When a Personal Attack Backfires….

So Rush Limbaugh thinks that any woman who believes that birth control drugs and medical devices should routinely be covered by health insurance plans is a slut. <yawn>

Well, I would yawn, except that I (to my embarrassment at the moment) agree with him about forcing employers to cover services that they have strongly held ethical or religious objections to providing. And Limbaugh took a perfectly reasonable objection — to the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Catholic employers and the Catholic church to pay for birth control and arguably for some types of abortion — and made a laughingstock of that position and those who hold it in the eyes of much of the public.

Make no mistake about it — I think that the Obama Administration’s actions are a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and fundamentally wrong. However, Sandra Fluke is no more a slut for holding the opposite opinion than I am a woman hating bitch for holding mine. She’s a fellow American, a fellow woman of childbearing age, and has the right and arguably the responsibility as an American citizen to take part in the national debate on this issue. While I don’t agree with her, she belongs in the conversation.

Limbaugh doesn’t, at least not until he has something relevant to say. His offensive personal comments don’t address the issue; they distract from it. The right way to deal with the distraction when a nitwit “can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject” (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) is (in my opinion) to first tell said nitwit to put a cork in it, and then ignore him. So, Limbaugh, shut up. And that’s the last I’ll have to say on this subject.

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