We have become too used to bullies making huge profits from their hate filled rants on radio. We have become too used to large corporations trying to advertise and thus make profits off of hate speech on the radio.
But today, I think I've reached a breaking point.
Today, on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said specifically of Sandra Fluke and in general of all women who want health insurance to cover their birth control costs, that they are sluts and prostitutes.
As you may recall, a Georgetown law student named Sandra Fluke had been denied access to testify in front of a committee chaired by Darrell Issa (R-CA)dealing with birth control, in favor of an all-male religious panel... because who else knows best about women's bodies and birth control than a bunch of undersexed and celibate males?
When Ms Fluke was finally allowed to speak in front of Nancy Pelosi's hearing on birth control, Ms. Fluke discussed that birth control prescriptions can cost $1000 a year and that mandatory health insurance coverage of such an expense is an important need for women in general, and for women at her school, in particular.
Rush Limbaugh, woman hater that he is, therefore concluded that women who want insurance to cover their cost for prescription birth control are in essence asking to be paid to have sex! Yes that's right, because insurance is paid for from a pool of people, in Rush Limbaugh's Oxycontin-addled mind, women who want insurance to cover or women whose insurance covers birth control are being paid to have sex and THUS all such women are sluts and prostitutes!
The actual transcript of his remarks are as follows:
"Can you imagine if you're her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi, and 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. "'Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported. It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations."
"'Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,' Fluke told the hearing. $3,000 for birth control in three years? That's a thousand dollars a year of sex -- and, she wants us to pay for it." ....
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: 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 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. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's "round heeled." I take it back.
There are many things to say about this but I'll try to keep it short as I can.
1. Most heterosexual women use birth control. Most gay women don't have to but some do to deal with medical issues that are positively regulated by the pill. Being able to medically control aspects of one's body falls under the realm of health care. There is a special animus towards all women by Rush that he must feel that most women are actually sluts and prostitutes.
2. It is one thing to disagree with someone on a policy issue. It is one thing to disagree strongly and couch your disagreement in terms of strong arguments. That's fair game I do it all the time. It's another thing altogether to have an older, extremely wealthy man who controls a huge percentage of corporate airwaves to use his right-wing corporate bully pulpit to call a specific, younger woman by name, a slut and a prostitute. I call it thuggery and I consider it a disgusting display of anti-female disrespect and abuse, even from the rotund bully of hate, commonly referred to as Rush Limbaugh.
3. There are many businesses that support Rush's bombastic daily rants. Some sponsors of his show are large national and multinational corporations. I wonder how many of them really feel that all women who want insurance to support their health needs, to support their reproductive freedom, consider these women to be prostitutes. Furthermore, I wonder how many CEO's (male and female) of these corporations would like to have their children, their daughters expressing their right to free speech to be called out nationally as a prostitute and a slut?
I wonder how much the CEO's and executives of the corporations sponsoring Rush Limbaugh's show would appreciate having the names of their daughters published online calling them out as sluts and prostitutes whores and the like simply because they are presumably sexually active and most likely use a form of birth control. I bet they wouldn't appreciate it very much. Some might even find it threatening.
4. I'd like people to help me by listing all the current sponsors of Rush Limbaugh's show.
I'm going to write personal (not mass emailed or form letters ) to each CEO of the companies that currently sponsor Rush's show explaining to them why I find their corporate sponsorship of such anti-woman hatred to be a repulsive stain on their corporate brand.
I don't think many of these corporations would advertise on Taliban Bob's Anti-woman radio show, I find it hard to imagine why they support Taliban Rush's version of misogyny.
5. I want corporations sponsoring Taliban Rush to know that I refuse to continue to support any such with my money.
6. And further, I'd like to hear from these corporate CEOs, if they have the guts to respond, how they'd feel if it was their wife, their daughter, their mother being called a prostitute on public airwaves, simply because she was exercising her right to free speech, simply because she has a viewpoint about health care and her body that a hate-filled bully on the radio disagrees with. (because, quite frankly, it's not that hard in these days of social networking to effectively cover the internet with corporate CEO's relative's names as being a sluts or a prostitutes...it takes a bit of work, more than Rush Limbaugh turning on the mic but I kinda doubt the CEO's really would want to feel at the receiving end of such personal animosity like Rush dishes out daily).
7. Rush Limbaugh certainly has the right to hate women--to feel that women who want to have control over their bodies, who want equal access to health care and insurance access, that such women are sluts and prostitutes. Rush Limbaugh is allowed to be the worlds fattest misogynist on the airwaves if he wants.
But I think if corporations want to support such anti-women hatred, they should be called out on it, as corporate sponsors of bullies, of anti-woman hate speech.
Please join me in stopping corporate sponsored misogyny.
Your thoughts, letters, ideas are welcome.
Thank you all!
Fri Mar 02, 2012 at 6:25 AM PT: UPDATE #1 I tried, REALLY tried listening to his show yesterday but it almost made me sick. I managed to hear 4 sponsors before I thankfully was interrupted. I will try and listen today and will list on this diary the sponsors.
What I didn't realize is that some of the sponsors of his show are national and some are local. Amazingly, one of the local advertisers in my area is Physician's Medical Group, a large, local collection of physician's. The idea that PMG is sponsoring a man that is calling women who use insurance or call for insurance to cover the pill, sluts and prostitutes, is just appalling to me.
anyway, I will update with names and list here.
Thank you all!