Who Agrees With Rush Limbaugh?

March 8, 2012

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WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 23:  Sandra Fluke, a...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably well aware that last week Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a “slut” and demanded that she post videos of herself having sex because she (according to Rush) wanted the government to pay for her birth control. There’s just so much wrong with this statement it might be hard to tackle it in one article, but I’m going to give it the old college try.

As the story goes, Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law student, testified in front of congress in late February in support of President Obama’s proposed mandate that insurance companies be required to offer women’s contraceptives like any other covered medication. She argued that birth control for women can cost as much as $1000 a year and low cost/free clinics could not help in many cases. In her testimony she stated her friend has a medical condition, polycistic ovary syndrome, and birth control pills are prescribed by a doctor to treat that condition. Despite this fact, the insurance company got in between her friend and her friend’s doctor (you know, that very thing Republicans argued Obama care would do? Yeah, it’s already being done by insurance companies). In response to this, Rush Limbaugh said,

What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

Later that day Limbaugh also said the following:

Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope.

Furthermore, on March 1st (a few days later) he continued on this same subject and said,

So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.

My first thought is that if Mr. Limbaugh thinks he has a right to watch videos of women who want birth control covered by their health insurance companies having sex, then I want videos of Rush Limbaugh in agonizing pain because his health insurance company paid for his extreme doses of oxycontin. I’m just following his line of logic, shouldn’t be a big deal to him, right? Also, Rush really is showing his ignorance if he thinks you need to take more birth control pills the more sex you have. I guess he’s just too used to popping his narcotics from dozens of different prescriptions he got from his housekeeper when he has issues, so he figures throwing more pills at something should help get rid of the problem faster or better.

Ms. Fluke’s testimony was a response by Democrats in response to Republicans inviting an all-male, all-conservative panel to discuss the requirement that health insurance companies provide contraceptives in the same fashion as other drugs. If the democrats really wanted to balance out a panel of 10 conservative males discussing contraceptives, they could have called Ellen DeGeneres, Rose O’Donnell, and Iceland Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir to discuss Viagra and prostate health issues. Again, it’s along the same lines of logic, just taken to the opposite extreme.

I’m actually not quite sure why the big conservative religions are so uptight about this issue. It’s pretty widely known that the Catholic church (still) opposes the use of contraceptives, ironic considering 98% of Catholic women use or have used birth control. You’d think they would want to make sure their own people were following their views before trying to actually speak out vehemently about them. I guess it’s along the lines of Republicans being so outspoken against homosexuality when so many of them are caught having or soliciting gay sex.

I’d like to end on a note of linking this issue with another current event, the Republican Candidates. The response of the current 4 candidates has been tepid, at best, with Ron Paul being the most honest – he said Limbaugh is most concerned with his fiscal bottom line.  Yet any candidate not named Ron Paul is completely willing to keep railing about how we need to attack Iran, despite the fact that wars in the Middle East tend to be unpopular and cost the lives of thousands of young Americans and simply throw more fuel on the fire of terrorism. What does it say about a man who’s willing to start a war that will have nearly zero repercussions for him, but he’s unwilling to stand up to Rush Limbaugh? Do we really want someone like that for president?

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One Comment (+add yours?)

  1. Martin Kelly
    Mar 08, 2012 @ 16:31:14

    Limbaugh is and always has been a pig. Several marraiges reveil that he is not much fun to live with either. That people consider his “show” to be newsworthy is surprising to me. That people react so strongly to him, but consider Bill Maher and Al Frankin to be just comedians with good views is also confusing to me.

    He was wrong and obscene about the young lady. The congresspeaple who brought the young lady in to testify because she was an expert witness were also wrong, but not obscene. I believe that the young lady while believing she was doing the right thing and advancing her own concerns was simply used.

    If we look at what sparked all of this nonsence we get to the real and important issues. There was a hearing called of religious leaders to address the apparent breach of relegious freedom imposed by the health care law forcing religious institutions to provide coverage for birth control. Some congress people objected that only four witnesses showed up and they were all men, so they left, held a news conference and declared that the hearing was on whether women had the right to access to birth control. Althogh this is a valid point of discussion, it is not an accurate description of the hearing, but we are talking politics. It was after this point that any sense of decency was lost, with Mr. Limbaugh taking the most rapid descent into meaningless drivel.

    If we want to have a discussion about wormen having access to birth control (and they do) fine. If we want to have a discussion about mandates to pay for that birth control with other people’s money, fine. If we want to have a discussion about mandates impacting freedom of religious expression (remember pagans can’t sacrifice live animals), fine. We never seem to give any attention to meeting the birth control needs of men. Oh yeah, that is because most men think it is a woman’s responsibiltiy. Maybe Mr. Limbaugh should think about. I am all for freedom of speach, let anyone say anthing they want, just remember there are consequenses and in this case they were financial.

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