As readers know well, the Obama administration has mandated that free contraceptives including abortifacients be provided by all employers regardless of moral objection, including religious institutions, through insurance mandates. Whether the mandate is to be sustained is a critical issue for our republic, indeed our society and culture.
Ms Sandra Fluke is a thirty year old with a decade of experience as an abortion and women’s rights advocate. She is near completion of a law degree from Georgetown. Because of Fluke’s advocacy background she was promoted by Democrat operatives to testify before congress in support of the mandate. Her testimony in no way was limited to tax money for limited cases. She advocated for a universal mandate on employers to provide “free” contraceptives and abortifacients regardless of the moral views of the employer / payer.
The issue was further confused when talk show host Rush Limbaugh apologized to Ms Fluke for referring to her advocacy using the term “slut” and “prostitute” even though her advocacy inextricably calls for subsidized sex, regardless of marital or economic status. We think he needn’t have apologized. The terms used were “in context” and within the bounds of political and social satire and trenchant commentary.
Instead Rush should have called on Ms Fluke to apologize to women for implying that all women and men desire subsidy for their elective behavior. Advocating as essential the provision of free birth control for attendees of a purported to be elite expensive school should be ridiculed. Part of Rush’s ridicule was to refer to Ms Flukes testimony as prostitution because it was about sex and she was at least a former paid professional in advocating for “sex.” The context was well within the bounds of political satire, certainly as practiced by the now hyperbolic left. Perhaps it is in her nature for Ms Fluke to advocate for total free loading on the health care system.
While one could in retrospect be slightly more subtle, Rush should not be kowtowed into only circumlocutions when the left flamboyantly uses the same terms to describe conservative spokeswomen when the subject did not involve free sex advocacy (see references within links provided below). Rush was using satire and ridicule regarding the advocacy of a political position that should be roundly criticized. It is difficult but not impossible to shame the left. Their over-the-top reaction indicates that to be true.
The umbrage the left took was as phoney as could be. Rush’s critics should be reminded of the wholly indefensible reference to “tea-baggers” and attempts to define “Santorum” as a disgusting sexual practice (“Google” Santorum sometime and see what the left is OK with).
The articles linked below are terrific. Republicans should be well versed in the specifics of the two-faced “shock” over Limbaugh’s comments. The full “magilla” on the companies who cancelled their advertising on Limbaugh’s talk show can be seen here: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/05/rally-for-rush
In commendable fairness, liberal commentator Kirsten Powers lists many of the comments found to be unremarkable when they were said by liberals toward conservative women.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/04/rush-limbaugh-s-apology-liberal-men-need-to-follow-suit.html
And this from Gary Bauer at http://www.cwfpac.com/subscribe-end-day-report
ACTION ITEM: My friends, we can’t let the left destroy Rush Limbaugh. Below are the companies that have withdrawn their support from Limbaugh’s show. Call them. Respectfully tell them that you disagree with the decision to cancel their advertising, especially now that Limbaugh has apologized, not once but twice. Let them know that you will take your business elsewhere.
AOL: 800-827-6364
Carbonite: 877-665-4466
Citrix: 800-424-8749
Go To Meeting: 800-263-6317
Legal Zoom: 800-773-0888
Quicken Loans: 800-863-4332
Sleep Number: 888-484-9263
Sleep Train: 800-378-2337
posted by RM
