Pay Attention to What the Carrion Eaters Say

Eli does not usually get explicitly political, although there probably are not three bunnies on earth who could not guess where the Rabett stands politically (maybe slightly to the right of Bernie Sanders and somewhat more to the left of Barack O), but the recent Limbaugh meltdown has important lessons, and the one Eli wants to teach is don't follow fools down the rabbit hole (the Rabett hole also being a bad place to go).

As some emerging from a week long car wreck may recall, Rush has been forced to apologize (not gracefully) to a Ms. Flake for calling her a slut and a prostitute for supporting Obama's gambit, requiring birth control (pills) be covered by health insurance as a medication/device.  According to Rush

What does it say about the college co-ed 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. That's right. We would be the johns. No! ... Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back.

Eli's barnyard colleague, the Capitalist Imperialist Pig, put it pretty well

The wimpier Republicans are fleeing Flush Limbaugh's little adventure in calling a law student who testified before Congress a "slut" and volunteering to set himself up as her pimp. Never fear, though, little Stevie Landsburg Rushes in where logic, taste, and an understanding of the actual question at issue fear to tread.

Go read the comments at Stevie Landsburg's blog for a taste, but, Eli says, and here Eli is always right, the Pig, and everyone else are missing the real point.

So let Eli tell you exactly how stupid Limbaugh, Landsburg, Lubos and  the jackels are:  No slut, whore, what have you, uses birth control pills today to let them screw about.  Why not?  Have the clowns not heard about HIV??  Birth control pills are no barriers to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Birth control pills as birth control are used by women in committed if not married relationships.  They are also used to control the pain of menstruation and other conditions.  In other words they are pharmaceuticals used to control biological functions.  They are medicines.  Health insurance covers medicines, and if you are lucky enough to be covered, it even covers some for others that you will never use.

This has been another dispiriting example of the takeover of conservatism by the carrion eaters and our acceptance of their framing.