The saga of Sandra Fluke (now being painted as some sort of hero to women) is a perfect example of why we needed Andrew.
Her testimony before Congress appears to have been very dishonest. Fluke’s story about her friend who was denied birth control pills despite a medical need unrelated to contraception seems unlikely to be true, and should be investigated — it seems implausible that reimbursement for a product that might be used for birth control would, or legally could, be denied someone with a medical need for it. And the claim students need $1000 per year for contraception is just flat-out untrue; birth control is generally around $20/month, and anyone can buy condoms for a dollar each, in the unlikely event a college student is unable to find free condoms, which cost nothing. And it’s not clear who misrepresented her age as 23 rather than 31, but it certainly gives the appearance of having been done to elicit sympathy.
So, she goes in front of Congress and lies, and the President of the United States personally telephones her and tells her how brave she was. For lying. (Some people the President hasn’t called to praise for bravery: the families of Brian Terry and others killed by the Fast and Furious gunrunning program, Joe the Plumber, Syrian pro-democracy activists). And the end result of all this is that… Rush Limbaugh is forced to apologize for jokingly suggesting Ms. Fluke must be having a lot of sex to need $3000 for contraception.
So, the issue in summary: lefty activist lies, President praises her for it, media pressure causes prominent righty to apologize.
Try to imagine the MSM reaction if in 2004 a male conservative activist, whose age was misrepresented as 23 rather than 31, had gone before Congress and made some statements about birth control so ideologically tendentious as to be outrights falsehoods, something along the lines of “the government is forcing women to get abortions for no reason” or “the cost of abortion to taxpayers is trillions of dollars” and after he was harshly criticized for it by such prominent lefty blowhards as (let’s say) Matt “The world outlook is slightly improved with Breitbart dead” Yglesias, the President called and told him how brave he was. Not only would we have gotten dozens of stories explaining how wrong the activist’s statements were, Bush would have been forced to defend every wild claim the activist had made as though Bush himself had said them.
The genius of Breitbart was that he would do exactly what the MSM would have done in an ideological mirror universe where the right dominated media. That’s why he was so hated, and so effective.
Comments
21 responses to “What Would Breitbart Do?”
Fantastic and outrageous. Don’t forget the part where Laura Ingraham said Ed Schultz called her a slut but she never got a call from Obama. I’m sure there are other examples; reminds me of the post-Giffords conservatives-have-violent-rhetoric Biden-says-they’re-terrorists hypocrisy. I personally think Limbaugh made unwise remarks and set liberals up for easy victories in the public sphere, but the unquestioned misrepresentations and outright lies only serve to further infuriate the ‘losing’ conservatives.
Fluke is a liar and a confabulator and this would be a non-story had Limbaugh stuck to the facts and not stirred up the war on sex people by calling her a slut.
(OTOH, had he called her a liar no one would have cared.) The narrative remains SEX, and for some reason the Republicans keep obliging.
Breitbart would not have focused on the sex, but on the lies and duplicity. I agree that we need him back.
Birth control is not $20/month. It’s $4/month at Walmart and $9/month at CVS.
Condoms are $1 each only if you’re buying onesies. If you’re as active as Ms. Fluke claims to be, you either buy in larger quantities or you’re stupid. Amazon prices for small quantities range from $0.14-$0.33, and it should be possible to beat that.
Great post! And yet more food for my GoogleReader!
We can’t have Brietbart back. We have to take him forward with us.
BE BREITBART!!!
Outstanding. Thanks for that, and on top of a blizzard weekend, it stands out ever more. Well done.
Remember the feminist “slutwalks“?
So what’s Fluke and her flunkies so agitated about when, after proudly proclaiming her slutty behavior in a public forum, demanding a public subsidy for it, we’re supposed to believe that she’s truly indignant when called on it in a public broadcast?
Be Breitbart.
For what it’s worth, I actually met a girl last night who attends law school at Georgetown who also knows Ms. Fluke. She claims the story about the “girl” being denied contraception for a medical need is valid. I had no reason to believe she was lying to me.
However, I still don’t see how this is any kind of outrage. Millions of us pay for out of pocket medical expenses everyday. I don’t see how contraception is any different. And only $1000 a year? If this is such a serious medical condition, you’re telling me Ms. Fluke’s friend can’t scrape together a thousand bucks over the course of a year to buy needed medical treatment? I’m also a law student who’s had unexpected medical bills, yet I found a way to pay for them.
a. Can anyone post a link to the transcript or other place where Ms. Fluke claims she was 23? A third-year law student is unlikely to be 23, so I am not sure why this would even come up in the first place.
b. I looked at the cash price for various birth control methods. For example, Depo Prevara is an injection shot good for 28 days. The drug is about $80 a dose. It also has a 3-month version, but I couldn’t find a cost for that. Where did the $3000/year come from again? Various pills range from, looks like $30/month to about $90/month for the newest/latest pills (Yaz, for example, mostly marketing).
Would someone familiar with DC geography please measure the distance from Georgetown to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic? There are three clinics listed on Google maps. Sandra Fluke needs directions.
Feminism, far from helping women, has actually exposed the substantial negatives of female nature far more visibly than could ever have happened before feminism.
Read ‘The Misandry Bubbble’ to learn more.
[…] “What would Breitbart do?” Dave at Classical Values calls out suspicious claims in the Sandra Fluke hullabaloo that […]
Ms. Fluke’s acquaintance, the cyst-afflicted woman who was allegedly denied contraception for her condition, ought to publicly verify the story.
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Does anyone actually believe anything the institutional Left offers up as narrative anymore, really? They are truly singing to their own, small, choir. Arise, act, advance, they do not truly comprehend (yet) what they awakened.
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dpmaine – The Depo Provera shot IS for three months. There is no one month version. The price you quoted is for the three months.
Even if you couldn’t go to your local CVS or Wal-Mart to get BCP because you couldn’t afford to go to the doctor to get a prescription, you can still order the pills online from a Canadian pharmacy. It’s like $30-$45 for three months worth. This whole tale of woe is so unbelievably fake it’s not funny.
[…] the president only cares about women being called sluts when lefty activists are called sluts by right wing […]
Right on target. Briebart would have carefully investigated each of Flukes claims, and then published the truth, with no moral judgements, hyperbole, or comments about her morals, other than her truthfullness, which would be completely proven in his piece. Then he would watch the left with glee as they tried to defend her lies with more lies.
Rush tried to take the Dan Rather route, and embellish the story with hyperbole, which just gave the left a juicy target. Real investigative reporting, and truth, the Briebart way, is the way to beat the left. The only problem with that is it takes a lot more work for each story, and Briebart was one of the few with the tireless energy to do it. The left can get away with lies and embellishment, we cant.
Fortunately, the left knows they can usually get away with lies and embellishment, so they have grown lazy and sloppy. More good investigative reporters, like Briebart can tear them appart. We will not destroy the left with bombast, we will destroy them with their own words, placed beside the truth.
I don’t listen to Rush anymore. Haven’t for some time as I got burned out on talk radio over a decade ago. Rush was okay, but never one of my favorites. I was more into Larry Elder and Dennis Prager back in the day.
The problem for Rush sometimes is that he tries to be too clever, and it backfires. In this case, in order to marginalize Fluke’s statements, he went out of his way to make the case that Fluke was a slut without ever directly calling her a slut.
Clever, right?
Wrong.
And he’s been called on it.
I don’t blame any sponsor for pulling their ads. Who wants to sponsor a show where the host bullies and denigrates a person for giving her thoughts and opinions before a committee?
In the long run, Rush will be fine and this issue will fade. But due to Rush’s stupidity, the Right found itself on the defense when it s/h/b on offense here. And time is wasted.
Way to go, Limbaugh.
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