Stupid and sexist: That’s the Fox way.
Here’s what Fluke actually said:
Leader [Nancy] Pelosi, members of Congress, good morning. And thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation.
My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.
(Applause)
We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.
I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.
Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions.
When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.
And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.
And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard.
Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.
One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.
Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.
And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.
Women’s health clinic provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.
How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics?
These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.
In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.
A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.
Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.
When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.
In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.
I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’
Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.
On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.
Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.
As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’
Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.
Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were
One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.
Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.
Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.
I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.
Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.
One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.
As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’
These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.
In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?
We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.
We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.
We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.
We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.
We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.
And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.
Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.
The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.
Thank you very much.
Fox knows that its readers and listeners won’t take the time to read so many words, and that’s how they like it. It makes it easier for Fox to lie through its teeth.
Ridiculous.
[via Buzzfeed]
(h/t @StopRush)
JGabriel
What I like best about that Mark Steyn column? The date: March 11, 2012.
Republicans just won’t stop shoving their feet down their mouths and out their own assholes.
It’s kinda like watching evil contortionists.
.
Brian R.
Oh, Mark Steyn, you unbelievable asshole.
I should be mad, but if you’re intent on driving all women into the arms of the Democratic Party, then fine by me.
Trentrunner
Keep fuckin that chicken, repubs, keep fuckin that chicken.
Litlebritdifrnt
Mark Steyn is a fucking moron. He makes Rush look like a genius and that is saying something. He makes me ashamed of my nation that it could spawn such an ungrateful twat.
Uncle Cosmo
For a relatively unpopulous nation, Oz surely has far more than its share of flaming arseholes.
Steve S
I’m only disappointed that this is all happening now, rather than in September and October.
goethean
@Uncle Cosmo: I thought Steyn was from Canada?
rikyrah
I’ll say it again…,
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE.
period
Egg Berry
@Steve S:
I assume all this will continue for foreseeable future.
Uncle Cosmo
Mark
SwineSteyn bills himself as a humorist. Maybe to the same extent that the wingnutty “MallardFailmoreFillmore” is a comic.Baud
Obama needs to come out against chastity belts because I don’t think we’ve hit peak wingnut yet.
Linda
It’s hard to figure out why they keep plugging a losing strategy, but think of it this way: sometimes, tomcats keep spraying a terrritory even when there are no mating or hunting opportunities there. Why? To prove that they are still the top cat–in this case, to prove they can still create the media narratives. Too bad that’s not the case anymore. They should have cut bait on this last week, but are too arrogant to use their heads. Good for us.
Uncle Cosmo
@goethean: Jeebus, tough crowd here. Apparently you caught my post in the 100 seconds or so between its appearance & the time I requested deletion, having in the interim looked him up on the Net & realized that when I saw the phrase “I’m writing this from Australia” I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Mea gulpa, mea gulpa, mea maxima gulpa.
Odie Hugh Manatee
What’s amazing is that these idiots want to quintuple-down on this bullshit. That they are killing themselves with women isn’t even entering into the equation.
Oh, right… they have problems with real numbers. I would love to see the imaginary numbers they are looking at that are telling them that they are sweeping up the ladies votes with these attacks on them. Whatever is telling them that this is a winning tactic, I hope they keep flogging this issue right up to the day of the election.
Heck, I hope they keep flogging it after the election!
Whip it… whip it good!
El Cid
She said whatever they say she said; it’s not up to tape recorders or transcripts. Higher authorities such as FOX News don’t genuflect to such things.
Citizen_X
Jesus Christ, what a snotty little fuckbag Steyn is. “Grade 24, hur hur!” Yeah, god forbid anyone should go to grad school to learn, like, law, huh? Asshole.
Roger Moore
@Steve S:
There’s no particular reason to think it’s going to stop any time between now and then. The old game plan was to target the base during the primaries and swing back to center to win the general, but that’s gone by the wayside. Now the plan is to target the base during the primaries and keep feeding them red meat in an attempt to crank up turnout for the general. I sincerely believe that we ain’t seen nothing yet as far as the crazy goes.
Mike in NC
Mark Steyn, shit-eating maggot. Heh, indeed.
jl
@Baud: And he should denounce castration too. That was in the olde tymey arsenal of virtue, especially when a guy schtumpfed far above his station.
I guess the GOP will be dealing with the randy male problem any day now, like informed consent for V 1 * g r *, and filling out questionnaire on why the little fellow can’t get up in the morning or the night. And of course, no
insurance coveragetaxpayer dollars and immoral welfare for sexytime sex aids.But after the GOP introduces that legislation, castration was an old, strong, virtuous, permanent and 100 percent reliable cure, and I am sure they will discuss that option.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
That chicken’s gonna need a truckload of smokes after THAT.
Montysano
@ABL
One of the most chilling moments of Game Change came when Palin’s staff was worrying about her gaffes. Steve Schmidt says “News isn’t meant to be remembered. It’s entertainment.”
Also, too: Mark Steyn is a raging asshole.
handy
@Ben Cisco (mobile):
Best line of the night.
Polar Bear Squares
Like, dude, as a recent broke law school grad, I can tell you a 30-year-old law student isn’t rare. Some people had careers before they decided to do it. To make fun of somebody because they’re 30 (as if they’d give a fuck if she was 25) to me is the height of foolishness and fuckery.
Bruce S
Has anyone here mentioned the fact that Mark Steyn is an asshole among assholes?
WereBear
I’m okay with a long term look; this is the kind of thing that has to build, has to sweep up even people who don’t believe it when they first see it… let it be a subject at summer get-togethers. As the men cluster around the grill and the children cavort in the sprinklers; the women will be talking about this.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
My suspicion is that Republican consultants are running around with their hair on fire because their polls are showing that they’re in grave danger of not even being able to turn out the 27 percenters in November, much less any other part of the electorate, so they’re having to feed the lions early this year and hope no one remembers come November.
Of course, these are the kind of lions you have to feed every day, so they haven’t left themselves any room to pivot back to the center once their primaries are over. And this is a problem, to say the least.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Polar Bear Squares: I started working on the degree I currently have when I turned 30 (tried earlier, burnt out and joined the Navy before trying again). Now he’s just disparaging the part of the workforce that works on their education later in life.
gbear
Any chance that Fluke will be in court suing the pants off of some of these assholes by November?
El Cid
D’oh!
Litlebritdifrnt
@goethean:
He was born in Canada but was raised in England, which is why unfortunately I have to claim him as one of my own (mother fucker).
WyldPirate
The Republican base is incurably fucking stupid. This is why the Limbaugh and Steyns of the world can get away with saying the shit they do.
The sad thing is that the “news industry” has devolved into two versions of “reality”. Not only is it sad, but it is dangerous for the health of democracy.
dogwood
The problem for Republicans is that talk radio jocks and Fox News are de facto propaganda organs for the Party. The problem is when you outsource this stuff, you don’t control it. Limbagh, Steyn, etc don’t really care if the party is in power. They want listeners, viewers, and page hits. The Party base eats this stuff up, so we’ll see it continue as long as there’s an audience for it.
Steve in DC
There are two separate arguments going on here about birth control. One is about birth control as contraception, and the other is about birth control as medicine for other uses.
In the end though they just don’t want to pay for anything. Tossing contraception in via religious arguments is just the start. Hence the entire end goal of “moral issues”, kiss diabetic, AIDs, cancer and a slew of other things goodbye as well. And watch lawyers jump through hoops to find new moral issues with everything.
Ideally we need to break the back of the employer insurance scam and offer a governmental program. But till then, the best thing to do is fight them on everything and tar them as often as possible.
piratedan
c’mon now… they’ll get us all fired up now when it doesn’t matter and they’ll ramp up the 24/7 lie network and not even blink about this. I expect a full out blitz of shit like the Obama girls practice voodoo and that Barack doesn’t even go to church also, too have you noticed that he’s blackity black black? You can only trust the party of hypocritical white men because stfu that’s why. They are the political equivalent of what General Motors used to be, don’t tell us what you want, we’ll tell you what you want and what you should be concerned about. Hell these guys could throw a bucket of shit on the President and be outraged now matter what happened, if he sidestepped it or simply took it and be insulted that he soiled their shit.
I expect all that unregulated money is going to be its own goon squad of non-stop wtf as there is an all out assault on everything from Medicare to Women’s Rights to foreign policy. You certainly can’t expect our media to do anything other search for kernels of truthiness in that stableful of shit that is gonna be tossed.
Trakker
Two years ago this would have sent me into a rage. Today it makes me grin because I know, and they know, the right is toast. They finally overreached, and the best thing – the thing I really love – is watching the classy Sandra Fluke in contrast to the mountain of slime on the right calling her a slut. In fact she’s the anti-slut and everyone can see that.
On the left we have this attractive, wholesome, articulate Georgetown law student whose resume at 30 surpasses almost everyone slamming her on the right, a woman any parent would be proud of. And raging against her are the slimiest piles of wasted flesh on the planet. And this is just the beginning.
This piece by Mark Steyn just screams “yesterday,” but it’s all the right knows how to do, attack and slime, but the “sell by” date has passed on all this and the voters aren’t buying it anymore!
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
c’mon haven’t we all been referring to Ms Fluke as a plucky little 24th grader?
this guy has a command of the democratic hive mind that rivals rush limbaugh’s all time high score on the cpac touchscreen photohunt bar game, carburetor or clitoris?
Rita R.
@WyldPirate:
It’s why they do it in the first place. They know that once their drooling listeners and the rest of the GOP base hear it from them, that’s what they’ll believe the truth to be, no matter what the actual facts are.
That was the master plan, with Roger Ailes leading the way, to make reality whatever they say it is. Conservative postmodernism isn’t an oxymoron.
Steve in DC
@Trakker
Don’t be so quick to write them off. The right often pulls out of nowhere.
At core rich people are still scared as shit that either their taxes will go up, or, short of that we will have a French revolution and heads will roll. They’ll try any tactic to avoid that.
When dividing tactics won’t work, the rich will start acting like Goldman Sachs has and backing Democrats that love banks, and donating to places like the HRC to improve their image. That’s already happening.
Social conservatives might be toast. But the “fuck the poor and non college educated” crowd is stronger than ever.
Gin & Tonic
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
A game with which I am, perhaps mercifully, unfamiliar.
Daaling
sigh, once again ABL Vista edition SP1 takes the bait and let’s the right wing media set the narrative.
Psst, here is a hint. We want it framed as Limbaugh is an asshole that should be boycotted. They are trying to frame this as a moratorium on Sandra Fluke…get it???
Hart Williams
Pre-Reagan they used to say that the Republicans would rather be right than be elected.
Looks like they found their “roots” after a few decades out of the wilderness.
Only in this case “right” is “wrong.”
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
One of the things that just tickles me pink, is the wingnuts whining about the dem framing all this as “A War On Women”, taken right out of the Rove/Luntz handbook for GOP bullshit memes. They can’t stand it, and are too entitled minded to get how foolish and hypocritical they look and sound.
Willard
No fucking way…
looks like the Tea Party wave of 2010 was a GOP death throe, teh stoopid appears terminal.
David Koch
Fuck!
I’m running out of popcorn.
Fucking winger epic fail has triggered a national popcorn shortage.
It’s time for Obama to tap the strategic popcorn reserves.
Mister Papercut
Would that we were having the argument for the second, but these professional mansplainers haven’t engaged on it because they a) don’t understand it, b) don’t actually care, and/or c) have to defend the Grand Old Patriarchy at all costs.
As someone whose sister also lost an ovary for want of proper hormonal therapy (plus I had another friend, who spent her adult life pursuing her education, die of endometrial cancer four days after receiving her doctorate), I would love to have this discussion. Instead, we’re down to “Hurr durr, grade 24 slut, don’t you know you can get the pill at Walmart for $9? LOL women R teh dumb…” How can you even begin to argue with the fundamentally dishonest?
MikeJ
@Steve in DC:
Actually my argument is there is a medicine that has been prescribed by a doctor. Insurance covers prescription drugs. Insurance should cover this medical treatment.
I don’t give a shit if the patient has cysts or can’t get her husband to wear a condom. Not my business. Insurance should cover medical treatment. It’s not complicated.
Nerull
@Daaling: So, in other words, you want one person to take all the blame, so conservatives can avoid losing every woman voter in the country. Focus on one person, and they can simply throw him under the bus.
No thanks. Conservatives seem determined to drag the entire party down with them, we’re not going to give them an easy out.
Steve in DC
@Mister
You are forgetting, they don’t want to pay for ANYTHING. They aren’t going to say that, but that’s what it is.
So how they are phrasing it is “we don’t have to pay for people to have sex”, fine, fair enough. The liberal argument is “but it’s also medicine for other things as well”… instead of admitting that, because then they will have to pay for it they go back to “we don’t want to have to pay for sex”.
That’s what all of this is. Any time a conservative does anything that you think is actually about sex or race, think again… it always boils down to “I got mine and I’m not paying for yours” and then they dress it up as whatever they think will sell.
Keep in mind these same assholes where once social progressives pulling the same sort of schemes just from the other social side of things.
Why do you think they admit they want a moral exception for any treatment? Lung cancer, shouldn’t have smoked, diabetic, sucks for you fatty don’t drink soda, AIDS, shouldn’t have been having sex.
That’s the end game here, not paying for anything.
And do you really think any of them wouldn’t pay for birth control for their own daughters? Of course not, they don’t hate it, they just are freaking out in fear at the thought of a legion of people out there that could make them pay for it for everyone.
Of course these fears are stupid. But keep in mind these are the same assholes that are on record saying being rich doesn’t count anymore because there isn’t enough of a quality of a life difference between the rich and the rest. Because of medical treatments, big screen TVs, cheap plane tickets and steaks for all!
Make no fucking mistake about what we are really at war with.
pseudonymous in nc
Shit Steyn has a long-documented problem with women.
But Fox Nation is Fox News for people who think Fox News is too liberal.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Not really: he got his leg-up in journalism only thanks to that other Canuck in London, aka Prisoner 18330-424.
Daaling
@Nerull: I’m probably just wasting my time explaining this to you but whatever. More entertaining that watching crap on TV.
By even talking about Fluke directly you are losing. The right wing media knows this is how you will react which is why they keep doing this. You will try defend her with facts because you don’t know any better.
But without even knowing it, each time you talk about her instead of what Limbaugh said about her you are LOSING! As soon as the right wing media is able to make it directly about HER, you lost. So congradulations BJ’ers. Heck of a job.
RSA
Steyn starts out:
And a paragraph later:
This douchebag is quoting himself with “young coed”. (Though Limbaugh called her a coed as well.) That’s not the way quotations work.
Also, who calls women college students “coeds” these days? Will conservatives never leave the 1960s behind?
Steve in DC
@MikeJ
Insurance doesn’t cover all perscription drugs by any stretch of the imagination. Nor does insurance fully cover all drugs in the same way. So let’s the cut the bullshit that “perscription” some how means covered, it doesn’t.
Ideally it should, but we aren’t going to get that sort of UHC, which we don’t have and got killed off by this administration.
Daaling
Furthermore let me elaborate some more even though I have about as much confidence this will sink in as I do my dog will stop doing something after I yell at them to stop doing it.
There is a saying the right wing messaging experts (weasels) like Rove have. You attack their strengths. Fluke is our strength so they attack here. Always attack. As soon as you are defending something you have already lost the messaging war before it has even started.
So by being put in a position of defending Fluke..BAM…game over. You lose! The proper response would be to attack Limbaugh. That is what they are trying to prevent. You can still get the satisfaction of defending Fluke but it must first and foremost be about attacking Limbaugh thereby defending Fluke. But you people just don’t get it. Most don’t because it’s not the way people typically react to things.
John of Indiana
If 30 is “middle age” then I must be the fucking Ancient One Dr. Strange studied under…
Steyn should date a 30-y-o. When I was his age (he’s what, 19? 20?) I was enjoying the company of 40-y-o women. Yum!
sloan
So I just checked out Steyn’s website and HOW DID I MISS THIS but his Christmas album is bitchin’:
Oh hell yeah. Gimme some of that full disco Marshmallow World megamix.
Wag
@Steve in DC:
And what happens after they pull out? They hope to God that nobody gets pregnant.
but I guess that’s a form of contraception, so the GOP won’t be in flavor of that.
But the withdrawal method is free. Ineffective, but free.
arguingwithsignposts
@Daaling: Thank you Mr. dumbshit progressive strategist. Now will you FUCK OFF while adults have a conversation.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: I find it fascinating that a person who has zero influence on our politics and cannot vote in this country AND also lives under a Conservative government AND has done nothing to attempt to change this loves to moralize about our politics. Irony works overtime on Derf I tell you what.
Daaling
@arguingwithsignposts: Your handle is a very accurate projection my little furry groupie.
@Yutsano: Hugs and kisses to my most loyal groupie at all. And how pathetic is that?!
kay
Imagine how weird it must be to become one of these Enemies of Fox News.
Does anyone remember the name of a single one of those male religious figures who testified? The Panel?
I don’t.
The next time, more than one woman has to go. It hardly seems fair to let her go out there among these vicious paid jackals alone.
ShadeTail
Why is anybody bothering to try working with this Daaling piker? The level of willful ignorance coming from that user name is staggering, so there’s really no point to wasting time with whoever that is.
different-church-lady
@John of Indiana:
“When I was 80 I had the clap.” — George Burns
arguingwithsignposts
@Daaling: Fuck you, i’m not your groupie, you pathetic little troll. No, wait, i’m sorry, that’s an insult to trolls.
Piss off, wanker.
different-church-lady
@Daaling:
My god, it must be so hard to be you.
Brain Hertz
I really should say something about the “middle aged schoolgirl” jibe; it’s something that I heard brought up last week and it just bugs the shit out of me.
The point being made is that Fluke is a 3rd year law student and (apparently) 30, which it is claimed makes her unusually old (and therefore a “fraud” or a “plant” in some versions). In one variant of the storytelling, reference is made to an MSNBC article which incorrectly stated her age as 23 (this was spun into “…she is NOT 23 as we were told all along”).
Except that 30 is not in any way notable or unusual for a 3rd year JD student. I’m not an attorney, but I work as a technical specialist in a legal team along with many attorneys and legal interns. Although some law students do go directly from a bachelors degree to law school, it’s pretty typical for law students to spend a few years working in their chosen field after graduation (as Fluke did), and then going back to law school to get their JD.
You know what would be an unusual age for a 3rd year law student? 23. You’d need to graduate high school at 16, or a very young 17 to do that.
Steve in DC
@kay in some cases it could help. All the women are now famous, I’m sure the book on food is selling like crazy now, and the law student will have a ton more offers because of this.
It’s comical in it’s own way.
different-church-lady
@arguingwithsignposts: No, no, no, you’re doing it all wrong. Here, try it like this:
arguingwithsignposts
@different-church-lady: i like the cut of your jib.
I imagine it burns all sorts of calories.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: I’m not so sure about that. To wit: El Rushbo.
gnomedad
@Trentrunner:
Just looked up KFTC at Know Your Meme, found this. Ladies and gentlemen, your GOP.
TooManyJens
@Steve in DC:
Exactly. The moralizers who don’t think sexually active women should have their health needs taken care of are being used for cover by the people who don’t think ANYONE should have their health needs taken care of if the Great God Market does not so decree. It’s easier for the IGMFY crowd to whip up outrage about contraception than about, say, diabetes medication, but if they had their way people who couldn’t afford the latter wouldn’t have it either.
People who are generally pro-universal health care but anti-insurance coverage of contraception (they do exist) should be aware that their putative allies WILL turn on them.
Daaling
@arguingwithsignposts: Sweet talk will get you nowhere my little projecting groupie.
@different-church-lady: Ignorance is bliss so yea I envy people like you sometimes.
To all my new and returning groupies. Luv ya all. Hugs and kisses. I appreciate every single time you post about me. It only motivates me more so thanks so much for that.
El Cid
@RSA:
Well, it’s necessary, since male students are always referred to as “eds”.
danielx
Nice, very nice – did Steyn skip his last rabies vaccination appointment? Must be an epidemic of that disease going around right now on Fox. It does cause one to wonder when that whole hallowed concept of “limited government” was raised. Perhaps Republicans could add an addendum. Something like “limited except when it comes to women’s bodies, those irresponsible harlots!” Why not? It’s no crazier than anything else they’ve said. And here poor Ross Douthat spent at least a half hour of his life on today’s column about how Republican voters and Presidential candidates aren’t really crazy.
According to Ross, “…given their options, Republican voters have acquitted themselves about as sensibly, responsibly and even patriotically as anyone could reasonably expect.” Given that Republican primary voters had exactly the options they wanted, I might add. If they’d wanted what passes for a Republican moderate these days they could have had him, or her, or it. They didn’t.
Well! Nothing else to be said about that – Ross is undoubtedly correct, Republican voters have acted about as sensibly and responsibly as anyone could expect from Republican voters. However, it’s been clear for a while now that crazy as a shithouse mouse is about as much as one can reasonably expect from Republican primary voters. Which is pretty much what that last sentence implies if you want to read it that way (note: I do indeed want to read it that way).
1. Ross is of course completely full of shit – Republican primary voters got candidates who sound or are mean, crazy and/or stupid because that’s what Republican primary voters wanted. From taxation to budget cuts to other people’s naughty bits, they wanted mean, crazy and stupid and that’s precisely what they’re getting. However, this is Ross’s job and he’s not to be blamed; putting polish on shit is what he gets paid for and a nice gig it is too.
2. I can’t bloody believe he actually used that particular phrasing in the last sentence, without stopping to read it through, twice and thrice. Ross just might want to pass his column past an editor before he hits the ol’ publish button. Eliminate the ambiguities, boy! Else in the last sentence of your column you might unintentionally make it sound like Republican primary voters are mean crazy assholes. We certainly wouldn’t want that…
imbrium
@Daaling:
Yes I do. And they lose on that moratorium.
I read Hotair, Freep, redstate and a few others. I’m well aware they’re all patting themselves on the back with glee about how brilliantly they’ve won this round. I know they think the “Fluke = Flu*k” is a huge win for them…I’ve seen more iterations of this viewpoint than I care to remember.
They are wrong. Yes, no one should let up on the dickishness of RL but every time they mention her name, an orgasm of anti-female hate ripples across the right wing blogosphere. And they are empowered even more, promising to go tell it to their female relatives and coworkers while drowning in a sea of testosterone fueled approval.
They are not winning by debasing Sandra Fluke. We are not losing by defending her. Rush being an asshole is about a novel a discovery as the wetness of water.
different-church-lady
@Daaling: It’s your life. If this is how you want to squander it who are we to judge?
JGabriel
@RSA:
Porn video producers.
.
Down and Out of Sài Gòn
@Uncle Cosmo: don’t sweat it. Steyn may be from Canada, but Murdoch is from Australia.
brantl
@Daaling: You’re trying to frame it as you’re a genius, and that’s not selling, poor dear.
Patricia Kayden
@Daaling: Your English is not good.
Djur
Someone who uses “moratorium” to mean “referendum” is looking down his nose at the intellects of BJ commenters? Get real.