Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke and Hypocrisy

Late last week Rush Limbaugh called a woman, a third year Georgetown university law student, 30 year old Sandra Fluke, a slut on his radio show. I had planned on staying out of the controversy except that now, some of the same people, Bill Mahr, Chris Matthews, and Kieth Olberman, amongst others, who have had very crude things to say about women from Sarah Palin to Hillary Clinton are now having the nerve to ridicule Rush, when what he said, while not polite or kind, was tame compared to what they said. This is just plain hypocritical. I am not here to defend Mr. Limbaugh's comments but I will call hypocrisy when I see it.

First lets do something really strange and take what he said in context, which was essentially that she wants the American tax payer to pay for her sexual activities via contraceptives. In the world I grew up in someone who wanted to be paid to have sex was called a prostitute or a slut. Mr. Limbaugh comes from an older generation then my own, and he is conservative in all things, so why should his reaction surprise any one? Yes he shouldn't have said it that way, and yes the outrage has caused many a sponsor to run, much to many liberals delight, but he has a large audience and someone will fill in the gap because there is money to be made from his loyal listeners, continuing to talk about this is just giving him free publicity.

Second, the idea that she is some sort of private citizen it simply false. One thing I have learned in writing, or when you get up in front of an audience,is that once you speak out you subject yourself to attacks from all sides and some of it can get personal and nasty. She became a public figure as soon as she started speaking to the congressional committee and voicing her politically charged point of view. I am hard pressed to believe that she hadn't a clue that her statements would cause a stir especially in light of her being a third year law student. She apparently was smart enough to get into law school but not smart enough to know what would happen? I know that I have the potential to cause trouble every time I write something or speak publicly and I barely graduated high school.

Third, He hasn't said or done anything, that other prominent commentators haven't. But most of them have been given a pass, not because they were apologetic for what they said, but because they are a part of the favored party. The excuse is that the people that they attacked were mostly political in nature. So calling a woman a "Twat" or the C word is OK as long as the victim is a conservative republican or a political figure? This is pure hypocrisy. Women's groups ought to be up in arms EVERY time some well known figure makes a derogatory comment about a woman not just when its a conservative talk show host.

Fourth, and lastly, This is not about women's health issues. This is nothing more then a continuing battle to force religious institutions to provide contraception in violation of their first amendment rights and their collective conscience. It is an attempt to make conservatives look like people who don't care about women or their health, it's a brilliant tactical move on the part of the Liberals, but it is also nothing more then smoke and mirrors. Mr. Limbaugh comments didn't didn't help but we are not talking breast cancer here, we are talking about forcing Americans to pay for sexual activity that many might be morally or religiously opposed to.

So my suggestions to any and all that were offended by his comments, get a back bone, and if you are going to be "outraged" at Rush then go after ALL media who tear women up, not just the conservative ones. And lets stay focused on the real issue, which has nothing to do with women's health but rather the issue of forcing religious institutions to violate their consciences in clear violation of the first amendment.