LITTLE ROCK — A flood of opinion rushes out on the issue of Rush Limbaugh’s misogyny.
Yes, I said misogyny, which means hatred of women. What else could this be?
You have a glorified radio disc jockey who is a famous right-wing blowhard and bully. You have a young woman law student who dares to advocate in congressional testimony that her Jesuit university should provide health insurance that covers women’s contraception.
So he gleans from her gender and public-policy position that she is a slut and prostitute. He sees a woman who is having so much sex that she can’t possibly keep her pregnancy protection paid for on her own dime.
He so relishes this fantasy that he shouts it in his public broadcast.
He proposes that she make a pornographic video of all this sex that he says she is having-so much that she can hardly walk, or so he bellows to millions. He asks that she post these images of her supposedly rampant sexual activity on the Internet so he can watch and get something in exchange for his health-insuring dollar. Thus he could objectify and debase her on a regular basis.
That’ll teach a little lady to get uppity and take on the men who run the churches and universities and Congress.
There is no evidence, of course, that the young woman behaves in the ways Limbaugh described. Even if she did, men who have a lot of sex tend to get applauded by other men, unless the man having a lot of sex is a Democratic president.
It is no wonder women resent men. I speak collectively, of course. Fortunately there are individual women still willing to ally with individual men, their primitive failings notwithstanding.
Generally speaking, pharmaceutical erector sets for under performing men-Viagra and such-have been covered by health insurance since the discovery of their magic, whether as a fertility enhancer or mere pleasure facilitator. Yet a device that shields a woman from becoming pregnant, and that can otherwise protect her reproductive health, emerges as the cause of holy consternation.
A woman can argue for birth-control coverage in health-insurance policies without being willing to have sex with every man she sees. Birth control is not about having a lot of sex.
It’sabout having any sex.
It’s like my mother told me when I was in high school and started spending serious time with a young woman.
“Johnny,” she said, “it only takes once.”
Viagra seems moredesigned than female contraception for simple pleasure, unless, that is, these 60-year-old men are trying to give their grandchildren a new aunt or uncle.
Limbaugh is an extreme case of outrage. But he does express, albeit in a crude and hyperbolic way, a worldview that is not uncommon among culturally conservative men. They tend to look at insured contraception in the context of a devalued judgment of women as subservient child-bearers and helpmates.
Indeed, they often appear to have a hang-up about sexuality, at least where female liberation is concerned.
Rick Santorum seems still to be offended by females because of the promiscuous free love of the 1960s. Miniskirts, bralessness, the pill-theyseem to give him flashbacks, sometimes occurring in the middle of his speeches.
Meanwhile, Limbaugh’s apology to the young woman shouldn’t count for much. Advertisers were starting to get concerned.So he issued a lawyerish written statement about how he was trying to treat an absurd public-policy view with intentionally absurdist rhetoric.
Limbaugh revealed himself either way, whether he meant what he said or didn’t know any better than to joke that way.
Finally, I continue to be bothered by this notion that our mainstream politicians must publicly disavow outrageous things that insignificant others such as glorified disc jockeys say.
Mitt Romney and Santorum have plenty to answer for in terms of what they have said themselves. They are not responsible for Limbaugh. Only Limbaugh is responsible for Limbaugh.
It was appropriate for President Barack Obama to telephone the slandered young woman to offer support. I only wish his press secretary hadn’t announced that he’d done it. That demeaned the presidency by positioning a disc jockey as worthy of the president’s public counterbalancing.
It was cynical, of course. Obama will be happy to run against Limbaugh. He’ll take 90 percent of the female votes and try to pick up an addled man here and there.
John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 03/06/2012