“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
“Picking And Choosing”: The Church, Taxes, And Health Insurance
The other day Tim Noah used the occasion of the Senate’s vote on allowing any employer to prevent their employees’ insurance from covering anything and everything the employer doesn’t like (which every Republican senator except Olympia Snowe voted for) to argue that this is yet more evidence that employers ought to get out of the business of providing health coverage, and we ought to just have the government do it. In a single-payer system, these kinds of decisions can be made by our democratic process, and not by every employer individually.
There’s just one note I want to make about this. Conservatives have been talking a lot about the importance of preserving the “conscience” of the Catholic Church, their right not to participate in anything that violates their beliefs. That, of course, is a privilege that the rest of us, being citizens of a democracy, don’t enjoy. We pay taxes, which go to a lot of things we dislike. I don’t like the fact that our government spends as much on the military as every other nation on earth combined. I also don’t like the money we spend on tax subsidies for oil companies. My conservative friends don’t like the fact that the government gives food stamps to poor people, and pays the EPA to make sure our air and water are clean. But we all pay taxes, because that’s how it works—we don’t get to pick and choose each line item we want to pay for and which ones we don’t.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, like all religious institutions, doesn’t pay taxes. Nor do their affiliated organizations like hospitals and universities, because they are nonprofit organizations. So if we had a single-payer system, the Church wouldn’t be involved in anybody’s insurance. The only way they could influence the law would be the way they do on other issues now: not by demanding that the law give them yet more special treatment, but through their moral persuasion on how they think the rest of us should act. And you can imagine how much force that would have.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, March 5, 2012
“From Eve To 2012”: What’s Behind The Slut-Shaming
As leading Republicans have been asked about Rush Limbaugh’s typically despicable attacks on Sandra Fluke—the law student who testified before congressional Democrats about the importance of health insurance coverage for contraception—they’ve offered some pretty weak responses. Mitt Romney said that when Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” “it’s not the language I would have used.” Perhaps he meant that he would have called her a “harlot” or a “trollop.” Rick Santorum, whose opposition to contraception is well-established, said that Limbaugh was “being absurd, but that’s, you know—an entertainer can be absurd.” Before we move on to this week’s controversy, it’s important to note just what kind of venomous beliefs this episode has brought to the fore. Republicans are insisting that this isn’t really about contraception, it’s about religious freedom. But for some people, it’s about something much more fundamental: the dire threat of uncontrolled female sexuality.
Limbaugh is indeed an entertainer, and he’s an entertainer who understands his audience very well. Does anyone think that when he called Fluke a “slut” that millions of his listeners didn’t nod in agreement? The real threat, as Limbaugh sees it, the thing that must be shamed and ridiculed, is the idea that a woman might be in control of her own sexuality. As Limbaugh said, “So Miss 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.” In other words, her sexuality is only acceptable if it can be placed in a context where it exists for his pleasure and not hers.
In rushing to Limbaugh’s defense, Bill O’Reilly offered only a slightly different take. “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?” Displaying his typical ignorance, O’Reilly, like Limbaugh, is under the impression that this issue is about taxpayer money and not what is being covered by the private insurance that women themselves are paying for. It’s convenient, because that way he can still consider himself involved, and claim the right to withhold his payment. And that way, the decision about whether a woman will have sex, and what will happen to her if she does, still lies in some measure with him.
It’s no wonder that even when a group of conservative state legislators passes a law requiring any woman who wants an abortion to get it only if she’ll submit to a series of humiliations, they usually insert exceptions for rape and incest. If it were about the fetus, it wouldn’t matter how a woman became pregnant. But if she was raped, then she wasn’t committing the violation of willingly having sex, so she need not be punished. So long as her sexuality doesn’t belong to her, she hasn’t fallen.
This is an old story, of course, going all the way back to Eve, through Hester Prynne, and going strong in 2012. So if you thought there weren’t still people, lots of them, who view the idea of a woman controlling her own sexuality with horror and rage, then the last week was a helpful reminder.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, March 5, 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
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