Archive for March 1st, 2012
Rush Limbaugh Goes too Far: Calls Woman “Slut” and Publicly Asks for Pornographic Videos
Rush Limbaugh has gone too far this time.
Recently, Sandra Fluke, a law student, testified about the need for women to have contraception be covered by health insurance before the Congress. She said that it could cost as much as $3000 to pay for contraception out of pocket, which is a great deal of money for a student — or, really, anyone at all.
Rush Limbaugh took exception to this, and called her a “slut” on Wednesday, February 29, 2012. Going further, he said this today, March 1, 2012 (quoted at US News and World Report, and reposted by MSNBC’s Web site):
“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.”
This is much worse than anything Don Imus ever said, yet he was fired by MSNBC; nothing at all so far has happened to Limbaugh, and that’s not just sad — it’s disgusting.
How can Limbaugh say such reprehensible things and get away with it? Why is there no penalty for him, at all? Is he like Howard Stern, the “shock jock,” who can literally say anything now that he’s on Sirius/XM Radio and not lose his job? And if he is, why?
I’m sorry — women need contraception for many reasons, and not all of them are because we are intending to have sex. Women often use contraception to help regulate the menstrual cycle; this is a real problem that the all-male “official” Congressional panel doesn’t seem to understand, possibly because they’ve never had to deal with it themselves.
Limbaugh should be ashamed of himself for calling this woman a “slut,” and be even more ashamed for equating the need for health insurers to pay for contraception with pornographic videos.
Congressional Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was quite right to call for Limbaugh to apologize for the “slut” comment; when Limbaugh “doubled down” on Thursday and called for Ms. Fluke to put up pornographic videos of Fluke using the contraception she’d been asking for, he not only spit in Pelosi’s face — he spit in the face of all women.
I am appalled that Limbaugh, rather than apologize, “doubled down” in this manner. I can only hope that his employers, who are paying him to be controversial, will realize this is way over the line and put a stop to it. Immediately.
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Further thoughts:
The fact is, I’d be surprised if Limbaugh himself had never used a condom — which is a form of contraception. He probably paid for it himself, for all I know, but even if he didn’t, who cares?
If you’re an adult, you’re likely to need contraception at some point. All Fluke was doing was asking for health insurers to pay for something very basic that prevents unwanted pregnancies from happening — something everyone should approve of, because pregnancies in this world should be planned if at all possible, considering the expense of raising a child.
Bottom line here is that Limbaugh should be punished. Because if Don Imus lost his job over something far less offensive, why should Limbaugh continue to have his?
Just Reviewed “Fair Coin” at SBR
Folks, E.C. Myers’ forthcoming FAIR COIN from Pyr Books is a nice young adult novel that held my interest, but had way too many archetypes for my taste. (What is an archetype, you ask? A way to quickly build a character based off stereotypes rather than intrinsic motivations; I believe more than one archetype per story — much less a novel like this — is a cop-out, and makes me wonder why the author didn’t put more thought into his characterizations.)
So what you have here is this — which would you rather have, the great plot, or some characters that you can believe in? Because in FAIR COIN, you don’t get both — unfortunately, you can only get one, and Myers picked the plot.
Here’s my review, where I did point out that two secondary female characters were well-thought out:
Enjoy!
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Lest you think I enjoy saying bad things about debut authors, I don’t. But I have to call ’em the way I see ’em.
FAIR COIN proves that Myers can write; his plot-line worked and he obviously can write interesting, idiosyncratic characters when he puts his mind to it. But he had not one, not two, but three archetypal characters and that’s just not good — he needs to focus on his characterization in his next novel, so maybe that book will be the exceptional read this one wasn’t.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 