Rush Limbaugh, after unceasing demands and outrage from the Left, and after message boards, including this one, gleefully reported an exodus of advertisers from his program, formally apologized to Sandra Fluke for saying that women who want others to pay for them to have sex are called sluts and prostitutes. He didn't exactly call HER a slut or prostitute but nobody can objectively say it couldn't be taken that way with his monologue that day. He has never been forgiven for that and this will be listed in the assigned 'bash Rush talking points' for probably as long as this generation exists. I personally am on the record that his remarks were in bad taste at best, and insulting at worst, and, while he was technically correct, it was wrong to apply the concept in that context.
But where was the outrage from the Left, the calls for boycotts of their programs, and pressure on their advertisers to abandon them when:
In 2008 Ed Shultz said Sarah Palin set off a bimbo alert. At another time he called Laura Ingraham a slut, for which he did apologize later, but not before he called Kirsten Powers a slut when she reported the incident--Kirsten didn't get an apology--and when. . . .
Keith Olbermann said S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, and when he said Michelle Malkin was "a mashed up bag of meat with lipstick", and when he decided to back Obama said that "somebody should take Hillary Clinton into a room and only he comes out." . . . and when. . . .
Matt Taibbi wrote on 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.” In Rolling Stone, he referred to Hillary's 'flabby arms' and when Erica Jong took him to task for that, he described Erica as "an 800-yr-old sex novelist." (Erica was 70 at the time.) I'm not sure but I think it was Taibbi who coined the phrase "batshit crazy' to refer to Michelle Bachmann, a phrase that was picked up and repeated thousands of times on blogs and message boards. (Not that opposition to conservative women brings out sheep quality in some folks or anything.). . .and when. . .
After Chris Matthews chose Obama over Clinton, at different times he referred to Hillary as: “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratchet,” and “Madame Defarge.” Matthews has also called Clinton “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity” and once claimed she won her Senate seat only because her “husband messed around.” He asked a guest if “being surrounded by women” makes “a case for commander in chief—or does it make a case against it?” 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.". . .and when. . . .
Bill Maher has called Palin a “dumb ****” and used '****' to describe her. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. (Would he still have a job if he had made the same joke about Michelle Obama?) Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!”. . .“And by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It’s called Hooters!”
I would hope we would find the maturity to look to the policy itself as reasonable or not. Colorado's current new gun law registration is likely to drive two long standing and very profitable gun manufacturers out of the state. And the Democrats who intend to or have voted for this legislation don't seem to care.
