Rush Limbaugh - A Must To Avoid

   Rush Limbaugh’s recent insult-filled tirade against congressional testifier Sandra Fluke is merely the latest in a 25-year litany of ugly verbosity from the Republican Party’s number one cheerleader and avatar, as well as the party’s proclaimed "most important talk-show host in America". Wonder how most GOP incumbents feel about him now, in the current election year?

   Even for Limbaugh, who has made a career of spouting a stew of racist, homophobic, misogynist rant-fests for the "humorous" entertainment of his 20 million mostly-male fans, his comments last week qualified as breathtaking.

   Under the guise of actual political and current event discussion of the February 23 Washington, D.C. hearing deliberating the proposed Obamacare mandate of contraception insurance coverage for women, Limbaugh loudly denigrated the messenger instead of the message. He repeatedly called Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute", while claiming that covering her birth control use meant that taxpayers were "paying her to have sex."

  Of course, intelligent observers of this tempest saw once again the usual dichotomy employed by many rightists since time immemorial regarding all things sexual: place the emphasis and blame onto the female, while ignoring the other half necessary for the act itself. Guys like Limbaugh would probably never happen upon the fact that the woman’s male partner would be indirectly "paid to have sex" as well.

   Compounding the mess, Limbaugh continued the tirade over several days, asking Fluke to distribute online sex tapes of her trysts while positing the question of who exactly purchased her condoms back in the sixth grade. All this while standing before his microphone gesticulating wildly for emphasis, adding an extremely unattractive mise en scene to his even uglier words. This rendered his comment "I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke" ludicrous during his predictable and insincere apology finally issued last week, after all those years of similar vilification against countless other individuals.

   Limbaugh is obviously not a long-term hit with the ladies, with four marriages under his belt. And you have to wonder if maybe the contraception subject of his attack has something to do with his childless status. Of course, birth control would be no financial problem for Limbaugh anyway with a salary of $50 million annually of his total $400 million contract. Only in America.

   The good news is that over 40 sponsors, including media giant AOL and insurance company Allstate, have pulled their advertising from Limbaugh’s radio show, necessitating a flood of free public service announcements and the occasional several minutes of dead air for his fans to listen to. And there’s a nation-wide online campaign by MoveOn.Org to have Clear Channel drop his show from their broadcast schedule, which admittedly would fly in the face of our country’s important freedom of speech laws, and would open up a can of worms that most thinking people would like to remain closed. But to those said remaining fans who think that there’s been some piling on against poor Rushbo over the past week, think about how you’d feel if your wife or girlfriend had been the target of his repellent speech. Or even your sixth-grade daughter.

   We can only hope that American women of every political stripe remember in November about the rampant bigotry and discrimination demonstrated against them every day by the sensibilities of a Republican party that has spent the past 15 years regressing back to their current medieval proposals against their gender. In general, the conservative movement has never been exactly friendly to the female demographic, and you can include minorities, gays, the poor, students and others to that mix. But with popular demagogues like Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and the Tea Party faction currently holding sway over the right-wing masses, it may be time for our distaff 51 percent to take a closer look at their own interests re: voting more of these people into positions of political power, at any level.