Perhaps you’ve seen these widely-reported musings of the esteemed Mr. Limbaugh? Via TPM:
Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the contraception hearings taking place in the House of Representatives, taking particular aim at Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke who testified about the importance of contraception coverage for the women at religiously affiliated organizations — like law students at Jesuit schools such as herself. Limbaugh’s take on the issue:
“What does it say….that she 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, she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the tax payers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? The pimps.”
That’s right, ladies. According to Mr. Limbaugh, the right-wing id’s gaseous Mouthpiece-in-Chief, if you want your insurance companies to pay for contraceptive coverage then you are nothing more than whores. All of you.
I really have no comment on the particulars of Mr. Limbaugh’s epigrams. As Burt would say, res ipsa loquitur. When passing a festering pile of barnyard excrement, who among us pauses to admire the variegations of brown therein? The staggering stupidity and misogyny required to make a statement like this defy any attempts to parse them.
No, what I’d like to note is something I saw in that same TPM dispatch:
In her testimony, Fluke was talking about hormonal contraception, and specifically about the medical reasons for having hormonal contraception beyond preventing pregnancies. [emphasis added]
I haven’t been able to find a transcript of Fluke’s testimony yet, so I’m relying a bit on the veracity of TPM’s reporting. Given that it is itself a partisan source, there is the possibility that Fluke was testifying in part about hormonal contraception to prevent pregnancy, which is what Limbaugh (to give him far more benefit of the doubt that he deserves) may have been referring exclusively. However, I did find this from HuffPo:
Fluke, a third-year law student, said that Georgetown Law, a Jesuit institution, does not provide contraception coverage in its student health plan and that contraception can cost a woman more than $3,000 during law school. She spoke of a friend who had an ovary removed because the insurance company wouldn’t cover the prescription birth control she needed to stop the growth of cysts.
Clearly Fluke was talking, if not exclusively, then largely about non-contraceptive uses for hormonal contraceptive pills. Which makes what Limbaugh said not only vile and appalling, but also shockingly (though unsurprisingly) dishonest. To do so requires a degree of malicious indifference to the health of women that I find staggering.
There are many, many non-contraceptive uses for oral contraceptive pills, such that I wish there were another name for them. In my practice, I prescribe them with great frequency for menstrual disorders that include debilitating pain, massive blood loss and (as in the case of Ms. Fluke’s friend) ovarian cysts. For women with disfiguring acne who want to be treated with Accutane, hormonal contraception is required because the former medication can cause horrible birth defects. For many parents, it is a tough sell to agree to starting their daughters on this medication because of how closely linked to contraception and contraception only it is in their minds. Limbaugh’s comments only serve to strengthen this mental association and the (unfortunate and unfair) opprobrium that comes with it, to the detriment of women’s health.
So deep and abiding is Limbaugh’s hatred for the President and his agenda that he is perfectly happy to keep needed medication out of the hands of countless women, assuming he even recognizes the existence of their non-sexual reproductive health needs in the first place. He is willing to have the daughters of his very listeners deprived of medication that might help them, so long as the end result is a political defeat for the Democrats. The pain and suffering of women is something he will happily accept, if it means his political enemies will lose.
He is a disgrace, not merely as a political commentator and public figure, but as a human being. If there is a single more corrosive influence on our contemporary civic discourse than this nauseous bloat, I can scarcely think of who it might be.
Speaking as someone who took “contraceptives” for many years for medical reasons such as the type you describe–fortunately, covered by my insurance– thank you for this post! And I think the young woman Limbaugh slandered should sue for defamation of character, if only in the (probably vain) hope of teaching him a lesson.
Men and women are equals. This does not mean that they are equal in every single thing they do. For example, men are, on average, physically stronger than women. It is much easier for a semi attractive (even a 6/10) woman to go out and get laid. The same cannot be said about men. Men have to work at it, have some skill (game) and thereby get a woman to sleep with them. It is a LOT harder for an equally attractive man to get women than it is the other way around. This is one of reasons behind why we, as a society, naturally celebrate men who are successful in bedding multiple women; while at the same time shame women who bed multiple men.
Let us briefly visit the topic of virginity from both perspectives. Virginity in a man is not a desirable state or label when it comes to an attribute that the opposite sex wants. This is because he has obviously not been preselected by other women. However, female virginity is not looked at negatively in the least by men. If she looks decent, no man cares if the girl is a virgin or not. In fact, a female virgin is often wanted more.
Now don’t get me wrong, men LOVE sluts. We will never turn down an opportunity to sleep with a good looking slut. Partly because she’s good in bed, partly because it’s sex. But any decently intelligent, self-respecting man will know that it is a terrible idea to emotionally involve himself (i.e. date) a slutty girl. That would be a very dumb move. Why would any man want to get emotionally involved with a girl who’s had 15+ sexual partners? We would just be setting ourselves up for failure. There are many nice worthy girls out there who don’t have daddy issues and haven’t slept with an entire fraternity house. But, by all means, fvck the brains out of sluts in the meanwhile.
Most guys can detect when a girl is a slut by the first few dates and by what he hears about the girl from other people and from the girl herlself. We put this information together and figure out if she is dating material or not. If not, I like most guys, will still go in for the prize but have no intention of following through with dating the dirty little tart.
To put it simply, a lock that can be opened by many keys is a useless lock and of little worth. But a key that can open many locks is a master key and is valuable.
Medical arguments aside, it is exactly this kind of backwards thinking that leads to comments like Mr. Limbaugh’s. How much sex a woman chooses to have is a personal choice. If I choose to be promiscuous or enjoy having multiple sexual partners, I don’t expect to be ostracized by society for it. The terms “slut” and “whore”are thrown around way too loosely and reflect both a lack of respect toward women and a double standard that still exists in our society. Just because a woman is sexually liberated doesn’t mean that she has “daddy issues” or isn’t “dating material.” I don’t know why there is such a disdain for women who enjoy sex (and it comes from both men and women.”
How can you say that men and women are equal and in the same breath assert that this double standard is only logical? Sexual promiscuity is NOT the same thing as physical strength. It has to do with how a society treats individuals, not how evolution has influenced biology.
Very well said.
I wonder, by his logic then, I suppose we could consider his supporters drug dealers? Unless of course, his oxy was provided through insurance claims, then we are all drug dealers!
This world, and certainly this country, would be a better place without the likes of Rush Limbaugh in it. Rejoice, when that day comes!!!
Ol’ Rush’s mouth has outrun his fat ass for so long, it’s a miracle the two are still connected. For entertainment purposes only…..
My favorite line was: “She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford the contraception.” As if having sex only, say, once a month, makes oral contraceptives more affordable.
I know. As though hormonal contraception must accumulate in proportion to the number of times a woman has sex. The comment is epic both in terms of sheer idiocy and utter ugliness.
Well, he’s making an emotional argument, not a rational one.
And that’s what makes Limbaugh such an effective polemicist. He has a terrific intuitive connection to the reactionary Id.
And I was of course relieved to see he went on to rail against men who get Viagra covered. Man-whores, all of ’em!
So deep and abiding is Limbaugh’s hatred for the President and his agenda that he is perfectly happy to keep needed medication out of the hands of countless women, assuming he even recognizes the existence of their non-sexual reproductive health needs in the first place.
Honest question: do you think it’s that simple? Suppose that the GOP were in power and had proposed legislation banning contraception coverage. What are the odds he would present the exact same argument against Fluke’s views and in support of the GOP?
In either case, his ends are nakedly partisan and his rhetoric is loathsome. So, sure, maybe it’s not hatred of the President per se, but a broader hatred of liberalism and its proponents in general. But really, isn’t that a distinction without a difference?
Maybe it is. But it seems to me that if he’d still call Fluke a slut and imply she’s a whore even if there was nothing to be politically gained by doing so, then his motives wouldn’t be strictly political. They’d fall into a different category. That’s all I was wondering about.
But in your proposed scenario, his motives would still be political. They’d just be in support of the dominant party instead of in opposition to the President.
In any case, what seems obvious that’s he’s perfectly happy to say revolting things about women and stymie their access to health care in pursuit of his own interests. Perhaps they need not be political, but in any case the issue at hand is his patent misogyny.
but in any case the issue at hand is his patent misogyny.
Yes. Agreed. That’s the direction I was going in.
I see what you’re saying. Limbaugh’s misogyny stands apart from his political agenda, however entwined they may be in expression. Fair point.
Yeah. I kind of weaseled around it because I didn’t want to come right out and say “Hey, he’s partisan, but he’s a misogynist too!” I mean, I’m comfortable saying that. But lots of folks would probably find it offensive.
I have absolutely no compunction about saying so.
Think the trial of Lenny Bruce. He’s no Lenny [nobody is, not even Jon Stewart!] but that’s what’s happening here.
“I figured out after four years why I got arrested so many times. Dig what happens—it’s been a comedy of errors…I do my act at, perhaps, eleven o’clock at night; little do I know that at eleven a.m. the next morning, before the grand jury somewhere, there’s another guy doing my act who’s introduced as Lenny Bruce in substance. “Here he is: Lenny Bruce, in substance.” A peace officer…does the act. The grand jury watches him work, and they go: “That stinks!” But I get busted. And the irony is that I have to go to court and defend his act.…
Now the cop is going to do the act before the judge who never heard of Lenny Bruce before….“I don’t remember the whole act, your honor, but I made these notes….Ah, let’s see now: ‘Catholic,’ ‘asshole,’ ‘shit,’ ‘in the park,’ ‘tits,’ ’n ‘shit,’ ’n ‘Catholics,’ ‘Jews,’ ’n ‘shit.’ That’s about all I remember. That’s about the general tenor of the act.”
Limbaugh’s isn’t a very good joke, but you’re not following the internal logic of it. By exaggerating the cost of a year’s contraception at @ $1000/yr [it’s more like $20/m0], the only way that works out is 3 condoms a day @$1/ea.
The rest is expecting to get it for free, i.e., someone else pays for it. By including herself in the deprived, Ms. Fluke put her private life on the public line, and therefore is fair game for mockery. Lots of sex, somebody else pays for it.
I don’t think it’s a very good joke, and Limbaugh has doubled down on it to piss off his nattering critics, the outraged congresscritters on the left trying to make political hay of this without understanding [or caring] the nuance of it, since they got their account of this from Media Matters or other anti-Limbaugh hacks, like the cop in the Lenny story.
Ms. Fluke offered herself as a national laughing stock with a very specious argument. What follows is the usual grist for the mill, both Limbaugh’s and his critics.
Oh, dear. I doubt very much that we will be able to agree on this much, Tom. If there were holes in Ms. Fluke’s argument, the correct response was to point them out (as one notes you did above without recourse to slurs). One does not call her a slut. Doing so is completely, perfectly indefensible, I’m afraid.
I also disagree that testifying before Congress makes one fair game for vicious character assassination. If willingness to face this kind of defamation is the price anyone must be willing to pay to give our national leaders their opinions in public testimony, then ours is an impoverished nation indeed.
And finally, you have sidestepped the problem that Ms. Fluke seems to have been discussing (in large part if not the whole) the non-contraceptive uses of the medication in question. All the condoms in the world would have done nothing for her friend’s ovarian cyst.
Is this just the exile of moral reasoning in action, Tom? That CCers and liberals are so morally corrupted they can’t even understand the nuance of Rush’s deepdeep point, the one hidden beneath layered mischaracterizations of Flukes argument and obscene judgments – moral and evidential! – about her sexual behavior?
I said it was a junky riff. Taking Fluke or Limbaugh seriously here is the only error. You know how he does his act, extemporaneously. He was riffing and ended up there.
To the substance, Doctor, Fluke’s lengthy [!] argument on the non-contraceptive uses of birth control pills is virtually a separate argument—and I’m not sure that Catholicism even has a moral objection: iirc, it doesn’t.
But if one puts their personal life on the public line and makes dishonest arguments with it—and her argument is specious, that women are discontinuing contraception for $20 or less a month, then mockery will follow.
Would I make this joke? No, it’s not funny enough. But on the outrage meter, it’s a 2. We see anti-Catholic jokes and the etc. here @ LoOG all the time and unanimously let them pass.
I don’t want to spoil everybody’s fun with clarity, but this is closer to the Lenny Bruce thing than anything. Limbaugh isn’t huffing and puffing and yelling she’s a slut like Claude Akins in Inherit the Wind. He’s being snarky.
Limbaugh then said, “ok, so she’s not a slut. She’s round-heeled.” [“Round-heeled” is an old-fashioned term for promiscuity.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/rush-limbaugh-sandra-fluke-slut_n_1311640.html?
Are we sure her argument is dishonest? Does birth control cost $20/month with insurance or without? If that is the cost with insurance, than her argument might very well still stand.
BSK, I’m seeing multiple sources saying the pill, without insurance, costs $20-$50/month. That would equal a high-end annual price of $600. That’s less than $1000, to be sure, but not so low a price as to be inconsiderable, as some people are desperate to assure us is the case. Still, I’d wager that in most cases it could be lower end due to generics (not all the various forms of the pill can still be under patent protection).
$20 is generally with ballpark with insurance. It can be as little as $5 or as much as $40, though $5-25 has been most common in places where we have lived. The big exception was with NuvaRing when insurance didn’t cover it like other contraception. I don’t think we bore the whole cost, but we did bear something like $50 a month.
I found the same thing. Does one need regular check-ups to keep the prescription coming? There might be other costs as well.
Even if this woman’s numbers are exaggerated, nothing justifies the attack that Rush made. And, I’m sorry TVD, but reading between the lines does not get us from Rush’s statement to your interpretation of it.
He called her a slut who wants to get paid for sex. How the hell do you read that as a commentary on potentially exaggerated numbers?
It depends on what you mean by birth control. That covers a lot of different things.
Just with oral contraceptives, price can vary. I found this with a bit of searching.
Prices:*
With Medicaid: Free or a small co-pay
With insurance: Usually the cost of your co-pay
Without insurance: $10-$20 (generic at pharmacies); $20-30 (Planned Parenthood); $60-$90 (name brand at pharmacies)
http://bedsider.org/methods/the_pill#costs_tab
I can’t vouch for the site, since I just found it with a few minutes searching, but it seems legit. I will allow others to judge for themselves.
If you are using a generic, it seems to be about the cost of a cheap meal out. Even the top end name brands are certainly budgetable items. I can see how she could get to $3000 for three years, since paying $90 a month for 36 months puts you at $3240.
I sympathize with her friend, but can’t help but feel that she should have re-prioritized her spending, which might have saved her an ovary. Maybe she shouldn’t have to pay for it, but she ought to have done, if only for prudential reasons.
Cost of pelvic exam, yearly, to get birth control prescription: $212.00
Cost of yearly pap smear (billed separately from pelvic exam): $236.00
Cost of hormone pills without insurance: $48.75 per 28-day cycle
number of 28-day cycles in a 365-day year times $48.75 cost : $635.49
Showing how birth control costs over $1000 a year from my own receipts and putting right wing assholes in their lying place: priceless.
For everything else there’s Mastercard…
Funny, I don’t remember Lenny Bruce calling out individuals in quite that way. In the classic role of social critic comedians, Bruce was trying to undermine standard social prejudices, whereas Limbaugh works hard to reinforce them. This isn’t close to the Lenny Bruce thing at all.
Also, wasn’t Bruce actually put on trial? I don’t see this happening to Limbaugh, unless it’s for his drug problem.
Lenny caught hell for saying Jackie Kennedy was trying to escape the JFK death car, which, if you look at the Zapruder, she certainly was.
“Why this is a dirty picture to me, and offensive, is because it sets up a lie, that she was going to get help … because when you’re daughters, if their husbands get shot , and they haul ass to save their asses, they’ll feel shitty, and low, because they’re not like that good Mrs Kennedy who stayed there. And fuck it, she didn’t stay there! That’s a lie they keep telling prople, to keep living up to bullshit that never did exist. Because the people who believe that bullshit are the foremen of juries that put you away.”
You know, guys, it’s just us chickens down here, and y’all know me pretty well by now. This posturing is unnecessary. I’m not fronting for Limbaugh—I just know how he ticks. He extemporizes his whole act, and you can see his mind working. He shpritzed onto the “slut” thing–think Robin Williams’ stream of consciousness—and instead of backing down like Don Imus and the “nappy-headed ho’s thing,” decided, screw it. There’s no satisfying his critics anyway.
Now he’s tripled down—dug the hole even deeper—with the videos thing. It’s stupid and even in even worse taste, but PC and tapdancing and all the rest just isn’t rewarded these days, esp when you’re a lightning rod like Limbaugh.
Show weakness, that’s when the jackals get reeeeeeealllly excited. So Rush has decided to brazen this one out. I dunno how it’ll work, but Bill Clinton brazened out a situation where he was 100% in the wrong and managed to turn Ken Starr, a principled public servant and a better man than Bill Clinton is, into the villain.
Things being what they are, Limbaugh will not come out on top as Clinton did, but if he can survive this without having to debase himself as Imus did, it’ll be worth it. Basically, the strategy is to keep this flap in the realm of the absurd—where it started, some comedic shpritzing— than let the demagogues transform it into any measure of reality.
Because, me brothers—and even if you won’t admit we are brothers, we are, let’s face it—this is all bullshit. Limbaugh would sooner write a quiet check for somebody suffering from “female problems” than deny her proper medical care over ideology. If you believe otherwise…well, I can’t honestly believe you honestly believe otherwise.
I don’t think there’s much use in our going round and round on this, Tom. Suffice it to say that:
1) Calling a woman a slut is beyond the pale. Period. It matters not a whit to me how it is characterized, riffing or snark or otherwise. It is a shameful, shameful thing to do. Sadly, I fear that shame is a feeling that Mr. Limbaugh sloughed like so much lizard skin a long time ago.
2) I’m not entirely sure how germane the jokes that are bandied about on LoOG thread are, but let’s call them relevant. I’m not really aware of an anti-Catholic tendency, but then I don’t read all the threads comprehensively, and I’m sad to admit that once it seems you and an interlocutor are at loggerheads I tend to tune out. That said, if I were aware of anti-Catholic slurs here in my own little corner, it would besomething I’d be quick to condemn.
3) The average out-of-pocket cost for contraception, from what I can gather by doing a little bit of research, is about $26 for uninsured women. For some it may be more, for some less. That’s still
$600+[corrected: $300] per year, which for a student on a budget can be pretty steep. In any case, disagreeing with Ms. Fluke’s sums does not give anyone leave to imply she is a whore.[Corrected to reflect egregious calculation error, which occurred to me while driving home in the snow.]
You take the joke literally, Dr, S, because you prefer to. It’s a bad joke, but a lot more Lenny Bruce than Jonathan Edwards.
As for society, the gov’t, or insurance companies owing everyone freedom from the possible consequences of their recreational sex, well, that will not be questioned. We prefer the Toy Dept. of discussing a bad joke on talk radio.
Peace.
Partially playing devil’s and partially out of curiosity, Tom: Six months ago when folks were using derogatory terms for Palin or Bachmann, do you condemn or laugh off? I can’t remember anyone calling either round here a whore, but had they done so would I be mistaken to think that you would have roundly condemned them?
Tom, we do seem to be an an impasse. There remains the problem that Limbaugh seems to be quite flagrantly mischaracterizing the bulk of Ms. Fluke’s testimony. Regardless, even if she were discussing the issue of contraception per se, we appear to have little more of value to say to each other. “Just a joke” is, in my opinion, a terribly poor excuse for slandering the good name of a young woman… or, frankly, for slandering anyone. The excuse of humor is tissue-thin, and I happen to believe that certain words don’t figure into the jokes of respectable people, no matter how much we may think the target has it coming.
We appear to disagree on this, which is a pity.
I still don’t get what the joke was even supposed to be?!?! Am I that dense? She spoke about the difficulties of securing necessary medicine with the limitations the University puts on its plans. Limbaugh called her a slut. Haha…?
Tom, you’re not giving my much to agree with about, so a truce of sorts seems a long way off. Eg, this
Taking Fluke or Limbaugh seriously here is the only error.
makes no sense. I take Fluke seriously because she went before congress and offered testimony on an important issue for her specifically but women generally.
And I take Rush seriously because he’s the leader of an insane clown posse who revere his ‘logic’ and ‘reason’, and who view him – non-ironically – as a bulwark against indoctrination.
I think Rush has a bad joke and a valid point, mocking that free contraception is some sort of “right.”
RTod, I got so inured to the Palin and Bachmann puke that I can barely tell you what I wrote. Enough of the attacks were deranged and passionate, not snarky. I heard Limbaugh and he’s really doubling down on a bad joke than particularly angry or moral/judgmental, which is why I brought up the Lenny Bruce thing, which shows how tone is bled out of second-hand accounts.
I think Rush has a bad joke and a valid point, mocking that free contraception is some sort of “right.”
I’m not sure why it’s at all funny Tom. Maybe you could explain it to me. For example, is it hilarious to think that men have to show that prostate exams are a right before we permit insurance companies to cover the service?
I don’t think this is going anywhere, Mr. Still. I explained that Rush is not frothing, but his critics are. They would rather froth at him than defend Ms. Fluke’s argument in the real world.
I don’t blame them.
As for why prostate exams differ from voluntary contraception, I doubt we’ll get very far on that either. For the third time, I find the idea that society/gov’t/insurance companies owe anyone freedom from the consequences of recreational sex to be indefensible, and properly risible.
I explained that Rush is not frothing,
I’ll admit I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh make this comment (did you?), but I have listened to him enough to know that he does indeed froth, and frequently.
Fluke’s testimony irrelevant!?
Student health insurance at universities has nothing to do with the controversial Obamacare/HHS edict, which is for employees.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/292414/re-you-should-be-paying-our-sex-lives-ed-whelan
Amazing. What a colossal waste of time.
As for Limbaugh, it’s Toy dept. shit, and now that there’s no connection with discussing the real world, well, sorry to spoilsport the umbrage, because that’s all that’s left.
______
As the Department of Justice explains (p. 14 here) in responding to a “passing reference” in Belmont Abbey’s lawsuit against the HHS mandate,
Neither the preventive services coverage regulations [including the HHS contraception mandate] nor any other federal law requires [a university] to provide health insurance to its students — much less health insurance that covers contraceptive services.
Nothing in this point, I’ll emphasize, bears meaningfully on Belmont Abbey’s lawsuit, which principally concerns its obligations under the HHS mandate to provide coverage to its employees of contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization.
At bottom, Fluke’s testimony (even apart from her resort to unverifiable anecdotes about fellow students) doesn’t even have any connection to the HHS mandate. The fact that pro-HHS mandate propagandists are touting Fluke as their star witness is a stark sign of how empty their case is.
One last thing, then I’ll be done with this, I promise. (It’s been a long day, and my martini awaits.) Tom, if you really think that Limbaugh’s “joke” is distracting from the validity of his message, then it seems to me you should call him out. You are, after all, one of the most notably conservative voices on a political blog that enjoys respectable readership. I’ve certainly called out my own side for doing things I thought were distracting and idiotic. Why don’t you take this opportunity to do likewise? If you think Limbaugh’s comments are harming the legitimate arguments your side could be making, then say so.
C’mon, Dr. S, you took this circus seriously:
The pain and suffering of women is something he will happily accept, if it means his political enemies will lose.
Bro, do you really believe that, or were just talkin’ shit too? Anyone who actually know’s Limbaugh’s style know he was being facetious.
I’ll concede—I did—it’s a bad joke that I wouldn’t make, but because it’s not funny, not because it’s particularly offensive, which is about a 2 on the outrage meter.
And, unless Whelan’s wrong—it turns out Ms. Fluke isn’t even talking about anything relevant, which makes her doubly unsupportable and melodramatic, the Dems that proffered her up as an ‘expert” moronic, and defending Limbaugh’s bad taste even less worthwhile.
Yes, he has hurt his cause here—you’re correct, I stipulate that, and could or should should have made that admission and stipulation more pronounced from the first. But we both know that would have made no difference—we all know each other here, Doctor—so I went for clarifying the facts instead of a PC tapdance that would mollify none of the persons who’ve commented on this thread.
Or somebody tell me that ain’t so. I’m always willing to be pleasantly surprised.
;-P
For the third time, I find the idea that society/gov’t/insurance companies owe anyone freedom from the consequences of recreational sex to be indefensible, and properly risible.
And that’s precisely why Limbaugh’s so-called “joke,” isn’t funny at all–he’s a dumbass, but even a bright guy like Tom ends up thinking this issue is just about paying for consequence-free sex, even though the therapeutic uses of contraceptives have been pointed out over and fricking over.
Student health insurance at universities has nothing to do with the controversial Obamacare/HHS edict, which is for employees.
Graduate assistants exist in a poorly defined space between student and employee. Not that this is commonly known, so there’s no intent to rip you here, but if Ms. Fluke is a graduate assistant, it’s quite possible (although not certain) she’s on an employee health care plan.
So this is the defense for Limbaugh?
That he is some sort of performance artist, like a deep cover Colbert or Andy Kaufman, doing an insane portrayal of a frothing wingnut?
Dunno- must be the sort of thing that elite San Francisco artsy types like.
must be the sort of thing that elite San Francisco artsy types like.
+1.
TVD-
Just so we are clear here, someone “jokingly” calling a woman he’s never met a “slut” while legitimately attempting to discredit her and her position registers a 2 on your outrage meter?
His facetiousness vs. demagoguing his facetiousness. Interesting debate we have shaping up here.
Because that’s what’s happening, folks. I’ll recap:
The Dems put up Ms. Fluke, totally irrelevantly as it turns out, and with a rather indefensible point even if she had been relevant, that there’s some sort of right to free contraception that somebody else pays for.
But she was talking about student health plans, which aren’t the issue, and further tried to divert the contraception question into the non-contraceptive uses of birth control pills, which I’m not even sure the Catholic church opposes, but which is a side or separately arguable issue anyway.
So instead of discussing/debating the real life issue, we have members of Congress lining up to condemn the facetiousness of a talk show host, down in the Toy Dept. of American politics.
And since it appears there’s no substance to defend in this Sandra Fluke circus, demagoguing Limbaugh seems the only reasonable course. Because anyone who thinks he actually wants women’s pain and suffering in return for cheap political points is either deluded or dishonest. It’s beyond me that an intelligent person actually believes that.
Tom- Have you read transcripts of Fluke’s entire testimony? I can’t find them. If you also can’t, I struggle to see how you can make many of the claims you do. If you did, please share.
“So instead of discussing/debating the real life issue, we have members of Congress lining up to condemn the facetiousness of a talk show host, down in the Toy Dept. of American politics.”
On what planet would doing what Limbaugh did not be front page center? On what planet is the party that backs the guy that makes those kinds of jokes without saying anything not going to take it in the shorts come vote time?
Bottom line: regardless of what point your side is trying to make in an election year, if someone who’s seen is a leader of your movement makes it by saying a young women that disagrees with him is a slut who should tape and broadcast herself having sex – and everyone running for office on your side is afraid to say anything about that statement… well, get ready to smile at the camera and say “Hello, President Obama!” for another four years. Honestly, how can you not see that?
RTod, bringing the hammer down! That’s a good pragmatic argument.
If I was responding (oh wait, I am!) I’d’ve focused on the moral bankruptcy of people who think making jokes about sluttery/whorishness/voyeurism can be justified in an argument over contraception coverage. I mean, Tom likes to talk about the exile of moral reasoning in modern discourse, and I think he’s right: conservatives are moral monsters. What do obscene, false, insulting accusations of a specific woman’s behavior have to do with insurance companies covering contraception? Is this a core part of traditional moral reasoning?
I mean, we all get the point being made Tom: that you don’t think insurance companies ought to cover contraception. See how easy it is to make that point? And I didn’t even call anybody a whore.
Isn’t this, even as joke, textbook ad hominem? Or maybe ad feminem?
Yeah, I am the pragmatic guy.
I think I kind of see it that way in terms of meta, though. I can’t believe that the Romney campaign wants nothing more than to casually say to a reporter here and there that Rush certainly overstepped his bounds, and that the Governor certainly was not amused by Rush’s recent poor taste joke. But he can’t, because you can’t be a GOP candidate today and cross the machine. I bet the whole camp knows they’re going to pay for it in the general, and I bet it’s killing them that they have to sit and say nothing.
I will say that I think what (I think) is Tom’s main point, which is that the having the woman testify was more of a publicity stunt that a fact finding mission, is quite obviously true. I would probably disagree with him, however, that the Big Group o’ Men that the GOP led House called to testify on this same subject wasn’t exactly the same thing. That’s just politics. Limbaugh doing what he did was just a big fat early Christmas present that he handed the Dems.
The political implosion of the GOP over these past 6-8 months has been truly staggering. This was all the stuff they used to be so good at.
Oh RTod, I concede losing the demagogue war. I was analyzing at arm’s length. Of course the Dems, with no real case, turned it around on Limbaugh. That’s a duh.
Limbaugh’s guilty of misdemeanor bad taste, the Dems of felony distortion and exaggeration. Congresspersons are taking on talk radio, because they cannot win the debate in the adult world. Free contraceptives for recreational sex is a tough sell as a “right.”
But it’s all in the game. Dare big, win big. If you’re going to trivialize an issue, trivialize it in the biggest way possible!
Betcha didn’t know how completely irrelevant Ms. Fluke’s argument was. Me neither, and there’s no way the press is going to let the American people know.
And yes, BSK, I did read the Fluke transcript, acknowledged infra. Much of it was indeed about the non-contraceptive uses of birth control pills, which is either a non-issue re Catholicism, or a separately arguable issue. Conflating the two is, well, sophistry, exploiting the lack of univocality—in this case two different uses of the same pill.
Limbaugh is certainly not saying that treating her ovarian cysts makes a girl a slut. Even the biggest demagogue can’t sell that.
Tom-
Please link to hour spurce for the Fluk transcript. I have not been able to find it.
Grrrr… “your source”. Stupid iPad.
Found it, Tom. And her is why I think you are dead wrong:
“I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.”
She acknowledges that, as a student, is not specifically targetted by the mandate. But her experiences as someone who has had her access to contraceptive care limited by the Church’s stance on insuring it are analogous to employees and she is speaking from that perspective. She is giving a face amd a story to the women unable to secure such coverage and what the consequences are for them. How is that not relevant? Sure, there is an appeal to emotion and a bit of grandstanding, but that is nothing new for Congress. The realities of limiting access to contraceptive care is fleshed out by her story and would have provided proper balance to the panel of men brought in by thr Reps. She is also someone who has worked on issues relating to reproductive health, giving her experince and perspective beyond her own. It s a farce to consider the whole of her testimony irrelevant simply because she is not immediately impacted by the legislation. Sh gives a perpsective that has been deliberately made absent from the conversation on the official record.
Also, here is an easy way to cite a source: http://www.whatthefolly.com/2012/02/23/transcript-sandra-fluke-testifies-on-why-women-should-be-allowed-access-to-contraception-and-reproductive-health-care/
Of course Fluke’s testimony is still irrelevant, BSK. The issue is employer-based health insurance, and the people affected have jobs. As in $20 a month to buy their own contraceptives.
TVD, I have a lot of appreciation for the voice and perspective you offer to this site, but I just can’t understand why you’re tying yourself up in knots over this non-issue. You claim that contraception is cheap even after several commentors have clearly demonstrated otherwise; you claim that non-sexual use is a side-issue when it was the very impetus of the OP and title; you claim that Fluke’s testimony is irrelevant when Whelan himself admits he completely misread the law and botched his interpretation (I’ll grant you didn’t see the updates but it needs to be addressed); you claim that Rush was just free-associating even though he returned to the same topic and doubled down after a day to think about it.
Limbaugh is an asshole, I imagine even he would agree, so why pick this hill to die on?
Po’mouthing for Rush Limbaugh? Missing the nuance?
Well, we know what Rush Limbaugh uses for birth control. His personality.
Four trophy wives later… the one before the new model moved out of the marital bed a month after they got married and lived in separate housing in the “manor” till they finally got the divorcing part done.
The new one is 15 years his junior and some strange cross between a stepford wife and a june cleaver captive.
99
You didn’t read the OP at all, did you.
BTW, the “it’s only an act” got tired a LONG time back.
Excellent post, Dr. S. I have naught to add, beyond that my day was better before I read about Rush’s revolting arguments. 😉
I’ve listened to Limbaugh a couple of times a week for a year or so. I listen to hear what the other side is believing these days. He’s mean, dishonest, a racist, and a true woman hater with the maturity of a nine year old boy. On one show he repeated the phrase “Barack the magic negro” over twenty times (I didn’t start counting immediately) ,and he justified it by saying he didn’t make it up,he was only repeating what someone else said. He’s always called women ugly and stupid. To him a woman’s only value is her looks. How he ever got this last woman to marry him is beyond me. She must have traded in her brains for his money.
Apparently the latest from the comic genius of our time:
“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 to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Liberals, of course, have no sense of humor.
Ya know, I drive on public roads every day. I have sex on some of those days. Does that make me a whore on the latter days since I used a public road to get to the place I had sex?
No, it’s those “tips” you accept that make you a whore.
James! You said you’d never tell! Now our secret is out…
Ow, I didn’t see that coming or I would have kept my mouth shut.
What I am waiting for is November, after Romney loses in great part due to the female vote disparity. It will be fun to read and listen to the FOXy pundits try to muddle out why it is that women just didn’t vote for their side. I think they are really going to not understand why.
Conservatives think they have a sense of humor. Of course, as usual, they’re wrong.
Oh, that’s not a fair cop. Conservatives can be funny. They just can’t be preachy at the same time. It’s pretty much one or the other. Here, Rush preferred being preachy to being funny. Conservative humor is like conservative music: a conservative person can certainly make good music, or he can make conservative music. Trying to do both at the same time produces suckage.
Rare exception to the rule, D.I.’s “Guns.”
Listen to Rush for 6 weeks and you will get to know when rush is serious and when he is using absurdity to make his point.
Plus you know, the liberals hate him so you’ll know when he does stuff just to set em on fire.
Rush is hilarious sometimes.
I listened to him for several years, and he never made me laugh.
Jon Stewart does a much better job of mocking liberals than Rush does.
I used to listen to him during my afternoon drivetime back in the 80s. He was pretty funny then, and very entertaining.
Somehow, during the election campaign of 1988, he became the “voice of the right.” And from that point on, he became very polemical (and much less amusing, at least to me).
He was trying to be amusing in the portions that Dr. Saunders quoted. But it’s in-group humor. The “funny” part was not in what he was saying, per se, but in the notion that he and his audience were tweaking liberal sensitivities together.
See, here’s a good example of how to resolve a Hobson’s choice. If my options were to…
a) listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show for six weeks; or
b) remove my own eardrums with a rusty X-Acto knife and no anesthetic,
…it wouldn’t even be a close call, my radio would remain silent.
Fortunately, there are other options than these.
(That’s more of a Morton’s Fork)
Plus you know, the liberals hate him so you’ll know when he does stuff just to set em on fire.
Atrios’ theory is that conservative’s sole motivation is to piss off liberals. There’s lots of evidence, like the above, to support his theory. Which is amazing to me. The once proud tradition of conservatism has been reduced to a trivial and childish purpose: to piss off liberals.
Does deliberate antagonism fall under Burkean caution or Oakeshottian traditionalism?
http://nation.foxnews.com/sandra-fluke/2012/03/01/hot-video-limbaugh-takes-blowtorch-fluke-slut-controversy
I lost track of how many times he used some derivation of the phrase “so much sex.”. His insistence on its usage shows just how ignorant he is. Whether you have sex once a year or 60 times a month, you still require the same amount of prescription contraception. But that doesn’t fit into Rush’s desire to slut shame and talk incessantly about the sex lives of girls half his age. So he simply edits it out. Again, what is the joke here?
The biggest issue here is that Rush Limbaugh hates Rush Limbaugh.
Doctor Saunders, Just a short line to say how much I admire your patience with fools who have a tendency to hijack posts.
Oh, I’m quite fine with Tom’s comments. I’ve said my piece, and it’s obvious we’re not anywhere close to agreeing with each other (and are unlikely to get any closer). But it keeps me honest to have someone so vociferously dissent.
Tom van dyke,
Read thru this blog and agree with your conclusions.
I thought Rush made the issue viral public and does what he does best, illustrating the absurdity of lefts positions and driving them nuts, with a tweak at the end to make them go ballistic.
What is wrong with Rush? I certainly THOUGHT we, as a collective society, had moved on from “it’s all the woman’s fault if she gets pregnant” malarkey. Seems Rush is a throwback to the 1940s. He needs to be ousted from any position where his inane remarks are heard far and wide. It’s one thing for him to give his opinion in private or to a small group of friends. It’s quite another to lambast all women in America on an issue he is clearly stupid about. I used birth control for years. (NEWSFLASH RUSH: The husbands are not willing to give up sex if their wives don’t use birth control. NEWSFLASH: Who wants to raise more kids than you can afford? Now THAT’S real stupidity!) I always “paid for my own”. A clueless person thinks the “government” pays. As for low-income women, so what if they get bc paid for? They also get antibiotics paid for, etc. Would you RATHER they refuse their husbands/boyfriends sex and refuse and deny THEMSELVES enjoyment God put on Earth for men AND WOMEN? What about the HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN born into poverty if the women don’t use birth control? You would gripe about that, too. You are nothing but a worthless figure who needs to grow up and get another job!
Did you listen to Rush’s broadcast?
You do realize he isn’t against birth control.
He’s against someone else being forced to pay for someone else’s birth control.
Especially if they’re sluts.
Back before Bill Maher himself became a polemicist, he used to have a bit that went something like “you notice how back in the day they threw the virgins in the volcano, but never the sluts?”
LOL
I’m against war. I’m also against being forced to pay for someone else’s war. Sucks to be me. We’re all forced to pay for things we don’t like. If this is the bone of contention, surprise, that’s a trivial argument. *Everybody* agrees that it sucks to be forced to pay for things you don’t want. You have to get over that, and move on to the next step. Is it okay, in this instance, for society at large to determine that you ought to pay for “something”, if that something includes things you don’t want?
Or you really have to shut your trap when everyone else tells you that “I don’t want to pay for that, so the government has to stop doing it right now”… but the Nash Equilibrium for that game strategy is (spoiler alert)… anarchy! No government.
If anarchy is where you want to go, okay, I guess. If not, stop pursuing a rhetorical strategy that is going to dump you there.
Rush isn’t funny any more. He wasn’t anywhere near as funny as George Carlin back when he was funny, and like George the older he got the more political he got and the less funny he got. George managed to stay occasionally funny. Rush cratered into “unfunny” over a decade ago. Now his idea of being funny is to be deliberately horrendously offensive to groups of people he doesn’t like, and then nudge the guy next to him with his elbow when that group responds and talk about how oversensitive “those people” are. He’s a bully, pure and simple.
He’s not a bully and He’s not George Carlin
I like that you capitalized the “He” there. Intentional or not, that’s funny.
And He said ‘pill takers are sluts’ and the listeners did swoon and He said ‘those who would have us pay for their contraception are prostitutes’ and the audience did sigh in delight, and woe unto them who will cross He who so declareth.
Insurance companies are a cost-pooling mechanism. By definition, participation in the pool means that your premiums are paying for procedures that do not directly benefit you. Since insurance providers commonly cover procedures and prescription drugs of this class for men (vasectomies, viagra, etc.) it seems curious that Rush is only offended by coverage for womens’ drugs.
On the other hand, Rush has already been in trouble with the law for obtaining Viagra without a prescription, so perhaps he’s being consistent with his principles.
Wow, did you ever think the words sluts and vaginal probes would come up in political discourse?
Superb comments summarizing my feelings about Mr. Limbaugh. He really is a noxious, soul-less, narcissistic bully, isn’t he? The word “disgrace” and “misogynist” does not begin to describe him. In my view, however, he is something far worse: an opportunist who peddles hate speech he doesn’t necessarily believe in simply because doing has proven so lucrative.
That’s the beauty of the market.
Rush Hates women does he? How is that, after you hear Comrade Ed Schulz call Laura Ingraham a slut? Comrade Bill Maher used a C-word to describe Sarah Palin. Let’s not forget the slime of Comedy, Comrade Sandra Bernhard Jokes ” Like Rush Did” About Black Men Gang-Raping Palin. Want more, you Freedom Haters? Truth is, Comrade Fluke is just there to push the Obamacare agenda to make Catholic colleges pay for contraception, sterilization and abortion pills. She knew the school’s policy before she enrolled. Now is that so hard to understand? You Liberals make me so sick, I just want to puke.
Is it just me, or does this comment sound kind of like what the Left *thinks* the Right talks like – rather than how most of them actually talk?
Or what a guy thinks a gal might say. Actually based on the syntax I’d bet you or Russell a round of drinks that Christina is “Mike.”
btw, Rose, in order to collect you would have to do Vegas. So do Vegas.
That’s ever so fascinating!
So, Christina, I don’t know if you’re actually reading. If you are, and you really are “Mike,” I’d recommend not pushing your luck by commenting with too much vitriol too frequently.
Do Vegas anyway, Rose. Ditch the kids for a weekend. You know you wa-a-a-a-ant to.
Rest assured, Ms. F, now that I have this little blog, should any prominent liberals call women sluts or c***s (which I cannot bring myself to type) or any other egregious slurs, I promise to call them on it.
PS> Love that “Comrade” of yours. So quaintly retro!
How anybody could read this article beyond the title is beyond me.
Rush does not hate women.
Women complain about how unfair it is that men are called studs when they sleep around, yet women get called sluts for the exact same behavior. It’s actually not a double standard though, because both scenarios are pretty different in terms of circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least four crucial differences:
First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. A man needs social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women, though, a vagina and a pulse is often enough. Whenever an accomplishment requires absolutely no challenge, no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline. People respect those who accomplish challenging feats, while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained feats as weak, untrustworthy or flawed.
Second, women have potential to do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He’s definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread VD. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only all these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage.
If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If you reverse genders and have one woman who sleeps around with five men who are monogamous to her, and she gets pregnant, the father could be any of the five men. And if one of those men is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he’s investing time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that isn’t carrying his DNA into the next generations, a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint.
Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or is secretly raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me.
Since the DNA test and the birth control pill didn’t exist until recently, there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage for most of human history. For this reason society developed a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women, and society accomplished this by creating the slut stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, longstanding traditions and customs are not easy for society to break so the slut stigma remains.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around more. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women sleeps with many men in a nine month period, she can only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women during a nine month period, you can get many pregnancies during that period. The more women he sleeps with, the more possible pregnancies.
So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men being promiscuous compared to women being promiscuous. This doesn’t mean that women have evolved to be strictly monogamous. Women have evolved to be somewhat promiscuous too, something men badly underestimate. However they haven’t evolved to be as rampantly promiscuous as men.
Fourth, promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men. A woman has more to lose from choosing bad sex partners than a man does. She’s the one who gets stuck with going through a pregnancy and taking care of a baby alone if she chooses a deadbeat. For this reason, promiscuous women throughout history have historically been viewed as being a vastly more irresponsible risk takers than promiscuous men, who rightly or wrongly could always run away from the consequences of unwanted pregnancies easier than women could.
These four reasons explain why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Of course all this is gradually changing, but we’re up against millenia of evolutionary and cultural conditioning here, so don’t expect any dramatic overnight reversals.
Understand that I’m just explaining why the double standard came into existence and not condoning or condemning it. This is not an attempt to pass judgment or be self-righteous in any way. It’s just an explanation of why the two conditions are treated differently.
Girls everywhere and all you emasculated “men” who are trying so hard to be politically correct at the expense of your masculinity, listen up.
Men and women are equals. This does not mean that they are equal in every single thing they do. For example, men are, on average, physically stronger than women. It is much easier for a semi attractive (even a 6/10) woman to go out and get laid. The same cannot be said about men. Men have to work at it, have some skill (game) and thereby get a woman to sleep with them. It is a LOT harder for an equally attractive man to get women than it is the other way around. This is one of reasons behind why we, as a society, naturally celebrate men who are successful in bedding multiple women; while at the same time shame women who bed multiple men.
Let us briefly visit the topic of virginity from both perspectives. Virginity in a man is not a desirable state or label when it comes to an attribute that the opposite sex wants. This is because he has obviously not been preselected by other women. However, female virginity is not looked at negatively in the least by men. If she looks decent, no man cares if the girl is a virgin or not. In fact, a female virgin is often wanted more.
Now don’t get me wrong, men LOVE sluts. We will never turn down an opportunity to sleep with a good looking slut. Partly because she’s good in bed, partly because it’s sex. But any decently intelligent, self-respecting man will know that it is a terrible idea to emotionally involve himself (i.e. date) a slutty girl. That would be a very dumb move. Why would any man want to get emotionally involved with a girl who’s had 15+ sexual partners? We would just be setting ourselves up for failure. There are many nice worthy girls out there who don’t have daddy issues and haven’t slept with an entire fraternity house. But, by all means, fvck the brains out of sluts in the meanwhile.
Most guys can detect when a girl is a slut by the first few dates and by what he hears about the girl from other people and from the girl herlself. We put this information together and figure out if she is dating material or not. If not, I like most guys, will still go in for the prize but have no intention of following through with dating the dirty little tart.
To put it simply, a lock that can be opened by many keys is a useless lock and of little worth. But a key that can open many locks is a master key and is valuable.
I’d argue this, but since I’m emasculated I’m just going to go sit quietly in the corner and write in my journal.
Bwa ha ha! At least we castrating b*tches managed to get Tod mouthing our PC line. Alas, Brody has eluded our grasp and is free to speak the truth that we’ve terrified other men from speaking. Clearly our 6/10’s aren’t working on him. Maybe we’ll send a 7/10 and see how it goes.
If not, I like most guys, will still go in for the prize but have no intention of following through with dating the dirty little tart.
Doubtless there are innumerable dirty little tarts just crying their eyes out at missing the chance to date a prince like you.
I was having a pretty boring Saturday night. No longer.
It just occurred to me that the Roissyverse and the Derbverse are largely the same thing, and inhabited by no small number of the same exact people.