Rush Limbaugh. Photo credit: Palm Beach County Sheriff's office
American right-wing radio show host Rush Limbaugh is in disgrace among even Republican politicians after he branded a Georgetown University law student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying before Congress in favour of taxpayer-subsidied contraception last week.
Sandra Fluke, a 30-year-old third year law student at Georgetown University and former president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice testified before a Democratic committee on 23 February. She discussed the prohibitively high cost of contraception without insurance and highlighted that the pill was not just taken to avoid pregnancy but also to combat problems such as polycystic ovarian syndrome.
The week after Fluke’s testimony, Limbaugh attacked her on his show, asking: “What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] 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.”
The next day, Limbaugh went still further: “So, Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis. Here’s the deal. If we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Advertisers abandon shock jock. It was only after several advertisers announced that they would be withdrawing their ads from his show that Limbaugh issued what has been branded a ‘notpology’ on Saturday. Unsurprisingly, the begrudging apology did not reverse the advertiser’s decision. David Friend, the CEO of online security firm Carbonite, wrote: “No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady.”
Republican presidential hopefuls run a mile. Limbaugh’s sponsors aren’t the only ones abandoning the colourful character. The two main Republican candidates have both tried to distance themselves from Limbaugh, with Romney commenting: “it’s not the language I would have used,” and Santorum dismissing him as “absurd”.
Birth control remains hugely divisive issue. This latest scandal just reflects the deeply divisive nature of issues surrounding abortion and birth control in the US, adjudged The Telegraph. The newspaper noted that, last month, the Obama administration was forced to back down on plans to force employers to provide contraception for their employees. A new plan puts the burden on insurance providers. Miss Fluke testified to Nancy Pelosi’s mock committee set up by the Democrats after Republican congressman Darrell Issa barred Fluke from an all-male panel on contraception.
Obama backs Fluke. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to give a right-winger a good kicking, and appeal to the female electorate, President Barack Obama called Fluke on Friday afternoon to offer his support. Fluke later told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that: “He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women … And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud. And that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me. So, I just appreciated that very much.”
Rush a jobs killer? American commentator Bob Garfield in The Guardian, employed Rush-ian logic to make a series of insulting remarks about the shock jock, calling him (amongst other slurs) a “jobs killer”: “What does it say about a champion of free enterprise when his advertisers are forced to scatter like teenagers when the cops bust a beer party, costing the economy millions of dollars? It makes him an enemy of business, right? It makes him a jobs killer.”
