Old, fat, mostly white men messing with your ovaries
by westwood
The news angers me, most days. Hence I return to it morning after morning, a junkie looking for my daily fix of righteous indignation, followed by quiet fuming until placated by orange pekoe. Most days, I get over it. Some days, I take action in pursuit of change. The last few days, I’ve just stayed angry. Really angry.
Have you heard the whole U.S. contraception debacle? Let me break it down for you.
1. Obama introduces a bill to the Senate whereby religiously-based health care providers would have to cover the cost of prescription contraception for women.
2. The Senate’s Republican majority brings a panel to weigh in on the situation. Just look at how qualified this panel is to discuss women’s reproductive rights!
Image Credit: ABC News
Who are they? All-male religious figures, that’s who (scientists and doctors and women need not apply. Especially if women somehow are scientists and doctors… that’s just crazy).
3. The Democrats brought in a law student, Sandra Fluke, to testify about a friend who lost an ovary due to the inability to have prescription birth control covered (she had polycystic ovary syndrome). The Republicans decided she ‘wasn’t qualified‘ and barred her from testifying. Many Democrat women walked out.
4. The bill was narrowly defeated (51-48). Insurers remain the right to refuse to cover contraception.
The Icing On the Cake: Republican radio personality pundit idiot moron Rush Limbaugh blasts Fluke on his show (don’t read these quotes if you don’t want to turn purple and fume). His words:
“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan 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.“
The next day (because clearly that wasn’t enough), he spouted, “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 post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Pardon me while I go vomit in my teacup. Again.
Thanks CPB!
On a kind of sad and hilarious note, Rachel Maddow pointed out that Limbaugh probably doesn’t actually understand what birth control is, because his remarks indicate that he thinks a woman needs to take a birth control pill to avoid pregnancy after every (heterosexual) romp. Watch her do her thang here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
So what does all this mean? There’s good news, and there’s bad news.
The Good News: Limbaugh might actually have screwed himself over this time. He’s lost advertisers and actually had to issue an ‘apology’, which is a rarity for him. The average person will be outraged by his asinine and offensive remarks, and it may spark some healthy debate around the issue and perhaps make a few folks do something about it.
The Bad News. I originally wanted to argue that Limbaugh’s words constituted hate speech, and that he could be taken down on this basis, but unfortunately the structure of the legal system exempts what he’s done from formal consideration as hate speech (thanks Em. for being my consult on this). To qualify as hate speech, it must be both hateful and harmful. It is definitely hateful, but is it harmful? A court likely wouldn’t see it at such, given that his listenership isn’t wide enough and one would have to make the case that his words were against women in general rather than one specific woman.
However, I do think what he said is harmful as well as hateful. What’s the danger in his rant? The danger is that a few sicko whacked out dudes will hear his words and feel validated. They won’t understand that he is exaggerating for the effect of controversy and ratings. They wont realize that his outrageous statements are mostly an act designed to inflame. They will simply feel reinforced in their misguided beliefs about how contraception is for ‘slutty’ women only, and that it’s okay to say such terrible things about women (or people, for that matter). This is why as responsible citizens we need to demand that Limbaugh and people like him be pulled from public forum, no matter how well their controversy generates ratings. It’s words like his, and people like him, that make people with seriously messed up views think that it is okay to retain to those views… and to act on them, with disastrous consequences.
Filed under: conservatism, politics | 13 Comments
Tags: contraception, democrat, GOP, Obama, politics, pundit, reproductive rights, republican, rush limbaugh, sanda fluke, senate
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Recent Comments
I’ve stayed angry about this gut-wrenching, sickening debacle too. Most times I don’t even know what to say, because I just CANNOT BELIEVE what is being said in the US about women and their reproductive systems.
For an example of how Limbaugh’s hate speech is already affecting people:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/04/1070800/-I-ve-spent-the-past-2-days-trying-to-convince-my-16-y-o-she-is-not-a-slut
As well, if there are any readers from the US who are also outraged by his actions, they may consider signing the petition to remove him from the Armed Forces Radio because of his misrepresentation:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/sec-panetta-get-rush-limbaugh-armed-forces-radio-now-no-tax-money-abusive-divisive-insulting
Thanks for doing a piece on it, I hope more people can see what is being said and speak out against it.
Thanks for those links… I hope US citizens take note!
The blogs I follow have been all over this, so I’m happy to see others take the torch, even if it is a bit late.
But maybe a slow boil is what we need to get rid of the likes of Rush and all those men on that panel.
Thanks for the post, and for explaining the situation so well.
Timely ranting has never been my forte
. I’m glad you liked it.
That’s typically because we try to be as thorough as possible with our research and fact-checking around here, though.
When life becomes completely unbearable in the US, please come to England. We do have nutjobs like those you describe, but the difference is that all the electable political parties and the broadcasting channels know that they are nutjobs and treat them as such. When I heard of Bills to require women to have a vaginal probe before a termination, I felt similarly angry. The whole world, fortunately, is not as insane as the US.
Look at the women’s faces on the first pictures. They are NOT impressed.
I do not understand why “birth control” materials are not very very affordable! Well, actually I do understand but I do not like it!
If the government can subsidize all the crap that they do, there is no reason that they cannot subsidize drug companies and other manufactures of “birth control” methods!
I thought there was supposed to be a separation of church and state for good reason!
I understand that religious institutions/work places want to ban this because well this is what they believe in. I get it I do, what I don’t understand is why with the separation of church and state clause, we are bringing religion into institutions that are not faith affiliated.
What bother’s me the most is that people like this are so narrow-minded that they are only looking at it for one of it’s uses and not the many other clinical reasons why birth control would be used. Plus the association that women use this because they want to “slut it up” is insulting to anyone including myself. Considering that I use it for the other clinical purposes. I really hope he loses all of his shows financial backing and he will learn that being fake apologetic will get you nowhere.
As much as I agree with you about Rush, I would think twice about pulling him off the air. I would rather see hatred out in the open versus it hiding where folks can’t see it. If you can’t see it, it just may get worse. Then, when you take their voice away from them, that gives chickenshit conservatives the inspiration to take away yours. Good blog.
That is a very interesting point. I had not considered it before. It is interesting that as our society becomes more ‘tolerant’, it may just be that the hate goes underground. How then do we find it to address its roots? Interesting questions are raised. Thank you.
On hate speech: I don’t remember the exact reason, but I once wrote to the FCC to complain about Limbaugh (something relating to 2008 presidential campaign), and I was sent a form letter outlining what constitutes hate speech. I would argue that Limbaugh is hateful and harmful in that there are people out there who actually believe what he says. That is harmful in so many ways, not the least of which is harmful to Fluke’s reputation. But hey, I’m trying to be logical here.
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