Political & Elections

hope · Guru

RE: President Obama calls Sandra Fluke to Offer His Support

longprime · Guru

current and popular culture favors one side.

catahoula · Guru

A temporary disagreement on a philosophical point, lp.

The obsession about the finer distinctions between Ms. Fluke and Palin/Ingrahm/ad nauseum seems a kind of sloppy spin, given it glosses over the fact they're all women. Solidarity seems to break down along party lines these days, which is truly a shame since a campaign theme like the War On Women is going to have a hard time with the fine distinction that it's only the ovaries of democratic women that are at stake.

hope · Guru

Oh don't worry about me, lp. I am staying at my son's apartment--and he doesn't even get cable!! smile

longprime · Guru

Let go.

and stop reading, watching, and listening to such things.,

hope · Guru

you're trying to make a distinction between calling someone stupid and pathetic and saying they sound stupid and pathetic.

Yes, I am. I am saying they sound stupid and pathetic repeatedly defending their double standard. I personally believe it does not help their cause.

“You know, these women, [Monica Crowley et al] somebody really needs to go repossess their ovaries. Really, truly, they have no right to them. They are fabulous, little organs and they have absolutely no right to be estrogen-bearing beings. Okay? Just cut ‘em off, let ‘em go through the hot flashes, let ‘em just sit there and complain about hormone therapy, okay? Just take the ovaries and get it over with. Because they don’t deserve to have estrogen. They really don’t. It’s a privilege.”

Colorful, allright. Not offensive to Ms. Crowley and other conservative women of course; and certainly not an attempt to shut her up, like the right is trying to shut up poor, innocent Ms.Fluke. disbelief

I've seen Randy Rhodes on television. Probably on Fox of all places. She is actually rather well known, as liberal talk show hosts go.

Cartera · Guru

I have no idea who conyat is. So you're accusing me of twisting things when you're trying to make a distinction between calling someone stupid and pathetic and saying they sound stupid and pathetic. Good luck with that one. There's no semi-professional to my status either. I've never been paid a dime for my political activities. I have never defended Bill Maher's use of the word ****. It's beneath him and serves no purpose. I don't know where he was when he said but, worse case scenario, it was on his cable show at 11pm at night. I find that different from broadcasting at all hours of the day to 20 million people - not just one day, but consecutive days and not just calling her a name, but going on about how much sex she is having and suggesting that she video herself having all this sex so he and other conservatives can get their money's worth. Sorry if I can distinguish between those two things. With regard to Randi Rhoades, I have never listened to a word she has said and I don't even know who she is. I read what she said and she picked a more colorful way of saying what I have said - I don't see how any self respecting woman can defend what Rush said.

hope · Guru

Cartera, are you the old CC poster conyat?

Seriously, I can't keep up with the way you twist things...it's above my pay grade. But then I'm not a semi-professional politico. Conyat did the same. This is on a par with the very best of her work:

There is no double standard. You're making it up. The targets do not compare. However, calling people stupid, pathetic, ugly or hateful adds nothing to the argument. It's the classic rubber/glue thing.

I did not, you may observe below, call any one person pathetic or stupid. I said it makes the left look pathetic and stupid. Which it does. Because it is entirely and completely duplicitous. Also, I did not call any individual "ugly" or "hateful." I called their comments ugly and hateful. To say I did is a lie, pure and simple. If you give Rhodes a pass on what she said, an deny that it is ugly and hateful because she's a lib, I don't know what to say. I think perhaps you've crossed some kind of line into fanaticism.

People who defend what Rhodes, or Maher, or Olbermann and all the others who slander women with impunity say because they are conservative do look pathetic and stupid, because everyday people are pretty good at picking up on hypocrisy.

And I'm sorry to say that your continuing to do so leaves me no choice but to add you to those same "people."

If you think you are helping your cause in not backing down from your argument that these people are entitled to free speech, even if ugly, but LImbaugh isn't, I think you are very very wrong.

jmo

john doe · Guru

Most people not including those here, will not compare calling Fox political pundits, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow or whoever you folks want to cite with a grad student.

Cartera · Guru

There is no double standard. You're making it up. The targets do not compare. However, calling people stupid, pathetic, ugly or hateful adds nothing to the argument. It's the classic rubber/glue thing.

hope · Guru

The left's double standard makes them look pathetic and stupid. Randi Rhoades can say awful things, and no one cares, because liberal orthodoxy is boring and humorless. What does it say about people who think Maher's use of the words bimbo, c***, dumb tw**, etc., are hilarious, and defend him because he is a "comedian," as opposed to Rush, who, they say, is a political commentator? Their instinct to censor ideas they don't like has backfired on them for twenty years re Rush. There is no context or point to their ugly rants against conservatives, just pure hate--and that is boring, and, obviously, not funny.

Artemis · Senior Member

It appears our president has a lot of sympathetic phone calls to make. I wonder if he'll be able to fit them in with his hectic schedule.

Obama tops recent presidents in fundraising attendance

Doherty said it makes sense to stage most fundraisers in the nation's capital, but he said the heavy schedule still eats into Obama's time. "Something has to give," he said, "whether it's time with his family, time sleeping, time spent lobbying members of Congress or something else."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-07/obama-campaign-fundraising/53402226/1

winchester · Guru

Randi Rhodes is a liberal talk radio host that can be heard on numerous affiliates across the country and on satellite radio. So when she says something, there’s likely more than a few people listening. And she just said something pretty wild.

After playing audio of Fox commentator Monica Crowley criticizing Sandra Fluke and the idea that women need $3,000 a year for birth control, Rhodes lost it on Wednesday, saying that conservative women don’t deserve to have ovaries.

“You know, these women, somebody really needs to go repossess their ovaries. Really, truly, they have no right to them. They are fabulous, little organs and they have absolutely no right to be estrogen-bearing beings. Okay? Just cut ‘em off, let ‘em go through the hot flashes, let ‘em just sit there and complain about hormone therapy, okay? Just take the ovaries and get it over with. Because they don’t deserve to have estrogen. They really don’t. It’s a privilege.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/liberal-radio-hosts-wild-rant-repossess-conservative-womens-ovaries-cut-em-off/

Cartera · Guru

She may be an activist but she is still just a citizen who chose to express her opinions. She's not a paid political pundit who gets better ratings the more she is attacked. People testify in front of Congress on a regular basis. I don't remember any of them getting attacked, on a personal level, as she has been. She didn't say one thing personal. Her main points were about women who needed birth control for reasons that had nothing to do with sex. That is her best argument and she knew to make her best argument. Yet, her attackers chose to make it all about sex and, more pointedly, her sex life. There are no valid points in those arguments - just name calling. The only logical reason to humiliate and shame her is in an effort to quiet her and others who might speak out.

-- Edited by Cartera on Thursday 8th of March 2012 11:58:41 AM

catahoula · Guru

She's not a public figure, since she's a Georgetown Law grad student.

And she isn't a ringer democrats brought in for furtherance of one of their re-election planks, since it's public knowlede she's a reproductive rights activist attending Georgetown to be active. And active she's been, since she's a past president of whatever grievance club has dominion over that issue.

The spin on this seems complicated.

-- Edited by catahoula on Thursday 8th of March 2012 11:30:39 AM

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

I should have put a sarcastic emoticon next to that statement.

Sadly, no beer summits or phone calls for conservative women who are maligned.

CelticClan07 · Senior Member

I wonder if President Obama will call Michelle Malkin or any other conservative woman who has been called a rude name by someone on the left.

SLS- because I care about you, I ask that you do not, I repeat, do not hold your breath waiting for a phone call to MM, SP, etc.....could cause irreparable harm to you. aww

hope · Guru

This is the third of such threads recently begun concerning this topic which has been allowed to stay open way past the time it was obviously political. CC can't resist any thread that criticizes, either directly or indirectly, the Catholic church, it seems.

john doe · Guru

That is not in the political discussions thread that has been closed for quite some time. I'm still surprised that the contraception thread is still open - I expect it to close anytime.

hope · Guru

I can see why cc closed the political discussions thread

Did they? You might want to check out the very political "Cost of Contraception" thread going on there right now. confuse

john doe · Guru

With all the drivel here, I can see why cc closed the political discussions thread

Cartera · Guru

Unhinged - that's the word.

hope · Guru

From Michelle Malkin: The War on Conservative Women

I'm sorry Rush Limbaugh called 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut." She's really just another professional femme-a-gogue helping to manufacture a false narrative about the GOP "war on women." I'm sorry the civility police now have an opening to demonize the entire right based on one radio comment -- because it's the progressive left in this country that has viciously and systematically slimed female conservatives for their beliefs.

We have the well-worn battle scars to prove it. And no, we don't need coddling phone calls from the pandering president of the United States to convince us to stand up and fight.

At his first press conference of the year on Tuesday, the Nation's Concern Troll explained that he phoned Fluke to send a message to his daughters and all women that they shouldn't be "attacked or called horrible names because they are being good citizens." After inserting himself into the fray and dragging Sasha and Malia into the debate, Obama then told a reporter he "didn't want to get into the business of arbitrating" language and civility. Too late, pal.

The fact is, "slut" is one of the nicer things I've been called over 20 years of public life. In college during the late 1980s, it was "race traitor," "coconut" (brown on the outside white on the inside) and "white man's puppet." After my first book, "Invasion," came out in 2001, it was "immigrant-hater," the "Radical Right's Asian Pitbull," "Tokyo Rose" and "Aunt Tomasina." In my third book, 2005's "Unhinged," I published entire chapters of hate mail rife with degrading, unprintable sexual epithets and mockery of my Filipino heritage.

If I had a dollar for every time libs have called me a "Manila whore" and "Subic Bay bar girl," I'd be able to pay for a ticket to a Hollywood-for-Obama fundraiser.

Self-serving opponents argue that such attacks do not represent "respectable," "mainstream" liberal opinion about their conservative female counterparts. But it was feminist godmother Gloria Steinem who called Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a "female impersonator." It was NOW leader Patricia Ireland who commanded her flock to only vote for "authentic" female political candidates. It was Al Gore consultant Naomi Wolf who accused the late Jeane Kirkpatrick of being "uninflected by the experiences of the female body."

It was Matt Taibbi, now of Rolling Stone magazine, who mocked my early championing of the tea party movement by jibing: "Now when I read her stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of (redacted) in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose."

It was Keith Olbermann, then at MSNBC and now at Al Gore's Current TV, who wrote on Twitter that columnist S.E. Cupp was "a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does" and who called me a "mashed up bag of meat with lipstick on it." He stands by those remarks. Olbermann has been a special guest at the White House.

Some of us have not forgotten when liberal Wisconsin radio host John "Sly" Sylvester outrageously accused GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch of performing "fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee" and sneered that she had "pulled a train" (a crude phrase for gang sex). (Earlier, he called former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a "black trophy" and "Aunt Jemima.")

Or when MSNBC misogynist Ed Schultz called talk show host Laura Ingraham a "talk slut" for criticizing Obama's petty beer summit. Or when Playboy published a list of the top 10 conservative women who deserved to be "hate-f**ked." The article, which was promoted by Anne Schroeder Mullins at Politico.com, included Ingraham, "The View's" Elisabeth Hasselbeck, former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann and others. Yours truly topped the list with the following description: a "highly f**kable Filipina" and "a regular on Fox News, where her tight body and get-off-my-lawn stare just scream, 'Do me!'"

And then there's the left's war on Sarah Palin, which would require an entire national forest of trees to publish.

A reporter asked Obama to comment on examples of liberal hate speech at Tuesday's press conference. He whiffed, of course. This is, after all, the brave leader who sat on his hands while his street thugs attacked tea party mothers and grandmothers as "Koch whores" during the fight over union reform in Wisconsin. (As I reported last week, his re-election campaign is now targeting the Koch brothers' private foundation donors in a parallel effort to chill conservative speech and activism.) He's leading by example.

So no, we won't get any phone calls from Mr. Civility. Acknowledging the war on conservative women would obliterate The Narrative. Enjoy the silence.

hope · Guru

I wonder if you are around teenagers, as I am. You seem to be clueless about the high school culture.

Skank is a common word that girls use for other girls of a certain type. It has replaced the old-fashioned "slut" in their vocabulary. In fact, I have never heard a boy use it--only girls. Maybe you can explain why that is.

The way this girl wrote is entirely consistent with the way kids think.

I was wondering how long it would take you to get to the "gay stereotyping." OMG it never ends. Be happy she has gay friends--oh, I forgot--you can never be happy.

Cartera · Guru

Night and day as in Maher and Limbaugh?

No one asked her not to give her opinion. She should make her opinion known as clearly as she likes. I would champion her right to express her opinion. I happen to believe she crossed a pretty bright line when she attacked Fluke using the words she did. To sink to making her argument by attacking Fluke's morality is lame, particularly since she knows nothing about it. Adding in a paragraph of gay stereotyping makes it demeaning to people who have nothing to do with this argument.

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

I wonder if President Obama will call Michelle Malkin or any other conservative woman who has been called a rude name by someone on the left.

The war on conservative women

By Michelle Malkin • March 7, 2012 09:13 AM

The war on conservative women
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

I’m sorry Rush Limbaugh called 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut.” She’s really just another professional femme-a-gogue helping to manufacture a false narrative about the GOP “war on women.” I’m sorry the civility police now have an opening to demonize the entire right based on one radio comment — because it’s the progressive left in this country that has viciously and systematically slimed female conservatives for their beliefs.

We have the well-worn battle scars to prove it. And no, we don’t need coddling phone calls from the pandering president of the United States to convince us to stand up and fight.

At his first press conference of the year on Tuesday, the Nation’s Concern Troll explained that he phoned Fluke to send a message to his daughters and all women that they shouldn’t be “attacked or called horrible names because they are being good citizens.” After inserting himself into the fray and dragging Sasha and Malia into the debate, Obama then told a reporter he “didn’t want to get into the business of arbitrating” language and civility. Too late, pal.

The fact is, “slut” is one of the nicer things I’ve been called over 20 years of public life. In college during the late 1980s, it was “race traitor,” “coconut” (brown on the outside white on the inside) and “white man’s puppet.” After my first book, “Invasion,” came out in 2001, it was “immigrant-hater,” the “Radical Right’s Asian Pitbull,” “Tokyo Rose” and “Aunt Tomasina.” In my third book, 2005′s “Unhinged,” I published entire chapters of hate mail rife with degrading, unprintable sexual epithets and mockery of my Filipino heritage.

If I had a dollar for every time libs have called me a “Manila whore” and “Subic Bay bar girl,” I’d be able to pay for a ticket to a Hollywood-for-Obama fundraiser. To the HuffPo left, whore is my middle name.

Self-serving opponents argue that such attacks do not represent “respectable,” “mainstream” liberal opinion about their conservative female counterparts. But it was feminist godmother Gloria Steinem who called Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a “female impersonator.” It was NOW leader Patricia Ireland who commanded her flock to only vote for “authentic” female political candidates. It was Al Gore consultant Naomi Wolf who accused the late Jeane Kirkpatrick of being “uninflected by the experiences of the female body.”

It was Matt Taibbi, now of Rolling Stone magazine, who mocked my early championing of the tea party movement by jibing: “Now when I read her stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of (redacted) in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose.”

It was Keith Olbermann, then at MSNBC and now at Al Gore’s Current TV, who wrote on Twitter that columnist S.E. Cupp was “a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does” and who called me a“mashed up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” He stands by those remarks. Olbermann has been a special guest at the White House.

Some of us have not forgotten when liberal Wisconsin radio host John “Sly” Sylvester outrageously accused GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch of performing “fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee” and sneered that she had “pulled a train” (a crude phrase for gang sex). (Earlier, he called former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a “black trophy” and “Aunt Jemima.”)

Or when MSNBC misogynist Ed Schultz called talk show host Laura Ingraham a “talk slut” for criticizing Obama’s petty beer summit. Or when Playboy published a list of the top 10 conservative women who deserved to be “hate-f**ked.” The article, which was promoted by Anne Schroeder Mullins at Politico.com, included Ingraham, “The View’s” Elisabeth Hasselbeck, former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann and others. Yours truly topped the list with the following description: a “highly f**kable Filipina” and “a regular on Fox News, where her tight body and get-off-my-lawn stare just scream, ‘Do me!’”

And then there’s the left’s war on Sarah Palin, which would require an entire national forest of trees to publish.

A reporter asked Obama to comment on examples of liberal hate speech at Tuesday’s press conference. He whiffed, of course. This is, after all, the brave leader who sat on his hands while his street thugs attacked tea party mothers and grandmothers as “Koch whores” during the fight over union reform in Wisconsin. (As I reported last week, his re-election campaign is now targeting the Koch brothers’ private foundation donors in a parallel effort to chill conservative speech and activism.) He’s leading by example.

So no, we won’t get any phone calls from Mr. Civility. Acknowledging the war on conservative women would obliterate The Narrative. Enjoy the silence.

-- Edited by SamuraiLandshark on Wednesday 7th of March 2012 01:19:21 PM

winchester · Guru

Yes, the left is certainly unhinged. In light of how horribly the left treats women, and how they so routinely give each other a pass, it is the height of audacity for them to go after Limbaugh. They are, truly, shameless.

-- Edited by winchester on Wednesday 7th of March 2012 08:40:26 AM

Cartera · Guru

I truly am surprised by your display of visciousness and I pity the hate you hold in your heart, I really do

Oh please - the viciousness came from Ms Morabito, who holds herself out as a Christian - what a joke.

I hold no hate for her. I just don't think it is appropriate for an admissions admbassador to refer to a fellow student as a "skank" and a "welfare condom queen." And then there's this

Hey Sandra! How about next Saturday night, you come hang out with me and my gay boyfriends! Your hair will look fabulous and you’ll get to see great musical theatre! Oh, and odds of you getting pregnant? Zero percent

She could have made a perfectly sound argument without attacking a fellow student. I don't think either the President of the college or Jesus would approve.

hope · Guru

“I don’t know what’s in Rush Limbaugh’s heart, so I can’t comment on the sincerity of his apology,” the president said. “All decent folks can agree that the remarks that were made don’t have any place in public discourse.” - President Obama.

Gosh, I guess he missed that a $1 million dollar donor to his Super PAC routinely says things that, according to his standards, "don't have any place in public discourse."

hope · Guru

I don't think we'll be successful in getting him off the air, but maybe he'll think a little longer about attacks like this next time

I'd like to see an email campaign to have Morabito removed

And Fluke says that being called a slut by one loudmouth radio personality is an attempt to silence her?

Irony much?

The impulse to suppress free speech comes from the left. Just look at CC, for example. ;)

CelticClan07 · Senior Member

Cartera wrote:
I'd like to see an email campaign to have Morabito removed as a Georgetown Admissions Ambassador. I doubt my two emails were enough though. May have to see if there is an enterprising student in the DC area wanting to take that on.

Why in the world would you want to see her dismissed from the GAAP? She is a representative of a CATHOLIC institution. You know, a college that holds daily Masses, celebrates the Sacraments, celebrates Holy Days. Sandra Fluke, not so much. Didn't care for her rebuttall? Cartera you can't be serious. And if you are on the warpath with this woman, then I truly am surprised by your display of visciousness and I pity the hate you hold in your heart, I really do.

winchester · Guru

I don't think we'll be successful in getting him off the air

If Rush deserves to be off the air then so do Chris Matthews, Bill Maher, Keith Olberman, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Shultz.

CelticClan07 · Senior Member

john doe wrote:
I don't know some of the people that this stuff is referring to but can we compare making statements about tv and radio personalities who are out there everyday in the public eye to making statements about a college student?

Yes. She's nearly 31 years old JD. Not a 18-22 yr old college student. And SHE put herself in the public eye. Either she allowed herself to be manipulated by the Dems and went before a hearing, or she was a very willing particiapant <my guess> to have her day in the spotlight which has now turned into a national circus. Rush is a jerk, just like Shultz, Maher, etc....but I still would be embarrassed if I were her parent.

Cartera · Guru

11 advertisers have now dropped Rush. I don't think we'll be successful in getting him off the air, but maybe he'll think a little longer about attacks like this next time. I'd like to see an email campaign to have Morabito removed as a Georgetown Admissions Ambassador. I doubt my two emails were enough though. May have to see if there is an enterprising student in the DC area wanting to take that on.

hope · Guru

A fellow student?

This girl is an undergrad and Ms. Fluke is a 30 year old law student.

Night and day.

I agree with CelticClan. To go to the length of sending emails to demand this girl be removed form her job?

Pretty much out there.

Oh I just love when "secular humanists" can be as vile as they wish, but anyone identifying as a Christian is called upon to be a perfect example of human kindness and love by these same secular humanists.

Jesus never called upon his followers to sit there like bumps on a log, you know. ;)

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 6th of March 2012 05:30:10 PM

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 6th of March 2012 05:30:35 PM

hayden · Senior Member

I suppose this was back when everyone was pretending she was a 23 year old "co-ed."

Third year law school students, as she very clearly identified herself, are rarely 23. The average law student STARTS law school at the age of 25.

It was Limbaugh who called her a coed, not Fluke or anyone who knew her. "Pretending"? You seem to be blaming Fluke and her supporters for the gross misrepresentations by Rush Limbaugh. He kept calling her a coed, and other people picked it up. I guess it never occurred to them that he apparently never bothered to actually look into anything that coed "Susan" Fluke said or did.

This whole thing reminds me of all the criticism of Obama for not publishing any articles in the Harvard Law Review, when law students never publish articles in the Harvard Law Review, and notes are published anonymously. Regardless of the facts, it's just another charge to level.

john doe · Guru

I don't know some of the people that this stuff is referring to but can we compare making statements about tv and radio personalities who are out there everyday in the public eye to making statements about a college student?

Artemis · Senior Member

You hit the proverbial nail on the head, catahoula. Sadly, politics as usual. I'd give you a big ol' LIKE if we had a like button.

catahoula · Guru

The point would be that there's zero chance of Obama calling any of the ladies on the right, being that he couldn't give a rat's ass as to how the Maher's of the world make them feel. Wouldn't be furthering his career goals like the call to Fluke did.

I don't understand the argument that the size of Maher's audience mitigates his behavior - having only 12 or so viewers/cheerleaders/whatevers should have made it even more likely that the responsible people on the left would have stepped up and marginalized both him and his crowd. Maybe the things he says are one of life's guilty little pleasures for way more people than is suspected?

winchester · Guru

During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.”

Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, … He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show. His solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton, who he thought should drop out of the presidential race, was to find “somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.”

Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.”

…

Matthews has wondered aloud whether Sarah Palin is even “capable of thinking” and has called Bachmann a “balloon head” and said she was “lucky we still don’t have literacy tests out there.” Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, who is the former president of the Women’s Media Center, told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in 2011 that Matthews “is a bully, and his favorite target is women.” So why does he still have a show?

…

Maher has called Palin a “dumb ****” [same word Rush used] and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job.

…

Liberals—you know, the people who say they “fight for women”—comprise Maher’s audience, and a parade of high-profile liberals make up his guest list. Yet have any of them confronted him? Nope.

…

when it comes to high-profile campaigns to hold these men accountable—such as that waged against Limbaugh—the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.

Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/04/rush-limbaugh-s-apology-liberal-men-need-to-follow-suit.html

-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 6th of March 2012 01:43:09 PM

hope · Guru

he has daughters so he feels for her parents?

I suppose this was back when everyone was pretending she was a 23 year old "co-ed." I wonder if he wishes he could take the call back, now that everyone knows she is a 30 year old reproductive rights and gender activist. Did he know? There appears to be some backlash toward his naked political opportunism, either way.

I don't believe anyone here was saying that Obama should have called Palin or Bachman or Ingraham. I believe the discussion was about the double standard on the part of liberal women when it comes to outrage and demands for apologies.

I saw the clip of Fluke on The View. She appears to be one very hard and tough cookie. The day I'll believe she was "offended" at being called a slut is the day I believe the sky is falling. I am quite sure she welcomed it as a chance to draw attention to her cause, score some points for her party, and participate in the takedown of Rush Limbaugh.

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 6th of March 2012 06:06:13 AM

hayden · Senior Member

So are you suggesting that the president call Sarah Palin, the former mayer, governor and vice presidential candidate, to ask her if she's okay, and tell her that he has daughters so he feels for her parents?

Personally, I can't imagine anything more demeaning to a politician. People call Obama a nazi and terrorist every day, and no one would ever imagine him needing to get a phone call to check on his feelings.

hope · Guru

Right. As Paul begalia explained, smilingly--you see, the difference is that maher is a comedian, and rush is a bully . And his mother loves watching maher. Simple as that . From my phone

catahoula · Guru

Former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, the man who runs Obama's super PAC, did not reply when asked if he will be returning Maher's $1 million dollar donation."

No harm, no foul, he was joking, the other guy wasn't.

soccerguy315 · Guru

So... Sandra Fluke was aware of this situation ahead of time and went to Georgetown specifically so she could fight this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/meet-sandra-fluke-the-woman-you-didnt-hear-at-congress-contraceptives-hearing/2012/02/16/gIQAJh57HR_blog.html

Cartera · Guru

Comparing any others to Rush is comparing apples to oranges, based simply on numbers. I guess in terms of what they do, Rush compares closest to Olbermann since they both focus on politics. However, Olbermann's audience is miniscule and he carries no sway whatsoever.

I thought the comments by Georgetown's President were compelling. I don't see how any self respecting woman could rally behind Rush on this. Maybe none have.

longprime · Guru

I don't listen to any of them. However, When Political people seek favor from entertainers or are careful in their positions else be criticised by entertainers;

Maybe the Entertainers are not really entertainers? evileye

hope · Guru

Obviously the Democrats see this controversy as their big main chance to once and for all destroy Limbaugh. Even the Washington Post has weighed in:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-can-no-longer-avoid-its-rush-limbaugh-problem/2012/03/02/gIQA1xvVnR_story.html

What despicable rank hypocrisy when the rants of Maher and Olbermann are not even mentioned, let alone criticized.

The Democrat party is something else. disbelief

hope · Guru

...based simply on numbers.

Well that is very revealing, cartera.

Rather backs up my assertion that the idea is to get rid of Rush.

Seems to me anyone in media, no matter what the numbers, who calls any woman (even a conservative one!) a c*** and a tw**, should be held accountable. Doesn't happen does it if they have liberal point of view. It's indesputable.

You have the moral lowground here, not women who agree with Rush that Ms. Fluke, before we found out she is a professional activist, and not a 23 year old "co-ed" made a fool of herself before Congress.

An MSNBC "political" host, Ed Schultz, called Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut" and this had nothing to do with attempting to make a point, as Rush was.

Really these tactics are despicable...and for Obama to align himself with them, well, not a surprise....

-- Edited by hope on Monday 5th of March 2012 12:45:36 PM

hope · Guru

Cartera, you will never get it .