face down Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Eun, the Taliban and what’s left of al-Qaeda. Yet they’re so scared of a talk-radio buffoon that they ignore or excuse an eruption of venom that some of Limbaugh’s advertisers — nine, at last count, have said they would no longer sponsor the show — find inexcusable.
I would have thought that crass political calculation might lead the would-be GOP nominees to the correct position on Limbaugh’s rhetorical depravity. Women constitute a majority of voters. If they merely lean toward the Democrats this fall, as they usually do, Republicans still have a mathematical chance to win the presidency by racking up a big majority among men. But if the GOP is perceived to endorse Limbaugh’s hateful rhetoric about “feminazis” and his stance of male grievance, female voters could turn what looked like a winnable election for Republicans into a debacle.
But Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are so frightened of being labeled insufficiently conservative — in this context, meaning “not nice enough to Rush” — that when given the opportunity to show some backbone, they go all wobbly.
What does this say about these men? To me, it suggests that maybe Romney isn’t as smart and disciplined as he’s said to be. Maybe Santorum isn’t as sincere, compassionate or moralistic as he appears. Maybe Gingrich’s vaunted intellectual courage is afraid of its own shadow.
As it happens, President Obamacalled Fluke last week to express his support. Perhaps, as a father, he imagined how he would feel if one of his daughters were attacked so viciously. Perhaps, as a canny politician, he saw the benefit of denouncing Limbaugh’s caustic caterwauling.
Either way, Republicans spent yet another week talking about contraception. Casey Stengel once said that “most ballgames are lost, not won.” He could have been talking about elections.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 5, 2012
“The Price Of A Woman’s Reputation”: Why Hasn’t Clear Channel Punished Rush Limbaugh?
Rush Limbaugh’s been facing a wave of protest since his ugly attacks on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke: he called her a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified before Congress about the importance of employer coverage of contraception. In response, advertisers have begun to pull out of the show. And in a near-unprecedented move, Limbaugh issued an apologyfor his choice of words, though not for the sentiments behind them. But Limbaugh’s efforts to save his show seem unlikely to stop advertisers from fleeing the show or to stem the tide of criticism from figures ranging from Sen. John McCain, to New York’s Cardinal Dolan—to one of Limbaugh’s colleagues in the shock jock game, former CBS radio host Don Imus.
“So were it me, and I ran a radio station or whatever, I would make him go down there and apologize to her face-to-face. He owns a Gulfstream 4, get on it, go to Washington, take her lunch, tell her, ‘look, I’m sorry I said this stuff and I’ll never do it again,” Imus said. He recalled that when he made offensive remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, referring to them as “nappy headed hoes,” “Look at what I did. It was a lame attempt to be funny, and it was three words. And I went and met with these people after I’d been fired…If he was on my radio station, he wouldn’t be on it.”
Imus’s criticism also illustrates that Limbaugh is held to different standards than his fellow commentators on radio and television. Here are some of the punishments Limbaugh’s counterparts have faced for ugly sexual remarks about women:
-In 2009, after Imus made his remarks about the Rutgers basketball team, CBS Radio suspended him for two weeks without pay, MSNBC stopped simulcasting the program on television, and CBS eventually fired him even though his program netted $15 million in annual revenue. Imus apologized at the time and publicly acknowledged his comments were “really stupid.”
-Last May, MSNBC suspended host Ed Schultz for a week after he used language similar to Limbaugh’s during his radio show. Talking about Laura Ingrahm, a staple of right-wing radio, he described her as “this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut.” He apologized to Ingraham on television, calling his language “vile and inappropriate,” and saying “It was wrong, uncalled for, and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura, and ask for your forgiveness.”
-In February, Clear Channel suspended California radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou for two days after a segment about Whitney Houston’s death in which Kobylt imagined what it must have been like to be Houston’s friends, saying: “It’s like, ‘ah Jesus, here comes the crack ho again. What’s she gonna do? Oh, look at that, she’s doing handstands next to the pool. Very good, crack ho. nice.’ After a while, everybody’s exhausted. And then you find out she’s dead.” The hosts agreed to attend sensitivity training and bring on guests to discuss why their remarks were so ugly.
Fluke was asked today whether she thought Limbaugh should be fired. She said that was a choice for Clear Channel and Limbaugh’s advertisers. But we’ll ask for her: what makes Limbaugh immune—thus far—from punishment by his employer for an ugly, extended personal attack on a woman performing her civic responsibilities? Maybe it’s that, given the profits Limbaugh rakes in, Clear Channel’s established the price of a woman’s reputation.
By: Alyssa Rosenberg, Think Progress, March 5, 2012
“From The Mouth Of A Bully”: Rush Limbaugh’s 53 Smears Against Sandra Fluke
While Rush Limbaugh has offered his fake apology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a slut and a whore, it’s important to recall each of the 52 times last week when Rush insulted Fluke. So I’ve compiled a comprehensive list, each of them linked to Limbaugh’s own transcript of what he said. Does one half-hearted apology make up for 52 smears?
I’d love to see someone compile the audio (or better yet, a video) of Rush making all 52 insults against Sandra Fluke. If anyone would like to do that, please email me at collegefreedom@yahoo.com, and I’ll give you my password to Rush’s website.
Here are the 52 smears by Rush Limbaugh.
Feb. 29, 2012:
2) “they’re having so much sex they can’t afford the birth control pills!”
4) “Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can’t afford birth control pills.”
March 1, 2012:
5) “You’d call ’em a slut, a prostitute”
7) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
9) “the sexual habits of female law students at Georgetown”
10) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
11) “having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
12) “four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
13) “Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex.”
14) “to pay for these co-eds to have sex”
16) “Therefore we are paying her to have sex. Therefore we are paying her for having sex.”
17) “Have you ever heard of not having sex so often?”
20) “’If we’re paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes.’ And what else could it be?”
22) “I’m having sex so damn much, I’m going broke.”
23) “She’s having so much sex that she’s going broke! There’s no question about her virtue.”
24) “having so much sex she’s going broke at Georgetown Law.”
26) “She’s having so much sex it’s amazing she can still walk, but she made it up there.”
27) “Maybe they’re sex addicts.”
28) “to pay for her to have sex all the time.”
29) “she wants the rest of us to pay for her sex.”
30) “She wants all the sex that she wants all the time paid for by the rest of us.”
31) “Here this babe goes before Congress and wants thousands of dollars to pay for her sex.”
32) “a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman.”
33) “She wants all the sex in the world, whenever she wants it, all the time.”
34) “If this woman wants to have sex ten times a day for three years, fine and dandy.”
35) “to provide women from Georgetown Law unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
36) “so she can have unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
March 2, 2012:
39) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t afford her birth control pills anymore.”
40) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it — and we should.”
41) “She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
44) “Does she have more boyfriends? Ha! They’re lined up around the block.”
45) “It was Sandra Fluke who said that she was having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
46) “By her own admission, in her own words, Sandra Fluke is having so much sex that she can’t afford it.”
47) “they’re having a lot of sex for which they need a lot of contraception.”
49) “who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”
50) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it.”
51) “As frequently as she has sex and to not be pregnant, she’s obviously succeeding in contraception.”
UPDATE: added thanks to your comments;
By: John K. Wilson, Daily Kos, March 4, 2012
“Opus Dei”: Rick Santorum’s Old-Time Religion
Rick Santorum, a proudly letter-of-the-canon-law kind of Catholic, was once a good bit more relaxed in the practice of his natal faith, according to a profile of the Republican presidential hopeful’s religious journey that appears in today’s New York Times.
Reporters Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Laurie Goodstein attribute the hardening of Santorum’s religious beliefs to his relationship with his father-in-law, Dr. Kenneth L. Garver, a physician and father of 11. Garver’s daughter, Karen, who went on to marry Santorum, apparently went through something of a rebellious period: as a young woman, she was romantically involved with a doctor who performed abortions who was many years her senior. But when she married the man who would go on to become a congressman and then a U.S. senator, her rebellious days came to a close.
From Stolberg and Goodstein’s article:
The Santorums’ beliefs are reflected in a succession of lifestyle decisions, including eschewing birth control, home schooling their younger children and sending the older boys to a private academy affiliated with Opus Dei, an influential Catholic movement that emphasizes spiritual holiness.
That description of Opus Dei kind of snapped my head back for a minute. Opus Dei is essentially a secret society of laypeople whose members generally hail from among society’s higher ranks, affording the organization a degree of temporal power not typical of your everyday prayer circle. Stark distinctions are made regarding the roles played by the sexes.
There are various strata of membership in Opus Dei. For instance, married people, known as supernumeraries, play a different role from the single people, called numeraries, who live in Opus Dei housing. Here’s a bit from an article about Opus Dei that appeared in the Jesuit magazine, America, in 1995:
According to two former numeraries, women numeraries are required to clean the men’s centers and cook for them. When the women arrive to clean, they explained, the men vacate so as not to come in contact with the women. I asked [Opus Dei spokesperson] Bill Schmitt if women had a problem with this. “No. Not at all.” It is a paid work of the “family” of Opus Dei and is seen as an apostolate. The women more often than not hire others to do the cooking and cleaning. “They like doing it. It’s not forced on them. It’s one thing that’s open to them if they want to do it. They don’t have to do it.”
“That’s totally wrong,” said Ann Schweninger when she heard that last statement. “I had no choice. When in Opus Dei you’re asked, you’re being told.” According to Ms. Schweninger [a former Opus Dei member], it is “bad spirit” to refuse. Women are told that it is important to have a love for things of the home and domestic duties. “And since that’s part of the spirit of Opus Dei, to refuse to do that when you’re asked is bad spirit. So nobody refuses.”
In other words, no home ec classes for the Santorum boys.
The Santorums, of course, are entitled to practice their religion as they see fit — an entitlement, if you will, that is one of those things that truly does make America great. The problem is, Rick Santorum thinks you should live by his religious beliefs, too. In a chilling Washington Post Outlook piece, Sarah Posner imagines what Santorum’s America would look like.
By: Adel Stan, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 4, 2012
The “Sluts Of America” Are Fighting Back
I am a slut.
Before this week, I didn’t know I was a slut. But Rush Limbaugh set me straight:
What does it say about the college co-ed 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.
Sandra Fluke is the Georgetown law student who testified about the necessity of providing insurance coverage for birth control. She spoke about her friend who suffers from polycystic ovarian syndrome, which was being treated with birth control pills, until she could no longer afford to shell out $100 a month for her treatment.
Ms. Fluke did not talk about her own sexual activity. She did not claim that she was having so much sex that she could not afford the cost of contraception. She did not demand that she be paid for having sex.
But no matter—according to Rush, Ms. Fluke is a slut. I don’t know what dictionary Rush is using, so let’s see if we can suss out what exactly he thinks makes Ms. Fluke a slut:
- Maybe it’s because she can use the word “contraception” without blushing. So can I. Guess that makes me a slut.
- Maybe it’s because she cares about women having affordable access to necessary medical care. So do I. Guess that makes me a slut.
- Maybe it’s just because she’s a woman. So am I. Guess that makes me a slut.
And you know what? If you can talk about contraception, care about women’s health, or have the audacity to possess a vagina, you’re a slut too.
When he was called out for his obscene attack on Ms. Fluke, Rush didn’t back down; he doubled down:
It was Sandra Fluke who said that she was having so much sex she can’t afford it. […] She’s spending $3000, $1000 a year, on pills and she’s going broke and wants us to buy it. […] By her own admission, in her own words, Sandra Fluke is having so much sex that she can’t afford it. […] Does she have more boyfriends? They’re lined up around the block. Or they would have been in my day.
Ms. Fluke said none of those things, but you know the Republican rule: When you’re losing an argument, just make shit up and hope no one notices. This afternoon, Rush issued an “apology,” in which he basically said he was sorry if any sluts were offended by being called sluts, but if they weren’t such sluts, he wouldn’t have to call them sluts. Some apology, eh?
Of course, people did notice. Like Republican Rep. Darrell “Vaginas violate my religious liberty” Issa in Congress:
Democrats are largely to blame for the name-calling and personal insults of the contraception debate, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged Friday. […]
“While your letter raises important concerns about these inappropriate comments and the tone of the current debate over religious freedom and Obamacare, I am struck by your clear failure to recognize your own contributions to the denigration of this discussion and attacks on people of religious faith,” Issa said in response to Cummings.
You see, if those damn sluts hadn’t objected to Issa’s No Girls Allowed hearingabout how birth control makes Catholic bishops sad, Rush Limbaugh wouldn’t have had to attack those sluts for being sluts. See? It’s all their fault. You might even say they were asking for it.
Bill O’Reilly, who once had to pay millions of dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim, so you know he’s highly educated about what makes a woman a slut—refusing to have sex with Bill O’Reilly and his falafel—also joined Rush Limbaugh in his slut crusade:
“Let me get this straight, Ms. Fluke, and I’m asking this with all due respect,” he said. “You want me to give you my hard-earned money so you can have sex?” (Fluke is actually calling for her university’s private insurance plan to cover birth control.)O’Reilly went on, saying that, since Fluke wanted society to cover her “activities,” the government should also have subsidized his college football uniforms, since an injury might “cost society a lot.” He also said that perhaps taxpayers should pay for gym memberships for men so they could stay physically fit.
But a funny thing happened on the way back to the 17th century. Women Sluts took notice too. Known slut and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Limbaugh’s attack “obnoxious.” The sluts at the Washington Post wrotein an editorial, “This is not the way a decent citizen behaves.”
Even President Obama, the slut-in-chief himself, called Ms. Fluke to offer his support:
“He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women,” Fluke said. “What was really personal to me was he said to tell my parents that should be proud, and that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me, so I just appreciated that very much.”
The sluts of America are fighting back, and they’re hitting Rush right where it hurts: his corporate sponsors. Sleep Train, Select Comfort/Sleep Number, Quicken Loans, Cleveland Cavaliers, Citrix and LegalZoom have all pulled their support from Rush’s show. [Late today, the CEO of Carbonite announced that despite Rush’s “apology,” Carbonite is pulling its supporttoo.]
So, sluts, you know what to do: Click here to send an email to Rush’s other corporate sponsors, demanding that they stop supporting him and his slut crusade.
And then click here to tell Bill O’Reilly’s sponsors to drop him like a hot falafel.
By: Kaili Gray, Daily Kos, March 3, 2012
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