What Rush Limbaugh is almost surely planning to say to those who are outraged at his rape analogy.

Rush Limbaugh likes to throw out things that he knows liberal media types will propagate. He knows what gets them, and he's using them to go viral. It doesn't always work out right for him, and the Sandra Fluke incident ended up hurting him, but often it creates excitement around his show and keeps his reputation relatively fresh. People love him and hate him, and that's keeps the old radio show going.

This weekend lots of the sort of people who love to hate him are raging about the analogy he used in talking about the ending of the Senate filibuster:

Let’s say, let’s take 10 people, in a room in a group. And the room is made up of six men and four women, okay? The group has a rule, that the men cannot rape the women. The group also has a rule that says any rule that will be changed must require six votes of the ten to change the rule.

Every now and then some lunatic in the group proposes to change the rule to allow women to be raped. But they never were able to get six votes for it. There were always the four women voting against it, they always found two guys, well the guy that kept proposing that women be raped kinda got tired of it. He was in the majority and he said, you know what, we’re going to change the rule. Now all we need is five."

And the women said, "You can't do that."

"Yes, we are. We're the majority, we're changing the rule." Then they vote. Can the women be raped? Well, all it would take then is half the room. You could change the rule to say three. You could change the rule say three people want it, it's gonna happen. There's no rule.

We've got Carolyn Bankoff in New York Magazine ("a vile, profoundly inappropriate rape analogy"), Amanda Marcotte ("The rape comparison is distasteful and casually misogynist"), and Politico collects the tweets:

Ana Marie Cox, a political columnist for the Guardian US, wrote that “Limbaugh using a rape analogy to explain the filibuster really takes mansplaining to a level I never imagined” — or as ChartGirl.com founder Hilary Sargent dubbed it, “rape-splaining.” Media Matters research fellow Oliver Willis tweeted that “rush limbaugh really games out how you could theoretically vote to rape women. hes just throwing it out there folks,” while fellow Media Matters colleague Todd Gregory called it “dumb, glib bullshit” that “is such a perfect encapsulation of rape culture, it should be put in a museum.” And The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley and Sabrina Siddiqui also weighed in, with Foley tweeting “Class act, that guy” in response to Siddiqui’s comment, “In today’s edition of offensive rape analogy.”

Come on. It's a trap. Don't you know your most basic famous aphorisms about democracy? "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." Usually attributed, probably incorrectly, to Benjamin Franklin, it vividly drives home the problem with simple majority rule.

I'm virtually 100% certain that on his Monday show, Rush Limbaugh will laugh at his critics for their ignorance of the famous aphorism. He can easily point out that he did not minimize the seriousness of rape. In the aphorism, the lamb is killed by the wolves. His analogy substitutes rape for killing, men for wolves, and women for the lamb. Really, it's men who are getting the negative stereotype, so misogyny is exactly the wrong word. A lamb is the very symbol of innocence. And it is killed by those terrible, selfish wolves. Knowing Rush, I predict he'll pivot to a discussion of abortion: Maybe women don't realize that killing an innocent is terrible. Maybe that's why they didn't understand the workings of his analogy.

If he says all this on Monday, I won't know whether I've figured out his devious plan or if he reads my blog. If you're reading this, Rush, feel free to steal my ideas and you don't even have to say: It should have been so obvious that my analogy was built on that old wolves-and-lamb aphorism, but these idiots are blinded by their perpetual grievance. Well, I've got to say that one female saw what was clearly there, and that was the unusually perspicacious law professor blogger Ann Althouse.

ADDED: I do get why people feel antagonized when Rush — who's been taunting feminists for years — whips out a rape analogy and why they choose to exploit the occasion to attack Rush again — as feminists have done for years. I'm explaining a syndrome of baiting, taking the bait, and exulting. Rush doesn't always win, and sometimes both sides win, each in the minds of different audiences.

I know that many people think that rape should be sacrosanct in a way that murder is not, and that it cannot be used casually in jokes and metaphors and that even serious discussions of the subject require advance warnings so as not to inflict mental pain on rape survivors. We use murder as metaphor constantly in jokes and figures of speech, and murder is an even greater crime than rape. I'll bet some readers feel inclined to say: Yeah, but murder victims are dead. But that's my point: We say lightweight things about murder all the time. (And victims of attempted murder are alive, as are the loved ones of murder victims. These people are around to feel mental pain.)

ALSO: I realize that Rush's analogy deals with a more complex scenario than the old wolves-and-lamb aphorism. The wolves and lamb had only a simple democracy, with no safeguard added to protect the minority. The Senate filibuster rule was a safeguard for the minority, and Rush's point had to deal with the problem of using a simple majority to abolish the safeguard for the minority. So if you wanted to talk about lambs and wolves, you'd have to develop the story so that the lambs had believed they were protected by a system in which they could not be outvoted by the wolves, and then the wolves used their majority to change the system and then they outvoted the lambs.

Of course, in the real life of lambs and wolves, there is no system to lure the lambs into complacency, there is no pre-lunch vote, and everyone knows all along that wolves eat lambs and lambs don't eat wolves. The predator and prey are locked into place, and the wolves should never be trusted.

In the real life of men and women, all are threatened by violence, including violence to themselves and to the people they care about, and nearly all men care about at least some women. Only some men — probably quite few — want to be free to commit rape, and it's hard to imagine any man wanting all the other men to be free to get away with raping any women that they want. It's not helpful to try to think about the damned filibuster in these terms because unlike lambs and wolves — where you totally get that all the wolves want to eat all the lambs — there's no reality to the scenario.

So it is fair to say that Rush selected rape as the analogy in order to get a rise out of his usual antagonists, who responded to his call. They were seduced by his allure.

Now, in real life of the Senate, it's quite different from lambs and wolves or men and women, because the majority position switches back and forth over the years and both parties are equally eager to further their interests as they see them and equally tempted to take advantage when they have the majority. The Senate had a structural safeguard that protected the minority and it was always subject to repeal by simple majority. The rule survived because each party, when it had the majority, could picture itself back in the minority. To use a temporary majority to take away the protection of the minority was to accept a risk and to activate the predatory nature of their long-time opponents. In this setting, no one is eaten (like the lamb) and no one is raped (like the women). All survive in an endless political fight that just got nastier.

Therefore we do need some better analogies.

About those "got insurance?" ads from Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education.

I thought these were a spoof at first, but they're not. I didn't think about what was going on until I was listening the podcast of Rush Limbaugh's Wednesday show, and then it dawned on me, not because I looked at it the way Rush did, but something about his take made me see the light.

So here's what Rush said:

These ads are promoting this irresponsible behavior and assuring you that you'll be okay if you engage in this irresponsible behavior if you get insurance.  The ads are designed to convince young people, Millennials, to go sign up for Obamacare....

Rush focuses on this:


He says:

That ad is promoting promiscuity.  That ad is associating promiscuity with Obamacare.  Obamacare will get you your birth control pill so you can get him and you can get her.  And you can get each other between the covers. You don't have to worry about anything because Obamacare's got you covered because you got insurance....

Describing some other ads:

The implication here is that Millennials can be bought by promising them free access to all of this irresponsible behavior -- irresponsible, unserious behavior.

That all they care about, the only thing young people care about -- and maybe this is true since they can't find work. That all they care about is drinking shots, guzzling out of kegs, partying, hooking up, drinking wine at the gym, taking risks, and being irresponsible in general.  But then they're assuming that these same irresponsible, sybaritic, hedonistic worthless, irresponsible kids are nevertheless responsible enough to seek out insurance at the Obamacare exchange. 

No, that's not what I see here at all. Of course, Rush is interested in going back to the Sandra Fluke incident. But my take on this is that what's needed to make the insurance market work is for a lot young, healthy people to sign up for these plans that cover things older/sicker people use. But young, healthy people are shocked at the idea of paying over $500 a month when they have few medical expenses and they've been counting on things remaining the same for a while — the old young-people-think-they're-invincible phenomenon. The ad campaign is the result of brainstorming: What are all the bad things that might happen to a young healthy person?

Most of the ads show imminent accidents. Like this:



The message isn't: Get insurance so you can do risky things. It's: You think you're young and carefree but you really do face risks that could be expensive. The unspoken reality is: We want you in the system because you're the kind of person who's likely to pay more in than you take out. Now, the birth control part is a bit different, because that's a routine expense, but come on. Birth control pills cost something like $20 a month, and your insurance will be $500+ a month. You're not going to get back what you pay in through getting birth control pills free. That's just a cheap come-on.

Young, healthy people are the marks in this game. And maybe these ads help them feel hip and cool, not like those old fogeys who will disapprove of these ads. Well, the oldies are the ones who need your money. Please don't notice!

How not to show respect for the stay-at-home spouse.

On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory questioned various commentators about a report from the Pew Research Center that said that in 2011 women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 40.4% of American families. (It was 10.8% in 1960.) There were some strange statements from "Republican strategist" Ana Navarro:

There has been an evolution in the American family.  You know-- and I think what we have to be as a society is accepting of what couples decide to do for themselves.  There are some people who want to lean in, there are some people who want to lean back and be on a rocking chair drinking a mint julep.  Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect…

So right off, Navarro is portraying the home-based partner as lazy! The old image was lying on the sofa eating bonbons. She's got the sofa replaced by a rocking chair and an alcoholic beverage in place of the box of chocolates. Gregory breaks in with a wisecrack — "Enough about your Sunday afternoon" — and this prompts Navarro — the Republican — to double down on her idea that the stay-at-home spouse is a sponge:

When I say in my house that I want to be a kept woman, the answer I get back is well, I want to be a kept man.  So, you know, that’s not working-- it’s not working in my house.  

Kept woman! This isn't as bad as Rush Limbaugh's notorious equation of free birth control and prostitution. It's actually kind of worse. Limbaugh intended to malign the demand for free birth control. He meant to say that the general public shouldn't have to pay for a particular person's sexual activities. He found a notoriously crude way to say I don't want to pay for you to have sex (i.e., if someone pays you to have sex, you're a prostitute). But aside from the crudeness, the opinion that the group shouldn't pay for the individual to have sex isn't offensive. It's just economics and ideology.

Navarro claimed "Whatever works for every couple is what we should respect," but she said — twice, quite clearly — that the stay-at-home partner isn't contributing. The first image was of someone loafing and drinking alcohol during the day. The second image was of a "kept woman" — that is, a woman who doesn't take care of the house and the children or do anything helpful other than to provide sex! If that "works for" you, that that's something that deserves respect — she asserts — but it wouldn't work at her house, and if she were to suggest that for herself, her husband would say that's what he wants. Obviously, the idea is that the nonbreadwinner spouse is goofing off. So where's the respect? At most, she says, if some other couple finds that this "works," then we should accept that they make their own decisions. Navarro goes on to say:

But I think, you know-- I think, we-- women that work need to be not judgmental of women who don’t.  

But your judgment leaked out all over the place!

I think men who are mister moms need to be accepted by those who are the alpha male breadwinners.  So, I think it’s got to be whatever works-- different folks…

Mr. Mom... alpha male... the disrespect is plain, even as you keep insisting you are tolerant.

"The Rush Limbaugh Program is considering ending its affiliation agreement with Cumulus Media at the end of this year..."

"... a move that would bring about one of the biggest shakeups in talk radio history, a source close to the show tells POLITICO."

Should the move take place, 40 Cumulus-owned radio stations would lose the rights to the most popular talk radio program in the country. In addition, the show might be picked up by competing regional radio stations in Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas and other major markets.

According to the source, Limbaugh is considering the move because Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey has blamed the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. In Feb. 2012, Limbaugh referred to Fluke as "a slut" because she had called on congress to mandate insurance coverage of birth control. The subsequent controversy over those remarks resulted in a significant advertising boycott.

This seems pretty obviously to be a move in a big negotiation. Isn't Cumulus in bigger trouble without Rush than Rush is without Cumulus? I'm guessing Rush is having great fun with this, tormenting Dickey, who disrespected him. What source do you think talked to Politico? Cumulus, we're told, reports its earnings on Tuesday, and Rush doesn't like hearing its financial problems blamed on him. How would you people do without me?