And by “stunner,” I think what was meant was, “predictably”.
A few days back I noted that, in their push to lend their new ginned-up martyr Sandra Fluke credibility and gravitas, the Washington Post inadvertently told us just who this supposed “courageous” Silkwood of the spermicidal sponge really is — namely, a reproductive rights advocate who came to Georgetown with the express purpose of pressuring the Jesuit university into doling out contraceptives as freely as it might communion wafers.
And now we have the rest of story: Fluke is a former president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, a group dedicated to making sure “all people can exercise the rights and access the resources they need to thrive and to decide whether, when, and how to have and parent children with dignity, free from discrimination, coercion, or violence” — with “justice” evidently only accomplished when those who don’t wish to subsidize others’ contraceptives are vilified, discriminated against, and coerced into doing just that, ostensibly as a sop to “women’s health” and reproductive “dignity,” but in actuality as yet another secularist maneuver to weaken the First Amendment, empower centralized government, and encroach on individual rights by shrinking the parameters under which those rights are considered operable.
That is to say, she’s a fraud, a plant, a radical feminist activist, and a special pleader for “rights” that don’t exist.
— Oh. And of course a hero now to the “progressives,” who simply will not stop until they are allowed to remake our society in their image, with any differences of conscience — that is to say, one of the very bases for individual liberty — re-imagined as “intolerance” and “hate” in order that it may be punished and, ultimately, stifled by law.
Because really, what enlightened society tolerates hate?
I’ve been arguing that the US is in the midst of a coup. However unhelpful that may seem to some to say aloud, it’s nevertheless true. And if we don’t accept things as they are — even if in so doing we risk being cast as fringe extremists and hysterics — then we’ll have allowed our pride and our egos prevent us from saving the last great hope for liberty from those men and women who would presume to steal it from us.
And Rush Limbaugh ain’t one of them.
(thanks to JHo)
****
related: Government is their God
****
update: more on Fluke here (h/t Blake, whom I still can’t email without it bouncing back to me, which is why he didn’t get a reply to an email he sent me yesterday, though I wrote one and sent it).
Well said Sir!
Off to soccer tournaments all day, so carry out the plan of the day.
That is all.
With all the fertilizer they spread around, it’s not surprising they use plants so much.
;-)
Daddy Donut day and a soft coup. You’d have to admire the multi-threaded multi-generational mostly self-organizing brilliance of the approach, if you could see it while biting the pillow.
Geez, Maher can seriously and loudly call Sarah Palin a c**t and, at best, you get shrugged shoulders
Limbaugh mocks Fluke’s “I want sex and you are required to pay for it” stance, naming it for what it is, and Fluke gets a call from Obama.
Someone needs to tell Rick Santorum that rather than engaging on the contraception issue when questioned, Rick needs to turn the question around and ask the interviewer if they really think contraception is the crucial question of the election.
One thing to remember: Most (if not all) of those who are shrieking the loudest over Limbaugh’s use of a four-letter Anglo-saxon word to describe Fluke are exactly the same people who had no trouble at all calling their political opponents “teabaggers.”
As our host is so fond of saying: This is who they are. They can own it.
Someone spending close to 100 bucks a month on birth control isn’t just a slut, they are a stupid fucking slut.
Of course, at this point the truth about her is almost irrelevant, as the narrative has already been written in the MBM and they certainly don’t change their stance easily.
Manufactured truth is fun!
More on Fluke here.
Amen. Preach it brother.
The “Sandra Fluke” thing was a set-up from the start. There was never any intention to have her “testify” in front of a real Congressional Committee. She was presented as a 23 year old law student who was president of a campus club (not the 30 year old reproduction rights activist that she is) on purpose. A great reason for her to testify, and her request for inclusion was made well after the deadline. She was designed to be turned down.
If she had gone in front of a real hearing and been subject to questions under oath the “testimony” she gave later would have fallen apart when questioned by any competent person. That she would give her statement in front of a Democrat only “committee” a Potemkin committee which could be made to look real on TV was what was planned from the beginning.
Her statement, pdf, was crafted to ensure that she was making no personal statements about herself or her own situation. Only hearsay and unsupported figures were in it. The “problems” were all which unnamed others. Stories which had a gleaming surface of emotional appeal but which if looked at with the reasoning mind are full of oddities which make them seem contrived. This too was a set-up. A hundred dollar bill dragged through the conservative blog-go-sphere to incite precisely the reaction that has happened. They probably never thought they would land a whale like Limbaugh though.
Whether they can pull off this little scheme will be seen this weekend on the news and talk shows. Sandra Fluke has an agent who is placing her all over the TV and radio. because the story is now about how “mean” the right and the media are being to her she will be treated with kid gloves. All the sob stories will be peddled at truth from on high. No one will ever ask her to name any of these women though I expect one to be outed. It will turn out the the woman who texted her from the emergency room is her lesbian long term lover and the tears will fall like rain as she tells of how they had planned to have a baby but now because of those evil insurance companies and the horrible pro-life extremists they can’t. Oprah material.
The right was trolled, hooked, played and now the net is descending into the water. The only hope is that the left as is their wont will overplay their hand and/or have some fingerprints show up on examination that dirty up the narrative they have set in play. Sandra Fluke, even her name is no fluke.
Sandra Fluke is a slut and a whore for the LeftLibProgg sect.
Which makes Barack Obama her pimp-daddy.
After she graduates (if she graduates) she should move to oh, say, Chicago, and should she pass the Illinois Bar (if she passes) she could go to work on behalf of the “community, maybe join a local church or maybe lecture on Constitutional Law. After that, the state legislature, the United States Senate; why, she could be President of the United States ’round about 2032 say?
Reproductive rights activist. Classic.
As if anyone is not in favor of reproduction and is blocking it.
Like you can’t get as much birth control as you can possibly take or roll on for spare change per use at a place like Georgetown–and zero social sanction for using it, might I add, despite the Catholicism.
This fellow Trevino, twittering a lot on Treacher’s feed, notes–quite correctly I might add–that her national media hits on the Today show and others are almost certainly being done in conjunction with a professional public relations operation.
Just like she’s not 23 and not the Ms. Fluke-goes-to-Washington sort, she’s also being professionally brokered and advised, on multiple levels.
Gotta keep the bitches obedient.
Thing is, Roddy, we all know it.
And some of us — those who aren’t too busy shrieking for Rush to stop being so mean to the poor dear (at least, to the “poor dear” she’s being made out to be by the very PR professionals and press of which you speak, that is) — are going to make damn sure everyone who will listen knows it.
Because it’s a fake and a fraud. And we need to concentrate on that — and the fact that individual liberty is at stake — to show just how far the Left is willing to go to dupe you into surrendering what are your actual rights.
Unfortunately, to some, the real problem is that we need to pretend to be respectful of all this bullshit, to pretend we, too, care about “women’s health,” lest we lose “moderates” and “independents”.
That is, we have to operate inside the left’s narrative, or else risk losing elections. After which, if we win, we’ll be expected not to operate outside the left’s narratives, or else risk losing re-election.
And so on.
Also, pace Joy McCann, Stacy McCain is right about feminism
“In a slutopia, all contraception is free.” *
Jeff, just use bhiatt 1 at (very warm) mail dot com
Does email from my (very warm) mail account get through to your account?
I think so, Blake.
test email sent, Jeff.
Anyway, I find it almost surreal the way Democrats set this up with Fluke.
Everything that’s come out about Fluke is coming from the blogosphere.
Every time I think MSM, Democrats and the White House can sink no lower, you get this kind of shit. MSM is happy to push the a fake agenda under the guise of “this is an issue people care about.”
I’m sure MSM is pushing the agenda, because of an interview I heard where the newsreader kept coming back to the contraception issue with Rick Santorum, even though Santorum tried to change the subject to real issues.
The interview went something like this:
Newsreader: About contraception..
Santorum: Oh, that’s just a gotcha question, I think jobs, the economy and national debt are the important issues..
Newsreader: Oh yeah, that stuff is important, but what about contraception….
Damn. Just can’t help myself. )
[…] “Stunner. Georgetown ‘Coed’ Sandra Fluke Is a 30 Year-Old Women’s Rights Activist” – Jeff G., Protein Wisdom […]
Left a comment at Jeff Setaro’s place (pingback above).
Here we go:
@dicentra here’s the reply if posted on my site:
I don’t disagree with you, but I think you’re missing the point, Rush’s comments are a distraction and created a stumbling block for opponents of the Obama Administration’s contraceptive mandate. They helped Democrats and their willing accomplices in the sound bite media shift the debate away from religious-freedom — which we were winning and turned Ms. Fluke into a useful victim.
Dan Foster’s sums things fairly well over at NRO: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/292479/slut-gate-and-gentlemanliness-daniel-foster
Great. Now we’re complaining that the guy mocking the distraction IS the distraction.
By all means, treat the struggles of struggling law students to find the money needed in order to carry-on an active sex life without worrying about the distracion of an unwanted pregnancy seriously.
Only to those who allowed it to. Which observation it just so happens also contains the germ of the solution, to those willing to listen and hear.
“It’s Not About Sandra Fluke, or Rush Limbaugh, or Contraception — Jeffrey A. Setaro”
If this is so, then why post about them?
Notice that my posts on the issue always pointed back to the First Amendment, individual autonomy, and the like. It’s the people on the right who don’t instantly laugh at the left’s attempts to turn Limbaugh’s jokes (or mine, for that matter) into something they never were, out of abject fear over how the left is going to depict them, who provide the distractions and let the left know that, to stop the right, all they need do is dishonestly re-frame the right’s actual arguments.
It’s a form of rhetorical surrender, and it seems we’re simply incapable en mass of learning from the consistent and predictable consequences of such capitulation: the short term noise dies down, but the long term strategy of the left to control us and the cultural narrative remains ubiquitous and strong.
Because we’re largely a bunch of pussies.
Because we’re largely a bunch of pussies.
Depressing, ain’t it?
Joke of the day: Sarah Fluke… So when will Bill Maher apologize to Sarah Palin? Did President Obama call her up? Why no feminist outrage over that? They are hypocrites.
*
Used, from $1.65
Because they provided convenient way to remind everyone what argument is about… And it’s my blog and I’ll write about what I want to. :)
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/03/a_statement_from_rush
And it’s important to note that while he apologized for his poor choice of words, he did not concede the greater point.
Oh jeez… I hit the post button to soon.
What I mean to say was, as an aside Rush has apologized to Ms. Fluke…
Matters not. The story is now that the hateful Limbaugh was forced to apologize to the poor girl he nastily attacked, even though he was only attacking “her” as a way to illustrate the absurdity of her argument.
Yet here we are, she’s the victim: The poor professional activist “girl” whoring for the Dems in an effort to turn out the First Amendment, now a martyr. Because many on our side caved and allowed her to be.
Incidentally, you know who brought a lot of attention to this issue? Rush Limbaugh. And watching a lot of cheap grace accrued by those on the right over the way he chose to do it sickens me.
We are where we are because we’ve already lost, and people like you, sad to say, don’t see why that is — and likely never will.
rush should have said : ms. sandra is not a slut she’s a floozie.
The Capt. Brittles Rule always applies to matters political.
Always.
Dan Foster’s sums things fairly well over at NRO:
Dan Foster’s first point is wrong. I responded to a supporting post at NRO, wherein I say what Jeff essentially says:
I further noted there that Jesus could also have saved himself a lot of trouble by not stirring up the scribes and Pharisees so much, by doing all those provocative things such as healing the sick on the Sabbath, identifying himself as the Son of God, and calling them “whited sepulchers.”
You cannot fight evil politely. You can only lose to it.
@Jeff G. I know exactly what Rush was doing… I laughed, and cringed when I heard it because I could this train coming. All the good work Rush has done on this issue was undermined by one bad joke.
Americans instinctively understand and love liberty and religious freedom, even if they all too often take them for granted, they don’t like it when someone calls an attractive, well-spoken young woman a slut though. We have to realize we’re going to be held to a different standard of conduct than the left and frame our arguments accordingly.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend to support Rush, or anyone else, when I think they’re wrong or framing their arguments in a way that hurts our cause.
She may not be a slut.
But then . . . . . .
She’s not attractive: she’s a lesbian.
She’s not-well spoken: she’s a militant egalitarian feminist leftist of the worst sort, fluffed up by a public relations machine.
She’s not young: she’s thirty years old.
So, I guess one out of four isn’t bad.
Flinching always wins you a minimum of two more punches. It’s a loser tactic. It always has been. You don’t have to double down or escalate but flinching is always a bad idea.
Nor can you fight evil by becoming evil yourself.
We have to think about how our arguments play with the rest of America, whatever else Rush said about Ms. Fluke’s testimony was lost because most people stopped listening at slut. If you can’t see that, then this pointless discussion.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to put on some good Jazz, put my feet up and dive into Tom Clancy’s latest.
Nor can you fight evil by becoming evil yourself.
Insulting the enemies of liberty is not evil.
We have to think about how our arguments play with the rest of America,
You haven’t spent much time around here, have you? The whole decade-long mission of protein wisdom has been to refute the assumptions in that statement.
America doesn’t play much of anything honestly, it’s all about maximizing drama and facilitating distraction. And if you don’t fight evil for fear of becoming evil then you still failed to fight evil. Evil I think generally prospers when its would be opponents are paralyzed with of fear of making a mistake.
In other words, they control us, and that means we have to learn to police ourselves in perpetuity, careful to make sure anything we say can’t be taken out of context and used by those intent on misinterpreting us, because the Left is like the weather, it just is, and you can’t fight the weather, only prepare for it.
Is that it?
If my archives were up, I’d point you to the several posts on Bill Bennett, who tried to police himself, and yet still couldn’t account for where the left would clip his commentary. And predictably, the establishment right tut-tutted Bennett for having addressed a delicate issue in the first place.
To which I say this: if we can’t talk about the issues, we’ve already lost.
Your cause and mine are different, then: because not allowing the left to turn me into a timid, milquetoast bitch who needs to constantly worry about how I’m next going to be taken out of context is, to my way of thinking, the essence of “our” cause. For reasons I have written about at great length over the years here.
It comes down to this: if you allow your opponent to set the rules, they’ve most likely already won the game.
But I’ll be happy to quote you from here on out with respect to this kind of issue: “Rush […] hurts our cause,” says GOP blogger Jeff Setaro.
Actually it’s a quite pointed discussion — mostly about why we allow “most people” to stop listening when the Left, with deliberate political motivation, feeds them nothing but “slut.”
Rather than, you know, showing them that we’re willing to fight for our contexts, or meanings, and our actual arguments.
What’s pointless is trying to teach that lesson to those who have already surrendered and just haven’t yet admitted it to themselves.
Or maybe they’ve just read Camus and thinks the little battles are what matters, so fuck the war.
Or maybe they’ve just read Camus
All I learned from Camus was that when the rats start dying, the Plague has arrived.
Is that relevant? I can’t tell.
It is interesting how Limbaugh can — by his own admission — take a rhetorical wrong turn, yet with that simple conditional come out the other side as potentially “evil” for it, no?
But I’ll be happy to quote you from here on out with respect to this kind of issue: “Rush […] hurts our cause,” says GOP blogger Jeff Setaro.
You’re supposed to leave out the […], Jeff. It’s more pragmatic that way.
“We have to realize we’re going to be held to a different standard of conduct than the left and frame our arguments accordingly.”
That sounds like something akin to what Epictetus figured out. He’s the slave, and they’re the master. So, in consequence, he’d just have to live out his freedom inside his head, and not in the world.
Am I the only one who thinks she looks like a chubby twelve-year-old boy?
No. But just keep thinking it. Saying it is unhelpful. And writing it, well — to the fainting couch!
ot
link
“Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to put on some good Jazz, put my feet up and dive into Tom Clancy’s latest.”
The Cunt for Red Espresso ?
i could see this fluke playing softball with elena kagan
Thinking about that video where that dude walked to various stores outside of Georgetown where they sell contraceptives, I’m thinking that an enterprising and bored individual could devise an exercise routine for this chick that kills two birds with one stone.
“We have to realize we’re going to be held to a different standard of conduct than the left and frame our arguments accordingly”
I found that statement highly offensive! Care to rephrase?
mr. ernst thought i should post this here too
link
jasetaro, the only standard acceptable to the left is shutting up and accepting whatever preposterous policy they propose. You ascribe honest motives to demonstrably dishonest people.
“Care to rephrase?”
Get your mouth shut.
(at the 1:00 mark)
That was part of my point above.
@Jeff G., We’re just going to have to agree to disagree… 99 44/100ths percent of the time I agree with Rush, no one does more on a daily basis to advance conservatism than he does. But he, by his own admission framed his argument badly this time and it hurt us.
As I said I’m not going to pretend to defend when I think he was wrong… If that makes a heretic so be it. :)
yea i just glanced at the fluke’s testimony. hey how about alot anecdotal bs. but she is a slut but not sexually. she’s a prostitute for the totalitarians in the guise of compassion for “wymen’s health”. she can eff herself.
LOL, no… Actually she kind of, sort of, almost reminds me of young Rosie O’donnell. (Did I just say that out loud?)
how does it “hurt us” exactly?
And thats why you’re the problem, not the solution, Mr. Ivory Soap.
Not at all, the only thing honest about the left is their dishonesty.
Go shove an apostrophe.
She is less of a slut, and more of a whore for her ideological homies.
It hurt us by making her the story and choking off all the other counter arguments… which is exactly what the left wanted. If Rush had framed his argument differently he could have avoided or at least blunted the inevitable criticism.
She’s not a slut… She’s a political prostitute who’s only contribution to this entire debate was testimony filled nothing more than anecdotal straw men that helped distract people from the real issue.
FREE DENTAL DAS FOR ALL THESPIANS !!!!!
FREE DENTAL DAMS FOR ALL THESPIANS !!!!!
Political slutistute it is, then.
If that makes a heretic so be it. :)
We don’t do “heretic” over here, but we do have a problem with people who dance to the left’s tune, even for noble reasons.
Please pay attention to the term “cheap grace” in this comment of Jeff’s.
If you believe that Rush stepped in it by saying “slut,” go ahead and send him an email or write him a letter. But publicly distancing oneself from his comment is all too often a type of moral preening, similar in type to the Left’s calling everyone on the right a RAAAAACIST whether they are or not.
It’s a way to let other people know what a good guy you are. And by “people,” I mean “the Left,” plus some useful idiots on the right.
Because there’s no moral obligation for ANYONE to comment on Rush’s language. Rush can answer for his own comments. If you want to comment on the other problems with Fluke’s testimony without calling her names do it, and do it LOUDLY. Leave Rush out of it.
The Left DON’T have a point. As Jonah observed about Breitbart,
More Breitbarts; fewer hand-wringers.
Free…
…
…
slutstitutes !!!
No it didn’t. Here, watch: “why do you keep talking about what Rush Limbaugh said? If you heard it in context you’d know he was joking about how she needs $3000 a year for contraception, yet condoms cost $5 a pack. Precisely the kind of joke you’d expect from a Jon Stewart or a David Letterman.
“Which leads me to believe you wish to change the subject, because you don’t have a solid argument for how this dictate doesn’t eviscerate the First Amendment.
“Is that the case? Are you settling on Rush Limbaugh’s joke because you can’t answer questions about this mandate vis-a-vis the First Amendemnt? Are you seizing on the joke because it covers the fact that Ms Fluke is a 30 year old activist, not some poor college kid? Are you interested in keeping the joke foregrounded because it takes attention away from the fact that Ms Fluke went to Georgetown with the express motivation to force the Jesuits to accept and pay for her worldview — despite their being thousands of other universities she could have attended, had the availability of coverage for birth control been one of her pressing needs?
“What do you have against competition? I thought you were ‘liberal’? What’s so liberal about forcing conformity, taking away choice and competition, compelling uniformity? The answer is, nothing. Which is why you want to concentrate on a joke.”
See? The Left can try to change the subject, but it only works if you let them get away with it. Which our side always does, as people like you stumble over one another to show how above the fray you are.
Were I you, I’d be more concerned with how the Left is always trying to pull this off — and their proficiency at doing so — and look for a way to prevent it. And I submit “not saying anything that could conceivably be taken out of context and used against us” is not a winning longterm strategy.
It hurt us by making her the story and choking off all the other counter arguments… which is exactly what the left wanted.
Again, Rush didn’t make her the story, because she ISN’T the story—Rush’s comment is.
If you want to use his comment to pivot to another subject, please by all means do so, but don’t reward the Left for being hypocritical pissants about “vulgarities” by agreeing with them about Rush.
“Stop calling names, you filthy racist, sexist, homophobic, teabagging misogynists,” they say.
And you, like a good little prole, shut right up.
Sure. Had nothing to do with the pressure he’s receiving. It had to do with a come to Jesus moment.
Bullshit.
What Jeff said.
As my mama used to say, “Any pork in a storm !”
LOL, you owe me a new keyboard, monitor and a bottle of raspberry Two If By Tea… The least you could is warn someone before you say something like that. :)
Mmmmm.
Storm-bacon.
Look, Setaro, you seem like a decent enough sort, and you seem to be encountering Jeff’s line of argumentation for the first time (which, for the record, Rush subscribes to when he tells a reporter, “I reject the assumptions behind that question” and Glenn Beck supports when he says, “It doesn’t matter what you HEARD”).
Nobody likes to be informed that they’re playing by the enemy’s rules, especially people who have been passionately involved in the fray.
And we realize that conservatives instinctively recoil at certain tactics like name-calling and vulgarity and therefore hasten to distance themselves from what they find distasteful.
Trouble is, since the Left’s long march through the institutions (MSM and education), the public has been poisoned by spurious claims about how language works, and the result is that we have adopted a “battered-wife” attitude toward the Left’s bullying.
Like the abused woman, we tell ourselves that if we would just get dinner done on time or if we didn’t make all those other mistakes, we could avoid the beatings.
When instead the we should be rejecting the abusive behavior altogether.
Call it out, call it out, call it out.
And, like Breitbart said, “Apologize for WHAT?”
Their proficiency at doing so comes from the fact all they have to do appeal to emotion. There’s nothing intellectual about liberalism. We have a much harder argument, conservatism is intellectually driven, and unfortunately conservative ideas often don’t play well in sound bites.
The only counter we have is restlessly preaching & teaching why conservatism is better… We can disagree on the best ways to do that, which, unfortunately is one our bigger weaknesses.
She wasn’t really a whore, because she did it because she loved it. Nymph for the Trojan.
I think the best way to advance our ideas is to apologize for said ideas, at the drop of a hat, or the unwrapping of a rubber, in this case.
That and the sinus/ear infection from hell… It’s bloody hard to construct a coherent argument when you can’t see much less think straight.
Anyway goodnight all.
WooHoo!
CONvert!
Daniel Knauf, creator of HBO’s Carnivàle, now Tweeting the following (in chronological order):
Poor man. He’s now receiving the wrath of the Anointed. I told him to go hide at Mamet’s for the nonce and then come out swinging.
the stalinist left is much more “efficient”
< —– #IAmAndrewBreitbart
Insty actually punches down.
Didn’t somebody on the left say something about personalizing (i.e. put a face to it) issues, freezing them, hold them to their own standard?
Didn’t somebody else —this time on the right— say that guy on the left has a good idea, we ought to try it?
I guess that doesn’t work so well for us, since it’s obvious that one of the Left’s standard’s is the Left decides for the Right who gets held to whose standards.
The Left doesn’t care one bit for Sandra Fluke or her aims. What they are doing, and doing very well, is putting forth a shame-baiting premise of a non-issue and is making sure that the Right is ASHAMED to object to the premise.
ms. joan you’re a h8ter
[…] Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Ms. Fluke is a 30 year old with a long history of activism in this area. She was, and is, a fraud. […]
[…] I even have to mention that I’m speaking Sandra Fluke, or, as Jeff Goldstein has labeled her, the ‘supposed “courageous” Silkwood of the spermicidal […]
[…] awarded to Jeff Goldstein for speaking truths many do not want to hear: I’ve been arguing that the US is in the midst of a coup. However […]