It looks like conservative blabbermouth Rush Limbaugh's "apology" to Sandra Fluke didn't work. Not only has media giant AOL just become the eighth advertiser to distance itself from his brand of crazy, but the Georgetown law student has spent the day saying his "well, I kinda, sorta didn't mean to call you a slut" isn't good enough. And her refusal to accept his apology may be the strongest statement yet. Once again, she's allowing Limbaugh's own failings to help further her cause.
It's a cruel irony that Rush's crude and lewd attack on Fluke for trying to speak out for women's need for health insurance companies to cover the birth control pill allowed her message to reach much farther than the halls of Congress. She's had to weather a hail of epithets I wouldn't use in polite company, much less on the radio where anyone and Sandra Fluke's mother could hear it. But as Fluke told the ladies of The View this morning, even his apology doesn't address the problem:
I don't think that a statement like this issued, saying that his choice of words was not the best, changes anything, and especially when that statement is issued when he's under significant pressure from his sponsors who have begun to pull their support.
She's right.
Because even this morning, as he returned to work with waning support, Rush has continued an attack on Fluke that makes it clear he speaks for the vast number of men in America who have failed to grasp the root of the contraception coverage issue. It isn't -- as Rush so crudely said -- about women wanting to be "paid" so we can have sex. It's about health.
Taking to his program today, Rush argued that he still doesn't see why Fluke would be allowed to speak in front of Congress anyway ... because he doesn't see her as having any "expertise" on the matters at hand. This is why his apology doesn't count. He doesn't see her as an expert because he's refusing to hear what she's saying. Rush -- like too many men I know -- is still discounting the real life stories Fluke has put forth from real women about the health issues that the birth control pill could have helped them avoid.
Limbaugh has apologized for calling her a slut, but he has refused to acknowledge the crux of the argument. A woman, Sandra Fluke's friend, lost her ovary because she could not afford the birth control pill that would have controlled a disease ravaging her body.
It wasn't because she was a floozy who was having way too much sex. It was because she had a medical condition, a health issue. And we are talking about health care, aren't we, Rush? This is why he's still losing advertisers and respect from the American public; because he still doesn't get it.
What would you say to Rush if you were Sandra Fluke?
Image via Dan Correia/Flickr
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Comments 36
Eye roll. If either of you had listened to Rush Limbaugh today you would have heard him make very clear the reasons for his apology. He was apologizing less to Ms. Fluke than to his listeners for what he felt was descending beneath his own standards and becoming like his opponent. He doesn't care whether Ms. Fluke accepts or if it stops advertisers from pulling their ads. Rush Limbaugh's show is not about selling advertising. It's about appealing to listeners. Since that hasn't changed the only thing these advertisers have to look forward to is loss of revenue. They don't want my business (and the business of millions of others)? Fine. They won't get it. No dig deal.
Is it not embarrassing enough that Ms Fluke herself was talking about her sex life in public? If my daughter went in front of the world asking for birth control handouts and acting entitled I would be mortified. If they are old enough to have sex, they are old enough to buy birth control and I don't have to pay for their choices. Where has personal resposiblity gone? So yes, it easy to blame Rush but what about blaming the circumstances that put her in this position in the first place?? When you publically put yourself out there then someone will judge you.
Rush makes me sick and I'm glad she held her head high. Noone seems to acknowledge he was lying about insurance coverage for contraception being on the taxpayers dime. The rightwing media keeps twisting it and more than Rush has called her the nastiest things.
Chris did you even read this article? She didn't testify about her sex life. And if your daughter was treated in the manner that Rush is continuing to treat Ms. Fluke, I'm pretty sure you'd be outraged.
If someone said this about you in front of 20 million people and then apologized under financial pressure from their boss, would you accept it? Please read the actual transcript (she does not make any reference to her sex life) before believing Rush. No one is asking for free birth control. She's asking that it be covered as part of the insurance that they pay for through their school. Whether you agree or not, he was way out of line.
Feb. 29, 2012:
1) “testifies she's having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope”
2) “they're having so much sex they can't afford the birth control pills!”
3) “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.”
4) “Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can't afford birth control pills.”
March 1, 2012:
5) “You'd call 'em a slut, a prostitute”
6) “she's having so much sex”
7) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
8) “they want to have sex any time, as many times and as often as they want, with as many partners as they want”
9) “the sexual habits of female law students at Georgetown”
10) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
11) “having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet”
12) “four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet”
13) “Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex.”
14) “to pay for these co-eds to have sex”
15) “she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight,
apparently these deadbeat boyfriends or random hookups that these babes are encountering here, having sex with nearly three times a day”
16) “Therefore we are paying her to have sex. Therefore we are paying her for having sex.”
17) “Have you ever heard of not having sex so often?”
18) “Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
19) “we want something in return, Ms. Fluke: And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money.”
20) “'If we're paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes.' And what else could it be?”
21) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right?”
22) “I'm having sex so damn much, I'm going broke.”
23) “She's having so much sex that she's going broke! There's no question about her virtue.”
24) “having so much sex she's going broke at Georgetown Law.”
25) “Here's a woman exercising no self-control. The fact that she wants to have repeated, never-ending, as often as she wants it sex -- given.”
26) “She's having so much sex it's amazing she can still walk, but she made it up there.”
27) “Maybe they're sex addicts.”
28) “to pay for her to have sex all the time.”
29) “she wants the rest of us to pay for her sex.”
30) “She wants all the sex that she wants all the time paid for by the rest of us.”
31) “Here this babe goes before Congress and wants thousands of dollars to pay for her sex.”
32) “a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman.”
33) “She wants all the sex in the world, whenever she wants it, all the time.”
34) “If this woman wants to have sex ten times a day for three years, fine and dandy.”
35) “to provide women from Georgetown Law unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
36) “so she can have unlimited, no-consequences sex.”