Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney’s favorite GOP leader, has some advice for women in politics: If they ever want to be equal, Nancy Pelosi has to resign as House speaker, over her statement that the CIA wasn’t honest with her in its 2002 briefing about interrogation techniques.
Listen up, ladies. Rush wants you to get ahead. Here’s what he said Friday: "We are going to learn soon, folks, if women are the equal of men. We are going to learn very soon if women can finally break the glass ceiling. And you know what the test is? Let me tell you what the test is. Will Nancy Pelosi resign as speaker of the House? That's the test." He went on to say “if women really want equal treatment," "there is no better benchmark" than Pelosi resigning as her disgraced predecessors Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich had to. (Thanks to Media Matters, whose folks listen to Rush so we don’t have to.)
We know that feminism is a key Limbaugh obsession, and another one also turned up on his show today: Anal poisoning. "Obama knows he's being followed around by a bunch of sycophants who are going to die of anal poisoning,” the big man intoned. If you’re keeping score at home, you might want to know that this is at least the fourth time Limbaugh referenced “anal poisoning” in two years -- he previously said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would get it from "slobbering" over Obama, Sen. Lindsay Graham might catch it due to his closeness to Sen. John McCain, and former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe "will die of anal poisoning because he is so close to drilling Hillary [Clinton]."
I'm a grown woman and the mother of a college student, I think I'm pretty worldly, but I was honestly not familiar with the term or the condition of anal poisoning, so I used the Google. Scanning 24 pages, I found no reference to anal poisoning that didn’t reference Limbaugh. Apparently it’s a condition he named himself, perhaps after one of his sex tours to the Caribbean?
Sorry, back to Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile, the other GOP hypocrite has-been, Newt Gingrich, insists “the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry” into whether Pelosi is lying about the CIA lying to her. "I don't think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," Newt intoned. Let’s get this straight: Gingrich and cronies oppose an investigation into whether the Bush-Cheney administration broke the laws against torture and also lied about it, but they’re pushing an investigation into whether Pelosi lied about whether the CIA lied? I see.
I was on MSNBC today talking about Cheney and torture and I followed Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak mostly defending Pelosi. Sestak said he would be happy to hear Pelosi testify about all of this under oath -- if other parties to the torture scandal were likewise forced to testify under oath. Pelosi’s troubles are at least partly the result of President Obama’s refusal to investigate the torture matter completely. As I’ve said before, if Democrats were complicit in torture, I want to know (although Sen. Bob Graham, he of the OCD-like note-taking and diary-keeping, backs Pelosi 100 percent.)
When someone proves to me that Pelosi is anywhere near as corrupt as her disgraced forebears as speakers, Jim Wright and, yes, Newt himself, I will support her resignation, as a feminist and as an American. Until then, let’s tune out Rush Limbaugh until he gets help for whatever kind of poisoning has infected his brain.
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