Friday, March 9, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky
BY THIS TIME, anyone who’s interested knows that Sandra Fluke wasn’t just another young law student at Georgetown, but in fact was a 30 year old left-wing political activist who enrolled at the Catholic university in order to crusade on behalf of publicly funded contraception and abortion.
Because the 800-pound gorilla of conservative radio, Rush Limbaugh, made the mistake of calling her a few names, he turned this otherwise insignificant ditz into the media’s idea of a martyr. Unlike Joan of Arc, however, the only voice Ms. Fluke heard in her head was her own, which, being a liberal, she naturally assumed was God’s.
Her sleazy motives for enrolling at a Catholic school aside, she made a terrible spokeswoman for Obama’s war on matters of conscience and religious freedom. Even if you are one of those airheads who agree with Obama that his frontal attack on the 1st Amendment is really all about women’s health, you should be annoyed with Fluke. For one thing, the tuition at Georgetown runs $45,000-a-year, meaning that three years of Law School is running her, or, more likely, her folks, $135,000, not counting room and board. Whatever your politics may be, it’s pretty hard to imagine that whoever is writing the checks to Georgetown can’t also afford to pay for her birth-control pills.
For another thing, she even lied about the cost. She whined that if the federal government, otherwise known as the taxpayers, didn’t supply her with free pills, the three year cost would be $3,000. Frankly, I had no idea if that was true, but to me, the difference between $135,000 and $138,000 seemed rather inconsequential, and certainly nothing that called for a congressional hearing. However, after doing a little research, I found that a six-month supply of Yasmin, a popular generic birth-control pill, runs $89.98, plus shipping. Which means that, instead of $1,000 a year, the cost would be $179.96, and while we all know that shipping isn’t always as cheap as we’d like, it’s highly unlikely that it would run Ms. Fluke anything close to $820.04-a-year.
In other words, while Ms. Fluke is probably not a slut or a prostitute, as Limbaugh suggested, she is certainly a great big fibber. And if I were her parents, I’d certainly want to know why she is leading such an active sex life when she should be hitting those expensive law books.
Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh, in the wake of the media firestorm that greeted his inflammatory words, several of his radio advertisers jumped ship before trying to jump back aboard. However, the biggest problem with reacting too quickly in these situations is that it calls attention to sponsors in ways they’d much rather avoid. For instance, one of the advertisers that leapt before it looked is Carbonite. Before turning the spotlight on itself, all that we knew is that it was one of those companies that provides backup for computers.
But by jumping into the brouhaha, it led some of us to discover that its president is a guy named David Friend, who’s been a generous contributor, it turns out, to the presidential campaigns of Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama, as well as to George Soros’ MoveOn.org. What’s more, Mr. Friend, whose bizarre sense of chivalry compelled him to rush to Ms. Fluke’s defense, continued advertising on Ed Schultz’s show even after that goof referred to Laura Ingraham as a slut.
If I were Mr. Friend, I think I would be making an appointment with a vocational guidance counselor. After all, when you’ve been personally responsible for thousands of Rush Limbaugh’s fans finding a non-Carbonite way of protecting their computer files, it’s time to turn in your keys to the corner office and the executive bathroom.
Next to anticipating Mitt Romney’s victory over Barack Obama, my favorite pastime this year is watching Democrats carving up their liberal colleagues as a result of redrawn districts. I have already written about the blood-letting I witnessed when Rep. Brad Sherman went mano-a-mano with Rep. Howard Berman out here in Los Angeles. The only thing that could have improved the event is if it had been held in an arena filled with lions.
More recently, we’ve had the spectacle of Rep. Dennis Kucinich battling and losing a primary to longtime liberal House ally, Marcy Kaptur. Best of all, in the aftermath, we got to hear him whining about all her dirty tricks.
Frankly, I’ll miss Kucinich. After all, even for a liberal, he achieved notable distinction as a buffoon. As far back as 1977, when he was the 31-year-old mayor of Cleveland, he got national attention when Cleveland became the first major city since the Great Depression to go bankrupt.
During his 16 years in Congress, proving that Cleveland was no fluke, he helped the Democrats do their level best to bankrupt the United States. In 2008, during his bid to win the Democratic nomination, he decided to mention that he had seen a UFO. When skeptics weighed in, he defended himself by pointing out that Jimmy Carter had also seen one. Being Dennis Kucinich, he failed to understand that most sane people would more likely believe that Carter had arrived here on a UFO than that he had merely seen one.
Finally, just when I had given up trying to figure out why, if gold just keeps getting more and more valuable, all those guys on TV are so anxious to exchange it for worthless greenbacks, I started hearing from people trying to get me to invest in diamonds. What I’d like to know is what makes them such a great buffer against inflation. After all, the value of an item is generally determined by its scarcity. Well, since every day, diamond miners are digging up a new supply, and, as we’ve been told for decades that diamonds are forever, it strikes me that their price should be going down, not up. It’s only common sense.
The only thing I can figure out is that they’re waiting for me to invest before the diamond market finally adjusts and the price of carats becomes the same as that of carrots.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.
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