Right there, we learn so much about Rush Limbaugh. Clearly, he thinks that when you have a lot of sex, you must pay for it, so the more you have, the less of other things you can afford. What he doesn't seem to understand is, if you're on the Pill or other hormonal forms of birth control, how much sex you have or don't have doesn't actually affect the cost. In fact, a day after uttering that pronouncement, he is sticking to his strange argument, saying rhetorically about birth control costs: "Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex you have?" See, in Limbaugh's world, sex frequency is linearly associated with money spent.
Rush Limbaugh is a gasbag who once was detained for having a bottle of prescription Viagra that wasn't prescribed to him. He is a crass misogynist whose day of relevance has faded into a dragging, dusty sunset. He still babbles on the radio, though. You may recall Sandra Fluke, the law student who was not allowed to speak at U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's testes-only party about birth control. She finally got a chance to have her public say, which has led the good Rush Hudson Limbaugh III to go on the radio and request that Fluke provide a sex video in exchange for payment for her birth control.
Meh. It's Rush Limbaugh, blowhard, loser, Viagra user. You can't have high expectations from that quarter much beyond ineffectual efforts to degrade a woman who is half his age and twice as smart.
Rush seems to be struggling to make himself relevant after a series of debacles, so he has plumped himself into the middle of our nation's most furious reproductive health struggle in years, demonstrating his ever-weakening grasp of the issues and always limited interest in our nation's women and children by calling Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" for arguing for affordable birth control. The problem here isn't, however, our little Babbling Bloviator III. No. It's the political climate that made him think that it was OK to call her a slut and a prostitute and call for a sex video from her in exchange for affordable birth control. In Rush's mind, you see, all things sex related involve exchange of money for services.
But the climate is disturbing. Obama has stepped in with a call to Fluke showing support. Even Orange Boehner managed a tepid rebuke, calling the remark "inappropriate" but taking that moment to assert that calling a woman a slut and prostitute for lobbying on behalf of affordable reproductive health access equates to fundraising on the fact that Rush Limbaugh called her a slut and a prostitute. I am just positive that the Republicans have never... oh... never mind. Don't hurt yourself there, Speaker Boehner.
See, it's OK to be sensitive about how one obtains one's money. That's acceptable. So, to ensure that we're on the same acceptable level of discourse here, let's examine what exactly the words "slut" and "prostitute" mean.
Slut: "Careless, dirty, slovenly woman" is the first definition I find. Here is Sandra Fluke, finally being allowed to speak after being removed from the infamous Issa hearings:
She looks pretty clean to me.
What about the second definition of "slut." "A sexually promiscuous woman." See, Limbaugh assumes that Fluke needs birth control because she is having sex with someone, presumably male. She may well be. A woman could be having sex with six someones at once if she wants, and she ought to be able to do that (a) while using appropriate birth control and (b) and not be considered a slut for expressing her sexuality as she sees fit. These issues aside, Rush appears to be unclear about the fact that some forms of birth control serve purposes other than controlling reproduction, including regulating dysregulated cycles, addressing hormonal imbalances and painful periods, or dealing with acne.
The Great Bloviator seems also to overlook the fact that many many women in monogamous relationships with men--some of these men are their spouses, even--use birth control to avoid having more children. Rush himself has been married four times but has no children. How did he accomplish that? Indeed, when he was busted for having Viagra not prescribed to him, he appears to have been dating the woman who eventually became his fourth wife. Gosh, Rush. What was that Viagra for, you slut?
Moving on to "prostitute." Rush seems to have a bit of an obsession about the exchange of money or value for sex. First definition: "To sell the services of oneself or another for purposes of sexual intercourse or one who does so." While Rush seems to know quite a bit about the workings of the sex service industry, I find nothing hinting that Fluke sells herself for sex. So let's look at the second definition of "prostitute." "To sell oneself, one's artistic or moral integrity, etc. for low or unworthy purposes or a person who does so."
Let's see. Fluke, it appears, is a third-year law student at Georgetown University. Unless they've changed the way people generally fund their graduate education since I last was involved in that, it's unlikely she's selling her "artistic or moral integrity for low or unworthy purposes," unless you, like Shakespeare, feel negatively about lawyers in general on moral grounds.
How does Rush stand up to that second definition? I think this headline--"Peddling pure hatred has made Rush Limbaugh a rich man"--pretty much sums it up. Rush has some talents--talking for three hours straight ain't easy, you know--and he uses his native cynicism to package it all up for sale to the bidders he knows pay most: the rich people. Apparently, he'll also do it for vacuum cleaners, insurance, flowers, pizza, real estate, and pharmaceuticals. Rush, you busy little prostitute, you. He'd better start saving up though, because it seems that his charms are fading for some of his deep-pocketed sponsors.
In his infamous commentary conflating birth control, paid sex, and pornography, Rush closes with an offer to buy all the "women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want." I've got a better idea. He should buy that aspirin for himself, instead. Cheaper than Viagra, and it doesn't require a prescription. Women, you see, aren't the only people who have an orifice amenable to birth control interventions, although using aspirin does fit better with Rush's perception that the more sex you have, the more you have to pay for it.
