He’s an amazing talent, he smokes good cigars (which endears him to me), anyone who listens to him with any frequency knows that he’s remarkably good natured (not the nasty hater his enemies’ stereotype suggests) and he has a great flair for political analysis. Rush is very valuable, and nothing demonstrates his value so well as the intensity of the attacks against him.
No one who is on the air live for 15 hours a week can possibly avoid error, any more than any of us who blogs several times a week (and we have the advantage of being able to read our own words before we post; he can’t edit himself, he’s got to get it right the first time), or for that matter any more than our national leaders who misspeak at press conferences, or in debates, or even in prepared statements. So he’s going to say things that he will subsequently regret. It’s the nature of the medium. And it’s human nature.
Not one of us can survive a minute-by-minute analysis of our lives. We have all made errors, we have all done things we wish we hadn’t done, we have all failed to do things we should have done. It’s part of our common humanity. We’re all sinners. Rush makes fewer of these blunders than most anyone else on the air, even including the readers of the evening news.
He knows that, he said something he regrets, and he’ll say other things he’ll regret in the future. As will we all. He’s acknowledged it and said he’s sorry.
Like others, I think the issue of religious freedom is enormously important, and I think many of the “get Rush” crowd are happy to distract our attention from that issue.
I hope he gets us back to that issue, pronto. He knows that repeated apologies don’t work, but only offer fresh blood to the sharks.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep listening and learning. I think I”ll send him some good cigars, too.
and the retailers may find to their dismay that Rush’s fans are more loyal to Rush than to the products he recommends… I’d further guess that the folks complaining don’t use the products anyway.
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/05/rally-for-rush
Bring it.
Here is how I understand it:
1) she just mentioned contraceptives, not specifically birth control pills that are used as a hormone treatment for non-pregnancy issues.
2) the health insurance plan does pay for the hormone treatment for non-pregnancy issues (someone correct me if I am wrong).
3) she states that “we” are unable to afford the $1000 needed per year. The “we” would normally mean her and others
4) based upon calculations of others and the fact that I checked the cost of condoms (again, the issue is with contraceptives in general (sex) not birth control pills (hormone treatment)) the $1000 would allow a woman to have sex between 2 and 3 times a day every day for a year.
5) she did not say she and the other women were married or in a monogamous relationship.
6) she apparently, as a 30 year old female activist, decided to come to the college specifically because of the college’s health insurance plan so she could fight it.
Based upon the above, she would be defined as a slut. A man doing the same would be a pig (or a Clinton or Kennedy).
Rush really has nothing to apologize for.
She actually did mention them as hormone treatment, but it was buried in a sea of anonymous attribution (“friends”) and was ratcheted it up to 11! on the ‘women hardest hit’ scale.
Basically, it was from central casting and scripting at the Lifetime network.
My very blunt opinion is that if she absolutely needs these things, then she needs to get a job where they are part of the benefits plan, and go to law school part time. The world does not exist to maximize our dreams, especially if those dreams involve stomping on the cherished beliefs of others.
She is a free-loader, and apparently trying to become a professional one. Screw her.
I want to reemphasize my point. She has a college degree already. She can get into Catholic U, which presumably means she is employable. She is 30, which presumably means she should have been working for at least a few years. It is not the job of Catholic University to be a welfare program for optional lifestyle choices for those demanding society make every wish of theirs come true. No one made her go there.
Her *responsible” choices were to either get a part-time job, get a full-time job and go to school part-time, or use the savings she should have saved up over the years prior to entering law school. In other words, she should have taken some responsibility for her own life, instead of demanding it be subsidized (with the money coming from she-don’t-care).
Instead she’s demonizing a place that she did nothing to create or build up, but is using nevertheless. She’s a free-loader.
Sorry, Georgetown, not Catholic U. My point stands. She’s got a responsibility problem.
David, the topic was insurance coverage for contraceptives. Insurance coverage is only an issue with prescription contraceptives, which you can’t break down that way.
But, boy, do you disgusting men want to. That you’re all so gleefully speculating on how many times Sandra Fluke “does it” and then calling her names shows YOUR true colors.
And her demanding that others, including me (once the socializing of insurance costs is carried out) pay for her recreational sex shows her’s, and yours, true colors. What, should I have to pay for her dating life as well?
Meanwhile, the country is bankrupt, we have high unemployment and high gasoline prices. Barack Obama can’t run on his record so the Left has to manufacture a different crisis. Fluke went to Georgetown knowing it was a Catholic institution and didn’t provide prescription contraceptives. That’s her problem, not mine or anyone else’s.
AT Wal-Mart one can obtain Birth Control Pills for $5.00 a month.
36 months times $5.00 is $180.00.
So tell me Nora, Exactly What is she buying with the other $2820.00?
Not all prescription contraception is the pill. And costs are not equal around the country.
And the cost isn’t the point.
If you want to disagree with the mandate, disagree with it on political, ethical, religious grounds.
But that’s not what you want to do. You want to sexually assault a woman you disagree with, and cavort and cackle and make dirty jokes.
You haven’t made a single argument that goes to your position. You’ve chosen to make disgusting, piggy, fratboy comments about a woman instead.
And that is why the Dems won bigtime on this. You handed them that win on a silver platter. Yet you’ll be the first big whiner come November, when Obama gets another four years, unfettered by a looming election, and free to ruin this country completely. Thanks to a bunch of piggy little boys who couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a few dirty cheap shots at one woman who doesn’t matter in the least in this election. Yukyukyuk. Soooo funny. Let’s see if you’re still laughing in November.
And the cost isn’t the point.
For me, cost is most definitely the point. It was the central argument of her testimony. Further, the cost of “free” contraceptives will be passed on to insurance policy holders and taxpayers. Why of all medications should contraceptives have no copayment allowed? My wife has to pay a copay for her blood pressure medication. It reduces her chances of having a heart attack or stroke. People have to pay copayments for medications that keep them alive, but birth control should be “free”, not just for generics but for the most expensive options? Do you have any idea how expensive that “free” contraceptive coverage will be?
Why should I have to pay to treat the negative side effects of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise? You know how much THAT costs all of us? Don’t see you whining about that…oh, wait…high blood pressure is the result of being a big fat lazy pig, so I guess you’re a little biased there…
Guess your wifey just sits around on the sofa shoveling crap in her face and watching reality TV 24/7, but now I have to pay for her blood pressure meds because she’s got no little self control and self discipline, because she abuses her body, because she’s immoral and selfish.
See how that works?
My wife weighs 120 pounds, has never smoked and walks several miles a day. Still, she has high blood pressure without her medication. People like Christopher Reeve’s wife get sick and die from lung cancer without ever having smoked. It happens.
If you want to open behaviorally caused diseases, what about AIDS and STDs? How much should we pay to treat them?
Do you really want to go there? You sound like a very hate-filled person. It must suck to be you.
Yeah, I hate piggy men. And it’s awesome to be me. Because I’m not on any meds at all, never get sick, and take responsibility for my own health.
Your wife “walks”. Yeah. Me too. Since I was less than a year old. Of course, I also run two full marathons and several half marathons a year.
I think health insurance companies are a huge problem. If I could, I’d abolish them all. Let doctors and hospitals charge within market parameters, without the bloat and excess that insurance companies have encouraged. If you get sick, you pay. If you can’t afford it, go to a charity.
And everyone dies. That’s a given. No insurance in the world is going to prevent your death, but insurance just might extend your dying to the point of hell on earth.
And it’s awesome to be me.
It just sucks to be around you. There’s a lot of misandry in your posts. Hate is hate. You run half marathons. Big whoop. Come back when you’re in your 60s (like my wife) and your knees are shot.
I don’t know you and you don’t know me or my wife. I hope it always stays that way. You come across as a miserable excuse for a human being.
Also, you never answered my question below:
Question: Did you also denounce all of those who said those horrible things abut Sarah Palin?
Somehow, I suspect not. Bill Clinton probably got a pass from you as well.
I did answer your question, it’s just somehow out of cue, although I hit reply on your OP.
If it so sucks to be around me, why do you keep responding…?
All of us are ‘disgusting men’? Project much, beotch?
Yes, if you’re giving Rush Limbaugh a pass on this. You sure are. That’s not projecting, princess. That’s standing up for what’s right, something you don’t have the stones for.
I disagree with her position. I don’t think that gives me the right to sexually assault her, as Rush Limbaugh does.
That the way you and others articulate your disagreement devolved to the most disgusting kind of name-calling and personal attacks shows who and what you really are.
That not one man here has found anything seriously wrong with the kind of rhetoric RL used is frightening. That men think it’s okay to assume they have a right to have sex with a woman against her will if they disagree with her is disgusting.
It’s funny how it’s so wrong when Maher says things like this about Palin, but when RL says the same and worse about Sandra Fluke, it’s just a little mistake, whatevs, hey, let’s all go have a cigar…
Yeah, you can edit this out, too. Or maybe you’ll all just call for a gang rape like Rush Limbaugh did.
You are beyond disgusting. You are a pack of dishonorable, revolting, piggy, filthy, disgusting, failed men. Shame on you all.
Question: Did you also denounce all of those who said those horrible things abut Sarah Palin?
“I disagree with her position. I don’t think that gives me the right to sexually assault her, as Rush Limbaugh does.”
Excuse me? “Sexually assault?” Has Rush Limbaugh ever even met Sandra Fluke face to face?
Verbal disagreement is not (physical) assault—sexual or otherwise. If Fluke’s apparent sexual practices or life are being mocked, that is because she put herself into the public spotlight. If she can’t stand the heat, she should have stayed out of the kitchen, so to speak.
But kindly cease with your mendacious false equating of free exercise of speech with physical assault.
Read the entire transcript of his revolting, guffawing, yukfest over Sandra Fluke’s sex life. When you assert you are owed video tapes of her having sex in return for contraception coverage, you’re claiming you want to sexually assault her.
Sorry.
He’s a pig. There is NO defense of his piggery. None.
Your exaggeration is absurd. A sexual assault is a violent crime. To call what Rush said a sexual assault is to diminish the term. He was over the top and is paying for it. It’s even possible he may be sued. But he did not commit a violent (or nonviolent) crime. To suggest otherwise is stupid.
He said, it’s an assault, I’m not stupid, and that you would defend that animal only proves you’re just as bad.
You are not a good and honorable man. In fact, you aren’t any kind of man at all. None of you are.
No good and and decent woman associates with men who talk and think like that. Your mothers, wives, daughters, sisters are apparently all slatternly, filthy women who have so little respect for themselves they’re happy to associate with men who guffaw over the notion they’re owed video tapes of a woman’s sexual activity if her insurance company covers her contraception.
That’s who you people are. There is no getting around it. You keep showing the world what you are. Now I know what you are. You can’t unring that bell.
He said, it’s an assault, I’m not stupid, and that you would defend that animal only proves you’re just as bad.
You’re apparently ignorant of what the word assault means. What Rush did could be the basis of a civil suit for defamation. It’s up to Ms. Fluke to decide if she wants to sue. If she does, quite likely she’d win.
I’m not defending Rush, just pointing out your exaggeration discredits your posts. It does in fact make you sound very stupid and personally, I couldn’t care less of your opinion of whether I’m just as bad. You have no credibility.
Even if Rush said what you claim—and while he is a master of bombast I cannot imagine him being as sloppy in speech as you are in your writing, nor as over the top as your own hysterical tone—and even if he demanded tapes as you suggest, that is not a sexual assault.
Tasteless? Certainly. Funny, possibly. Vulgar? No question. But it is not an assault.
You are corrupting the language with your ridiculous hyperbole.
To publicly claim that you and your friends are entitled to video tapes of the sexual activity of a woman they do not know merely because they disagree with her over an issue is a sexual assault on her person. That’s what Rush Limbaugh did. He claimed he wanted a something in return for the fact that someone else’s insurance company might pay for her contraception, something of a sexual nature, since he was (according to his bizarre, twisted logic) paying for her to have sex (which makes him her de facto “john”, in his mind — so honorable — crowing over the thought of being a “john”).
That’s an assault. He publicly said he had a right to rape her and film it for entertainment value. That’s pretty much where his comments net out. If it’s fine for him, then you just approved of sharia law. Hey, if a woman’s morals don’t line up with yours, you have the right to demand sexual favors in return, even take them from her if she says no.
That’s what Rush is, and that’s what anyone who even attempts to give him a pass on this is.
To publicly claim that you and your friends are entitled to video tapes of the sexual activity of a woman they do not know merely because they disagree with her over an issue is a sexual assault on her person.
No, it is not. An assault is a genuine physical attack by one person upon another. A hyperbolic claim that someone should provide something outrageous if that person wants an outrageous concession is a form of robust humor by exaggeration.
It may be offensive, particularly to those of dour feminist mindset—though also to those of us who simply do not care for the more coarse and Rabelaisian jocularity—but it is not an assault, no matter how many times you shriek it.
It is difficult to tell whether you are intentionally working to further the corruption of the language or whether your thought processes are so impaired that you actually believe what you are saying. I suspect a combination of the two, with the preponderance being impaired thought processes on your part, since you seem to take it as a given that whatever you desire should be PEZ-dispensed by the government without anyone having the right to object. Someone with that skewed an entitlement view of the world can easily mistake frustration of her childish demands for an “assault.” Little children do that sort of thing all the time.
No, I don’t think anyone should have to pay for anyone else’s lifestyle choices, nor the negative side effects of their lifestyle choices.
You seem to think that if a person thinks Rush Limbaugh’s comments are disgusting, they agree with Sandra Fluke.
How stupid does that make you?
You seem to think that if a person thinks Rush Limbaugh’s comments are disgusting, they agree with Sandra Fluke.
No, I merely think that anyone who affects not to know the difference between speech and assault is an idiot, a corrupt propagandist, or a particularly revolting combination of the two.
Which are you?
I’m neither. Deal with it. Or not. You’ve already shown me what you are and you don’t even register as a human being to me anymore.
There she is—the most self-righteous prog in the world…
And there you are proving me 100% right.
Nora, you insult nearly everybody here, and want to claim the moral high ground? I don’t think so.
I’m insulting those who defend Limbaugh claiming he and his friends are owed a sex tape of Sandra Fluke’s sexual activity because he disagrees with her over this issue. Get over it, cupcake. Run along back to mamma if you can’t deal with it.
Yes, I did.
I heard Rush’s comments in “real time” and I would hardly call them a sexual assault. Discussing it later with my 32 year old daughter and some of her friends, their main point was that they hoped her parents didn’t hear her comments. By they way, she is a very liberal academic at a liberal northeast university. I have heard MUCH worse from Bill Maher.
Rush you made enough apologies the offended party should accept them and then the nasty incident drop and ‘move on’. Imagine when the left in this country,famous TV’s comedians and many democrats went on and on accusing the billion and half catholics,thousands of good priests and religious sisters of being pedophiles because some deranged priests decided to abused our dear children. Remember too when we the american people were called a country of cowards. Let’s said like President Obama ‘no more drama’please.
If Nora is representative of how most wommyn are responding to the whole contraception-insurance discussion then it provides pretty strong argument for repealing the 19th Amendment! Pretty much all of the stereotypes employed in denying women suffrage are on full display in your verbal diarrhea. An entire demographic that can be so easily manipulated by a sweet-talkin-sugar-coated-candyman con artist can never be trusted to vote with the necessary deliberation.
Except you’re not reading where I stand on the issue. You can’t wrap your ugly, sexist little brain around the fact that people can disagree with Sandra Fluke and still think that men who spew the disgusting sort of verbal diarrhea Limbaugh did are pigs.
But, to creatures like you, it’s okay for high-profile right wing personalities to publicly state that women with whom they disagree now owe them video tapes of their sexual activity, therefore what you think about anything no longer matters. You’ve shown the world what you are, and what you are is lower than pond scum.
What’s really sad about you pathetic little repressed gayboys is that you’ve all but lost the 2012 election. You traded it all for a few grubby middle-school boy cheap shots.
Hope it keeps you warm during all the long, cold nights of the next four years.
Keep those hits coming, sunshine. So, apparently Rush using the S-word is what bothers you, not that Ms. Fluke is willing to give herself up to her favored cause essentially for free. Ms. Fluke can be one and you will disagree tepidly. However, anyone who dares call her by a term that describes her to aptly can expect a knock-down by Hurricane Nora!
Your lack of perspective impeaches your trustworthiness as a steward of public good.
Yes, everything about her testimony bothers me.
But it’s too late for that now because it was soooo much more fun for Rush Limbaugh and the pathetic men who go all gooey in the drawers for him to chortle and guffaw and make piggy sexual comments. That’s the story now. There’s no room left for bringing up all the things that are wrong about her testimony because it devolved into a bunch of pigs feverishly calculating how many condoms she could buy with $3000 bucks and how many times she was having sex if she needed that many condoms. There’s nothing anyone can say now that gets past Limbaugh’s assertion that he is owed some homemade porn by Sandra Fluke if she thinks an insurance company should pick up the entire tab for her contraception.
Sorry, dude. That horse has left the barn, and it ain’t a-comin’ back.
Rush blew it, and the leap to defend his disgusting comments was the final nail in the coffin on this one. It’s over. You lost. The right played into the hands of the Obama machine and blew this completely.
Maybe you, Rush, and your ilk should have kept your stupid mouths shut until an effective rebuttal to Sandra Fluke’s testimony could be prepared. Oh, but that would have required restraint, thoughtfulness, a little serious research, and all that boring stuff. So much more fun to go with the creepy, dirty old man humor, eh?
Rush Limbaugh’s lack of restraint impeaches HIS trustworthiness as a steward of public good. But none of you have the stones to say that — George Will is right.
What Rush Limbaugh did was categorically wrong, and it was not a mere slip of the tongue, or a little misstep. It was a calculated effort to smear a woman he disagreed with by using the lowest possible means instead of doing his homework and coming up with something intelligent. And now he and the entire Republican party pays for his piggery. Thanks a lot.
I, for one, am grateful for Nora’s vulgar, coarse, illiterate, fact-free, fishwife presence on this thread. She provides a nice Frank Capra-esque “Why We Fight” moment.
Well within my own memory, a braying hag like Nora would have been shunned by men and women alike. The advent of Phony Feminism has lent a gloss of respectability to these hateful shrews, but the tide—however slowly—is turning, and I expect to live to see them sink, burbling, in the tarpits of their own hate.
Awwww…poor baby…
You still can’t handle the fact I don’t march in lockstep with you and your ilk.
Your pathetic insults are based on nothing. They’re merely pure fiction, something you have to invent in order to rationalize your insistence that it’s fine for prominent radio talk show hosts to demand videotapes of sexual acts from people they disagree with.
You can throw your stupid insults around all you like. They don’t bother me, dear. Like I said, you showed me what you are and what you believe. You have no honor. And without honor, you are less than nothing. What you say now doesn’t matter at all. ~shrug~ Sorry.
And anyone who knows me would be falling over laughing at you thinking I’m a feminist.
Nobody knows you, darling—or cares to. And nobody has called you a feminist that I’ve noticed. Fishwife, yes; braying hag, yes—and rightly so. Fraud hiding behind the bushes of Phony Feminism, certainly.
Live with it. You’re going to have to.
You can throw your stupid insults around all you like. They don’t bother me, dear.
Much as it may come as a surprise to you, those exact words apply to you as well. No one here gives a damn about your or your opinion.
By accusing Rush’s over-the-top comments as an assault, you’ve proven yourself ignorant of the meaning of basic legal terms. Words mean things, especially in terms of the law. We’re not laughing with you, we’re laughing at you. Pointing out your ignorance is the only reason anyone bothered responding to you at all. Ignorance is the natural state of people, but willful ignorance is inexcusable.
Yet…you keep responding…hmmm….
To me, publicly declaring you’re entitled to a sex tape of a woman because you disagree with her belief insurance should offer 100% coverage of birth control is assault. It’s a verbal sexual assault on a woman. It’s meant to demean her, to place her in a submissive position, to humiliate her, and to threaten her.
You’re not laughing at all. Nor am I.
I seriously believe you and the other so-called “men” here who are insisting that there’s something wrong with me for thinking there’s something wrong with Rush Limbaugh for saying these things are revolting, disgusting, dishonorable pieces of garbage. That’s not a joke. I really believe that.
And you still keep trying to justify your belief that it’s perfectly fine for men to demean, degrade and humiliate women they disagree with by using this kind of aggressive, sexually threatening rhetoric. You still don’t get that it’s not okay to do this, ever.
There is nothing you can say to change my mind about the fact that ANYONE who defends Limbaugh’s words is as much a filthy pig as he is.