Scoutdad wrote:
<<
As much as an idiot as Fluke is, you can’t attack private citizens like that, even if it is in jest.
>>
**************************************************************
I wholeheartedly disagree with you on this point. As soon as Fluke stepped into the public spotlight by appearing before members of Congress to make outrageous claims in an effort to influence public policy, her testimony exempted her from private citizen status. In other words, everything she discussed in that very public arena makes her fair game for criticism and scrutiny.
I didn’t say that she was exempt from rebuke and rebuttal. What I said is that nobody knew who this person was. They never saw her before and, odds are, they will never see her again. Her opinions are shallow and repulsive. What Rush did was to take the spotlight off of what she said in the minds of anyone who was on the margins of the controversy and put himself square in the spotlight. Ask yourself a question: Would these sponsors get up in arms if Rush had called Pelosi a ‘slut’? They might not like it and through back channels tell him about their displeasure but I doubt that they would drop him as fast as they did in this case.
Which begs another question. Don’t you think that Obama LOVES this? This argument is not at heart about whether your insurance company pays for your contraception. Rather, at the heart of it this is another attack on people of faith. I thought that Kelo was the greatest direct attack on the individuals rights because, all of a sudden, the government cannot just confiscate your property and use it for the public good (roads, raillines, etc.) but they can choose to take it and give it to another citizen of their choice, who can then use that property for his own benefit. Think of all the influence pedalling that that will engender.
But I think this is worse. The Catholic Church is stuck between complying and going against the core of their beliefs or not complying and paying millions in fines and legal fees, to the point of bankruptcy. The message- Believe what you want, just don’t act on it. What’s next after religious beliefs are controlled, political beliefs? You can believe in conservative or libertarian thought but if you meet to extol those beliefs you will be fined or jailed. If one falls the other is probably not far behind.
Rush is a national treasure. He has probably educated more people in the arena of conservative thought than anybody else. But he occasionally makes mistakes in his attempts to satirize. It would be a crying shame to see him lose his forum because he overstepped his bounds here. This broad was not worth it.