Ten years ago, when I lived in the most conservative part of California, I worked in a small office where I was forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio all day.
There will be no bargain, young Jedi. I shall enjoy watching you die. The unholy progeny of Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. I can’t be the only one who sees it.
Well, maybe I wasn’t forced. Nobody held a gun to my head, and there was nothing preventing me from leaving this job and taking another one. But the fact is that every weekday for the duration of his show, the radio in the office would be tuned in. The office manager was a big fan, and apparently couldn’t get through the morning without a heaping dose of right-wing bullshit, including homophobia, racial bigotry, and misogyny. Yeah, I understand that it was post-9/11, and much of the country was hysterical with fear, and whipped up into an often-religious fervor, vigilant against encroachments by the enemies of traditional American values. I understand that. But the idea that this should somehow translate to hatred against the marginalized within society, especially women, bewilders me.
Did I mention that the office manager was a woman? She was.
By now, you’re likely aware that Rush Limbaugh is under fire for comments he made against Sandra Fluke, a third-year law student at Georgetown University who was denied the right to testify at a contraception hearing in the United States House of Representatives – a hearing chaired exclusively by conservative-leaning males, i.e. those least likely to be impacted. Fluke’s testimony was eventually posted on YouTube.
Limbaugh went on the offensive, calling Fluke a slut and a prostitute, and suggesting that she post videos of her sexual activities online in exchange for access to affordable contraceptive coverage, something not provided by Georgetown. Now, I am the last to suggest that we should be surprised by such vitriol, as it is Limbaugh’s usual stock-in-trade. While Limbaugh has a substantial listener base and is immensely popular with his key demographic, he undoubtedly takes greater pride in his ability to offend and inspire anger. Personal attacks are the order of the day; Limbaugh famously derided Senator Ted Kennedy for his alcoholism mere days after Kennedy’s passing. (Note that Limbaugh has had problems with substance abuse and was arrested on drug charges in 2006.) So while I personally find Limbaugh’s comments reprehensible, I don’t expect sensitivity – or sensibility – from him.
Rush Limbaugh and John Wayne Gacy: Separated at Birth?
I might even go so far as to say that he is not entirely to blame. Yes, I consider him a self-righteous asshole. But his devoted following hangs on his every word, and will vote exactly as he tells them to. The Tea Party movement has proven that Americans are frequently willing – eager, even – to vote against their own best interests, and Limbaugh and his listeners provide further evidence. But as I stated recently on this blog, anyone who enjoys recreational (i.e. non-procreative) sex has no business voting for a Republican candidate, and neither do they have any business listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Nor, for that matter, do women. While I can think of numerous reasons why women might vote Republican – and given that I have more than a couple female friends who are staunchly conservative I’ve heard them all – the often blatant misogyny of the party’s policymakers, if not necessarily the party as a whole, puzzles me. In the early 1990s I found myself discussing politics with my mother’s sister. Both a Republican and a born-again Christian, the views she espoused, especially with regard to the place of women in society, were so anathema to me, so abhorrent and contrary to my own values, that I never again viewed her in the same way. For some time I wondered how someone like her could sell out her own gender. Then it dawned on me: All my aunt had done for the last thirty years was have children and cook. For most of my childhood, she was quite literally barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. She was the pin-up on the wall of every red-blooded right-leaning American male, just appealing enough to make him feel straight, but not so appealing that he felt compelled to jerk off.
I could analyze Rush Limbaugh, and I’m guessing that my conclusions would be correct. I’d guess that Limbaugh’s hatred of women comes from a deep-rooted self-loathing, probably at least in part because of his weight. I doubt that, as a child, he was popular with his peers, he was likely bullied, and I’m not going too far out on a limb when I speculate that women wanted little to do with him. As Dennis Miller pointed out before Limbaugh lost ninety pounds and Miller himself became a bloviating, self-important right-wing pundit, “anybody who hasn’t even seen his own penis in the past ten years is bound to be anti-woman.” And while Limbaugh slimmed down from gargantuan to merely overweight, his views have remained as despicable as ever, or have perhaps gotten worse. His currently less-bulky-than-it-was-fifteen-years-ago physique entitles him to criticize the weight of First Lady Michelle Obama, frequently referring to her as “Moochelle”, and it is this as well as his regular attacks againt House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for apparent botox treatments that exemplify his virulent misogyny.
The thing is, even when Limbaugh was the size of a DC-10 as opposed to a mere 727, there was no reason for his critics to take a cheap potshot at his weight. Sure, back then Limbaugh might have needed a complicated series of mirrors in order to see his penis and today he might need a magnifying lens. But the fact is that body-shaming is wrong, especially when one considers that there are so many more valid reasons to shame a man like Rush Limbaugh, or better yet, to let him shame himself. Fat cracks are just too easy, and by calling attention to the weight of someone like Limbaugh or, to use a more current example, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, you are inadvertently downplaying his views on abortion, the environment, and marriage equality. His opposition to Jersey Shore, however, is spot on.
Say what you will about DJ Pauly D, he’s probably in favor of a woman’s right to choose.
Seriously, Rush – why oppose birth control in the first place? As I’ve stated before, people aren’t about to stop fucking for pleasure, and easy access to contraception would curb unplanned pregnancies. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a decline in unplanned pregnancies would signal a decline in abortions, something about which the religious right would undoubtedly be pleased. It’s just common sense, isn’t it? Unfortunately, as I stated in my previous political post, it’s not about limiting the abortions. It’s about punishing women for taking sexual agency and having sex for reasons other than procreation. It’s strange, then, to think that religious and political conservatives wish to punish – indeed, to harm – the entire gender. I would have guessed that a faction of society that places such a high premium on procreative sex and, by all accounts, disdains homosexuality, wouldn’t dare treat women with such bitter, cruel disrespect. After all, without women, there is no procreation. In fact, without women, the only sex they’ll be having is the kind they claim – a bit too insistently, if you ask me – to be against.
In a perfect world, Limbaugh’s personal attacks and name-calling would fall on deaf ears. Potential listeners would have seen the harm in his constitutionally-protected hate speech and turned him off years ago. He wouldn’t have called Sandra Fluke a slut; the closest he might have come would have been to wake up in a public park, emerge from his dirty newspaper blanket, and chase a pair of necking teenagers away from his bench, all the while shouting “UNCLEAN!”, both hands tucked into the waistband of his smelly, bird-shit-caked sweatpants.
In a perfect world, this is Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh was unrepentant on Friday, now suggesting that Sandra Fluke should “think about maybe backing off the amount of sex” that she has. An odd suggestion, as anyone familiar with women’s bodies should know that the amount of birth control one uses correlates in no way to the amount of sex she has. That Limbaugh could display such abject, shocking ignorance and still be famous on anything other than a Tila Tequila level makes me weep.
Still, I can understand someone like Rush Limbaugh expressing shock and disbelief over women having lots of sex. I imagine he is used to revulsion and rejection. Here’s a newsflash, Rush: Many women are enthusiastic about sex. Just not with you.
This is now the creepiest picture ever posted to this blog. See the previous title-holder here.
UPDATE: Shortly after this post was published, Rush Limbaugh issued an apology to Sandra Fluke for “the insulting word choices”, citing the absurdity of discussing “personal sexual recreational activities” before a Congressional hearing held by Darrell Issa, a Republican representative. He insisted that it is not the business of the American people “to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom”, a claim that seems to contradict his position on Bill Clinton and his sexual dalliances.
One doesn’t have to be a genius to understand that Limbaugh’s apology is about as insincere as a sixteen-year-old forced to visit his grandmother at her nursing home. Limbaugh doesn’t feel any remorse for what he said; if he truly had mixed feelings about his words he wouldn’t have repeated them so often, heaping on additional acrimony each time. No, Rush issued his half-assed apology after losing several sponsors, including Sleep Train, Sleep Number, Quicken Loans, and Carbonite.
Kudos, @Carbonite, for pulling Limbaugh ads. If I ever need to freeze Han Solo for transport to Jabba the Hutt, I will use your product.
— Jack (and Jill) (@jackandjillcpl) March 4, 2012
This makes his comparison of Sandra Fluke to a prostitute all the more bewildering to me. After all, it isn’t often that Limbaugh apologizes for the controversy he creates, so he must have been feeling major financial pressure. For the sake of money, he did something he wouldn’t normally do. He did something he might consider degrading, or beneath him, in order to better ensure his financial security.
By Limbaugh’s definition, isn’t that what a prostitute does?
Still sponsoring Limbaugh’s show: Pro Flowers. Why not drop them a line?
-Jack
*We get political sometimes. It happens. It is our belief that one can’t run a sex blog in America without occasionally thinking – if not blogging – about politics. It is not our intention to offend, but rather to drag the issue into the spotlight and, in doing so, to force our fellow American voters to take action. If you don’t, you shouldn’t complain when you wake up one morning and discover that your rights have been taken away.
4 thoughts on “Why No Sex-Positive American Should Ever Listen to Conservative Talk Radio*”
Great post, I couldn’t agree more with the entire thing. He’s always been a blowhard, and maybe this time he’ll get some comeuppance. I saw that several major advertisers have already pulled their ads from his show, that’s the only way he’ll learn anything is by having his bully pulpit taken away. But I doubt he’ll ever learn a lesson, but at least we’d be rid of him.
Limbaugh is an idiot, and he’ll basically say anything to make himself relevant again. “Look at me! Look at me!”
One point about Republicans and birth control, abortion, the HPV anti-virus, sex education in schools, etc.
Republicans are against all those things because they are opposed to fucking. (It’s OK for them to fuck; it’s not OK for you to fuck.) Fucking is wrong. Giving you birth control would encourage you do the wrong thing. Ergo you shouldn’t have birth control. You shouldn’t have an HPV virus, you shouldn’t have safe sex education, you shouldn’t have condoms. You should simply not have sex.
It’s pointless to argue with them on logical grounds.
“But… wouldn’t birth control lead to fewer abortions?”
“No, not having sex would lead to fewer abortions.”
The problem (in their mind) is fucking. Again, you fucking. It’s OK for them to fuck. Just not you.
Great post, I couldn’t agree more with the entire thing. He’s always been a blowhard, and maybe this time he’ll get some comeuppance. I saw that several major advertisers have already pulled their ads from his show, that’s the only way he’ll learn anything is by having his bully pulpit taken away. But I doubt he’ll ever learn a lesson, but at least we’d be rid of him.
Your wrong and Rush is right… Now let’s get back to posting those beautiful pictures of Jill please!!!
Limbaugh is an idiot, and he’ll basically say anything to make himself relevant again. “Look at me! Look at me!”
One point about Republicans and birth control, abortion, the HPV anti-virus, sex education in schools, etc.
Republicans are against all those things because they are opposed to fucking. (It’s OK for them to fuck; it’s not OK for you to fuck.) Fucking is wrong. Giving you birth control would encourage you do the wrong thing. Ergo you shouldn’t have birth control. You shouldn’t have an HPV virus, you shouldn’t have safe sex education, you shouldn’t have condoms. You should simply not have sex.
It’s pointless to argue with them on logical grounds.
“But… wouldn’t birth control lead to fewer abortions?”
“No, not having sex would lead to fewer abortions.”
The problem (in their mind) is fucking. Again, you fucking. It’s OK for them to fuck. Just not you.
Your post is spot on. I’m appalled at how many women support him and the hateful diatribe he directs towards women.
Between him and Paypal my fingers have been getting quite a work out and not in the fun kinky way.