Umm ... the Obvious Question

Rush Limbaugh, who has never felt compelled to actually live the life he preaches, appears to be on the defensive again after a rather half-hearted apology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a slut and prostitute. And yet the obvious question that emerges is ... why doesn't Rush have any children? He has been married four times and had a few lacunae in between ... so where are the kids? The reality is he is either a) impotent, b) sterile, c) so disgusting even his wives won't sleep with him or d) a complete and utter hypocrite. Of course, he could argue that he only has sex in marriage, but it would be fun for someone to go check and see if any of his wives have had their birth control covered by their health care plans and if he ever had sex out of marriage without a condom. Just food for thought ...

Really this is just the latest example of the hypocrisy that is so common on the right -- anti-gay gays, porn opponents who watch a lot of porn (a study once found that conservatives watch more), moralizers with the morals of a jackal and a general tendency to say anything that will stir up the highly flammable masses. And it relates to their multipronged strategy over the past 30 years: 1) Win on passion and fear over facts, 2) Turn the focus away from the economy whenever possible, 3) When facts are inconvenient, just ignore them or lie and 4) Attack all institutions that can inform people of these strategies (or the facts) including the media, schools and universities; together with the public sphere in general. 

The funny thing to me about the whole affair is that Rush wasn't criticizing Fluke for having premarital sex, he was criticizing her for asking the government to cover her ability to have safe sex. That actually kind of makes sense, except that so many Limbaugh supporters want the government in our bedrooms telling us what is acceptable and what isn't. One assumes there will soon be a reality game show where judges rate the performances of random sexual partners before a live audience. And the second silly thing is the "public apology" itself. From at least Clinton forward, we have this national pastime of demanding public apologies, even when the actions are largely in line with what people like Limbaugh say, or Clinton did, almost every day. So they are marched out to give their apologies and then the media pundits grade the effort, the exact words used and decide whether it shows enough contrition or not. Since the politician, celebrity or pundit knows this, a team comes together to try to sculpt the perfect apologia and hope the pundits play along. This game went on for over a year as the GOP tried to unseat Clinton, but apparently the people were a lot more forgiving than they thought. And, to be honest, one thing you can say about the U.S. is we generally tend to be pretty forgiving, or at least forgetting ...