Issa Fail
Darrell Issa’s response to the Limbaugh Affair is typical “both sides do it” nonsense:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said in a letter on Friday that Democrats had a “narrow focus” on Rush Limbaugh calling Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” for her testify about contraception coverage and said members of his staff had been attacked as well.
~snip~
Issa said that his female staffers had been the subject of “intense and disgusting accusations and insults — ‘hag,’ ‘traitor,’ and numerous references to anatomy have been among the milder expressions hurled over the phone.”
Issa said he does not agree “with many comments that have been made during the effort to examine the constitutionality of Obamacare’s mandates on individual freedom, including the ones by Mr. Limbaugh, I find your narrow focus on this particular comment to be self-serving and dismissive of other inappropriate comments and attacks on Americans of faith.”
A break — give me one. Rush Limbaugh is practically the leader of the GOP and has been spewing racism and misogyny for a quarter century, but Issa wants to compare Limbaugh’s disgusting rant against Sandra Fluke to some unknown attacks against Issa’s staffers?
No. That mealy-mouthed nonsense is insufficient, as is calling Limbaugh’s words “absurd,” or “inappropriate” as Santorum and Boehner have done.
Rush Limbaugh is calling your mothers, sisters, and daughters sluts and prostitutes. “Inappropriate” and “absurd” doesn’t begin to cover it.
And by the way, the “you sluts want us to pay to have sex” narrative is unimaginably stupid. Sandra Fluke testified about her friend who was prescribed birth control for a medical condition — ovarian cysts. Nobody’s asking to be paid to have sex. Nobody’s asking for government-subsidized condoms.
Besides, we women have been paying men to have sex for years. The only purpose of Viagra and Cialis and the like is to allow men to have sex. Many health insurance plans cover Viagra. Where’s Rush’s outrage about that? Shouldn’t all men who take those little blue pills be forced post sex tapes online?*** Face it: We’re not the sluts — you are.
***Put the camera down.
[via TPM]
I’m sure Rep. Issa felt that Rep. Joe Wilson should have returned all the money he raised from “You lie.” What?
If he wanted to get a word for his staffers in there, I have an idea:
“I’m horrified by Mr. Limbaugh’s vile and obnoxious speech toward Ms. Fluke. I am especially sensitive to Mr. Limbaugh’s sexist, hostile, and aggressive speech, since during this debate, blah blah, women in my office have been called ugly stuff by people on the phone. I hold Mr. Limbaugh in part to blame for the decline of civility in the American public conversation, and urge him to STFU, for the sake of all women, and also, my staffers.”
I like this statement, Makabit, a lot. That would have been the classy thing to do by Issa. As we know, however, Issa is not a classy guy.
ABL, I thought you might like the picture of OK State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre holding a sign that read “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d FUCK a senator.”
awesome. thanks!
Too bad Issa’s mother was not practicing birth control.
So, smack me! I despise Issa.
You should hear me offline. I tend to get pretty colorful. I would’ve said something like “his dad should’ve used his hand that day.”
Apropos of the image used for this, Issa is the equivalent of an F2P n00b W+M1 Pyro going up against a pro Heavy-Medic pair. Limbaugh, meanwhile, is a griefer with a shock porn spray who gets his ass handed to him by everyone else and still thinks he’s the greatest.
The two of them are insignificant human beings who get too much attention paid to their flailings.
I do love your analogy.
Just pointing out that there are cases where Viagra and Cialis, et al have been prescribed for pulmonary hypertension and other non-erectile dysfunction conditions. I don’t have stats, but I can easily imagine it’s not even CLOSE to the ballpark of how many women are prescribed BC for non-contraceptive purposes.
But really — none of that matters. To me, the central argument is that the government and Rushbo shouldn’t stick their noses (or whatever it is they’re sticking these days) into why anyone has a prescription for BC. Or Viagra. Or xanax. Or allergy meds. Or protease inhibitors. Or whatever else they and their doctor happen to have arrived upon as an appropriate thing for them to be taking. No one should have to defend his or her decision to take legally prescribed meds. Now, if it’s a question of abuse/over-prescribing, then sure.
For example, I know (as in, am related to) someone who went through chemo and had to take a prescription to deal with certain side effects and potential side effects. This medication is also often prescribed for herpes. Well, is it anyone’s business WHY they needed that particular drug? Abso-fucking-lutely not. And honestly, until they got the prescription, I had ONLY heard that it was used for herpes, so my assumption upon hearing somebody was taking it would have been — well, you know. So I prefer not to politicize/make hay out of ANYONE’S private health decisions.
But yeah, paying for Viagra and slut-shaming women on BC is of course straight-up misogynist bullshit.
I’ve been informed that the prescription form of Viagra for hypertension has a different name and dosage — but there is still another purpose for the basic pharmaceutical configuration. Again, not that it really matters why anyone has a prescription.
As I just said elsewhere, I’m a little concerned that by focusing on the non-contraceptive purposes for BC and the worst-case scenarios for abortion (rape, incest, threats to life and health of the mother), we cede ground and sort of buy into the notion that we have to “justify” our healthcare decisions and the ones that don’t involve sex are somehow of higher moral value. Frankly, if Ms. Fluke and her friends wanted to testify “I take BC because I like to fuck and I don’t want to be pregnant,” that would have been perfectly acceptable to me. Though of course I understand why it’s sometimes easier to focus on the fact that “Oh hey, not everyone who uses BC does it because they’re doing the humpty dance” or “not everyone who gets an abortion does it because of horrifying circumstances of conception or health risks.”
Cannot type today! Here’s how that SHOULD read:
Though of course I understand why it’s sometimes easier to focus on the fact that “Oh hey, not everyone who uses BC does it because they’re doing the humpty dance” or “not everyone who gets an abortion does it because they simply don’t want to carry a baby to term — they do it because of horrifying circumstances of conception or health risks.”
It just gives me nightmares about the early years of AIDS when people spoke about “innocent” victims (i.e., the ones who got it through transfusions, rather than those nasty drug addicts and homosexuals).
Bottom line: healthy sex IS a part of overall healthcare, whether it’s a woman taking BC or using some other form of contraception or a man using ED pills. I’m not interested in parsing anybody’s reasons for why they choose what they choose in that department.
Not that the hypocrisy shouldn’t be called out, of course. I’m all for cutting healthcare benefits for ALL men in Congress until they sign a pledge that they will respect women’s healthcare decisions. But I’m not Grover Norquist, so of course they’ll never sign that kind of pledge.
About Issa: There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
There is an alternative: JerryforCongress2012.com