Rush Fluke
What does a Fringe Editor have to Do to be Discussed Before Congress Like Rush? 032112
The news (sorta news): Rush Limbaugh, a conservative politico-entertainer, calls a 30 year old law student a slut because she wants contraception covered under health insurance for students and workers.
The student was invited by Dems to speak before congress but a mean old Republican chair refused to allow it. Traditionally, Republicans have generally preferred to discuss such topics as female contraception and abortion without the distracting nignag of women in the room. The Dems, though, being intrinsically sensitive to those with ovaries, met with her and heard her request for insurance paid contraception.
Limbaugh, hearing of this and speaking for religious extremists from Rome to Tehran to Garden Grove, said that the young woman wanted taxpayer dollars to buy contraceptives because she has so much promiscuous sex she can’t keep herself in gummies. He eventually used Repubilogic to make the connection that having sex to get contraceptives is having sex for money which is prostitution. He said if she was going to use taxpayer money for prostitution the public was entitled to the videos, treating America to the image of Rush, slumped naked and alone in the gloom of his laptop, while on screen Sandra Fluke and a partner to be named later writhe on the sheets. A sad and lonely vision, and one likely to put one off your grits.
People bitched on “Facebook” and sponsors withdrew and other sponsors stepped up, and it was a brouhaha. Limbaugh eventually made what could have been an apology, but the young woman, Sandra Fluke, declined. Fluke, a student at Georgetown, a Jesuit university, feels the University receives federal money and should provide the contraceptive “coverage”. The Executive branch phoned to support her. Fluke’s currency increased as Rush’s sponsors fled, and Romney and Santorum each gave 2 cents on the issue. and Obama said there was no place in the discussion for Limbaugh’s language. Rush apologized again, and Fluke didn’t accept it again. Slowly, the outcry cooled and sponsors started to return.
The Fringe Opinion: Where Rush Went Wrong: The correct response would have been, “You have so much sex you can’t afford your own contraception? How’s a rich old bastard like me get in on something like that?” Obama had a much smarter approach, being strongly supportive, and though there is no transcript of the phone call available, we can guess it might have contained the phrase “have you ever heard of Monica Lewinski?”
First off, Rush has freedom of speech, also sometimes known as “freedom of stupidity.” Second, why is anyone surprised at this? No one is saying “we don’t understand it, Rush has always been so moderate and soft spoken.” If Mister Rogers (God rest his soul) had said, “Fluke, you’re a slut and a prostitute,” it would have been news. Otherwise, articles like this in the Prospect and other media is an indication that there is no real news, or at least no real news readers would be interested in reading about. Indeed, Rush, or anyone else in the media biz, who calls someone a “slut” has just created a pot-kettle situation.
Where the real news lies is not in Rush Limbaugh behaving like a misogynist, but in the steadfast refusal of “decent” people to pay for something they feel is immoral.
We’re not talking about killing and war, here, and we’re not talking about government intervention in private life. We’re talking about having protected sex.
The Catholics have led the movement against insurance paid contraception, partly because they have so many employees. Catholics, one might recall, are supposed to believe that having sex without the intention of creating new Catholics is against God’s law, kind of. The Official Catholics complain about providing contraception to non-Catholic employees because contraception is wrong, and the implication is that Catholic Employees would never want such a benefit, so it’s unfair to them in a way. It’s a little tiny leap in logic to suggest Catholics don’t want to provide contraception to their Catholic workers most of all.
Other fundamentalist religions aren’t against contraception- when used by a decent married woman to protect herself from the insatiable animal lust of her husband. That doesn’t mean they approve of all and sundry having pregnancy-free immoral sex.
Finally, there are those “fiscal conservatives” who don’t want someone getting laid on their tax dollar. You want to keep your fanny in the air, go ahead, but you’ll have to pay for the pleasure.
Atheists often look at the subject like this: contraception is a medical matter and should probably be part of health insurance. An atheist, unfettered by two thousand year old edicts rumored to be from God, might also notice that unwanted children are often a problem, and cost a great deal more than contraceptives. Indeed, an atheist might not be surprised that young men and women in their physical and sexual prime would want to go at it like monkeys all the time, and a responsible society might make contraception free.
But Atheists aren’t invited to the party. Instead, we have cool, scientific thinkers like the Arizona legislators who are pushing through a law which says contraception is not covered by employee health insurance, and if a woman wants health insurance to cover contraceptive medications she has to present her employer with a doctor’s note specifying that the medication is for treatment, and not to prevent pregnancy. Her employer, perhaps a Massa Legree, has control over his worker’s reproductive potential.
Sandra Fluke doesn’t represent bar-hopping college sluts so much as the future of health care. Contraception is a medical issue, and increasingly, our medical bills are taken care of by insurance.
It’s also likely that at some point even conservatives will notice that the pie of Earth is only so big, and more mouths mean less for everyone. Preaching at people not to have sex has had little effect on the global population which has grown from 3 billion to just under 7 billion in the last 50 years. Even acknowledging that population growth has slowed dramatically in China (11.9), the Middle East, and European countries (Germany at 8.9; Spain 12.6), the birth rate in the U.S. is still 13.7, depending on the information source.
Rush might take a moment to consider the hard realities of human population growth, though he, personally, has no children despite being married four times. That actually qualifies him not just for Zero Population Growth (link), but for the Voluntary Human Extinction Project, (link). It also causes us to wonder, has he had no sex in those four marriages, or is his gang not on the job, or has he been (gasp) using contraceptives? We’ll go with no one has wanted to have sex with him.
One thing Rush had done is to set the bar high for potty mouthed journalists and politico-tainers like the Fringe; it is now my goal to lose 65 advertisers and have the president call someone and apologize for me, but in the end, still come out smelling like a rose.
Good Luck!
