Rush Limbaugh has apologized for calling Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute for supporting health insurance coverage of contraceptives.
He was immediately swamped with outrage from the Left and from several sponsors of his radio talk show who announced that they would sponsor no longer.
Rush posted an apology on his website yesterday. After explaining his position against insurance coverage of contraceptives, he concluded:
“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.”
I’ve written before about the three types of apologies:
Category 1 is the defiant apology:“I’m sorry if you think I did something wrong.”
Category 2 is the evasive apology:“I may have made an innocent mistake, and I’m sorry for it—if I actually did it.”
Category 3 is the real apology:“I did something wrong, and I’m sorry for it.”
Rush gets only provisional credit for a Cat. 3—provisional until we see whether his subsequent behavior shows the apology to be insincere.
Sadly, Republican criticism of Limbaugh has been rare. Conservative icon George Will lamented today on ABC This Week:
“[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff. And it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”
And Kathleen Parker, the Washington Post’s in-house Republican, warned,
“Republicans need to stand up and condemn what he said. They need to truly distance themselves, and it’s going to take courage.”
Kudos to these two people of the right for speaking up about Limbaugh’s ugly talk. Now I wonder— where were all the Democrats who jumped all over Limbaugh when liberals labeled conservative women with these ugly sexist terms:
- MSNBC host Ed Schultz called Sarah Palin a bimbo and Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut
- Rolling Stone’s new star reporter Matt Taibbi wrote about Michelle Malkin, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” And about Ann Coulter, “you know you’re reading someone who would fuck a hippopotamus if she thought it would boost her Q rating.”
- And liberals’ favorite political commentator, Bill Maher, (he of the million dollar donation to the Obama super-PAC) called Sarah Palin a “dumb twat.”
It would be a good thing if serious people of the Left would combine their condemnation of right-wing slur mongers like Limbaugh with just a tiny word of protest over slur mongers of the left.
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Thanks to Kirsten Powers of the Daily Beast for some of the epithets cited.
