Rush Limbaugh’s Healthcare Hypocrisy

The heated (and roundly hyperbolized) squabbling over women’s contraception in the political sphere has taken a very ugly turn in the last couple of days, due in large part to a couple of incendiary and degrading comments made by conservative firebrand Rush Limbaugh. On his radio show this past Wednesday, Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” due to a testimony she made before Congress. The testimony, which advocated President Obama’s healthcare mandate requiring Catholic institutions to provide birth control to their employees, offended Limbaugh because, as he put it “she wants to be paid to have sex”. The next day, Limbaugh took his 3rd grade rhetoric to an even lower level, saying that if “feminazis” want taxpayers to pay for their birth control, they should post sex tapes online as a thank you gift.

These comments are at best insensitive and at worst misogynistic. Actually, they don’t even remotely relate to the issue at hand, which is whether the government has the right to require religious institutions to do things that they morally object to. Instead, Limbaugh seems to have taken issue with the fact that women want taxpayers and businesses to provide them with what he sees as recreational medicine.

Besides the fact that Rush has failed to acknowledge that “The Pill” is not solely used for sexual purposes (it can be used to treat acne and hormonal imbalances), he has also shown us all what a brazen hypocrite he really is. He was, if you recall, the poster child for using prescription medication with recreational intent for a good part of the 2000’s. Limbaugh was treated for an addiction to the painkillers OxyContin and hydrocodone in 2003, and was later arrested due to the fact that he engaged in “doctor shopping”, a process in which a patient seeks treatment from several doctors at the same in order to get more drugs. Charges were dropped after Limbaugh paid a fee and agreed to continue his rehab treatments. Then in 2006, upon returning from the Dominican Republic, he was briefly detained at Palm Beach International Airport for possessing Viagra in his luggage. Limbaugh shrugged off the incident by joking about it on his radio show, saying that “I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it.”

These past episodes would leave one to believe that Rush Limbaugh is more of a slut than Sandra Fluke. All Ms. Fluke did was give a well-reasoned and articulate testimony to a Congressional panel in order to voice her philosophical concerns. Limbaugh, on the other hand, hung around numerous doctors in order to obtain the objects of his pleasure. He let primitive desire get the best of him, and he became addicted to these objects of pleasure. He even openly insinuated that he used prescription medication to, umm… enhance a sexual escapade on a tropical island.

And he has the audacity to call other people sluts? The only difference between Limbaugh and a hooker is that Limbaugh was whoring out his wallet, rather than his body, to his “clients”.

Rush Limbaugh seems to hold himself in a higher regard than the nearly 40 million American women that use contraceptive pills, and that should come as no surprise to anybody who has heard his radio show at least once. He has a history of making insensitive remarks that are always delivered with a sense of grandiose importance. Now, he is attempting to trivialize and belittle important concerns about women’s health in order to garner high ratings for his program. This type of childish behavior cannot be tolerated, and any American who believes in civil discourse needs to openly condemn Limbaugh’s poisonous jabs. Already, two of The Rush Limbaugh Show’s biggest sponsors, Sleep Train and Select Comfort, have pulled their advertisements off of the program. Now, I’m sure Rush will direct some more crude jokes towards this, since both companies sell mattresses, but that doesn’t matter. His corporate sponsors and the general public have finally grown weary with his militantly partisan mumbo jumbo, which is a step in the right direction for political civility on the airwaves.

Oh, and if Rush believes that women who use birth control should have to post sex tapes online, then Rush, a user of Viagra, should have to post pictures of…no. Hell no.

But I think you get my point here.