Rush Limbaugh Failed to Adhere to Conservative Tenets of Civility in Attacking Sandra Fluke

Culture

It's a mystery why Rush Limbaugh designated Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" for testifying about the use of contraceptives to Congress. Rush knows well that adhering to minimum standards of civility and decency is an essential tenet of conservatism.

It doesn't make me feel better about the status of women to learn that Rush's comments were considered so offensive by the White House that the president telephoned Sandra Fluke to comfort her following the attack. The Huffington Post is now undertaking a campaign reminiscent of the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the Hollywood blacklist to remove Rush from the air, due to what they allege are FCC violations. This line has traction with HuffPo readers; however, it appears that site's viewership is declining in tandem with Rush's listening audience.

No one expects Limbaugh to defend women's rights, and even so, he did cross a big line with his commentary against Fluke. Removal of sponsorship is not censorship, and if Rush's sponsors do not approve, then that was the risk he took when making his comments. At the same time, the manufactured outrage from media competitors is comic-opera absurd. Michelle Malkin, conservative Filipina-American commentator, has experienced years of race- and gender-related abuse. Malkin kept a running diary of liberal hate speech and images up through the 2010 political season. Yesterday, she shared just a few of the choicer bits that she's been called for expressing her views openly.

Clearly, it is unacceptable to liberals and much of the media for a conservative man to call a liberal female a "slut." However, it is also acceptable for a liberal man (or woman) to call a conservative female an (unprintable epithet). Apparently, no one at HuffPo or other common media outlets sees the irony in the nasty terms applied to America's current female secretary of state by people like Keith Olbermann, while the President went sharply out of his way to immediately "defend women" by "comforting" a 30-year-old law student who got trashed by Limbaugh. Priorities are such that the president and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, took well over a week to telephone governors of states impacted by the recent rash of severe tornadoes in the Midwest.

Is this a double standard? Triple standard? Googol standard? It's looking more and more like the latter. The president's phone call to Fluke isn't going to win him a single vote he did not already have.

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