By JONATHAN GURWITZ By JONATHAN GURWITZ ADVERTISING New York Times News Service Where in the world would Rush Limbaugh have gotten the offensive idea that he could go on the radio and call a woman with whom he had a
By JONATHAN GURWITZ
New York Times News Service
Where in the world would Rush Limbaugh have gotten the offensive idea that he could go on the radio and call a woman with whom he had a political disagreement a slut?
Perhaps he got it from MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who on his syndicated radio show last year used the same epithet twice to describe conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham. Schultz apologized, took a powder for a week, then went right on yapping on MSNBC.
Ingraham, unlike Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, did not receive a comforting phone call from President Obama. Or Limbaugh might have drawn his inspiration from HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher. Last year on his cable show, Maher referred to Sarah Palin as a “dumb … ” — well, actually, I can’t print what Maher said. Suffice it to say that it’s a four-letter word that refers to a part of the female anatomy.
In a live show a week later, the Dallas Voice reported that Maher had called Palin an even more vulgar four-letter word that refers to the same part of the female anatomy. “There’s just no other word for her,” Maher quipped.
Now, if you “liked” one of those Facebook campaigns to boycott Rush Limbaugh or his sponsors then turned on your television to catch Maher’s latest “Real Time” offering, raise your hand. If, like Obama, your super PAC just accepted a $1 million donation from Maher, raise two hands. There — you just identified yourself as a sanctimonious hypocrite.
At this point you can hear the creaking of progressive minds laboring under the weight of inconvenient truths and the stammering of liberal lips as they protest, “But, but, Sarah Palin really IS a stupid” four-letter epithet.
Which only underscores the fact that while Limbaugh’s comments were vile, the contrived nature of the Fluke controversy has very little to do with fighting misogyny — and everything to do with politics.
Limbaugh’s comments about Fluke were repugnant and wrong, for which he — like Schultz, but unlike Maher — has apologized. From a political standpoint, they were also incredibly stupid. To have a chance at winning in November, conservatives must make the 2012 election a referendum on the unprecedented expansion of government power and spending under Obama and how — freed from the constraints of re-election — he would accelerate this disastrous transformation of limited government.
The newly-issued contraception mandate for Obamacare is an ominous example of what would come from four more years of the current administration. Given the facts about accessibility to contraception, independent voters understand that the power of the state to force Catholic institutions to completely pay for contraceptive devices and even abortifacients is an unbridled coercive power that can be used to compel anyone to do anything against his or her conscience.
That’s what the public debate should be about.
But Limbaugh, who is supposedly media savvy, got down in the gutter with his liberal counterparts. In so doing, he played right into the political and cultural double standard that he regularly rails against. With an assist from Rick Santorum, he managed to shift the public debate from Obama’s disastrous record to an alleged conservative plot to turn back the clock on contraception and a Republican war on women.
Nice going, guys. Liberals may not care that referring to a woman as “a mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” to quote Keith Olbermann, is acceptable among their leading media figures. Conservatives should — mostly for the sake of decency, but also for the purpose of self-preservation.
