I can't believe I'm writing one of these posts, and I really hate to give this hack any readers, but the Wisconsin State Journal (which leans heavily right, busted its union a few years ago, and endorsed Scott Walker for governor), is still the official paper of record for posting state government notices. They have some legitimacy, but there is no excuse for their printing a column that says:
Really, Rush Limbaugh was right (for once): Forcing private insurers to cover contraception is like paying us to have sex.
I have taken the quote slightly out of context, but only slightly, because the context in which the columnist presents it is phony. The author is widely regarded as a smug, posing Madison newcomer who thinks wearing a plaid shirt in his photo makes him look like a moderate. The Neanderthal attitude he displays in the quote above is couched in a column which pretends to extol the virtues of a healthy sex life by equating the benefits of having orgasms with eating organic vegetables.
He uses a flimsy cover decorated with references to farmer's markets and meditation-based stress-reduction (Gosh! He must be one of those Madison east-side progressives!) as an excuse to claim that the availability of contraceptives is not part of women’s health care:
Women's groups and Democrats tend to frame the issue as one of women's health, while conservatives and some religious institutions see it as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of religion.
It's not so much the former. And while there may be a narrowly focused case to be made that it's the latter, that doesn't mean government is doing the wrong thing.
See what he did there? Of course you do, because you’re an intelligent reader. His amateurish attempt at sleight-of-hand is one reason why he has very few regular readers. Doesn’t he realize that he writes a column in a newspaper published in Madison freaking Wisconsin? This is the home of the PhD cab-driver and the manual laborer who can dissect a logical assertion as fast as she can filet a walleye. For whom is he writing?
I suspect the professors who teach Logic 101 at the University of Wisconsin use his columns as test questions. “Identify the logical fallacies in the following essay.…”
If I were taking that test, I'd start with this:
Feminists talk about "women's health" as if the ability to have nonreproductive sex is akin to the ability to get medication for high blood pressure.
On second thought, I'll just let that one sit there.
Unfortunately for the columnist, nobody cares to read his false equivalencies or his disingenuous lectures on partisanship, so it looks like he has resorted to praising Rush Limbaugh to try to stir up some interest.
Congratulations, sir. You got me to click on your boorish ramblings and your fake, self-deprecating “joke” that your wife called you a dick for writing about this topic. Maybe she should write your column. I don’t know her politics, but obviously she’s honest, and she’s a good judge of character.