Obama served up the bait and Rush Limbaugh devoured it whole as if it was his last Vicodin. The hatred that Rush spewed over the testimony of Sandra Fluke was a not so gentle reminder of conservative males hatred for women as sexual equals and as independent sexual entities. It’s an unlikely group of allies but I found myself asking why do all conservative types, religious nuts and the Taliban, despite some of their protests to the contraire, hate women so much? Sure, they will tell you they love their women but apparently only in the roles of mother, sexual partner and domestic help. If a woman should step out of those boundaries they are immediately suspect of being lewsenuous and evil.
This all came to a head when Sandra Fluke, a law student, was testifying to Congress about having to pay for her contraception that was not being covered by Georgetown. This excerpt is from the Huffington Post:
Rush Limbaugh doubled down on his incendiary comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who was denied the right to speak at a contraception hearing, during his Friday show. The conservative radio host sparked outrage on Wednesday when he called Fluke “a slut” and “a prostitute.” He alleged that she was “having so much sex” that she couldn’t afford contraception. He went further the next day, adding, “if we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Rush took to the cause and of course twisted her words around and stated that in effect she wanted to get paid for all that sex and what did that make her? A slut? A prostitute? What the hell is this, the 1950’s or maybe the 1100’s? Moreover; Rush obviously doesn’t understand how modern female contraception works, i.e. to be effective the pills must be taken continuously and not necessarily taken as needed. I’ll make this easier for the mentally challenged neocons out there such as Rush: despite your tawdry daydreams a woman taking birth controls pills does not necessarily correlate to her having continuous sex every day. Plus many women take birth control pills to manage their monthly cycles better; again all nuances that would elude a male knuckle dragger like Rush. How many wifes did he have?
I also find Rush’s tasteless, prurient comment about wanting to watch her sex tape for his tax dollars somewhat curious. Never mind, that Ms. Fluke was actually calling for her university’s private insurance plan to cover birth control like many other private insurance plans, again no government dollars involved but Rush was never one to let the truth to get in the way of a good crude remark. However; this comment did give me pause and some insight as to how I could find some common ground for both Tea Party and Occupy Wall street activists. In fact, I know we all agree, that nobody and I do mean nobody, wants to see a Rush Limbaugh sex tape! My eyes, my eyes, they burn!
The Repucons presidential candidates were of course scurrying for cover. Romney looked confused about the issue and Santorum looked disgusted by Rush’s comment but I think this response was more in tune with his overall prudish repulsion of anything sexual other than making babies. As to Rush, he could care less about the impact on the presidential election; he loves having a so-called black leftist in White House and serving up the red meat to his rabid following.
Rush’s lame arguments made his comments about the government controlling your sexuality are equally disingenuous and farcical. In fact, it is the Catholic Church that wants to control the reproductive rights of all Catholic females as well as the non-Catholics in their employ and they are quite up front about their desired goals. Whereas, the government doesn’t say you have to take the birth control pills they just want to leave you with option that all other women in this country have. More neocon lies!
Of course, the other famous necon chicken hawk on Faux News, Bill O’Reilly, didn’t want to be left out of the fun and he also showed how real men should behave: don’t fight in wars you clamber for but instead display your manliness by disparaging women whenever given the opportunity. By the way, Bill’s deferment from the Vietnam War was based on his college attendance while Rush’s deferment was granted due to a pilonidal cyst, basically an abscessed hair on his ass – a true story by the way. Way to man up guys!
Of course, this is an argument being drawn with crayons and blunt ones at that but the meanness of the attacks also begs the question: “What explains the hatred of women by conservative males?” Off hand you could say religion and that is partly true. All major religions institutionalize misogyny after all it’s in the Bible and we all know how women are the purveyors of the Original Sin. But there also seems to be lot of boyish jealous rage by men over women not reciprocating their manly love and there is the persistent fear men have over a woman’s preternatural ability to create life.
The only good sensible response from normal folks is do what many advertisers have done; remove their ads and stop watching and listening to Rush. Sorry, it’s not going to happen, Neocons love this type of misogynistic hatred plus Rush loves getting attention, like a little boy pulling his wiener out of his pants for the shock value. But how is this incident different from the outrage that occurred when Imus infamously called Rutgers black basketball player “hoes”? Imus got fired even after meeting with the girls and apologizing to them but Rush just doubles down on the hate seemingly with no real repercussions. Well there is one, advertisers have started to pull their marketing dollars from his show and Rush has since been forced to a rushed apology before the bleeding worsened. Each more drop leaving Rush to curse his plight to his minions. Kind of sad actually.
My real concern is why are women so quiet as this male oriented assault goes on? Whether you are on either side of the debate women seem to be content to let the men battle it out and speak for them. That’s a big mistake. Enough, it’s time to be heard! And as to Rush, well karma is a bitch, sorry no sexual slur intended and I have a nasty feeling your next go around in life will be to come back as a Pakistani transsexual with Bill O’Reilly as your sidekick!
Many readers will accuse me of being a liberal but that is couldn’t be farther from the truth. I prefer the term neo-libertarian meaning I’m a fiscal conservative that also believes that the government and Catholic Church should stay the hell out of yours and mine bedroom! I voted McCain in the last election and felt that Bush left us a financial meltdown and two wars whereas Obama basically prolonged the recession. I also recognize the strong whiff of racism in neocon rhetoric in regards to a black president. I feel both parties insist on doubling down on the same stupid, tired policies that got us into this mess to begin with and that the only solution is to have term limits so that corruption is no longer generational in Congress.
