Remember that time Maureen Dowd needed to kick Rush Limbaugh, right after he announced he had advanced lung cancer, and she didn't spell his name right, because it was so important to remind us of the worst thing he ever said?

ADDED: This reminds me of the recent cancel-culture attack on Joe Rogan. You've got someone who talks for hours and hours and is good because he's free-wheeling and not too self-censoring. That makes for good listening. It's how to get popular on the radio or in podcasting. But it also means that there's a huge set of material that your antagonists can sift through, and the worst thing you ever said will be used as if it was most representative of the kind of person you are.

From a different perspective, it also reminds me of the reaction to the death of Kobe Bryant. Dowd is like the few people who brought up the old rape charge against Bryant. In this perspective, Dowd is not the canceller but the one who could be targeted for cancellation because of her lack of empathy for the person who has met with terrible misfortune. But she doesn't need to worry too much about that, because Rush Limbaugh is on the right and because his misfortune is his alone — there's no sweet daughter simultaneously struck by this lung cancer.

Deploying the French language when you're trying and not trying to talk about prostitutes.

Here's an article I found in the UK Independent when I googled the awkward French-ish phrase "belle du jour": "The truth about student sex workers: it's far from Belle Du Jour."

"I hate the word prostitute – when you think of a prostitute you think of someone on the street who is causing a public nuisance..."

Sophie* is 22, studying at university and paying for it through sex work... By advertising on an adult site, she can pick who she sees depending on the feedback from girls and customers. They try to establish legitimate clients from potentially dangerous ones, alongside rating and ranking the workers themselves....

Sophie is resigned and bitter about the perception of sex work – particularly the character of Belle du Jour. "I hate it. Because, say I work for a hundred pounds an hour, that it makes it sound very classy, whereas I tend to be going to real s***holes...." 

I take it that by "Belle Du Jour" Sophie and the Independent are referring to the movie "Belle de Jour," in which the young Catherine Deneuve plays "a respectable young wife who secretly works in a brothel one or two afternoons a week." The word between "Belle" (beauty) and "Jour" (day) is "de" (of) not "du" (of the). The title is premised on "belle de nuit," which means prostitute, in the sense of "lady of the night." Deneuve's character works during the day. I don't know why "the" is left out of both "belle de nuit" and "belle de jour," but I don't think "belle du jour" is a phrase that means anything, an opinion I'm basing on Google's changing my "belle du jour" search to "belle de jour" and not even asking if I really meant "belle du jour."

Enter Kathleen Parker, the Washington Post columnist, who's got a new piece titled "The silly, selective 'war on women.'" She begins with the unbelievable assertion: "The war on women is based on just one thing — abortion rights." Maybe no one reads any further after that. (Whatever you think of the packaging of the Democratic Party's gender politics as a "war on women," it obviously includes at least a couple other issues like employment discrimination and violence against women.) But I kept reading until I hit this:

I promise, this isn’t another abortion column, not that the horrific number of abortions performed each year shouldn’t make one’s stomach turn. Instead, extremists on the pro-choice left celebrate the “right” to terminate a 20-week-old fetus. Google an image of this stage of fetal development and try to comprehend the glee we witnessed when state senator Wendy Davis, now running for governor, became the belle du jour upon her filibuster to protect that “right” in Texas.

Belle du jour? You'd think after all the trouble Rush Limbaugh got into when he said something that sounded like he called a young woman a prostitute that conservative pundits would be more careful!

I realize that Parker was slapping "du jour" on "belle" in the old "soup du jour" way and meant to say that Davis is the Democrats' darling "du jour." It's a dismissive way of saying that people keep getting a new (whatever) every day the way a restaurant gets a new soup. And somehow Parker decided that the word before "du jour" ought to be in French too, even though the word "soup" in the phrase "soup du jour" isn't French. (In French, it's "soupe.") If you're going to tart up you prose with French, at least Google you're words and see if you've said something stupid. (Or maybe she didn't think "belle" was French at all and was really using the old "soup" format, and "belle" was the "belle" of "Southern belle" and "belle of the ball.")

And how's old Catherine Deneuve doing these days? Here she is at a fashion show in Paris 2 days ago, wearing, among other things, a sweater with the shape of a marijuana leaf knitted into it. And here she is, almost 50 years ago, as Belle de Jour:

"Sandra Fluke may seek Henry Waxman House seat."

"I’m flattered that I’m being discussed as a potential candidate.... A number of folks I respect very deeply have reached out today and encouraged me to run. I am strongly considering running."

What Rush Limbaugh is almost surely planning to say to those who are outraged at his rape analogy.

Rush Limbaugh likes to throw out things that he knows liberal media types will propagate. He knows what gets them, and he's using them to go viral. It doesn't always work out right for him, and the Sandra Fluke incident ended up hurting him, but often it creates excitement around his show and keeps his reputation relatively fresh. People love him and hate him, and that's keeps the old radio show going.

This weekend lots of the sort of people who love to hate him are raging about the analogy he used in talking about the ending of the Senate filibuster:

Let’s say, let’s take 10 people, in a room in a group. And the room is made up of six men and four women, okay? The group has a rule, that the men cannot rape the women. The group also has a rule that says any rule that will be changed must require six votes of the ten to change the rule.

Every now and then some lunatic in the group proposes to change the rule to allow women to be raped. But they never were able to get six votes for it. There were always the four women voting against it, they always found two guys, well the guy that kept proposing that women be raped kinda got tired of it. He was in the majority and he said, you know what, we’re going to change the rule. Now all we need is five."

And the women said, "You can't do that."

"Yes, we are. We're the majority, we're changing the rule." Then they vote. Can the women be raped? Well, all it would take then is half the room. You could change the rule to say three. You could change the rule say three people want it, it's gonna happen. There's no rule.

We've got Carolyn Bankoff in New York Magazine ("a vile, profoundly inappropriate rape analogy"), Amanda Marcotte ("The rape comparison is distasteful and casually misogynist"), and Politico collects the tweets:

Ana Marie Cox, a political columnist for the Guardian US, wrote that “Limbaugh using a rape analogy to explain the filibuster really takes mansplaining to a level I never imagined” — or as ChartGirl.com founder Hilary Sargent dubbed it, “rape-splaining.” Media Matters research fellow Oliver Willis tweeted that “rush limbaugh really games out how you could theoretically vote to rape women. hes just throwing it out there folks,” while fellow Media Matters colleague Todd Gregory called it “dumb, glib bullshit” that “is such a perfect encapsulation of rape culture, it should be put in a museum.” And The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley and Sabrina Siddiqui also weighed in, with Foley tweeting “Class act, that guy” in response to Siddiqui’s comment, “In today’s edition of offensive rape analogy.”

Come on. It's a trap. Don't you know your most basic famous aphorisms about democracy? "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." Usually attributed, probably incorrectly, to Benjamin Franklin, it vividly drives home the problem with simple majority rule.

I'm virtually 100% certain that on his Monday show, Rush Limbaugh will laugh at his critics for their ignorance of the famous aphorism. He can easily point out that he did not minimize the seriousness of rape. In the aphorism, the lamb is killed by the wolves. His analogy substitutes rape for killing, men for wolves, and women for the lamb. Really, it's men who are getting the negative stereotype, so misogyny is exactly the wrong word. A lamb is the very symbol of innocence. And it is killed by those terrible, selfish wolves. Knowing Rush, I predict he'll pivot to a discussion of abortion: Maybe women don't realize that killing an innocent is terrible. Maybe that's why they didn't understand the workings of his analogy.

About those "got insurance?" ads from Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education.

I thought these were a spoof at first, but they're not. I didn't think about what was going on until I was listening the podcast of Rush Limbaugh's Wednesday show, and then it dawned on me, not because I looked at it the way Rush did, but something about his take made me see the light.

So here's what Rush said:

These ads are promoting this irresponsible behavior and assuring you that you'll be okay if you engage in this irresponsible behavior if you get insurance.  The ads are designed to convince young people, Millennials, to go sign up for Obamacare....

Rush focuses on this:

How not to show respect for the stay-at-home spouse.

On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory questioned various commentators about a report from the Pew Research Center that said that in 2011 women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 40.4% of American families. (It was 10.8% in 1960.) There were some strange statements from "Republican strategist" Ana Navarro:

There has been an evolution in the American family.  You know-- and I think what we have to be as a society is accepting of what couples decide to do for themselves.  There are some people who want to lean in, there are some people who want to lean back and be on a rocking chair drinking a mint julep.  Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect…

So right off, Navarro is portraying the home-based partner as lazy! The old image was lying on the sofa eating bonbons. She's got the sofa replaced by a rocking chair and an alcoholic beverage in place of the box of chocolates. Gregory breaks in with a wisecrack — "Enough about your Sunday afternoon" — and this prompts Navarro — the Republican — to double down on her idea that the stay-at-home spouse is a sponge:

When I say in my house that I want to be a kept woman, the answer I get back is well, I want to be a kept man.  So, you know, that’s not working-- it’s not working in my house.  

Kept woman! This isn't as bad as Rush Limbaugh's notorious equation of free birth control and prostitution. It's actually kind of worse. Limbaugh intended to malign the demand for free birth control. He meant to say that the general public shouldn't have to pay for a particular person's sexual activities. He found a notoriously crude way to say I don't want to pay for you to have sex (i.e., if someone pays you to have sex, you're a prostitute). But aside from the crudeness, the opinion that the group shouldn't pay for the individual to have sex isn't offensive. It's just economics and ideology.

Navarro claimed "Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect," but she said — twice, quite clearly — that the stay-at-home partner isn't contributing. The first image was of someone loafing and drinking alcohol during the day. The second image was of a "kept woman" — that is, a woman who doesn't take care of the house and the children or do anything helpful other than to provide sex! If that "works for" you, that that's something that deserves respect — she asserts — but it wouldn't work at her house, and if she were to suggest that for herself, her husband would say that's what he wants. Obviously, the idea is that the nonbreadwinner spouse is goofing off. So where's the respect? At most, she says, if some other couple finds that this "works," then we should accept that they make their own decisions. Navarro goes on to say:

But I think, you know-- I think, we-- women that work need to be not judgmental of women who don’t.  

But your judgment leaked out all over the place!

I think men who are mister moms need to be accepted by those who are the alpha male breadwinners.  So, I think it’s got to be whatever works-- different folks…

Mr. Mom... alpha male... the disrespect is plain, even as you keep insisting you are tolerant.

"The Rush Limbaugh Program is considering ending its affiliation agreement with Cumulus Media at the end of this year..."

"... a move that would bring about one of the biggest shakeups in talk radio history, a source close to the show tells POLITICO."

Should the move take place, 40 Cumulus-owned radio stations would lose the rights to the most popular talk radio program in the country. In addition, the show might be picked up by competing regional radio stations in Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas and other major markets.

According to the source, Limbaugh is considering the move because Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey has blamed the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. In Feb. 2012, Limbaugh referred to Fluke as "a slut" because she had called on congress to mandate insurance coverage of birth control. The subsequent controversy over those remarks resulted in a significant advertising boycott.

This seems pretty obviously to be a move in a big negotiation. Isn't Cumulus in bigger trouble without Rush than Rush is without Cumulus? I'm guessing Rush is having great fun with this, tormenting Dickey, who disrespected him. What source do you think talked to Politico? Cumulus, we're told, reports its earnings on Tuesday, and Rush doesn't like hearing its financial problems blamed on him. How would you people do without me?

Why should more than 10 people show up at a Sak 'n Save at in Reno to see Sandra Fluke?

Who is this woman? Why is she a celebrity? She's read a couple of speeches prominently, in Washington D.C., where she was selected for that role by — which Democratic bigwigs? Why?! And Rush Limbaugh made fun of her elevation into the spotlight. He did it in a crude way that boosted her name recognition. That seems to be the closest thing to something that she did to achieve prominence, and I imagine that in her own mind, surrounded by those who chose her and elevated her, she may think she is an eminent person capable of drawing crowds. What a splash of cold reality to find yourself deposited — by your promoters — at a grocery store in Reno where nobody cares.

Sandra Fluke campaigns alongside Barack Obama.

In Denver.

Presumably, she'll be saying what she's writing in HuffPo today. (She's no longer identified as a law student, but is now: "Public Interest Law Scholar, Georgetown University Law Center," which seems to mean that she's been hired by the law school she just graduated from.)

Since day one, President Obama has fought for women's health care rights and the economic security that goes with access to affordable insurance. I wish that were true for Mitt Romney.

Mr. Romney offers only dangerous promises to roll back these rights. I'm going to take him at his word -- and every woman in America should, too. On Obamacare, he says he'll "kill it dead" on day one, eliminating mandatory coverage for lifesaving preventive care and once again letting insurance companies play by their own rules....

Are you getting the message that Romney is about killing women? Did you miss this ad?



You may think this is nonsense, but it's very emotional and millions of people will vote based on the emotion that is being rubbed raw right now.

UPDATE: Romney defends with Romneycare! "A Mitt Romney spokesperson offered an unusual counterattack Wednesday to an ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames the presumptive GOP nominee for his family losing health care: If that family had lived in Massachusetts, it would have been covered by the former governor’s universal health care law."

The Chronicle of Higher Education fires blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley for mocking university Black Studies programs.

Here's a Wall Street Journal editorial column condemning the Chronicle (including the disclosure that Riley is married to a member of the Journal editorial board):

As best we can make out, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen, fired Naomi Riley for doing what she was hired to do—provide a conservative point of view about current events in academe alongside the paper's roster of mostly not-conservative academic bloggers....

Riley herself has an op-ed over there at the Journal. (It's not like this lady is starving for media outlets.)

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

This is, I think, a little more complex than what Riley's supporters are saying. She mocked individual graduate students. This reminds me of the big Sandra Fluke controversy, which got traction because an established media professional took aim at a student. Riley made fun of dissertation titles and breezily threw out the opinion that the entire field of Black Studies was left-wing crap. Maybe it is. I don't know. I'm not reading the dissertations. It's tempting to riff on intuition and to speak provocatively, and that's what bloggers do. If the Chronicle wants bloggers — readable bloggers, bloggers who spark conversation and debate — they need to get that.

But combining that blogging style with an attack on named, individual students, where you are speaking from a high platform in the established media... that's the problem, and I don't see Riley stepping up and acknowledging it.

Riley, in this new column, proceeds with her critique of the field of Black Studies... or rather the media's resistance to critique:

[A] substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.

Knowing of this resistance, Riley could have begun her attack with something more sober and fact-based than lampooning the titles of students' dissertations. Maybe she deliberately sought personal attention by writing something too crude and impolite. It certainly worked. I'd never noticed her before and now everyone is talking about her.

"I'd like to finish the week without Scott's dick in my ear, but until captain douche-nozzle is recalled..."

"I'll drink and stew and become more resolute in my hate directed at this prick."

A sample of the discourse over in the Isthmus forum, where Madisonians bemoan the newly signed Wisconsin law that repealed the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

MEANWHILE: In the comments section of last night's post "The Democrats' War on Women," a couple commenters engage in sexist wordplay about Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (who, like Walker, faces recall). A commenter referred to "Walker and his 'minions'" and chickenlittle quipped "What about all the filly minions like Kleefisch? Do you want to filet them too?" and leslyn said "How do you filet a filly??" This portrayal of a woman as meat called to mind the infamous Hustler magazine cover (showing a woman's body fed through a meat grinder). I said:

"How do you filet a filly??"

Said, about Rebecca Kleefisch, by a female commenter who probably regards herself as a feminist. That image is one of sexual violence.

You compare an adult woman to a juvenile animal. You refer to slicing into her dead (animal) body, prepping her for cooking.

But the woman you revile is conservative, so maybe you didn't notice.

If you think you are a feminist, you are a fake one, really a lefty or a Democrat, and your partisan politics comes first.

Go stand over there will Bill Clinton.

Leslyn defended herself this way:

Oh for goodness sake, Althouse, "how do you filet a filly" was A PLAY ON WORDS on CHICKENLITTLE'S comment. Which you'd have recognized were you not humorless.

And get off the "feminist" rant already. To use a METAPHOR, you jump both sides of the fence.

My response:

I saw the joke. That is was a joke is irrelevant to my point.

Would you like me to Google "sexist jokes" for you?

Try making racist jokes out in public and see how far "it was humor" gets you.

Picture a filleted young horse. Picture a woman in a similar condition. Picture a particular named woman in that condition.

Now, is that funny?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh portrayed Sandra Fluke as a prostitute and said we should have sex tapes of her on the internet?

How funny was that?

Now... go on with your explanations about why you are really not a hypocrite.

Alternatively, concede. It might be the better option.

Being a feminist is hard. You have to be consistent. Take the challenge.

"You know, it really is surprising, because I feel like it's a retro-debate that took place in the 1950s..."

Olympia Snowe said.

"It's sort of back to the future, isn't it? And it is surprising in the 21st century we would be revisiting this issue. And Sandra Fluke should have been commended, not condemned, for her courage in expressing her own views and beliefs before members of Congress."

Ironically, what feels retro to me is saying to a woman: good for you for your courage in expressing your own views. It sounds as though she thinks women are timorous, mentally deficient creatures. It sounds like the way you'd compliment a child for attempting to do something "adult." Merely doing it at all is an achievement, quite aside from the quality and value of the performance.

Speaking of retro... this takes me back to the 1700s, when Samuel Johnson said: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

The difference is, Johnson thought he was being quite funny. Snowe is deadly serious. Insipid!

Rush Limbaugh makes a sex joke about President Obama: "I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton."

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh was riffing on Obama's seeming turnaround on the Keystone Pipeline. You might think he wouldn't dip back into sexual imagery so soon after the Fluke incident:

Obama could not stop this pipeline if he wanted to. This leg of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas was in the works. He doesn't have the authority to stop it.... He's just glomming onto it. It's like trying to be present when the Ten Commandments are given at the burning bush and claiming you wrote 'em. 

Note: The burning bush and the 10 Commandments are separate events in the Bible. Back to Rush:

I'm almost speechless here with the absolute brazenness of this. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama says, "I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton." That's where we're heading with this. The guy who steadfastly opposes drilling for oil and has not issued any permits to speak of, particularly since Gulf oil drilling moratorium -- the guy who has made his name opposing the Keystone pipeline -- is now out taking credit for it....

Several paragraphs later:

And that's why I think it isn't gonna be long before Obama starts bragging about how much pipe he's laid. He'll start comparing himself to other presidents. "I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton." He's gotta throw Clinton in there for credibility.

See? That's a scripted joke. Said twice, word for word the same. There's no question "laid pipe" is slang for having sexual intercourse. It's not unusual for Rush to throw sexual double entendre into his monologues. He has a way of saying things very clearly and pausing so that listeners who enjoy that kind of thing can laugh and his more puritanical listeners can not notice or pretend they don't notice.

Now, I don't really have a problem with him saying this, and I don't think it's like using an inaccurate prostitute metaphor over and over to make fun of a student who isn't much of a public figure. I think we should make fun of Presidents, and the joke is straightforward hilarity, not a component of a confusing argument about health care insurance. So it's funny, and it's against not one but 2 Presidents, and I always appreciate reminders of the way Bill Clinton treated women. In fact, I think Rush's joke may be a salvo in the much-vaunted "war on women": You think I'm bad to women? Remember how awful Bill Clinton was!

The trouble with that is it's very hard to say anything negative about Barack Obama's interaction with women. (Remember when Christina Romer tried? (She got her double entendre wrong!)) If you have to dredge up Bill Clinton, maybe it's not worth doing. But there is a larger, significant enough, point: The Democratic Party wants women to think it's all about women's interests, but they will subordinate these interests to their political interests whenever the interests diverge. That was the horrifying spectacle of the Lewinsky scandal.

Oh! The travails of the lefty comedian! (Hey, did Rush Limbaugh set a trap?)

"Axelrod Cancels on Bill Maher — For Now."

Senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod has canceled an appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher that was originally scheduled for later this month....

After the fallout from Rush Limbaugh’s crass insults of Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, conservatives began arguing that there was a double standard, with Democrats (and the media) far more tolerant when liberal media figures use crass words to describe Republican women, Maher being Exhibit A in their case....

[And] the comedian Louis CK recently pulled out as entertainer at the Radio-TV Correspondents Dinner. This followed criticisms... over the comedian’s past use of offensive language about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

And Maher gave $1 million to the pro-Obama Super-PAC.

Rush Limbaugh is a media genius, but I don't think he's enough of a genius to have laid this trap. It has worked as a trap. By going too far, on one well-chosen occasion — picking on a young woman about sex — he got an immense reaction from Rush haters, who smelled blood and imagined that they could use this incident to drive Rush off the air. In making their strong argument, Rush's opponents articulated a rule demonizing those who use offensive language to describe a woman.

Now, Rush is thoroughly familiar with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." Here's Rule 4 (pp. 128-129):

Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

In this Fluke incident, many left-liberals have committed to a rule that can now be used to take out some of their most valuable speakers and media outlets.

Let's keep reading Alinsky:

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. 

We'll find out who the real masters of ridicule are. Rush has his material, and he's going to use it. Look for Maher to attempt counterattacks with witticisms like "fat fuck." (Which I would think violates a left-wing rule that lefties should be compelled to live up to. I mean, do they accept mocking a person for being overweight like that?)

More Alinsky:

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.* If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. 

The asterisk points to a footnote that quotes — of all people — William F. Buckley, Jr.: "Alinsky takes the iconoclast’s pleasure in kicking the biggest behinds in town and the sport is not untempting …"

"Biggest behinds"... mocking the fat... hmmm... it is a tempting sport! Who will win?

"The political reaction to 'slut' was opportunistic, of course, but it worked with a lot of women..."

"... because — apparently, even in this age of sexual liberation and 'slut pride' — women are still somehow deeply affected by charges of wanton and undiscriminating sexual behavior," writes Glenn Reynolds, looking at the conflicts under the surface of sex-positive feminism.

This might even account for the importance of the contraceptive issue, because mandated contraceptive coverage may be seen as representing not just a modest monetary benefit, but also perhaps some sort of societal validation. I would have thought that a strong independent woman wouldn’t need a stamp of societal approval for her choices, but apparently I would have been wrong. I leave it to the evolutionary-psych folks to work out why the “slut” charge retains such power in liberated times.

Apparently, however, it is especially wrong to “slut-shame” even though lefties feel no compunction about shaming people regarding other personal choices — from not recycling to owning an SUV to, worst of all, being a Republican. As I say, there’s something more going on here. And if the “shaming” part of slut-shaming isn’t bad, because shaming is fine in other contexts, then it must be the “slut” part.

Who did the shaming? Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, were characterizing sex as nothing more lowly than private recreational activity. The idea was: You have to pay for that yourself. It was the other side that seized upon that argument and imposed a new, politically motivated interpretation on it, that the woman was shamed. The wounded woman — wounded in the "war on women" — should then seek succor in the arms of the Democratic Party, who would care for what are health needs (not recreational supplies!).

Realistically, this should be a policy debate about insurance coverage, but minds must be manipulated, so competing templates are offered. What should a woman prefer, to be thought of as a strong free agent, doing what she chooses, with the government as far from her sex life as possible or a government that sees her as vulnerable, easily wounded, and in need of protection and support?

One answer is: I'm for whichever side gives me $1,000. That's what's really frightening.

University president lambastes professor-blogger for finding some good in Rush Limbaugh's anti-Fluke rant.

It's Joel Seligman, president of the University of Rochester, issuing a statement:

I was deeply disappointed to read UR Professor Steve Landsburg’s recent blogs praising Rush Limbaugh for a “spot-on analogy” with respect to his offensive remarks about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke (although Landsburg parted company with Limbaugh for calling Fluke a “slut”). Landsburg went further. He stated that Ms. Fluke’s position deserved “only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered.” He further stated that the right word for her position was “extortionist,” characterized those who disagreed with his view as “contraceptive sponges,” and added that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex.

Contraceptive sponges... now, that is clever.

... I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion. To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do. We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination.

To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in your classroom may be one of the most offensive things a professor can do, but when a student is a political activist who testifies before a congressional subcommittee on a specific policy question that you disagree with, it's not that horrible to blog about that. (It's not the approach I, as a professor, felt like taking. If you look at my first post on the subject, I said "I've been avoiding weighing in on this subject, in part because, as a law professor, I don't like talking about an individual law student," and then my discussion wasn't about the young woman, but all the political leveraging that was going on.)

Of course, Seligman is a political actor. He's got to deal with his intra-university constituencies. I'd like to know who's been pressuring him to push back Landsburg.

Landsburg now has made himself newsworthy as one of Limbaugh’s few defenders. I wish he had focused instead on the ideal of a university as an institution that promotes the free exchange of ideas and lively debate at its best in an atmosphere of civil discourse in which the dignity of every individual is respected.

Lively, but not too lively, apparently. And please don't stick out "as one of Limbaugh’s few defenders." The more people are all on one side of an issue, in Seligman's view, the more important it is for everybody to get over on that side. And Landsburg ought to focus on... what? Some abstract ideal that Seligman seems to be violating in the process of mushily stating?

Here's the Inside Higher Ed article that pointed me to Seligman's statement. Added facts:

On Wednesday, about 30 students protested Landsburg's comments by coming to one of his courses and standing between him and the class while he continued to lecture.... They left after 15 minutes but then came back at the end of the class.

And the university president sides with the students... in lofty pursuit of the free exchange of ideas and lively debate in an atmosphere of civil discourse in which the dignity of every individual is respected. Okay.

"We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination." Where's the character assassination? Landsburg disagreed with the policy Sandra Fluke promoted. In Congress. Professors have the obligation to "nurture" and "inspire" her from afar by refraining from taking on her ideas? Is that some special kid-gloves treatment for women? Ironically, that would be sexist. Should we be patting the female political activist on the head and murmuring good for you for speaking up? That is dismissive. It's better feminism to react to what a woman in politics says and to respond to her with full force the way you would to a man. And that's what Landsburg did:

[W]hile Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty....

To his credit, Rush stepped in to provide the requisite mockery. To his far greater credit, he did so with a spot-on analogy: If I can reasonably be required to pay for someone else’s sex life (absent any argument about externalities or other market failures), then I can reasonably demand to share in the benefits. His dense and humorless critics notwithstanding, I am 99% sure that Rush doesn’t actually advocate mandatory on-line sex videos. What he advocates is logical consistency and an appreciation for ethical symmetry. So do I. Color me jealous for not having thought of this analogy myself.

Now, Landsburg's an economist. Note the references to externalities or other market failures. He goes on to say a little something about prostitution. He goes on find the the analogy to prostitution flawed. Fluke is, he says, more of an "extortionist" — an "extortionist with an overweening sense of entitlement." For some reason Seligman thought he needed to throw in his position on prostitution:

I totally disagree with Landsburg that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex.  

Landsburg, rejecting the prostitution analogy, had written "Ms. Fluke is not in fact demanding to be paid for sex. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)" Seligman continues:

Having been a Dean of two law schools with clinics that addressed violence against women, I am all too aware of the terrible correlation between prostitution and the physical and emotional demeaning of women.

Oh, a correlation? Well, then, by all means, totally disagree with a professor who entertains the notion that the exchange of money for sex might not in itself be wrong. Because you're all about the free exchange of ideas and lively debate!

"Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized..."

"... liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout," tweets Bill Maher.

Via Instapundit, who notes that Carbonite stock "set a new, and much lower, 52-week low today."

It's so lame of these companies to drop Rush after all the money they invested in building their reputation with people who like Rush. They had ongoing momentum from the accumulated advertising, and now they've nullified it. Where do they get the new customers? They've given in to people who are trying to win a political victory. Those people are happy about it, but are they going to buy that Carbonite stuff? I doubt it.

ADDED: Sarah Palin in Facebook:

Pres. Obama says he called Sandra Fluke because of his daughters. For the sake of everyone's daughter, why doesn't his super PAC return the $1 million he got from a rabid misogynist?

"Rabid misogynist" = Bill Maher (who called Sarah Palin a "cunt").

And, to show just how thick these interconnections really are: Instapundit is telling his readers that if they cancel their cable (to buy a Roku box), then "For added mischief, when you cancel cable, you can tell the company that it’s because of Bill Maher."

Obama says he doesn't want Malia and Sasha to be "attacked or called horrible names when they’re being good citizens."

Milking Flukegate.

The misguided attack on Sandra Fluke continues, displaying irritating ignorance about women law students.

Robert Stacy McCain, I'm looking at you. Rush Limbaugh has apologized, but McCain bullies on:

Rather belatedly, we are becoming aware that this supposedly typical Georgetown coed is not very typical at all...

McCain links to a blog post from The College Politico, which begins:

Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she’s not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.

As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years...

Random co-ed?! She's a law student! I've been in law schools since 1978, and I've never heard female law students called "co-eds." What the hell is a co-ed? Even as a word for female undergraduates, it's like you're from 1931. Here's the original teenage heartthrob, Rudy Vallée, singing his great old college song, "Betty Co-ed":

Betty Co-ed has lips of red for Harvard,
Betty Co-ed has eyes of Yale's deep blue,
Betty Co-ed's a golden head for Princeton,
Her dress I guess is black for old Purdue!

I first learned the names of famous universities hearing that song on an LP of college songs that my parents had. The cover photo had rows of pretty girls each holding up a pennant with the name of a college on it.

Betty Co-ed's a smile for Pennsylvania,
Her heart is Dartmouth's treasure, so 'tis said,
Betty Co-ed is loved by every college boy,
But I'm the one who's loved by Betty Co-ed!

Here's the 1931 Max Fleischer film, featuring a Betty Boop prototype and Rudy Vallée saying "hi ho!" and starting a bouncing-ball singalong:



Now, Betty has a lot of boyfriends. Some may even call her a "slut." That was back in the day when a girl on campus caused quite a hubbub. Did Betty put out? What birth-control did Betty use? How much did it cost? Who paid? I don't know, but how many voters of today remember what college was like back when Rudy Vallée was making women swoon?

Now, Vallée's a fascinating character in the history of pop culture:

Vallée... was perhaps the first complete example of the 20th century mass media pop star. Flappers mobbed him wherever he went. His live appearances were usually sold out, and even if his singing could hardly be heard in those venues not yet equipped with the new electronic microphones, his screaming female fans went home happy if they had caught sight of his lips through the opening of the trademark megaphone he sang through.

Vallee had a gentle voice:

Vallée became the most prominent and, arguably, the first of a new style of popular singer, the crooner. Previously, popular singers needed strong projecting voices to fill theaters in the days before the electric microphone. Crooners had soft voices that were well suited to the intimacy of the new medium of the radio.

Ah, the radio! You can't sound too harsh on the radio, especially when you're pouring your sounds into the ears of women. I know one older woman who, finding Rush too harsh, has moved on Bill Bennett, who seems caring.

But back to my point: co-ed.  This is an old-fashioned label to stick on a woman, and it shouldn't be used anymore even to apply to undergraduates. But you just sound ignorant to call a female law student a "co-ed." And that ignorance continues with this talk of Sandra Fluke not being "a random co-ed." None of the students at an elite law school like Georgetown are "random." There's an elaborate, multi-factored admissions process, and it specifically looks for applicants who aren't coming straight from college but have taken time and shown engagement with social and political issues.

A "30 year old long time liberal activist" sounds exactly like the kind of person who would apply to law school and get accepted with enthusiasm, because the schools want students who will contribute to the classroom discussions about the things we talk about in law school, like sex discrimination. This is what classroom diversity means. And we want students who will take their law school education and use it different ways, especially in political activism. So what if Fluke "enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control"? I have no idea if that's why she selected Georgetown, but it's not a bad thing, it's not something law schools don't like, and it's not an unusual orientation for a law student to have.

McCain also tells us that Fluke has argued that it's sex discrimination for insurance not to cover "gender-reassignment" surgery. Sorry, this is typical law-journal material. Of course, an advocate in the category she belongs to would make arguments like this. Argue with these arguments all you want. But it doesn't make Sandra Fluke some nefarious pseudo law student. She sounds like a typical excellent law student at an elite law school.

Which is to say: the personal put-downs sound old-fashioned and sexist.

The right wing stepped in it with Fluke. Having stepped in it, they keep smushing around in it.

As a woman, as a law professor, as a woman law professor, I don't want to be seen anywhere near these guys. Could you start acting normal about women participating in public debate?

Now let's have a serious debate about insurance. Yeah. It's not much fun at all. But you've got to quit having your fun with women and sex — in this context! — or you are going to alienate more and more women voters — and men voters — every day. Good lord! It's super Tuesday. We should be talking about Mitt Romney, not Sandra Fluke. Yeah: Mitt Romney and insurance. Boring. Too bad.

The Rush Limbaugh show is on in a few minutes. I'm live-blogging it.

11:06 CT: "I knew it was getting bad..." He got a busy signal trying to call himself to cancel his own advertising for his Two If By Tea product. He begins with a joke. Then gets serious. He's going to explain what the apology really means. And people haven't understood it. His error was "becoming like" his critics by using "those 2 words." He tries to "maintain a very high level of integrity," and those 2 words were "uncalled for... and I, again, sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke." He never thought she was "either of those 2 words." He never uses those words, he asserts, and by using those words "I descended to their level." If you descend to the level of your opponent, he says, "They win." "There was no ulterior motive... no speaking in code... That's why I apologized."

11:10: At this point, Limbaugh details the the time line of the controversy, beginning with Issa's hearing. "Democrats tried to play a game" with that hearing. The hearing was originally not about contraception, but because Obama has a problem with women voters, Democrats decided to make the hearing about contraception and therefore to replace their male witness with the female Sandra Fluke (in violation of the committee's rules), Limbaugh said. This led to the spectacle of Fluke's exclusion, and then the Democrats' subcommittee staged testimony with Fluke, which, Rush asserts, showed her not to be the kind of expert who belonged on Issa's panel. Fluke "gave vague examples based on unnamed friends."

11:18: Georgetown is a Catholic University, Limbaugh says. Fluke didn't need to choose to attend that institution. "Why are you really there? Actually, they know what they're doing. They intentionally" choose institutions like this in order to work within them, trying to change them, he says. And Obama is trying to force these institutions to pay for birth control, over their moral objections. And the Democrats used Fluke to advance their agenda, he says. He wishes he'd said that last week. He focused on the idea of her having frequent sex because he's trying to be entertaining and it was relatively easy to do. That was the wrong focus. "I acted too much like the leftists who despise me.... It's way beneath me. It was wrong. I apologize — because I succumbed."

11:27: "The left... the media... giddy that some advertisers are leaving the program." But these advertisers have "done very well" through using his show to reach his audience. "They've decided they don't want you.... This show is about you, not the advertisers." He knows he's successful because of the listeners.

11:33: Intro music to this next segment is "Higher Ground." The previous segment began with "She Bop." Rush says he rejects millions of dollars in advertising because he puts the audience above the advertisers. He rejected GM, he says.

11:35: "The advertisers who don't want you — fine, we'll replace them." He criticizes those "on the left" who pressured the advertisers. That's not something he and his people do.

11:37: "I'm not waiting for apologizing from people on the left" who say "despicable" things. He mentions Bill Maher and Sarah Palin. "Don't expect apologies." He's portraying himself as on a higher level — "Higher Ground" — than his critics. He apologizes (for sinking to their level), and they don't apologize (it's their level). And they don't respect you, the people who make up his audience, who mean so much to him.

11:38: He quotes Tocqueville: "It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants." That sets up a more general attack on Obama and the Democrats.

11:52: I won't live-blog all 3 hours of the show, but I'll listen to the rest on podcast later. To sum up:

1. Rush emphasized his high values and his apology for falling from them.

2. He characterized the left as consistently behaving at the level that he unfortunately descended to and as never apologizing for that behavior.

3. He wishes he'd emphasized what really matters, which is how the Democrats played Issa's committee to try to help Obama with his problem appealing to women voters. [ADDED: I note that he helped the Dems win at this game.]

4. He loves his listeners and does the show for them, not the advertisers, of whom he has plenty champing at the bit to get onto the program.