The Rush Limbaugh Appreciation Thread

[Brian]

Split off from the "50 Shades of EMI" thread...

To be honest and accurate, Rush Limbaugh thought it would be a humorous but telling way to make a point by ASKING what we call women who expect others to pay for her to have sex. He answered his own question, saying that we call such women "sluts."

I. This is a misleading interpretation.
1. The original comment: "What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic; real name Sandra], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut."
2. This is like little humor I recognize.
3. The rant was less semantically oriented than you suggest; it was not a search for the right word to describe the situation.
a. In a way, of course, it is, and it ends with Rush deciding that "prostitute" is a better word than "slut."

II. Rush's original remarks are distant from the facts.
1. They bespeak a complete ignorance of how birth control works. Birth control pills, properly regulated, are not taken in a dosage corresponding to the amount of sex you have. You take the pill whether you're having sex 5 times a month or 50. Rush obviously thinks that the controversy is about the morning-after pill, which to my knowledge it is not.
a. He compounds his error by arguing that there is only one alternative to the morning-after pill: "have you ever heard of not having sex?" This is fallacious.
2. The contraception used by the victim of Rush's assault is, as indicated above, no clear sign of how much sexual activity she enjoys.
3. Including contraception in healthcare coverage is in no way "paying her to have sex."

III. Rush's definitions are inaccurate.
1. slut: 1a. a woman considered sexually promiscuous. b. a woman prostitute. 2. a slovenly woman. (AHD)
a. re: 1a: there is no evidence of the woman's promiscuity, and anyway no yardstick by which to judge it as more or less "slutty" than anyone else.
b. re: 1b: Rush then corrects "slut" to "prostitute" (redundantly).
c. re: 2: inapplicable
d. "slut" has non-dictionary connotations as well, slangily describing somebody who enjoys casual sex and has an appetite for it. While there is nothing necessarily morally wrong about this, my purpose is not to argue that here, but rather to point out three additional things:
- people in long-term monogamous relationships, even and especially marriages, use birth control
- there is no particular evidence (past the anecdotal or the contemptuous) that access to birth control encourages "slutty" behavior at the expense of responsible behavior; if anything, access to birth control promotes responsibility (and cuts down on teenage mamas)
- the term "slut" is commonly discredited as sexist, since it describes attitudes and appetites found among both men and women, but said appetites are for some reason only considered a bad thing when found in women (or at any rate, men are not called "sluts" - perhaps "manwhores" if anything)
2. prostitute: one who solicits and accepts payment for sex acts. (AHD)
a. obviously invalid since that is not what Rush's victim was doing.
b. additionally, in prostitution the recipient of the sex act is the payer, or someone receiving a gift from the payer; contraception does not constitute payment for a woman to have sex with her pharmacist, or indeed to have sex with the federal government itself, which I imagine would be 50 Shades-ish.

The issue was not birth control or access to birth control, as the hyper-partisan press reported it, but rather the right of people not to be forced into slavery by government policies attempting to rob them of their earnings in order to pay for third parties to behave in ways they object to on religious grounds.

I. The use of the word "slavery" is literally wrong, analogically dubious, and intentionally inflammatory.

II. The use of the phrase "rob them of their earnings" (which negates the slavery analogy; slaves do not have earnings) suggests that all government taxes constitute some form of robbery.
1. is it "robbing me of my earnings" to fund various weapons development projects I personally oppose?
2. is it "robbing me of my earnings" to fund abstinence-only sex ed programs I personally oppose?
3. Thus the "tyranny of the majority." If a majority have voted for, and soon vote again for, a government the majority of which endorses a program, the minority must either accept the resulting contract between represented and representatives, or defy it Thoreau-style in the name of civil disobedience.

III. In the case of this particular institution, the Catholic Church, the facts suggest that its position is both immoral and hypocritical.
1. Birth control is correlated with reductions in teen pregnancies, extramarital pregnancies, fertility rates, rape pregnancies, and various other health issues, and is correlated with increases in women's rights and economic growth in the developing world.
a. though it is impossible to calculate an exact toll, the Catholic Church's opposition to all forms of sexual protection may well be responsible for millions of deaths in AIDS in Africa, and is one of the largest human rights crimes of my lifetime.
2. "Data shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced women of child-bearing age and who identify themselves as Catholic have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning at some point in their lives."
3. Birth control saves millions of dollars in health care, and is almost certainly a net gain, when you consider the alternative. If all citizens (and migrants!) in this country had access to it and funding for it, hospitals would have fewer births, fewer child illnesses, fewer pregnancies by the very young, fewer pregnancies by the young and uninsured (especially among illegals), and slower demographic growth among those who can least afford healthcare. I'm not saying I want fewer poor babies born to 16-year-olds because I hate babies, I'm saying I want fewer of them because if they're going to cost our society as much as they do, they should at least be the product of a conscious choice.
a. Granted, these demographics are unlikely to be Catholic Church employees, but there are other employers affected by this law. Additionally, my point here is that investing in contraceptives is a savings rather than a robbery.
IV. I object to many of the behaviors which cause people to need healthcare.
1. I object to mindless overeating that leads to obesity;
2. I object to people buying 7-11 Big Gulps and getting diabetes;
3. I object to people who don't buckle up or wear cycle helmets;
4. I object to cigarette smoking. I don't want to pay for the lung treatments of smokers.
5. All these things ultimately cost the government much, much more than two people having consensual, safe sex.

To summarize: your dichotomy of "the issue was not...but rather" oversimplifies matters. There are at least two freedoms in conflict here: the freedom of a religious organization to adhere to its moral code, and the freedom of an individual to access needed healthcare. Like it or not, reproductive care is a need, and like it or not, birth control saves millions of dollars and is probably a net gain for the healthcare system. It's a good investment at home and an even better investment in foreign aid. Granted, I'm not sympathetic to religious "moral" codes (I don't believe sexual protection is a moral issue), but this is a case of a "moral" position potentially denying another freedom and adding to a societal burden, in service of a principle which is dubious at its best and destructive at its worst. The Catholic Church in America has what you could call a very poor track record in moral authority. The fact that it may or may not have the right to deny comprehensive healthcare to its employees does not mask the fact that to do so is a bad, backwards idea from a medieval ethics which our society has long evolved past.

[mc ukrneal]

Rush Limbaugh is most definitly unworthy of appreciation.

[Todd]

I missed the hubub in the other thread, but one person who ought to appreciate Mr Limbaugh, ironically enough, is Sandra Fluke.  She ain't no publicity shy perma-student.  She may end up speaking at the Democratic Convention.  This has been a very good year for her.

Like Rush or not, he knows how to stay in business.  I would have thought he wore out his welcome around 1994 or so, but here there's a fresh thread about him.  Who actually listens to him? 

[Brian]

Who actually listens to him?

Mostly the late-50-something fathers of my friends? My best friend's dad, my coworker's dad, my other friend's dad... a lot of grumpy dads.

[Karl Henning]

I guess grumpy dads need entertainment, too.

[Gurn Blanston]

Mostly the late-50-something fathers of my friends? My best friend's dad, my coworker's dad, my other friend's dad... a lot of grumpy dads.

It isn't the people who listen to him who are the concern (everyone needs a chuckle); it's those who think that he isn't a great tub of horseshit that scare me.

[Coopmv]

I am not a Democrat but cannot stand this moron ...

[snyprrr]

Would Chomsky be like a polar opposite to Limpaugh? Who is the polar opposite? Sharpton? The gay guy?

[Brian]

Would Chomsky be like a polar opposite to Limpaugh? Who is the polar opposite? Sharpton? The gay guy?

Michael Moore, perhaps, or, though he's not a political figure, Dawkins. That said, Dawkins and Chomsky are in a different class by virtue of brainpower; Bill Maher is somewhat similar but his attempts at humor are generally better; the #1 liberal I can think of who combines sneering idiocy, blatant hypocrisy, aging whiteness, and a torrent of unending hatred, is... uh... crap. Keith Olbermann! There we go.

[Gurn Blanston]

Would Chomsky be like a polar opposite to Limpaugh? Who is the polar opposite? Sharpton? The gay guy?

Sharpton isn't the Gay Guy, he's the Black Guy... I'm not sure who the Gay Guy is these days, now that Barney Frank is retired. Or do you mean Anderson Cooper? He's pretty apolitical. Dammit, Snips, you are so freaking obscure sometimes    

[TheGSMoeller]

I guess grumpy dads need entertainment, too.

You know my father?

[Gurn Blanston]

Michael Moore, perhaps, or, though he's not a political figure, Dawkins. That said, Dawkins and Chomsky are in a different class by virtue of brainpower; Bill Maher is somewhat similar but his attempts at humor are generally better; the #1 liberal I can think of who combines sneering idiocy, blatant hypocrisy, aging whiteness, and a torrent of unending hatred, is... uh... crap. Keith Olbermann! There we go.

Yes! That's it; the other wing on that big old wingnut of American political commentary.

[kishnevi]

Rush is now alleging that Hurricane Isaac is really a consipiracy on behalf of Obama.  Or something.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/27/752661/rush-limbaugh-says-obama-manipulated-isaac-storm-track-to-delay-gop-convention-the-hurricane-center-is-obama/

[Gurn Blanston]

That's just too precious; I freakin' love it! 

See, you don't have to try to make a fool out of ole Rush; he does it so handily all on his own!

Of course, you want to be careful of all the people who lick clean the pearls of wisdom that spill out of The Man's mouth!

[Todd]

Well, Rush certainly knows how to say things to keep people talking and writing about him.  Good thing to keep advertisers paying.

It's odd to see the names Chomsky and Dawkins in a thread about Limbaugh.  I just would never have thought about trying to make that type of comparison.

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, Rush certainly knows how to say things to keep people talking and writing about him.  Good thing to keep advertisers paying.

It's odd to see the names Chomsky and Dawkins in a thread about Limbaugh.  I just would never have thought about trying to make that type of comparison.

No, Olbermann was the only reasonable (?) choice. Clash of the Big Fat Rich White Guys!

[Leon]

I don't have a dog in this hunt; I have never listened to Limbaugh.  Not because I think he's a blowhard or worse, but simply because I don't listen to talk radio of any kind.  But I'm curious if there is any political commentator from the Right who would not be pilloried on this forum?  And I mean a real Conservative, not someone like David Brooks.  A related question: is there a political commentator from the Left who is not a Moderate, but a far-left wingnut?

[DavidW]

Talk Radio is about emotion more than logic, reason or insight.  It is about portraying the other party as the enemies willfully tearing the country down.  It is rage fueled paranoia.  I think that it does harm to the people that listen.  Either it closes minds or makes blood boil.  It is bad news.

[Gurn Blanston]

I don't have a dog in this hunt; I have never listened to Limbaugh.  Not because I think he's a blowhard or worse, but simply because I don't listen to talk radio of any kind.  But I'm curious if there is any political commentator from the Right who would not be pilloried on this forum?  And I mean a real Conservative, not someone like David Brooks.  A related question: is there a political commentator from the Left who is not a Moderate, but a far-left wingnut?

As to your related question; I think Olbermann would qualify. He's pretty much of a Far Leftie.

Any far side commentator will get it from me, left or right. I despise radicalism in any form. Oops... I mean, I'm a moderate, one of the Lost Tribe of moderates who have been totally disenfranchised by their government. As a result of that, I feel licensed to take regular potshots at any and all of them. The Wingnuts.   

[Gurn Blanston]

Talk Radio is about emotion more than logic, reason or insight.  It is about portraying the other party as the enemies willfully tearing the country down.  It is rage fueled paranoia.  I think that it does harm to the people that listen.  Either it closes minds or makes blood boil.  It is bad news.

What he said.   

Hi Davey, welcome back.