First of all, if you are offended by harsh words, you may not want to read any further. This piece will be filled with the kinds of words that I would take my kids out behind the wood shed for using. But, the use of these words is necessary to illustrate the problem at hand. First, the set up: Sandra Fluke is a thirty year old (not twenty-three, as reported) liberal activist. She graduated from Cornell University in 2003 with a degree in feminist, gender and sexuality studies. Fluke then enrolled in Georgetown Law School with the express goal of overturning the school’s health insurance policy exemption on birth control. Fluke is the co-president of the Georgetown chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. And, it is thanks to this, that she was called to testify before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on women's health and contraception.
The end game here, of course, is the Obama Administration’s attempt to force religious institutions like Georgetown, a Catholic school, to cover the health care costs of things they find morally repugnant, like birth control. Under ObamaCare, things like one’s religious conscience take a back seat to unhindered access to condoms and birth control pills. The definitive protection of religious freedom provided by the first amendment is being over shadowed by the ever-expanding “emanating penumbras” of sexual freedom.
So, Ms. Fluke goes before the United States Congress to beg for birth control; claiming that, over the course for three years at Georgetown birth control could cost her $3000.
As is his modus operandi, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh responded to Fluke’s testimony in a manner that seemed intentionally geared to anger liberals and generate controversy:
What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra 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. 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 taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's "round heeled." I take it back. —Rush Limbaugh, February 29, 2012
The result was that, after several days of criticism from all corners and the loss of many of his sponsors, Limbaugh offered an apology to Fluke.
Ok, so Ms. Fluke wants someone else to cover the cost of her birth control, Rush Limbaugh equates that with prostitution and all hell breaks loose. Limbaugh is branded by the Left as misogynistic and anti-woman. Fair enough, but where are these voices of condemnation when liberal talking heads were using even harsher terms to describe conservative women? They were nowhere to be found. As columnist Kirsten Powers writes:
Did you know there is a war on women?
Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts. There have been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait. Sorry, that never happened.
And what have these men been saying with nary a voice of condemnation being raised?
MSNBC talking head, Ed Schultz said that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He also called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.”
Former MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann said that conservative writer S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.”
Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi wrote, “When I read [Michelle Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.”
Then there is comedian Bill Maher. Again, to Kirsten Powers:
But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job.
The outcry from the media, from sponsors, from liberal politicians has been virtually nothing.
Regarding Limbaugh and others, Fluke said, “I understood that I’m stepping into the public eye, but this reaction is so out of the bounds of acceptable discourse .?.?. These types of words shouldn’t be applied to anyone.”
I wonder if her “anyone” applies to conservative women, too. I wonder if she, as a feminist and activist, spoke out against Maher, Olbermann, Schulz and the rest?
When Limbaugh’s comments are put in the context of a media that shrugs off similar comments towards conservative women, I find it hard to even care. I am neither disturbed nor offended by Limbaugh's remarks. I am, however, offended by the hypocrisy of a media that pillories him but let’s even worse comments about conservative women by the likes of Olbermann, Maher, Schultz, etc.. go by unnoticed. Even worse, I'm offended that, as a nation, we have sunk to the level of dependency wherein a woman goes before Congress to ask that her birth control be paid for by someone else. That is the true controversy here. Fluke is a whore, a welfare state whore.
