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Sunday, October 4, 2009

Exceptionally strong promotion of traditional gender roles on the Rush Limbaugh show.

This phone call on the Friday show really struck me. I didn't expect Rush to go along with this as much as he did:
RUSH: Tina in Oklahoma City Oklahoma, great to have you on the program.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush great to be on the program and mega dittos from my husband David and our 11 homeschooled Rush Babies.

RUSH:  Thank you.  Eleven?

CALLER:  Eleven yes, every day we listen to you.

RUSH:  Mama.  Mama.  Well, I figure that took, let's see, 11 kids, five minutes, 55 minutes, 11 kids.
So Rush is on a comic track. With 11 kids, she has had sex for at least 55 minutes. Maybe her husband is still not a 60-minute man.
CALLER:  Something like that.

RUSH:  Couple cigarettes in between.

CALLER:  No, not in this house.

RUSH:  (laughing)  Yeah.  I hear you.
He's still going with the funny and she brings him up short. No, not in this house. Righteously puritanical.
CALLER:  Well, I am changing the subject.  You had been discussing recently about why women are unhappy?

RUSH:  Well, I've been reporting that there are people in the media studying why women are unhappy.
(Link added by me.)
CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  Yes.

CALLER:  Yes.  And I have been listening to that, and since the first time I heard you mention that, I knew the answer.  I was in the car with my 18-year-old son on Tuesday when you were talking about that again, and I looked at him, and I said, "I know why women are unhappy.  Do you?"  And without skipping a beat, he said, "Yes, because they're stepping outside of their God-given roles."  And I think he hit the nail on the head.  And in saying that I'm not saying it's a lesser role, it's a different role, and I think that women were designed and created to nurture babies, to love them, to educate them, to teach them to achieve their full academic potential, to love their fellow man, to become entrepreneurs, and I think that they're stepping outside of that and pursuing roles and stuff that just leaves them empty.

RUSH:  I have a hard time disagreeing with this.  Look at Hillary Clinton.
Now, I'm looking at the podcast, and this came at the very end of the 2d hour of the show. He needed to go, but he let her finish. Unable to articulate an opinion separate from hers, he made the slightly hedging "hard time disagreeing" statement then jumped for the cheap Hillary Clinton joke as he ran smack out of time.

But there it was. The old-time gender roles ideology, straightforward, unapologetic and unopposed. Served up hot. By a woman with 11 kids.

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