There’s been a firestorm of controversy over the last week about American talk show host Rush Limbaugh calling a woman testifying before a US Congressional Committee a “slut”.
I’ve only listened to Limbaugh once in my life. It was June of 1995 riding in a cab in Nashville. He was on the radio talking about a homeless advocate named Mitch Snyder who had become so despondent he’d hung himself.
Rush did an impression of Snyder choking and strangling as he died, interspersed with some crude jokes and laughter. I asked the driver to turn it off.
Driver: “You don’t like Rush?”
Me: “I don’t like assholes.”
To his credit, President Obama called the young woman maligned and offered his sympathies. At a press conference yesterday, he said he’d done that to send a message to American women and especially his own daughters that such characterization was inappropriate.
His critics have claimed his motives were less about propriety than politics, and frankly, I have to agree.
Less than 14 months ago, the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords sparked a similar debate about the language used in political debate, with many on the left insisting it was “always” the other side opting for the coarse, the perverse and the violent.
Yesterday, conservative writer Michelle Malkin begged to differ:
“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 balls in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose."
Wait. It gets better…
“Playboy published a list of the top 10 conservative women who deserved to be "hate-fucked." The article, which was promoted by Anne Schroeder Mullins at Politico.com, included (Laura) 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 fuckable Filipina" and "a regular on Fox News, where her tight body and get-off-my-lawn stare just scream, 'Do me!’”
Ms. Malkin’s full column and expanded list of slurs can be found here.
The United Nations theme for International Women’s Day 2012 is “Empower Women – End Hunger and Poverty”. But in most countries it is set aside as a time to honor and praise women for their accomplishments.
And maybe that means we all need to clean up our act and treat not only the women, but everybody else in our lives with the respect they deserve.
