Limbaugh's Latest Effort To Deflect Attention From His Misogyny

Rush Limbaugh, embattled talk show host and serial misogynist, spent a good chunk of his show pretending that Democrats are the real misogynists.

Limbaugh played a small portion of comments Democratic strategist Karen Finney made on March 13 discussing the Republican primaries in Mississippi and Alabama, in which she talked about the role identity politics sometimes plays in elections. While Finney's comments were in no way controversial, Limbaugh mischaracterized them as evidence that the Democrats were the ones engaged in a “war on women.”*

This is a transparent effort to deflect attention from Limbaugh's three-day long rant against law student Sandra Fluke for daring to speak out in favor of insurance coverage for birth control. During that rant, he called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” and demanded that she post sex videos in return for contraception coverage. Having lost so many advertisers due to his misogyny, he's desperate to change the story.

To say nothing of Limbaugh's other recent misogynistic attacks against author Tracie McMillan and reporters Lucia Mutikani and Alexandra Petri.

But Limbaugh still wasn't done trying to deflect attention away from his own war on women. During the show, Limbaugh attempted to paint Democrats as anti-woman because they had nominated Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008. Limbaugh argued: "[W]hen it was her turn, when she was to be rewarded, what did they do? They got rid of the woman, as quickly as David Ehrenstein could write a column in the L.A. Times entitled 'Barack The Magic Negro' and she was history." Limbaugh also said: “From the party of women -- women are so important to the Democrat Party, Hillary Clinton was going to get the nomination. And then they took it away from her. Barack Obama.”

That's right. Forget Limbaugh's on-going misogyny. (Today he actually suggested he can't be anti-woman because he judged the Miss America pageant once.) Democrats are actually the misogynists because they nominated Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

The language in this post has been updated. Media Matters regrets the error and apologizes to Ms. Finney for the lack of clarity in explaining that her comments are in no way comparable to Limbaugh's.