Beck, Limbaugh up to old tricks
With each succeeding Democratic victory, there’s a pause, then a salvo of shrill, below-the-belt attacks launched by the ever-desperate conservative media. If I would write a column in which I would refer to any woman as a “prostitute,” I would rightly face serious recriminations – from both the right and from the left.
Why, then, would Republicans sit back and allow Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to call Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La) a “prostitute” – without speaking out against that kind of gutter description?
It was revealed late last month that U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida – a Democrat – had called a female Federal Reserve official “a K-Street whore” on a radio program.
That was uncalled for.
He later issued an apology – albeit weak – in which he claimed he wasn’t really talking about the woman’s personal life.
Nobody who’d heard he’d used the word “whore” truly believed he was talking about her personal life. It didn’t matter. He had used a loaded word that shouldn’t have been used – period.
Just as when Glenn Beck called Landrieu “a high-class prostitute,” it didn’t matter in what context he used it – Democrats and Republicans should decry such language.
Landrieu’s supposed indiscretion was the result of her vote with her fellow Democrats to bring the Senate’s health care reform bill to the floor for debate.
She had helped insert language into that bill that would help ease her state’s Medicaid burden caused by the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Her “yes” vote cost $300 million. It’s a gambit that every politician in Washington plays at one time or another. But to Beck, that makes Landrieu a woman of (if only figuratively) easy morals.
He’s played that kind of game before. Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protester who lost her son in Iraq, was Beck’s winner in his “search for the biggest prostitute” in January of 2006.
All she’d done was protest the war, but Beck attacked her by saying, “Cindy Sheehan. That’s the biggest prostitute there, you know what I mean?”
He later added that Sheehan was really a “tragedy pimp,” because, he joked it’s “pretty hard to prostitute your son’s death.”
Beck has already lost an estimated 80 sponsors of his Fox News show, because he’d referred to the president as a racist earlier this year.
His remarks about Landrieu should help him lose a lot more.
Limbaugh’s language, and his post-Senate vote antics, went even further than Beck’s regarding Landrieu. He wasn’t content to merely call her a prostitute. He claimed she “is the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution.”
Aside from the outrageous language, Limbaugh and Beck skillfully omitted something very important when they characterized Landrieu as somebody who sold her political soul. She was merely following the wishes of her state Republican governor -Bobby Jindal.
“It is the No. 1 request of my governor who is a Republican. He explicitly asked that I pursue these funds. It is unanimously supported by every member of our delegation, Democratic and Republican. I am proud to have asked for it. I am proud to have fought for it,” Landrieu said.
In other words, while Limbaugh and Beck continue to make their case that a Democrat functioned on the political cheap, it was really a Republican who initiated the push for the much-needed Medicaid relief in the first place.
Limbaugh and Beck are, and have been, playing to their knuckle-dragger base.
Calling women “prostitutes” because they don’t share their particular political philosophy is both childish and dangerous.
But they’re really outgrowths of the ridiculous kinds of crusades they launch each day.
Recently, both have promoted the lie that under pending health care reform legislation, people who don’t buy it will face prison sentences.
If you’re inclined to think of Sen. Landrieu as a “prostitute,” then you’ll never be dissuaded from believing that Limbaugh and Beck are health care reform authorities who’ve read, somewhere, in the health care reform bills that there are jail sentences in the future for people who don’t buy health insurance.
Childish and dangerous, indeed.
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net