Rush Limbaugh: Pill-popping sex tourists shouldn't throw stones



Paul Rosenberg is the senior editor of Random Lengths News, a bi-weekly alternative community newspaper.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012310112911500270.html

San Pedro, CA - Rush Limbaugh's recent meltdown - his three-day sex-crazed rant/attack against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, whose congressional testimony made no mention of her own sex life - has a rich and strange collection of backstories to it, none of which include the sort of follow-on this story has had, complete with pseudo-apologies and the subsequent, ongoing loss of sponsors, which might even conceivably damage or imperil his career. Of those backstories, his own shady past as a pill-popping sex tourist is only the most lurid, not the most instructive. That only goes to underscore what's already self-evident: that Limbaugh's diatribes are heavily implicated in what psychologists call "projection" and the rest of know as "the pot calling the kettle black".

Much more instructive, to get things headed in a more fruitful direction, is Limbaugh's long history of similar sorts of vindictive, name-calling attacks. Media Matters has provided several illustrative lists, such as "Rush Limbaugh's Decades Of Sexism And Misogyny", "The 20 Worst Racial Attacks Limbaugh's Advertisers Have Sponsored", "Ten Of Limbaugh's Worst Advertiser-Sponsored Attacks On The Poor" , "Limbaugh's Advertisers Sponsored These Ten Attacks On Unions" - and a more all-purpose list - "15 Of The Worst Comments Limbaugh's Advertisers Have Sponsored Since 2004". These collections served to illustrate how continually Limbaugh resorts to similarly themed name-calling, thus reinforcing the point Media Matters made early on, that Limbaugh hadn't just used a couple of "poorly chosen words" to describe Fluke, he had engaged in three days of prolonged haranguing including 46 separate attacks.

What's more, they were all based on a lie, since Fluke never said anything about her own sex life. Fluke is a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and her testimony reflected that role - it was not about her, personally, but about the experience of other law students, individually and collectively, and about the broad impact of the denial of reproductive health care, not just with respect to preventing unwanted pregnancy. In fact, Fluke specifically cited other health impacts, such as cancer prevention.

But what does Limbaugh care about facts? Completely ignoring what Fluke actually said, he said things like: "[She] went before a congressional committee and said she's having so much sex, she's going broke buying contraceptives and wants us to buy them"; "We want you to post the videos [of you having sex] online so we can all watch"; "Ms. Fluke, who bought your condoms in junior high? Who bought your condoms in the sixth grade?"; "[S]he wants to have repeated, never-ending, as-often-as-she-wants-it sex"; "She's having so much sex, it's amazing she can still walk"; "[Fluke] is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman"; and "Does she have more boyfriends? Ha! They're lined up around the block." Most of these were stated repeatedly, with minor variations. None of them had any basis in fact and none of them were apologised for. It's no wonder that Limbaugh's non-apology failed so miserably.