It has frozen over.
A high profile Republican has finally strongly condemned Rush Limbaugh’s latest lowering of the bar on America’s political discourse. But unlike a statement issued through a press spokesman by House Majority Leader John Boehner calling Limbaugh’s comments “inappropriate,” Carly Fiorina, National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice-Chairman, made the comments herself. And she did not pull her punches:
Carly Fiorina, National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice-Chairman, on Friday condemned Rush Limbaugh for calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut.”
“That language is insulting, in my opinion. It’s incendiary and most of all, it’s a distraction. It’s a distraction from what are very real and important issues,” said Fiorina on CBS’s “This Morning.
Limbaugh had criticized women who supported mandatory employer health coverage of contraception.
“What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her?” Limbaugh said on his radio show earlier this week. “It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.”
Fiorina pointed out that there were serious and important issues – such as Thursday’s vote on the Blunt amendment – and that “those kinds of comments are completely distracting.”
“The Senate had an important vote yesterday… This is a vote about protecting the conscience clause, which used to have broad bipartisan support. That’s a hugely important issue in this country,” she said.
My old journalistic alma mater The Christian Science Monitor (I wrote for the Monitor from Madrid from 1975-1978) asks if Limbaugh has finally gone too far:
Has Rush Limbaugh finally gone too far? Has he said something so outrageous that it is actually damaging the conservative principles he espouses?
Those are relevant questions in the wake of the radio host/gadfly/provocateur’s labeling Georgetown University law school student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” while urging her to make public video tapes of her intimate acts. Mr. Limbaugh made the comments after Ms. Fluke testified in support of mandatory employer health coverage of contraception in front of a nonofficial congressional committee….
…Democrats and their political allies have rushed to her defense. Some 75 House Democrats have signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R) asking him to condemn Limbaugh’s words. The Women’s Media Center posted a Web story titled “Rush Limbaugh’s Sexism: Finally Too Much to Bear?”
Meanwhile, some Republicans have noted that while they don’t support his rhetoric, they support the point about health insurance Limbaugh was trying to make.
“A law student is now a hardship case? She needs the rest of us to provide her with free contraceptives?” said conservative columnist Mona Charen in a piece posted Friday morning on National Review Online.
Few commentators predict that Limbaugh will back down. He makes his living saying outrageous things: that’s how he attracts 20 million listeners a day, many pointed out. Even a nascent boycott of Limbaugh’s advertisers organized by opponents probably won’t faze him. (So far one advertiser, Sleep Train Mattresses, has pulled ads from Limbaugh’s show in reaction to the controversy.)
The problem, say some in the GOP, is that Limbaugh’s personal goals can conflict with the political goals he says he supports, and this may be one of those times. In pouring gasoline on a subject that was already a propane fire, he may have drawn attention to himself, but it’s possible he’s singeing Republicans who are standing close to the action.
The Washington Post’s Jamila Bey calls Limbaugh’s riff “hate speech.”
What Limbaugh did – and does frequently – is “slut-shaming” and it’s no less hateful and derogatory than racial slurs.
Any woman who dares admit that she is anything other than a virginal “Madonna” is rebuked and intimidated into silence and shame. And this tactic is profoundly dangerous in this context of helping to insure women’s health.
“She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception,” Limbaugh said of Fluke.
Let us ignore for the moment that Fluke was testifying about a friend who is too afraid to come out publicly and announce her need for birth control for a medical reason, and so spends $1,000 a year on medicines that are free or nearly so on insurance plans that don’t adhere to Catholic doctrine.
This is a textbook attack on a woman for being female and for speaking up.
Limbaugh, who invented the reprehensible slur “feminazi,” hurls that epithet at any woman who dares believe that insurance should pay for drugs her doctors deems necessary to the protection of her health. That includes women who are Jewish. Limbaugh feels it’s appropriate to liken those women to the terrorists and torturers who would have exterminated them.
This is hate speech. There is no excuse for it. And it must be called out at the moment it is uttered.
AND:
Limbaugh’s tactic of trying to silence women’s voices by making them afraid of the reprisals that will come if they express themselves is far more damaging than holding one meeting and not letting one woman speak.
He wants women to be too afraid to say anything at all. His language crossed into the realm of sexual harassment when he demanded that women objectify themselves and submit their private sexual activities to him and the world to watch.
Fluke was gentle in calling such language “beyond the acceptable bounds of civil discourse.”
All because a woman dares to hold an opinion.
Be sure to read Kathy Gill’s post on Limbaugh, his advertisers and a petition.
GO HERE for more blog reaction.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.