Emails on Limbaugh-Fluke Flap

One of my work colleagues, a right-winger but a nice guy nevertheless, emailed me a link to a story about Bill Maher's response to the controversy over equating his calling Sarah Palin a nasty word for female genitalia and Rush Limbaugh's calling Sandra Fluke a slut.

Here is my email response, complete with misspellings:

OK, Maher’s really crude. Fine. He insulted Sarah Palin, OK I’ll give you that. But that still deson;t change that Rush totally distorted Fluke’s position and testimony. Maher was making a joke about how stupid he thinks Palin is. Limbaugh was taking Fluke’s testimony—which Repubs refused to hear--and turning it inside out. Fluke NEVER said she favored the federal government and taxpayers financing insurance coverage of birth control for herself and her friends. So how does that make her a prostitute? She’s only saying insurance should cover it. I realize Rush was attempting to use crude humor—he ain’t no Jonathan Swift by the way—but his premise was based on a lie. Also his characterization of her as a slut didn’t come across as a joke. He was really calling her slut because she had so much sex she needed all this birth control. To me a slut is a woman who has lots of promiscuous sex with as many different partners as possible. Taking birth control doesn’t meant that you sleep around, you could be sleeping with one person maybe once a week and still take the pills because you don’t want an unwanted pregnancy and have to have an abortion. It wasn’t so much Limbuagh’s name-calling that outrages the “liberal elite” but his characterization of women who use birth control—99 percent of the population has at one time or other—as promiscuous, immoral loose women.  

Then the response:

I see your point but that’s not what Rush meant, the fact is she was testifying about not being able to afford birth control and wanted someone else paying for it which in it’s self is wrong.

What ever happened to personnel responsibility in this country, do we need daddy government taking care of all of us 24/7?How about Viagra?

You could buy birth control pills from Walgreens for $10 per month.

Then I fired back

But he specifically said that HE the taxpayer had to pay for Fluke’s activities in the bedroom and that he deserved to see her sex tapes online to “get something for what he was paying for” Fluke was also making the point that some women NEED to take birth control for their health—such as her friend who lost an ovary. But given your position, I’m sure you agree Viagra shouldn’t be covered either—in spite of bob Dole’s sweet deal with the company who made it.

Then, my colleague said:

I agree, we shouldn’t pay for it, the truth is that if it’s a medical reason your insurance company will pay, but the doctor has to say you need birth control because of x.

As far as what Rush said I read the transcripts and he never said we should see a video, while in bad taste, I think this is all just to cover up the fact and to distract from the bad economy, and to fire up the lefts base .Nothing more, in fact they should give back the million dollars from Maher if they feel what Rush said was wrong.

I replied:

And on the second day of Rush’s rant, he did say sex tapes should be posted online. I agree it’s a distraction from the economy, but Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and the republicans started it.

Response:

No they didn’t in fact it was started then picked up by the media but it was a question asked by George Stephanopoulos during the debate, he asked the question which came from left field about contraception, which in no way has or is an issue nor are any Republicans looking to outlaw this, it was a gotcha question that the media and the White House decided to use as pure distraction.

Of course I couldn't let that one go and said:

Stephanopoulos did not bring it out of left field. A week earlier Santorum stated his views on contraception—that it was wrong and he as president would speak out against it—no he didn’t say he would outlaw it, but he did say he thought it was destructive and he would speak against it. He’s a major candidate, he raised a controversial issue , and Stephanopoulos was asking him about it. How is that a gotcha?

And BTW the whole Catholic, religious freedom thing was raised by Gingrich, even though several states have the same law about religious-affiliated institutions having to cover contraception, even Arkansas which was approved by your pal Huckabee when he was governor.  

I'll let him have the last word:

The sad truth is that this is a nothing issue, the country has never been in this bad of shape, and for anyone to even consider discussing this issue is foolish.

I’m not sure you agree with me but this country is in a death spiral because of several bad choices made by this president his desire to be more like Europe.

You can not mistake his constant attacks on class warfare as just a random comment; it’s what he has used to charge up his base.

We are now so burdened with debt as a nation and yet he wants more spending, you have to admit that we as a country will never be able to get out of this huge financial mess he helped create.

There were a few more exchanges, but you get the general idea.