Sandra was barred from speaking at a debate over President Obama’s health contraceptive mandate because the hearing at Capitol Hill was faith based, and she was not clergy. She however did have a chance to speak to a Democratic hearing led by House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, on February 23. Rush Limbaugh, who is not known for his sensitive, careful, and polite take on political issues, has nevertheless shocked many when he criticized Ms. Fluke:
“Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter…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.”
“[She spends] three thousand dollars for birth control in three years? That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex — and, she wants us to pay for it.”
“What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, 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. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”
Many have criticized Rush’s insensitivity, as if unaware that such negative attention is exactly what he thrives on. A week later, when responding to the flack he has received over it, he relished in intensifying his take on the Fluke case. He gave a dialectic take on Fluke’s testimony with his own commentary interlaced. Here is a part of the transcript.
FLUKE: When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.
RUSH: Can you believe this?
FLUKE: Especially —
RUSH: Stop. Stop and listen to this! You’d think we’re hearing about a killer disease here! You think we’re listening to testimony about some horrible crime that’s being committed! “[T]he faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage”? Let me ask you people. When you walk down the street and you see a woman and you look at her face, can you determine whether or not she’s had a birth control pill or not? Do you know whether or not she’s suffering and in pain and miserable because she can’t find any birth control pills? Who knows this? How do you look at the face of a woman and know that? But listen to the way this is being portrayed. It’s like a terminal disease not having your birth control pill! Listen to this.
FLUKE: Last week I have heard more and more of their stories. They tell me that they have suffered financially, emotionally, and medically because of this lack of coverage. Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who like me are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy.
RUSH: Ms. Fluke, have you ever heard of not having sex? Have you ever heard of not having sex so often? What next that you can’t afford are you gonna go to Pelosi and say we need to buy? Mink? A Volt? A Prius? What next are you going to want, Ms. Fluke, that you see etched in misery on the faces of fellow students at Georgetown because they don’t have? “When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected…”
In all fairness, Limbaugh did qualify his “slut” comment: “Ok, so she’s not a slut. She’s round-heeled.” “Round-heeled” is an old term for a promiscuous person who has so much sex that in the process of laying on their back, they wear out their heals.
Whatever the case, as always, Rush is being Rush. And it seems that both Democrats and Republicans still can’t get enough of him.