Jammie Wearing Fools reports that Sandra Fluke, who after being called a slut and prostitute by Rush Limbaugh received a phone call from Barack Obama (though right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham points out she didn’t receive a call from the President when Ed Schultz called her a slut last year), is not a 23 year-old co-ed as has been reported. She’s 30, and she’s a feminist activist. Does this mean anything? Yes, it means that Fluke wasn’t thrown into advocacy; she isn’t brave or courageous. She’s an opportunist. Part of her desired job’s title is to draw the ire of the Right. She gets paid, or hopes to some day, for pushing the envelope, drawing a reaction, and moving the chains forward. She’s been readying herself for primetime, and now she’s doing the dog and pony show gathering sympathy and Twitter followers along the way. To pander to her is akin to coddling a boxer who gets roughed up in the ring. If you want to really give liberals a fistula, ask them why Fluke is regarded as heroic and receives a call from Obama while Bradley Manning sits in a jail cell.
So now this isn’t about women pulling a Trick or Treat routine – give us our sugar pill packs or else! – it’s about how Rush Limbaugh is leading the cavalry in the War on Women.
As they’re adept at doing, Democrats are playing on emotions and have blurred the lines separating the issue of people pushing back against the idea of free candy and that of Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut.
Granted, Rush Limbaugh gave the Left something meatier to chew on. Sitting in a vacuum, it was pretty clear that Fluke was a non-entity – her Congressional sideshow was boring and full of lies, and her reported rejection by Congressional Republican committee members is wholly overblown. Republicans’ best strategy would have been to not try to get too cute. Refute her inane arguments down the list. But, someone was inevitably going to let their personality get in the way which is why Nancy Pelosi wanted to get Fluke on TV in the first place. In this debate, the Democrats don’t care about substance; they care about the reaction of Republicans. And Limbaugh just happened to be the guy who took the bait in the grand liberal scheme which started when Obama singled out birth control for special mandate.
Of course, despite what David Frum says, liberals didn’t have to follow Rush Limbaugh over the synthesis and through the woods. Rush Limbaugh calls someone a slut – so what? That looks bad on Rush Limbaugh, but what does that have to do with the price of the Pill in Philly? It’s just that now we have two debates going on, not one new debate about a monolithic War on Women as the liberals would have it.
Anyway, the birth control ruse is merely the KY Jelly to ease us into the giant butt-fucking that is nationalized health care. If conservatives buy into the frame that liberals are trying to push birth control on us – and, as a commenter pointed out, if we start talking dollars and cents – we’ve lost the game. The response should always be that any sort of government mandate – whether that be for individuals to buy health care or companies to provide certain pre-approved plans – is unconstitutional and coercive. To get sidetracked by birth control or morality plays is to let mandated health care become the norm. To let mandated health care become the norm is to set the table for a debate on nationalized health care. And who do you think will win that debate?
As Michael Tanner, senior fellow at Cato Institute, wrote:
The problem with the contraceptive mandate is not the contraceptive part — it’s the mandate. The new health-care law requires every employer with 50 or more employees to provide their workers with health insurance. It also requires every American who doesn’t receive health insurance through work or a government program to buy insurance themselves or face a fine.
But simply providing or buying insurance is not enough to fulfill the mandate. The insurance must satisfy the government’s definition of what qualifies as proper insurance, including a long list of benefits that the government thinks you should have.
And also from Cato, John Cochrane points out how religious conservatives have let the debate be hijacked by pushing the agenda into the liberal frame:
The critics fell for a trap. By focusing on an exemption for church-related institutions, critics effectively admit that it is right for the rest of us to be subjected to this sort of mandate. They accept the horribly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and they resign themselves to chipping away at its edges. No, we should throw it out, and fix the terrible distortions in the health-insurance and health-care markets.
Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.
And now the Democrats are rolling up Limbaugh’s words and other on-going abortion debates into the health care discussion and are presenting this as a “War on Women”. They use such martial language – “assault”, “attack” – in order to create the image of a rapacious conservative cohort pulling health out of women’s bodies like the Dementors in Harry Potter.
You see how nefarious this is when you consider the big stink liberals created after Jared Loughner shot Gabby Giffords. It was all about the toxic culture that Republicans had created with their ads with crosshairs and their muscular ideology. Those extreme words created an environment which greased the wheels for extreme acts of political aggression.
But Democrats have raised over a million dollars to fight this “War on Women”. Just one example: Democratic New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg essentially compares conservatives to slaveholders:
“The Republicans want to take us forward to the Dark Ages again. . .when women were property that you could easily control, even trade if you wanted to,” he said. “It’s appalling we are even having this debate in the 21st century.”
Yes, it is appalling that these women can’t put on their big girl panties and make their own life decisions. Woman up ladies!
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I think the republicans need to start attacking more and not backing down. That’s been their greatest weakness, everytime someone is offended they apologize. Even if they did anything it would be sitting back and being reactive.
I see the left always attacking and more often than not, something good happens for them – the other guy gives up, there’s an opening, whatever.
Conservatives can’t compete because liberals have a monopoly on victimhood and sympathy porn.
Why the hell does Barack Obama care if this woman gets called a slut? He seems to love to get involved in petty issues like this and Henry Louis Gates.
“Conservatives can’t compete because liberals have a monopoly on victimhood and sympathy porn”
So they should reframe.
On related note, imagine collective leftism, herdlike, comes against a solid wall of depleted returns on sympathy for NAMs; furthermore, as men they get tired of being called faggots while getting the Yglesias treatment. That, and no bangable girls there. There is progress… so see fourth-generation anti-racists… but its ugly. Victory… brought no satisfaction.
So one leftist finds a brand new world of underdog whites, horizon-to-horizon of low hanging fruit orchards. And like a school of fish at once changing direction on a dime — or like a rush of speculators to new virgin lands — and the Left, with all its talent, initiative, and vicious determination — becomes a White Workers Party. Maybe in my lifetime?
Shit, these years as Untermenschen had made us smart, principled, and a little cunning too. The lefties-bored and restless. Their pets- they degenerated to unworthiness.
She sure as hell doesn’t look 23 in that pic.
@Lara: “Why the hell does Barack Obama care if this woman gets called a slut?”
He’s half-white-knighting, to retain the femvote.
Why the hell does Barack Obama care if this woman gets called a slut? He seems to love to get involved in petty issues like this and Henry Louis Gates.
For political gain, that’s why. Not to be cynical, but that’s what I would do if I were him. That’s why it is so maddening that Limbaugh walked right into the Left’s trap.
She looks about 40.
Ok, if Limbaugh walked into a “trap,” how exactly are we supposed to fight the Left? By never attacking it?
She looks like Monica Lewinsky, with a tiny bit of Susan Boyle. With apologies to Miss Boyle, who seems to be a genuinely good woman.
anonymous:
Limbaugh walked straight into a trap. Huge trap. Gaping maw with three rows of teeth. Fluke’s testimony was weak. You hammer the lies she told and you focus on the fact that she’s a paid mercenary being groomed to push free birth control on all the rest of us. Then you go deeper and point out that this is why ObamaCare is a travesty in the first place. That we’re talking about free birth control means that we’ve accepted government control of the finer aspects of our health coverage. We’re being fucked in the ass. And what’s usually the process there? You put it in slow, lube it up, divert attention, tell her it’ll feel good once it’s in. Before you know it she’s asking for DP.
Monica Lewinsky is much prettier. She does resemble Susan Boyle a little.
I agree, Rush was dumb. He doesn’t even work for the government, so why is it important?
Boehner denounced Rush Limbaugh. He really needs to be primaried.
Google keywords: boehner slut
She looks like a lesbian.
Obamacare is the beast, this birth control mandate is merely an annoying insect flying around that the nation has diverted 95% of it’s focus towards. We need to decide who’s country this belongs to, because this constant fighting between the adolescent Left and the spineless Right is beyond aggravating.
So not forcing taxpayers to pay for women’s birth control is waging war on their health? That’s like me saying that Brooklyn Decker is waging war on my sex drive by not sleeping with me.
“If conservatives buy into the frame that liberals are trying to push birth control on us – and, as a commenter pointed out, if we start talking dollars and cents – we’ve lost the game. The response should always be that any sort of government mandate – whether that be for individuals to buy health care or companies to provide certain pre-approved plans – is unconstitutional and coercive. To get sidetracked by birth control or morality plays is to let mandated health care become the norm.”
And that’s the fundamental flaw of being a reactionary–you can only ever react. And once you do that, you lose control of the frame and then you lose control of the debate. It’s far better to ignore irrelevancies and stick to the only talking points you care about, which is precisely what conservatives have failed to do.
“Why the hell does Barack Obama care if this woman gets called a slut? He seems to love to get involved in petty issues like this and Henry Louis Gates.”
That’s an interesting question. I think it’s part of his branding as Your Personal Black Buddy in the White House. Injustice happens, Obama swoops in like Superman to save the day. It’s the kind of meaningless gesture that will motivate his supporters to put in lots of unpaid work when the campaign heats up.
@mike- There’s a book called “The Logic of Failure” that explains why some get caught up in petty things when trying to lead. They feel compelled to do something, but don’t often know what to do, and so they focus on taking care of trivial things they feel to be within their realm of expertise so as to convince themselves they are actually doing something.
What do you find so awful about Obamacare exactly?
Well what do you know, Rush has now apologized. There’s something you don’t see every day.
http://news.yahoo.com/rush-limbaugh-apologizes-calling-sandra-fluke-slut-232701096–abc-news.html
Wouldn’t it be funny if it came out that Fluke participated in the slut walk protests?
I think she looks quite pretty. But she has already wasted her life on bitter activism. What a sticky beak (nosey parker)!
Waste of a pretty mouth.
Only the wimpiest guy would want to be with her now.
The Sandra Fluke story shows how lazy the conservative media really is. Can no one send someone up to Cornell University to find out everything that Ms. Fluke did while there. Can no one find out anything Ms. Fluke did in six years as a women’s advocate. I have not seen one story that lists Ms. Fluke’s hometown or where she went to high school.
My guess is that Ms. Fluke attend an elite private prep school to go along with Cornell and Georgetown Law School. Only someone who comes from wealth would put so much effort into these issues.
Instead of calling Ms. Fluke a slut, why not point out what an elitist she is and how no conservative should want to give people like Ms. Fluke any say in how they live.
Limbaugh was badly outplayed, but the play here started long before this latest incident.
The entire reason the Obama administration decided to push the contraception issue was to create a political wedge. It was a high stakes poker move, because it risked alienating Catholics, who tend to get defensive about their Church being ordered around by the government (regardless of whether they, themselves, use contraception). I think initially it was looking like the gambit was going to backfire, as even leftist Catholic pundits were quite critical of Obama for doing it, but then the strategy became more fully deployed — i.e., pull back a bit from the Catholic issue, but get the “women’s rights” issue squarely on the table in an election year when the democratic strategists are brewing up a base election. SO, you throw some red meat to the democratic base. The fortuitous element was the rise of Santorum at the same time, who is really the perfect, absolutely perfect, foil for creating this kind of wedge issue over women and sex — I think that the strategy was going to be deployed by the democrats anyway, but with Santorum the republicans handed them a huge gift, because the democrats can now even more effectively fear-monger among one of the core pillars of their base: women, especially single women (many of whom will identify with a person like Fluke). And Limbaugh came along and dumped a ton of gasoline — heck a ton of napalm — on the already raging wedge/base-stimulation issue in a way that democratic strategists must be cackling to death about.
You see, folks, the democrats would be tickled pink to have the election be about “the war on women” and moral differences around sex — because their base will be electrified by that, and most of the moderates will be turned off by positions that someone like Santorum is now personifying. It’s a heck of a lot better than having the election be about jobs and the economy if you’re the incumbent. And the republicans are playing right along, it seems. To be honest, the’re being rather extremely outplayed politically at the moment. Watching politics is fun, but this reminds me of the Chicago Bears beating Dallas 44-0 … after a point it’s just pathetic.
@GLPiggy the cited examiner piece is just misleading opinion. Issa ignored comm rules to invite Repub witnesses and then used the rules to deny dem witness. It was a hastily arranged fiasco and the majority didn’t want anyone to detract from their show. The govt oversight comm jumped on the bandwagon and essentially invited the guest that appeared on Sean hannity to testify before congress. The careful screening might just have been literally picking up ideas from fox news.
Surprised you would cite this innacurate piece as background piece on the “facts” when it tells a misleading one sided story about the republican majority.
And I don’t understand how contraceptives, which are covered as preventative care by most health insurance plans became an issue when several states already required their coverage. About 16 years ago I read all about obamacare in a heritage foundation plan. It built on our employer sponsored tax break driven insurance plans and was the right wing response to Clinton care.
Richard Spencer would make a great talk radio host for an Altright version of NPR. But does anyone under 40 even listen to terrestrial talk radio anymore?
What is it with the right and language? I believe in free speech, but calling someone a “slut”, uglier than Susan Boyle, “looks like a lesbian”, only plays into the left’s hand. When you use ad hominem attacks and pejoratives you give ammo to your enemies. It’s what Chuck said. It allows your opponents to ignore whatever valid points you make (if you actually make any) and focus on the words you used, and be outraged by it.
Words like that may irritate your enemies, e.g. Amanda Marcotte and Fluke, and make you feel better by being called clever by like-minded people but it’s not about them or you. You’re probably never going to convince the left-wing pundits and activists to change their positions. Also, preaching to the choir doesn’t help your cause either (the choir already believes). You want to convince the lurkers, the silent majority, the audience members who don’t necessarily participate in the discussions, because they aren’t as invested or they might not have the time. They can be convinced and they greatly outnumber you and your enemies.
Some of this advice is priceless:
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/12/a-little-new-years-advice/68535/
That’s not what “reaction” means. The term was meant to be a pejorative version of revolutionaire (reactionaire) that stuck (sort of like the originally pejorative ‘puritan’). Being ‘reactionary’ isn’t about ‘reacting’. The English term ‘reaction’ to mean responsiveness to stimuli didn’t even exist when ‘reaction’ was coined as a political term.
Even today if you used ‘reaction’ in the English sense in the Francophone world it’s not something directly translates. The English term has co-opted the original intent of the word.
Also if you require a $1000/year stipend to afford recreational sex then you are definitely a slut.
Seven advertisers have left Rush now.
Rush has said some awful things in the past, but advertisers will not tolerate him saying anything rude to a woman. Unbelievable.
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