Things That Make Me Go Ugh

Lots of items in the news have made me groan (or worse) outloud recently.

• Rush Limbaugh:  I don't think I need to do more than quote him to get my point across here:  "What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.  She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps. The johns. . . .  So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch." (source here)  I've decided that the GOP obsession with contraception is actually not a distraction from their lack of workable economic policy but is their economic policy (well, besides protecting the boardroom; see here for great post on private vs. public morality):  if more women are pregnant and have children and leave the work force (because of lack of national healthcare, maternity leave, and/or childcare, which is why these aren't on the GOP platform), more unemployed white men can have jobs, thereby improving the economy.  
• Catholic Church:  Dictating politics to the nation, the Pope has stressed that clergy should increase their opposition to same-sex marriage.  Similarly, the bishops, one of whom has recently be arrested for pedophilia, in this country aren't going to "be altar boys" anymore and are attacking SNAP, the organization supporting survivors of clerical childhood sexual abuse, in a last-ditch effort to avoid legal consequences.  Finally, as you know, bishops have made great waves against contraception and supported the Blunt amendment to resist supporting women's control over their own bodies.  Aren't these celibate priests just a little too obsessed with sex, marriage, and women's bodies?  
• GOP Primaries:  I don't even know where to start here.  Santorum wanting to vomit over the idea of the separation of church and state?  Romney's tepid response to Limbaugh's slut rant?  Support of the personhood movement and the Blunt amendment?  See Dowd or Collins for hilarious takes on these and more . . . particularly Seamus the dog.

I think the only saving grace of these frightening insanities is that I truly believe these are the last gasps of a dying power:  middle-aged, white Christian men of a conservative ilk, and the women who draw their identities, status, and power from them, who realize that they are no longer in control--with a black president in the White House, a female Secretary of State, liberal female Supreme Court Justices, decreasing church membership,and the increased acceptance of same-sex marriage in several states and political polls, not to mention the increasing racial, religious, sexual/gender-identity, and ethnic diversity of the nation.  (I should in the interest of balance, point out that this is not all men, whites, Christians, or conservatives.)  Why else would they contort themselves into such paroxysms of hate and oppression (see here and here for more lucid discussions of this idea)?  They're like preschoolers who don't get their way, who aren't in charge, and throw themselves on the ground kicking and screeching their ridiculous demands.  Except what they aren't fully in charge of any more is women's bodies, civil rights, the definition of morality, the country.  That's a lot to lose.

Of course, with hysterical preschoolers, it's best to ignore the tantrum until they calm down.  But we can't just let these men scream and control everything until they figure out they are no longer in charge (because they won't).  It's our responsibility to put them in time out and contain their damage . . . because trying to reason with them just doesn't work.

Whew, needed to rant incoherently myself just then before the incredulity and anger became overwhelming (so, in that way, I guess I actually understand the far right!).