Whence Cometh Limbaugh?

For anyone outside the US, our latest brouhaha (outside of the presidential primaries which are rapidly becoming seemingly endless background noise) is the personal and venomous attack made by a radio "personality" called Rush Limbaugh on a woman who dared to try to testify before an all-male (go figure) panel on contraception. She tried to tell this panel of dessicated elders that hormones are prescribed for a variety of reasons beyond contraception, such as ovarian cysts, endomotriosis, and debilitating menstruation.

She was not allowed to testify before the all-knowing patriarchs determining women's bodily needs--but that wasn't the worst of it.  The young woman, a law student, was subject to several days worth of rant from this "commentator" who, clearly and ignorantly confusing the morning after pill with the daily cycle of hormones, proceeded to call her a slut and a whore who was probably having sex every day (why else would she take a pill every day for 21 days?) and who was expecting that her medical insurance should cover its cost.

Commentary has been hot and heavy on the subject and Limbaugh's show has experienced an out-migration of advertisers (probably temporary as such is the way of the advertising world). There have even been attempts at humor: such as women legislators introducing bills to the effect that if women have to wait 24 hours and have invasive ultrasounds before terminating an unwanted pregnancy, men should have to have 24 hour waiting periods and psychological evaluations before they have vasectomies (which deny birth to thousands of potential children). Such are the follies among us.

I find more interesting the question of where all this hate and venom comes from. Could it be that an overweight, middle-aged man, with a string of failed marriages has allowed his personal animus to propose that the US go back to the stone age and that the women be stoned for annoying the men?

What his ranting reminds me of is the terrible hatred we saw on US TV when the first Black students were admitted to an all-White high school in Little Rock. It was uncomfortable for me to watch White faces, men and women both, screaming at the children going up the school stairs protected by armed guards. It seemed then that nothing would ever change. Now, all these years later, when these same people seen spitting and hissing on TV are contacted, they are embarrassed and ashamed. The world has changed.

I see a similarity between those ugly White protests and Limbaugh's over-the-top spewing of resentment and hatred. What they have in common is the passing of an era that was comfortable and familiar to the people who had felt themselves superior.

WWII began sounding the death knell for segregation. One by one the barriers fell or were kicked down. Segregation ended first in the military. Then it moved into the social realm during the Johnson administration. All along the way, it encountered resistance from whites because it was one of "knowns" that Whites were superior--except time and again it was proved that they weren't. And they didn't like it. What they had grown up believing was no longer true--their lives were no long secure and the things they had "known" and built their lives around were no longer acceptable.

Now, it's the women. How comfortable it must have been when women stayed home and existed to serve. They put everyone's needs before their own. Yet, even then, no matter how exalted "mother" might be in the household, she was a domestic servant regardless of whether she willingly accepted that role and tried to find pleasure in it. Anyone remember Marabel Morgan and "Fascinating Womanhood"?

But WWII changed womanhood too. The women discovered they could work and earn money for it. In fact, they could be independent and many of them liked the feeling. They started protesting and standing up for themselves. They stopped seeing the role of domestic goddess as their ultimate achievement. Many of them sought out education and started asking hard questions. So the revolution started and those who had been comfortable with the old ways, with women in their place, now had the harsh reality of generations of women who could not only compete but seemed to be taking over areas like professional schools that had been comfortably reserved for men. It was no longer easy to dismiss a woman as too "emotional" when she was staring you down in the board room.

In this regard, Rush Limbaugh is simply of his sex and of his generation. The world has changed around him, and he doesn't like it. He represents the angry generation of men who grew up with one idea about women and now find that the women no longer know their place in his understanding of it. But it's not just men. All those women who denied their own talents and saw their role as ministering to their families must be wondering too. Of course, they can't admit that doubt or it would be the same as saying their lives were wasted. They only thing they can do to resurrect their dignity and the rectitude of their choices is to vilify other women who chose another path.

Ah me. All this hurt and resentment and bitterness. The world has changed. The world is not going back to what it was. It is no longer a White world. It is no longer a male-dominated world. We might just as well get on with it and stop throwing stones.