Rush Limbaugh isn't the only talk-radio wingnut to bully Sandra Fluke this week. Yesterday, prominent Christian conservative talk show host Janet Mefferd got in on the act. Mefferd, for those who don't know, is the same gal who remained deafeningly silent at a guest's claim that some wingnuts were planning a military coup against Obama, and only condemned such extremist talk after a good bit of prodding.
Mefferd started out by repeating--in only slightly less offensive terms--Limbaugh's smear that Fluke wants to have sex on our dime.
Women’s health, women’s health…. It’s just like Sandra Fluke from yesterday when we were playing audio of that girl from Georgetown who was weeping, well I don’t know if she was weeping, but she was whining at least, you can say she was whining, to Nancy Pelosi and company.
‘Oh, all my friends are going broke at Georgetown Law School because we can’t afford birth control and we spent $3,000 over the course of our law school career on birth control’—$3,000?—‘We just can’t afford it and you need to pay for it, this is about women’s health.’ And of course everybody on the side of common sense is saying, you know what Sandra Fluke and company, nobody’s making you do it, nobody’s making you do it, you’re not asking for some sort of help with cancer drugs, you’re not asking for some sort of help with getting nitroglycerin pills for your heart condition, we would be moved, we would be very sympathetic, we would care, we would find some way to help if this were some dire emergency and you couldn’t afford it.
Mefferd then spent the next three minutes wagging her finger at Fluke, saying that she should have asked her parents to pay for her birth control. "If you want to go out and fornicate," she said, "you need to pay for it."
Let's say it all as a group--Fluke was simply speaking out against Georgetown's refusal to cover the cost of contraceptives. Mefferd actually played the clips on the tail end of her Wednesday show, and still managed to twist it several miles out of context.
I'd wondered why no Republican woman has spoken out against Limbaugh's ugly attacks on Fluke. Now I know why--ten to one they're probably thinking the same thing as Mefferd.