George Will had one of the best lines on ABC's This Week Sunday morning. Mocking Speaker Boehner for going no further than calling Limbaugh's remarks "inappropriate", Will was incredulous. "Inappropriate?!", he asked. "Eating your main course with your salad fork is 'inappropriate'".
The reason for my relief is my conviction that when Limbaugh's remarks are fully vetted, the conservative, "family values" electorate will turn on him and his apologists with a vengeance. Limbaugh did not merely call Ms. Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute". He also suggested that if she wanted taxpayers to pay for her birth control, and, therefore, for her to have sex, she should provide something to him in return. Specifically, Limbaugh asked her to make a sex tape and post it on YouTube so he could watch it.
Boom! Once the One Million Moms and the Tea Partiers and Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann supporters hear the whole story, and realize how Limbaugh apparently spends his free time, they will refuse to support or associate with the lascivious pornography junkie (I exclude Newt Gingrich supporters from my list to the extent they are not otherwise included because the Speaker's hypocrisy on matters of out of wedlock sex is too unconscionable to contemplate).
Do not worry about me. I have not lost my mind nor become stupidly optimistic. I never expect much from Rush Limbaugh in the human decency column. What I find unnerving is the lack of outrage from EVERYONE besides Limbaugh. Milquetoast apologies and qualified condemnations do not count. For an electorate that is so quick to shroud itself in its view of the Constitution, the excuses being made for Limbaugh's behavior, or, worse, the attempt to pass it off as entertainment, ignore the basic fact that Ms. Fluke was exercising her First Amendment right to express her opinion.
There will be no additional condemnation by the One Million Moms, GOP presidential candidates or any of their ilk. They are more interested in merely repeating the mantra "Family Values", as if that absolves them of their general intolerance, than holding self-described "entertainers" accountable.
This country is in serious trouble when it has given national political party contender status to a total maniac (cf. The Onion, February 29, 2012) who attacks President Obama as a "snob" for wanting our youth to get a college education, but dismisses the significance of Limbaugh's attack, telling CNN "(Limbaugh's) being absurd, but that's, you know, an entertainer can be absurd." The lack of any critical analysis of Santorum's selective self-righteousness by millions of his supporters, and the resulting refusal to be associated with such nonsense, illustrates the challenge faced by those trying to have an intelligent discussion on solving the country's problems.
