Rush Limbaugh has been calling the National Organization for Women (NOW) “NAGS” (National Association of Gals) for a very long time.  So this headline isn’t news, it’s Limbaugh’s continued bullying that should be the news. 

Rush’s sexist, sputtering verbal attack launched at college student Saundra Fluke, followed up with an insincere apology (designed to save the last remaining bit of his over-sized posterior) was transparent and shallow.  The apology’s transparency is bolstered further by Rush’s challenge of NOW President Terry O’Neill statement of the obvious in a speech made in New Orleans.  From Yahoo’s Cutline… 

“Right now it really seems like we’ve got this godsend named Rush Limbaugh who has dropped this thing in our lap,” O’Neill said. “Which is just wonderful. But the road ahead is really not gonna be completely rosy.  We’ve got to be very clear on what the challenges are, and very clear about how we can move our own agenda forward in the current political climate.”

To which Rush responded,

“I thought they were outraged,” Limbaugh said. “I thought they were offended. I thought it was the worst thing they ever heard anybody say.  [Now] it’s ‘wonderful.’  What a political opportunity.  A godsend! The Nags called me a godsend. So not only am I God’s gift to Obama, I’m God’s gift to women.”

Like any good abuser, Rush is still searching for his excuse.   Terry O’Neill nailed it on the head when she talked to Rewire about Rush’s recent, feigned outrage over her comments. 

“He’s using classic bullying tactics.  It’s the old trick of the abuser that states that he didn’t do any harm.  He beat the shit out of her, but she got up and walked away.  So it’s okay now, she really deserved it anyway.”

The fact is that Terry didn’t state what a host of others haven’t already said or thought.  Rush’s comments are ultimately helpful for the cause of women’s equality.  His comments are politically helpful to a pro-choice President Obama.  His comments are helpful in proving that the next step in the GOP “pro-life” agenda is the elimination of all of women’s reproductive options and choices, including contraception. 

It is a victory when politicians or radical right wing misogynist media personalities say out loud they’ve been thinking all along, when they cross over that line of societal acceptability.  It illustrates to the public at large the hatefulness and degradation that is at the heart of GOP policy and the zealots that dominate our airwaves, control our state legislatures and who have been handed a dangerous national platform to pursue their deepest wants and desires for the women of the nation. 

Those wants and desires are perverse…they are desires of subjugation, domination and subservience.  They seek to destroy the “uppity women” of America…those damn dirty contraceptive slewing sluts.  When men with power get too hopped up on their own testosterone and say something stupid out loud, it is a “godsend” and we thank her very much for the gift of their honesty.