Just when we thought Rush Limbaugh couldn’t stoop any lower.
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From MSNBC:
Limbaugh, who called Fluke a “slut” during his Wednesday radio show, doubled down on his comments on Thursday.
So, Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis. Here’s the deal. If we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch,” Limbaugh said.
Bashir reread what he called Limbaugh’s ludicrous thoughts and asked his panel to comment. Democratic strategist Krystal Ball called Limbaugh “despicable,” “disgusting,” and a “loathsome individual.”
MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart also weighed in and called Limbaugh’s comments deplorable. “I’m troubled and saddened about the coarsening of political discourse,” Capehart said. “There’s a way to talk about these things without being hateful…rude or derogatory about people…For him to go down this low road…it’s low even for him.”
Dead silence. Where is the laughter now?
I am almost speechless. How many people have been fired or taken off the air for totally inappropriate remarks?
Why are we having this discussion in 2012? Nice way to kick off American Womens Month.
Who are Linbaugh’s sponsors?
Where are the people disavowing Linbaugh’s remarks? So far I have mostly heard Democratic women.
He’s an American with free speech rights. He’s not running for office. He bores me too much to outrage me. Too noisy to get my attention.
At what point do we allow someone’s free speech to run over top of other people? I hope Sandra Fluke sues him for slander.
Actually Emma, sorry you are bored. Is it ok for radio personalities to lash at out at people with whom they disagree and call them sluts and other nasty names? What if Ms. Fluke were your daughter?
What would someone have to say or do to shake you out of your boredom?The fact that we are even having to have this discussion in 2012 just astounds me.
This is beyond belief!!!
IMHO Rush is on the edge of pornography asking for videos of people having intercourse.
That’s what he’s saying, isn’t it?
Yea, I am pretty sure that is what he is saying. He probably wants to watch to get his naughty on. That’s probably the only way it can happen.
I am still waiting to hear people disavow his words and actions. Frankly I am shocked that no one here has even said EWWWWWWWW.
I don’t ever ever ever want to hear about the Republicans thinking they have moral authority over anyone or anything after this.
Was Limbaugh not a speaker at CPAC?
Ah, yes, Rush Limbaugh was at CPAC, as a speaker. according to Huffington Post:
Really! So at what point to Conservatives or Republicans not claim this rude, crude and socially unattracitve man? Time to step up to the plate and do a little policing of one’s own house. No moral high road. It is all for show.
What grown man says ‘sure as heck’ and then tells America he wants the video of a law student having sex?
Is this when we start discussing morality?
Rush is a pervert, like his followers. They get off onorn. It’s the only way they can get any.
So none of our conservative contributors are going to disavow Rash Slimball? Sorry, he no longer has the dignity of his own name. He certainly has been allowed to be the champion of conservatives for many years. I guess those would be conservatives who are not Republicans?
@Moon-howler
I’ll disavow this. We had a few laughs yesterday, but Rush seems to be digging the hole deeper. Calling for what seems to be in his mind taxpayer-funded porn is beyond the pale.
Recall also what I wrote, that Rush is not the spokesman for Conservatives or Republicans. Perhaps some people see him that way, but not most. How I long for the days of political discourse along the lines of William F. Buckley. Rush, Glen Beck, et. al. are not even faint shadows of the founders of conservative intellectual thought.
Thank you Need to Know. I am glad you stepped up to the plate. Too many people do associate him with either R or Conservative. He should not be invited to speak at various conferences or to represent conservatives (who generally vote Republican) because he really gives you all a very black eye. The distancing should start from within. He needs R’s and C’s telling him he is unacceptable.
Yes, he does call for taxpayer funded porn also as well as insulting a women who really didn’t deserve it.
Now there is howling on Faux News because President Obama called Sandra Fluke just to make sure she was alright. How very decent. He is the father of daughters. No one wants their daughter attacked like that.
This is Rush being Rush – I expect no less of him. I just do not know how people can listen to his drivel day after day – he often spits out tidbits of hatred and racism – but his followers still follow.
MH,
“At what point do we allow someone’s free speech to run over top of other people?”
Never fear! When people violate your sensibilities and you’d like to enforce yer own version of the 1A whip out your new shiny Silence Gun.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/weird-gun-future-attacks-words-not-people-193050045.html
I have wanted one of those for years!!! So far the remote mute button just isn’t working as well as it could.
All kidding aside–didn’t Rush get thrown off Monday night football for inappropriate remarks about blacks? Imus? Dawg the Bounty Hunter who thought he was having a private conversation?
There are penalties.
The biggest risk Rush is taking is alienating himself from Republicans who will find it difficult to associate with him. Over the years, Rush has walked a fine line between going over the top to create a sensation that builds ratings, and maintaining some credibility among conservatives. Conservatives (and liberals who enjoy being offended) are his core audience. Moderates don’t pay much attention to him. Glen Beck crossed that line blatantly and fast, and put himself in a position that made associating with him impossible for many Republicans. Another difference is that I always thought Beck took himself seriously as a leader of the conservatives and an opinion leader, rather than as an entertainer. Rush has always known he is an entertainer first, and anything else second.
Beck’s stock and trade were wacky conspiracy theories, which Rush has usually avoided. Rush is now walking in the territory of attacking people who have done no wrong (even though some of the guys snickered about that tape and what’s going on at Georgetown :-)) and coming across as overtly sexist when female votes are key to winning elections. Remember that Rush has never and will never be a candidate so impact on elections has no direct relevance for him. However, losing his conservative audience will cost him ratings and dollars. That prospect does matter to him. Instead of doubling down on his remarks, he should have backed off and stated that he went too far. Otherwise, he’s going to go the way of Glen Beck who was too outrageous even for Rupert Murdock.
@Moon-howler Ed Shultz got one week of unpaid leave from MSNBC after calling Laura Ingraham a slut, although Laura wasn’t out crowing to the world about her wildly expensive sex life, and especially in a forum where that really wasn’t the central topic. Rush is the Howard Stern or the Greaseman of talk radio–loud, obnoxious, sometimes foul and hard to listen to. I don’t care what he says, don’t choose to give it all that much import, and I don’t feel the need to react when I hear his latest “outrage,” anymore than I ever cared about Greaseman or Stern. This is how the guy earns his bread, so why the outrage, as if this was so unexpected from him?
@Need to Know
I’m not so sure. Whether or not it could have been done without the unfortunate pejoratives, I do think Rush may be doing exactly what he intends to do and that is to re-spin up the contraception issue back around to what it really was/is – a debate about the ability of the government to impose insurance carrier requirements on a mainline Church even when it is inconsistent with their doctrines and, second, the issue of never ending entitlements and where will they ever stop. In the same week, the jr Senator from Vermont introduced legislation to expand Obama care to include free dental care. In hyping up the women’s health issues and body thing, Dems successfully sidetracked the real issue – religous freedom and free healthcare demands (not access) – aparantly even for students at a private “religous” college. We’ll see, but I don’t think we have heard the last of this. I really do hope that that young lady is really an innocent in all of this and not found to be a political operative. If she is – she’s been used by both sides.
@Emma
Why yes Ed Schultz did do that. He also got benched for 1 week without pay and immediately said he had gone too far and apologized for his crude behavior. Now what is still missing from the slimball scenario that keeps it from being like Schultz?
Does it matter what Schultz did? Does poor behavior out of Schultz somehow lessen the magnitude of what Slim-ball has done?
Schultz called Ingram a ‘right-wing slut’ or something obnoxious like that. Then we have Anne Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot. (she sure was off her mark on that one.) Did she ever apologize for that?
It really doesn’t matter. Schultz, Coulter, Ingrams, Limbaugh (as well as a bunch of others) are all commentator personalities. What pushes Limbaugh over the top is his fury directed at a private citizen who had simply testified before a committee. He misquoted her horribly before he tore into what would have been called several generations ago, her virtue.
Sorry, Rash Slimball gets no pass from me because someone else did something first. We aren’t talking about shooting spitwads here.
I will put you down for a no as far as repudiation goes.
@Blue
How can she be a political operative? Did she make Slimball call her a slut and a prostitute? Was someone doing voice over for Rash?
Shall I put you down for a NO also?
For that matter, if a female testified who had been picked up on 14th Street, it would have still been rude to have called her a slut.
A major sponsor left the Limbaugh show today. Good. Money talks. Imus looks like Saint Peter retrospectively.
@Moon-howler Why is it my job to repudiate him? I don’t exactly fit the mold of right wing conservative–that is, unless the person casting the mold is a single-issue voter. How’s Rush on gay marriage?
@Emma
He sure is in favor of hetero marriage or at least he has practiced it a lot.
I think it should be everyone’s job to repudiate him. This is just a typical way of putting women down or dismissing them. Sexually active women somehow give up their validity as human beings. He needs a resounding chorus of disapproval from his fellow Americans, regardless of party lines or political labels.
Update from the Washington Post:
Obama reached Fluke by phone as she was waiting to go on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
I wonder if the mattress companies felt particularly vulnarable to off color jokes? Who are his other sponsors?
WEak but better than nothing repudiation from Santorum:
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Friday dismissed radio host Rush Limbaugh’s disparaging remarks about student activist Sandra Fluke as “absurd.”
“He’s being absurd, but that’s you know, an entertainer can be absurd,” Santorum said on CNN. “He’s in a very different business than I am.”
I will give credit where credit is due, with about the same degree of enthusiasm.
rush may think of himself as an entertainer – but when he is invited to speak at CPAC and other events, the sponsors of those events are not inviting him for his entertainment purposes – the CPAC executives are inviting him for his supposed conservative values.
Exaclty!
Rush has no intention to apologize, he was, is, and will always be a pathetic human being.
There has been a lot of dismissal of the Beck and Limbaugh threads….like who cares what they say. Yet I have done threads on the school killings last Monday and climate change and they have barely pulled in any comments.
No one seems to have anything to say when 4 students are just gunned down while eating breakfast in their high school but everyone had something to say about an old bloated garbage gummed shock jock calling a young woman a slut.
Maybe the school killings are just shock we can’t deal with. It makes no sense to us. Of course, neither does calling a perfect stranger a slut because they want access to contraception. But we are used to men denigrating women to dismiss them so we are more comfortable talking about it.