A lifetime media ban for Rush Limbaugh for his violent attacks on womens' rights.

Four marriages, no kids? Contraception?

The young woman who addressed the US Congress to protest the attacks on women's rights was called a "slut" and a "prostitute" by Rush Limbaugh, the misogynist and former drug addict.  Limbaugh is a wealthy man, a "fortunate son" as the song goes. He is a mouthpiece for the capitalist class whose interests he serves by pitting one section of the working class against the other.  Blaming immigrants, gays, workers and the unemployed for what is a crisis of capitalism.  Here's a guy who got out of going to Vietnam due to a cyst we heard. His whole clan is an infested mass of lawyers, politicians of the 1% and judges, those who suppress the struggles of workers and youth, bring injunctions against workers on strike or have the cops help the scabs break strikes by crossing picket lines.  He is a multi-millionaire if not a billionaire signing an 8-year, $400 million contract extension with the 1% media propaganda machine, Clear Channel in 2008.

He is publicly opposed by the slicker, more astute representatives of his class for his extreme right wing views that have the potential to threaten the stability of the system and capital accumulation. But many of those that openly oppose him now will, in the event of a deeper crisis and a united mass movement of the working class, not be reluctant to use his special talents.

After Ted Kennedy's death Limbaugh commented, “…he took money from people who worked, used the government to do it, and gave the money to people who don’t work..”.  It's hard to imagine that some workers (white, male workers) give Limbaugh any credibility.  He attacks his class brother Ted Kennedy for his liberal views, supporting unemployment insurance, welfare and other social safety nets that workers won in the streets through mass action.  This is from a man who does no productive Labor.  Limbaugh avoided the draft and produces no wealth in society. He is a social parasite as far as workers are concerned but has too much useful potential to be completely abandoned by the 1% despite their reservations.

I read that some of the advertisers have and/or are threatening to pull their sponsorship of his radio show due to his sexist comments.  The response from the 1% though is pretty mild.  There is no doubt in my mind that things can be said about women by these public figures that would never be tolerated if they were racial in nature. I think Limbaugh would be off the air if he were to refer to a black person in equally derogatory racist terms.

Sexism is still prevalent in many of the institutions in society.  Women face huge barriers in the trade Union movement and socialist groups are notorious for their treatment of women within their organizations while they advocate against sexism in general.  Look at what happened to Don Imus.  He made sexist remarks but I believe it was the racial element that cost him his job. The black population reacts very strongly to these attacks, not simply through letter writing campaigns but in the streets where it counts. The sports commentator Jimmy the Greek was let go rapidly for his comments about black people.

The way women are portrayed in advertising is the offensive and has the most pernicious affect on young women and men in particular.  Some ads are really pornographic.  A country that is is the porno capital of the world won't expose a "tit" on mainstream TV and if someone does, (Janet Jackson although most of us never noticed it) all hell breaks loose.  The ads on that very same media, especially during sporting events where a male audience is guaranteed, are full of sexual content and semi-pornographic-------all in the interests of selling the commodity from cars to ice cream.

On the question of rape, the justice system fails miserably.  Look at some of these statistics that can be found here:

1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape).
17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.
9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.

Lifetime rate of rape /attempted rape for women by race:

• All women: 17.6%
• White women: 17.7%
• Black women: 18.8%
• Asian Pacific Islander women: 6.8%
• American Indian/Alaskan women: 34.1%
• Mixed race women: 24.4%  

Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted.

Here's the math. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey --there is an average of 207,754 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year.
There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year. That makes 31,536,000 seconds/year. So, 31,536,000 divided by 207,754 comes out to 1 sexual assault every 152 seconds, or about 1 every 2 minutes.

Look at the events surrounding the rape of the immigrant woman from Cameroon by Dominique Strauss Kahn. Many men are sympathetic to Kahn and believe he has been  unfairly treated. I am not saying that a working class woman can't lie or falsely accuse someone.  But here was a woman, an immigrant from Africa, a maid at a hotel.  She claimed Kahn raped her.  Kahn is one of the most powerful men in the world. He was head of the world bank at the time. He had the resources and money to have this working class woman's private life dissected in order to portray her as a liar and a person of low morals.  This is the standard procedure when a woman comes forward and accuses a man of some means of rape. It is the reason so many women don't bother, along with the shame and other after effects of it all. Strauss Kahn got away with it. He has gotten away with it many times before---he is a free man.

There is less hullabaloo about Limbaugh's vicious and violent attacks on women than Janet Jackson's nipple that was reported to have been exposed on national TV.  I missed it personally as it happened so fast. When the accusations of rape were brought against Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, this blog argued against any investigation by institutions of capitalism. Assange is not Rush Limbaugh. We called for an investigation by panels independent of the 1%.  Trade Union's women's sections, rape crisis groups and other women's organizations.  The same would have applied to the Strauss Kahn case. Those with money win in their courts.

As for Limbaugh, he should be fired from working in the industry for life. Reagan did that to 11,000 air traffic controllers so there's a precedent.