If I'm A Slut, Rush Limbaugh's a Eunuch

Let me make sure I understand this correctly: Rush Limbaugh equates advocating that employers provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives to asking to be paid to have sex and, if you're a woman doing the advocating, being a prostitute and a slut.

I, too, support President Obama's policy requiring employers that provide health insurance coverage to include birth control within their coverage. I believe that when you enter the stream of commerce by having employees, you should be held to the same standards as other employers. I guess that makes me a slut.

Well, if I'm a slut, Rush Limbaugh's a eunuch. I'm talking not having the balls of a field mouse.

It was easy -- no, cowardly -- for Limbaugh to simply brand a young woman with enough courage to voice her support of that policy before a Congressional committee as a prostitute and a slut. His message was simplistic and offensive -- because of who you are, what you advocate has no merit. A woman advocating insurance coverage of birth control is a slut. What would he call a man advocating the same thing? What would he call a man advocating insurance coverage for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs? Well, a man who would brand a woman advocating insurance coverage for birth control coverage a slut, from the insulation of his radio broadcasting booth no less, is a eunuch. No courage, no balls whatsoever. A eunuch.

Oh, and Rush, although you want this young woman, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, to post a tape of herself having sex if she is provided such coverage, are you going to ask men who receive insurance coverage for erectile dysfunction drugs to post their sex videos, too? Somehow, I don't think so. Women who want to avoid pregnancy by using insurance-covered contraception are somehow sluts, but men who "pump it up" using erectile dysfunction drugs are what -- studs?

I don't think so.

Sounds like Rush has been hitting the oxycontin again. Maybe he needs to go to rehab. Again.

99 Problems (But Rush Ain't One)

So, Rush Limbaugh has challenged President Obama to a debate about his economic policies. The RNC Chair has spent the week distancing the party from and then embracing (re-embracing?) Rush Limbaugh. And the President's surrogates have actually gone beyond just taking note and getting in the fray, perhaps in an attempt to whip up Democratic frenzy.

Am I missing something here?

For starters, if Rush Limbaugh were a Haitian from Liberty City instead of a white man from Palm Beach, he'd probably still be doing time behind that whole oxycontin/doctor shopping mess. A combination of white privilege and wealth privilege is responsible for the fact that he's still contributing nothing more than nitrogen to any intellectual discourse about the direction of this country.

That said, the President and/or his surrogates need not take the bait. To borrow from Jay-Z, they got "99 problems but Rush ain't one." Let's see: Four straight months of job losses; GM is about to bite the dust (wish they'd said that BEFORE taking the TARP money); AIG doesn't seem to know the meaning of the phrase "wretched excess"; the Dow dipped below 7,000 and isn't headed back up anytime soon; and there's a race between the banks foreclosing on homeowners and the mortgage bailout money assistance to those homeowners, with both vying for second place. We won't even get on which dog to choose for the First Daughters.

So, Mr. President, feel free to call up your Democratic surrogates, Congress, and anyone else who is wasting precious time on what Rush Limbaugh thinks and tell them:

I don't know what you take me as,
Or understand the intelligence this President has
I'm from rags to riches, GOP I ain't dumb
I got 99 problems but Rush ain't one

(with apologies to Jay-Z)