Tag Archives: Sandra Fluke

Addendum to the Legacy of Rush Limbaugh: The Cost of His Antics

20 Saturday Feb 2021

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I’ve read a few things about Rush Limbaugh this last week or so. Of course, I shared my own thoughts on the man, and no, they were not be the kindest things you might read about Rush, but I meant every damned word of it. What I see in the way of praise for Limbaugh coming from the right wing blogosphere in the wake of his detah has me shaking me shaking my head and grumbling. No surprise there, of course, but it does bring to mind an extra thought on the matter of this awful man and his awful legacy.

I have often thought that people like Rush Limbaugh do more damage to conservatism than they will ever do to liberalism or progressivism. We still think what we think over on this side of the political spectrum. Professional bigots such as Rush Limbaugh may be able to drown out our voices from time to time, but they can’t force us to follow their own script, to think the way they pretend we do. Our politics remains what it is despite their best efforts to distort it.

The same cannot be said of conservatism.

More than any other right wing hack, Rush Limbaugh successfully redefined conservatism in American politics. He made it what it is today. This is what all the countless posthumous dittos written in remembrance of rush consistently amount to, a story about hoe he redefined conservatism and effectively made conservative politics the force that it is today. Throw in a couple gratuitous bits of pseudo-patrtiotism and some faux Christian sentiments, and you have the bulk of what is said to honor the man; he made conservatism what it is today.

Just think about what that means!

How it actually worked?

The Sandra Fluke debacle is a great example. It illustrates perfectly why Rush Limbaugh’s impact on conservatism is nothing to celebrate. Sandra Fluke’s testimony was about an aspect of Affordable Care Act, something conservatives generally opposed. There were plenty of things that could be said in response to Fluke’s testimony. People could have questioned her estimates of the cost. They could have pressed her to substantiate various anecdotes in her testimony. They could have argued any number of details, and at the end of the day, there would still have been one very serious question about whether or not a national policy mandating the details of insurance coverage for institutions like Georgetown is really the best way to handle any of America’s healthcare problems, let alone those that Fluke was talking about. That is the debate I would expect to have with conservatives on such a matter.

That debate did not happen.

Instead, we got a national dialogue about the sex life of a law student.

We got the debate about the sex life of Sandra Fluke, not because she invited it, but because Rush Limbaugh preferred that round of right wing gossip to the substantive debate we could have had – should have had! In dropping this gigantic red herring on the national stage, Rush Limbaugh did not merely silence Fluke, he also silenced the legitimate voices of conservatives who had something worthwhile to say about the matter. This was not the decision of a strong conservative voice; this was the preference of a cowardly man who had nothing to contribute on the topic hand. Limbaugh had to lie to get his version of the debate in the public sphere, and he did not hesitate, not this time or any other. That his intervention could be thought of as a strong expression of conservatism is damning praise for conservatives. A strong voice for any cause doesn’t start diverting attention from the real issues, which was always Limbaugh’s modus operandi.

In the end, we on the left still know why we support the ACA, some form of universal payer, or any other sweeping national reform, but the ranks of Republicans who can tell you anything more than sordid stories from the right wing gossip industry grow thinner with every passing year. They do so, because right wing media was remade in the image of Rush Limbaugh.

What Rush did for conservatives was to replace their best arguments with a range of cheap gotcha games like the one he played on Fluke. Of course, by the time of the Fluke affair, Rush already had countless allied pundits who desperately wanted to be him. Combined with Rush himself, their collective chorus of nonsense effectively drowned out any serious efforts to discuss healthcare. Instead we debated whether or not Obama was a socialist, a Muslim, or Kenyan. And then of course, there was talk of death panels. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this nonsense is merely a means to an end; it drives the public consciousness and narrows the options of those who rise to fame on the basis of such lies. To this day, countless Republicans think Barack Obama is a Muslim and that he is not a natural born citizen of the United States. I also hear talk of lizard-people, but anyway… This was the crap that filled our nations airwaves as some struggled to fix our very broken healthcare system.

This was also the crap that fed the imagination of the idiots who stormed our capital.

And the idiot politicians who stormed them on.

…and the idiots who don’t understand how the one led to the other.

We can lay this fact, the fact that conservatives all over America were so easily distracted then and now, directly at Limbaugh’s feet. It was Limbaugh who took diversions like the one he played on Fluke to the top of the media market and the stage for propaganda operations like Fox News. It was Limbaugh that crushed any hope that conservatives with anything substantive to say would find their way into the news cycle and replaced it with an endless supply of bobble-head pundits ready and willing to caricature themselves and their supposed politics.

The modern republican Party is an talent agency for right wing media. Folks run for office so they can command better speaker fees and maybe even land a spot on some cable television program pretending to be conservative. Thoughts of actual governance completely escape the modern Republican leadership. That’s why Ted Cruz ended up in Cancun while AOC and Beto went to work helping people through the crisis in Texas. Time was when we could have debated whose vision was better for America. Today, we are left with the simple fact that they tried and he didn’t. Hell, Cruz didn’t even come back to address the crisis killing people in his state; he came back to address his own PR crisis, no more and no less.

If you think that example an outlier in Republican politics, then you have not been paying attention.

Limbaugh certainly did redefine conservative politics; he transformed it into a form of low-grade pornography. It sells better than conservatism did before he came along, and it distracts voters and party officials alike from the real work that needs to be done in American government. But it does get ratings.

Our former President liked ratings.

He liked them a lot.

These priorities did not come from nowhere. They came from a right wing circus crafted in the image of Rush Limbaugh.

Once again, his legacy is nothing to be proud of.

The Legacy of Rush Limbaugh

18 Thursday Feb 2021

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Rush Limbaugh passed away today.

I for one have no intention of dancing on Rush Limbaugh’s grave. Neither will I sit passively while the right wing echo chamber tries to fashion his memory into something worthy of respect and admiration.

Limbaugh consistently claimed to be doing satire. He was “illustrating absurdity with the absurd,” or so he liked to say. What this meant in practice was a good example of Schrodinger’s Asshole, the practice of saying something outrageous, then deciding whether or not you meant it based on the response you get. When Limbaugh got enough support, then he stuck to his guns. When he caught enough flack, then he was just kidding, and we liberals really needed to get a sense of humor. Teenagers do this. So did this professional bigot.

Often Rush would enter into a segment by noting some objectionable behavior carried out by someone on the left. He would ask, “What if I did that?” Then he would have a field day. The resulting rant could always be dismissed as a parody of liberal behavior, but that was only if such disclaimers were necessary. All too often what Limbaugh said following this kind of set-up became God’s own truth in the minds of his followers. What Rush did or didn’t mean by his comments on any given show was always up for revision. His ‘satire’ was never more than an exercise in plausible deniability, and his constantly insincere commentary carved a lasting place in the literal understanding of the ‘conservative’ mind of American politics.

So, what is Limbaugh’s legacy?

Let’s take a look at just one of the many interventions Limbaugh made in our national politics.

Limbaugh’s comments on Sandra Fluke.

This was part of the debate over The Affordable Care Act, specifically, a question about whether or not the Catholic University, Georgetown, was entitled to an exemption from required standards of insurance coverage for their students. The requirement in this case was the obligation to cover birth control. Sandra Fluke was one of several people called to testify before a Congressional committee on the matter in February of 2012, but she was excluded for for a number of reasons. A week later, the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee met and invited her to speak.

In her remarks, Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, made the case for mandating full coverage of birth control at Georgetown. Her comments focused on the use of birth control to combat health problems such as polycystic ovary syndrome. Fluke told the story of a friend suffering from this condition, one who paid over a hundred dollars a month for birth control that was specifically used to combat this particular health condition.

At no point in her testimony did Sandra Fluke comment on her own sex life or any birth control expenses she herself might have had.

On February 29th, Rush Limbaugh commented on Fluke’s testimony with the following diatribe:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

(As quoted in The Huffington Post, emphasis in the original.)

Subsequent controversy focused on the rudeness of Limbaugh’s commentary, on his decision to call Fluke a ‘slut’ and a ‘Prostitute’. Many on the right wing of the political spectrum came to Limbaugh’s defense, but in this case the backlash was sufficient to threaten earnings for Limbaugh’s show. In response, Rush came out with the following apology.

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit? In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level. / My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

March 3rd, 2012, As quoted in Wikipedia.

Limbaugh later added that he had acted to much like a liberal in making such remarks (Wiki again).

To say that Limbaugh’s apology was disingenuous is putting it mildly. The sheer irony of a man denying that he meant to launch a personal attack on a woman he had described as a ‘slut’ and a ‘Prostitute’ while lecturing her on the importance of personal responsibility is beyond outrageous. Adding that the nature of his error was essentially that he had acted too much like a liberal doesn’t help much. In effect, Limbaugh’s apology was really a thinly disguised effort to press forward with his attack.

Naturally, Fluke rejected his apology.

What always struck me as the most important outcome of all of this is the fact that Rush Limbaugh never retracted the central deceit of his comments on the matter. Fluke had not been talking about her own sex life or that of anyone else. Her point had always been that medical conditions could generate the need for birth control and even drive up its expense. One could find a lot to dispute in Fluke’s testimony, and reasonable arguments could be made about the policies in question, but it is simply not true to say that she was asking anyone to pay for her personal birth control. If Limbaugh was ever confused about this fact, he surely knew it by the time he produced his pseudo-apology. Not only did Limbaugh leave that lie on the table, he pressed forward with it in the very way he worded his fake apology.

In fact, the lie stands to this day.

Limbaugh’s fans, and countless ‘conservatives’ all over the United States still think of Sandra Fluke as the woman who wanted a university to pay for her own personal birth control, the liberal who wanted Georgetown to fund her own sex life. Whatever ‘conservatives’ think of Limbaugh’s language and general conduct, his narrative still dominates the right wing take on this matter. The lie that Limbaugh used to drown out more reasonable efforts at debating the policy implications of the day has never been rectified. It still clouds the issues, and it still paints a bullseye on Sandra Fluke which America’s right wing will be all to happy to take shots at the next time she dares to enter the public eye one more time.

This is Rush Limbaugh’s legacy. This is the long term outcome of his rhetoric, the result of a juvenile game of “maybe I mean it – maybe I don’t.” In this instance, Limbaugh’s intervention served not only to harm an individual but to leave a lasting source of disinformation which he never corrected in any way.

This lie is Limbaugh’s legacy.

This lie and countless others like it.

Hypocrisy and the Infinity Mirror: Reflections on the Limbaugh-Fluke Affair

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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What do you do when someone on your side says or does something so utterly beyond the pale that it is completely indefensible?

Those Americans calling themselves ‘conservatives’ got a chance to show us their response to this sort of dilemma back when Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, actively misrepresenting her testimony before an unofficial hearing and insulting her on his radio show. He would later retract the insults while leaving his lies about Fluke’s actual testimony uncorrected. His lies continue to circulate through the population, effectively replacing a responsible debate about the wisdom of mandatory birth control coverage and reasonable accommodations for religious objection with a fantasy battle over personal sex lives and government subsidies. The end result would seem indefensible, even outright embarrassing for anyone implicated in supporting Limbaugh.

One would think the responsible thing to do would be to say not just ‘no’, but ‘Hell no’, and refuse to back Limbaugh’s approach to the subject. One might even suggest that such an approach would help to distinguish the conservatives from the many playground bullies currently reveling in the delusion that their sundry bits of prejudice add up to some sort of political philosophy.

Suffice to say this was not the most common Republican response to the situation. The right wing echo chamber cried foul over liberal backlash against Limbaugh and quickly spun the story into a case-study in liberal hypocrisy. Liberals condemn Limbaugh, so the argument goes, but then look at Bill Maher and his comments about Sarah Palin! (I recall a few other examples, but Maher clearly occupied center stage in the right wing response to this issue.) Thus, Limbaugh’s disgusting personal attacks on a young student activist became proof of liberal misogyny?

How many of the right wing pundits jumping on the “what about___” response ever bothered to make a principled criticism of Limbaugh, one that went beyond merely disclaiming the insults to call him to account for his misrepresentations of her testimony? I wouldn’t say that the answer is ‘none’, but it certainly falls well short of the total commenting on the issue. Most of these ‘conservatives’ have simply been content to comment on liberal hypocrisy without making any serious effort to correct those in their own camp.

The focus on liberal hypocrisy enables conservatives to defend Limbaugh and complain about Maher without ever laying their own cards on the table. So long as the focus of thought rests on whether or not liberals have been consistent on the issue, right wing pundits never have to take responsibility for addressing the issues squarely themselves. And they can effectively work both angles of the debate just as they accuse liberals of doing, all the while laying responsibility for the inconsistencies of the entire national discourse squarely at the feet of those damned liberals.

And thus the charge of hypocrisy facilitates the same.

We could call this particular gambit the META-HYPOCRISY SHUFFLE. It consists of disguising your own inconsistencies by pretending you are just responding to those of someone else. There is nothing particularly new about this tactic, nor is it exclusive to conservatives. And of course the plot thickens when calling attention to this problem as well, because one can always add another layer to the house of cards by refusing to take a stand on the particulars while complaining about the inconsistency of the other guy.

…and on into infinity.

The problem is easy enough to identify. Untangling it is another matter, not the least of reasons being that the perception of hypocrisy is easy to manipulate in a variety of ways.

If you are not sure whether or not any particular individual is guilty of hypocrisy, you can always use the tactic of INCONSISTENCY BY ASSOCIATION. This consists of treating all of those who belong to a given group as though they are collectively responsible for producing a single ideologically consistent position. Thus, if I can find one self-described conservative who says that it is wrong to degrade women, quote him, then go find another self-described conservative who does just that, well then voila! I have proven conservatives inconsistent.

…unless I haven’t.

To make the charge honestly, I need one person who does both things, not two or more people who simply share the label.

And of course there is always the possibility of GAMING THE PRINCIPLE. This is really just another variety of the straw man fallacy. The tactic exploits a common weakness that typically accompanies expressions of outrage. When people are really angry over something, they often fail to state the principles they feel have been violated with any degree of precision, …or even at all. This makes it easy for others to come along and rewrite the principle in question for them. Even if the outraged individual has spelled out the specific principles they feel have been violated, a loose paraphrase can often lead readers to forget that inconvenient detail.

Someone who feels that Sandra Fluke did not personally deserve Limbaugh’s personal attacks, for example, could easily be construed as claiming that one ought never to insult a political opponent (thus confusing a claim about what is a reasonable criticism with a claim that some people ought never to be criticized). The point here is to supply a principle to one’s critic that puts him on the worst footing possible, even if that principle has little to do with their actual concerns. From there it is a simple task to demonstrate the individual in question has violated the principle they never actually endorsed, and that’s Q.E.frickin-D.

Except that it isn’t.

To make the charge honestly one must be sure that a person has violated a principle she herself has actually advocated, not one that sounds close enough.

And finally there is the very simple tactic of SKIPPING THE FACTS. Just because accusations and insults may be leveled in all directions does not mean that all of them have equal value. Sometimes party A really has done something wrong and party B hasn’t. It’s easy enough to flip the tables of accusation and say; “see how you like it?”…but if the claims don’t have equal merit, then this gambit is hollow as hell.

All of these tactics help to transform the sort of inconsistency that shows up under the scrutiny of critical thinking into one that will show up in a political narrative whether or not it is warranted on the facts at hand. These tactics did not emerge with the Limbaugh-Fluke controversy, nor will they be filed away in the wake of that dust-up. They are constant presence in the political landscape, and the right wing of this country is making very effective use of them.

In the long run, the problem here is not that questions about liberal behavior have been put on the table; it’s that putting those questions on the table has become a very effective way to get questions about right wing behavior off the table.

Remember Kids! False Equivalence is a Way of Life

09 Friday Mar 2012

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As the Limbaugh-Fluke flap dies out, the right wing blogosphere has fielded a number of diversion tactics, not the least of them being the good old fashioned tu quoque argument that liberals do it too. They have fielded several examples of putatively equivalent behavior, but Bill Maher’s comments about Sarah Palin seem to get the most mileage. He has used quite a few derogatory terms to describe Palin, several of which have sexist overtones every bit as vile as those of Limbaugh.

So, is there a difference? Well, yes.

Sarah Palin has a history of persistent dishonesty, malice, and utter stupidity, all committed in the public eye. Called out for her short-comings, Palin has consistently doubled down, blamed others for her failings, and produced one excuse after another for conduct that falls well short of basic human decency. Yet the pseudo-conservative machine that is Limbaugh, Fox News, and right wing radio supports her anyway.

Somewhere in the time since Palin first became a candidate for Vice President of the United States the public criticism ceased to be about demonstrating her faults and became an effort to shame her and her supporters for ignoring (and even celebrating) those faults. Insulting Palin may not be admirable behavior, and it certainly isn’t an adequate solution to the problem posed by a political base completely devoid of judgement. But the transformation of public criticism into outright abuse didn’t happen on day one, or even day three of her candidacy. It happened over time and in direct response to an extensive record of shoddy behavior on her own part.

Fluke, one the other hand, gave testimony in one (unofficial) public hearing. This and this alone was enough to warrant the attacks made on her character and (more importantly) a very deliberate misrepresentation of her actual testimony.

Furthermore, Rush Limbaugh did not merely call Fluke a slut, he supported that insult with false claims about her testimony and her actual sex life. His use of the terms “slut” and “prostitute” served not merely to indicate Rush’s contempt for the woman in question, but to promote a calculated misrepresentation of her politics and her behavior.

At the end of the day, Fluke wasn’t attacked for anything she actually said or did, but for a fantasy scenario having little to do with anything she actually said or did.

In short, Palin has become an object of ridicule, not because she is conservative (she isn’t), but because she has proven herself to be incompetent and shameless. Fluke became an object of ridicule for no reason other than that she was on the other side of this issue long enough to get public attention.

If neither attack is acceptable, each plays a very different role in the current discourse. Take away the insults to Palin and we still need a means of characterizing the public behavior of a person who has proven herself to be utterly irresponsible. Take away the insults to Fluke and we may just begin to evaluate her actual testimony.

That is one very considerable difference.

Case Studies in Professional Bigotry: Poisoning the Vaginal Well

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

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I suppose the furor over Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke is dying down. The smoke is beginning to settle, and some on the left might be thinking we have gained a victory of sorts. But I wonder.

Ten years from now, how will I remember Sandra Fluke’s testimony? Will I remember what she actually said? Or will I remember Rush Limbaugh’s flagrant misrepresentation of her testimony? Something tells me that most folks will remember Limbaugh’s take. They might not like his insults, but they won’t really remember just how far off the mark his interpretation of her testimony was to begin with.

It’s a common pattern. Folks tend to remember the headline even after the have forgotten the article. They remember the outrageous accusation long after they have forgotten the reasoned rejoinder. They remember the error long after the correction has faded from memory.

And that is of course the point of Limbaugh’s politics. It doesn’t really matter whether or not his critics prove louder than his supporters, much less whether or not they are right and he is wrong. What does matter is that Limbaugh has replaced a substantive debate over the merits of an insurance regulation with one about the imagined sex life of one particular college student.

Rush Limbaugh characterized Fluke’s testimony as a plea for public assistance with contraception to help sustain her personal sex life. The fact that Fluke made no mention whatsoever regarding her own personal sexual activities seems to have escaped Rush Limbaugh, or at least his public comments on the issue.

Subsequent outrage has focused primarily on the ethics of Rush’s personal attacks on Fluke. That Limbaugh has apologized does little to help matters. The apology was limited to his use of two words. It was followed immediately by renewed attempts to misrepresent Fluke’s testimony and eventually stirred into a narrative about sinking to the level of liberal rhetoric (because apparently such tactics are distinctively liberal).

Really, there are too many errors and lies in Limbaugh’s take to correct them all. One hardly knows where to begin!

But herein lies the central problem. What Fluke was actually doing was trying to show the need for the availability of insurance policies that cover contraception. She explained the financial needs for such policies and she testified to the existence of medical uses of contraception beyond birth control. Her testimony only begins to touch upon that latter subject.

One can certainly question Fluke’s presentation. A critic can double check her math on the cost of birth control. He can ask for documentation of the actual cases she mentions (or others like them). He can even raise questions about the total impact of laws requiring the availability of coverage, or the acceptability of Obama’s present compromise with Congress. All of these might be reasonable questions to which reasonable answers might be offered.

We could have such a debate.

And of course some of these arguments are taking place, but they must now take place in the shadow of Limbaugh’s personal attacks. Long before anyone on Fluke’s side of the discussion can begin to answer the real criticisms of Obama’s policy and Fluke’s testimony, they must first wade through the poisoned waters of Rush’s lurid imagination. And the real problem here is that imagination, perverse as it is, remains far more vivid than the details of the actual political decision at hand.

This is a victory for Limbaugh and the right wing echo chamber. One may pray that it proves to be a Pyrrhic victory, that he and those who have joined in Limbaugh’s tactics will pay dearly in lost advertizing revenues and diminished public status.

But that is a vain hope.

What Rush and his ilk do best is to inject this kind of personal invective into an already difficult subject. He brings public support for the conservative cause, not by appeal to conservative principles, but by triggering the anger of those with little real grasp of conservative politics (much less those of liberals). And those with but a thin grasp of fiscal conservatism or the ironic politics of Federalism may yet be moved by contempt for the morals of a loose woman. This the bet made by Limbaugh and others mocking Fluke.

It is unfortunately a sound bet.

In the end, Limbaugh’s story will prove more compelling than Fluke’s, not because it is the more sound argument, but because it is the more psychologically moving.

This is the power of Limbaugh, of Oreilly, of Hannity, of Savage, of Coulter, of Beck, and of all the other professional bigots working the right wing echo chamber. It is a force for which the left has never found an adequate solution.

But the problem is not simply that the din of slut-shaming, race-baiting, and liberal bashing keeps the left on the defensive (and often beats left wing defenses outright), it is that these voices have also beaten the conservative thinkers of the nation as well. Those who might have sound reason to question left wing politics have long since fallen to the way side in American politics, their own points just as difficult to hear above the thunder and clash of the right wing hate-machine.

And what passes for ‘conservative’ comes ever closer to the living caricature that people such as Limbaugh embody.

The United States has been shifting steadily to the right, led not by the Republican party leadership or conservative intellectuals so much as the shrill voices of folks such as Limbaugh. Voices that are always happy to tell us this woman is a slut, that man is a communist, or that those on any form of public assistance are as undeserving as the day is long. It is frustrating to see how often these herders of prejudice have defeated the left in one political conflict after another.

It is still more alarming to see that people calling themselves “conservative” are increasingly unable to recognize their own political heritage, or take note of established political compromises. Cap&Trade (a free market counter-point to environmentalism) is now a socialist ploy. Because it is a Federal rather than state policy, Obamacare is a radical effort to destroy the free market. And Obama’s current compromise proposal parallels that offered in 28 states. While right wing bigots do their best to convince the public that the President’s new policies constitute an unprecedented attack on religious freedom, it is in fact a variant on policies already established in other jurisdictions.

Far from a demand that the public pay for her private sex life, Fluke sought to explain the benefits of covering birth control under insurance plans. The wisdom of such provisions has already been born out by the insurance industry itself which recognizes the option as a long-term cost saving measure. That private individuals, particularly those struggling their way through school, may find it difficult to pay for contraception should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually tried to live on a student’s budget. But insurance companies can discount the present cost of contraception against the savings it generates. It is for precisely this reason that such coverage need not lead to extra cost for anyone, much less the fantasies of public assistance touted by Limbaugh and his fans.

For women such as Fluke, the issue may well be the chance to get through school before finding themselves at the mercy of their own bodies. It is well enough to tell these women they should take responsibility for their own choices, but men do not have the choice pressed upon them with quite the same degree of urgency. Of course an accidental father may be required to pay child support, but that still falls far short of the consequences for a woman who must bear the child (and who will be far more likely to raise it). Insurance coverage makes possible a degree of protection from unwanted pregnancy (among other things) which would otherwise be unavailable to them. In practice, it can mean the difference between a successful education and dropping out of a program.

Limbaugh’s slut-shaming is nothing other than an attempt to dismiss the value of such benefits, to ensure that they are not weighed against the value of religious freedom as conservatives are now defining it.

Of course institutions such as the Conference of Catholic Bishops will argue that providing such policies contradicts their faith. This too is a value demanding our attention. But how far does the right of religious freedom extend? Does it really entitle an institution such as Georgetown to deny the option to its students? The requirement that insurance companies serving their students provide such coverage on their own is a reasonable compromise on the issue, one well established at the state level. Whether or not a co-payment would prove necessary or even acceptable remains an outlier in this discussion, but it is needn’t prove to be a deal-breaker.

If the Obama administration has shown unusual aggression on the issue, so has the Council of catholic Bishops, and so have the Republicans. Time and again, Boehner and other Republicans have sought to preserve the religious liberties of institutions to discriminate against individuals on religious grounds. (Witness the Head-Start debacle of 2005.) If their is an argument to be made that such policies protect the religious liberties of corporate entities, another argument can be made that they threaten the liberties of those that deal with such entities. Ultimately, the Republican vision of religious freedom is most salient to the interests of those with significant political power. It has little to offer the individuals who may for one reason or another find themselves doing business with such entities.

The public must now weigh the value of preserving religious freedom for entities such as Georgetown against the possible costs to women such as Fluke and her classmates. There is every reason to hear the testimony of both sides, and to find a solution which facilitates the interests of all concerned.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee heard the concerns of those in religious institutions. What Fluke sought to do was explain the concerns of women who must deal with those institutions. There is no reason that testimony could not have been given due consideration.