Brandon Ferdig responds to Mark Greene’s post on Rush Limbaugh
First let me say this: I’ve written here before about how fear is an integral part of the arguments for any particular issue. As a reader and contributor and as someone who wants to see this site provide inspiring content to help men be better men, people be better people, I’ve called out this fear when I’ve seen it.
In this spirit, I have written this response to Mark Greene’s article: Rush Limbaugh Finally Sh*ts the Bed.
***
The incendiary comments recently made by Rush Limbaugh aren’t appreciated by most people. For those who do support Limbaugh’s comments, Mark Greene was perceptive to note that the people it brought out of the woodwork were those men who are tortured with fear of women and/or sex and so release this anger in verbally abusive ways toward the likes of Sandra Fluke.
I’m glad Mark brought this point up. Indeed, it is a terrible fear that these men project, and by giving it the light of day hopefully it may hasten its eradication—for the benefit of the women who are targeted and for the men who embody and suffer with it. May they be Good Men someday soon.
Unfortunately, Greene’s reactivity to Rush Limbaugh took his piece to harmful places: misinformation, alienation, and bigotry. So I write this retort to shed some much needed light on this one-sided, emotion-laden article.
The harm starts with the misinformation. Greene writes that Fluke is not asking for people to “buy her birth control”.
But, she is. By asking the government to force her college to offer birth control as part of the health insurance package, she’s forcing the plan to be more expansive and expensive which all policy holders will have to help pay for. Rush is wrong in saying that she’s making the taxpayer pay for it, but all the other students (as well as anyone else) who are on the plan will have to.
Greene then refers it as “A reasonable request.”
But that depends. It’s not reasonable if it’s simply for birth control. Health plans don’t pay for condoms.
Third, Greene suggests “These guys want to take away birth control”.
This is false. How is Rush or “The Republicans” taking anything away? What they are saying is that they don’t want to pay for it. This is not theft in the least bit.
Second, the kind of hate—the fear—that I addressed in my recent piece “The New Bigotry” is also featured in this piece. The most distressing line Greene writes is, “…my favorite part: It’s all being linked to the Republican Party.”
Oh goodie.
Greene is giddy here not because he hopes to see a better world but simply because he wants to see “Republicans” fall. When you seek to subtract, but not add or replace, the situation doesn’t improve. With no Republican what you do get is the current White House which advocates an escalating wasteful and bloody drug war—which has led to the death of thousands of innocent lives in Latin America, the incarceration and indefinite detention of those not even charged with a crime, and a drone attack program that has killed hundreds of innocents in the Middle East.
And if no Republican was offering a better solution to these problems, I’d not bring this up. But the fact is, the only presidential candidate making these deadly issues known to American living rooms hails from those Republicans who Greene wishes to see go away. By making this piece so political, Greene is (probably) unknowingly asking that no one challenge the nation’s leadership on these vitally important issues.
Lastly, Good Men don’t alienate an entire population because of who they vote for. Again, by rooting so ardently against the GOP, he puts his politics ahead of being helpful.
I don’t like Rush Limbaugh. I’m glad people don’t stand for the kinds of things Limbaugh says. I’m even more inspired that Greene identifies a fear in these “rageful” men that I hope can be eliminated.
But I also have distaste for intellectual dishonesty—especially when it belittles an entire swath of people. I’m writing this in the hopes that it will put the brakes on a dangerous trajectory Greene’s article endorses; don’t make the same mistake Limbaugh’s listeners make: getting riled up and drastically over-compensating for what you dislike, causing you to toss out logic, sensibility, and good nature.
Read Mark Greene’s “Rush Limbaugh Finally Shits The Bed”
Photo: AP/Chris Carlson
Tanya. That would be a good idea for many of the commenters. They’d learn something about health insurance policies.
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Signe I was referring to the situation prior to Obamacare. A question is what the assessable payment is. If it is substantially, or even slightly, less than an insurance premium, the ER will likely choose that route. That means te EE will be going to whatever government program is available. In other words, a mechanism for reducing or ruiining private insurance companies–see rep. Jan Schakowsky who says that’s a goal–and right-next-to forcing people on to the government plan. My recollection of the fine for individuals not having insurance is that it is a fraction of an individual or family premium.… Read more »
Signe. Employers are not required to offer health insurance. It’s a choice they make, usually under pressure to get and keep employees, or as a matter of union negotiation. For employers, it’s a better deal to provide health insurance than to pay extra salary and have people buy their own. Health insurance premiums paid by the employer are a deductible business expense and they are not reportable to the employee as income. No taxes at all. Should the employer wish to take the salary route, things change. Say the group premium for a family is $400 per month. Depending on… Read more »
Richard: Absolutely agree with you about the “loss of the buy-sell connection between patient and provider.”
To clarify, I should have said “will be penalized for not providing insurance ” rather than “be required to provide insurance.” It was my understanding that under the Affordable Care Act employers with 50+ FTEs will have to provide insurance coverage or make an “assessable payment” for every FTE beyond the first 30. If I’m misinformed on this please let me know.
The 1942 Stabilization Act limited wage increases by employers but allowed the adoption of employee insurance plans to attract workers. As a result of decades of employer-sponsored insurance we now have limited options: take what your company offers or pay substantially more to purchase insurance elsewhere. My company offers five separate policies with almost exactly the same benefits and options; certainly nothing similar to my high-deductible car insurance or a catastrophic coverage policy. To me the question isn’t whether a religious institution should be required to provide insurance covering temporary or permanent sterilization; it’s whether employers should be required to… Read more »
That guy.
What help is needed? BC is cheap. You don’t need help. It isn’t the money and conservatives are not going to follow you on dates with spare condoms in case you were too broke, or too forgetful, to have some on hand.
Last I heard, liberal women are having kids at below replacement rate, somewhere about 1.5 per woman. Conservative women are replacing themselves, 2.1-2.2 per woman, and conservative Christians at about 3.0.
So, thanks for the offer, but we’ll just stand by and watch.
Six consecutive articles defending Obamacare, obfuscating the truth, silencing the righteous, and promoting divisive misinformation.
How can feminists pretend like they are interested in dialogue? Your anti-male campaign is as transparent as it is horrifying.
Anthony I suggest you take a look at your choice to attack instead of engage. It’s just another form of brutality. Something you insist you oppose.
Our society already treats pregnancy like a medical problem requiring a hospital intervention. You can now schedule a C-section so your baby is born on a specific day and time. We treat pregnancy like a dangerous condition requiring close medical attention. Well, if we’re going to continue to look at it like that, then let’s be consistent. Let’s treat birth control as medicine designed to prevent an operable medical condition. Prevention of pregnancy sounds to me like a perfectly acceptable solution to a dangerous medical condition. If we let people take pills to prevent the onset of a dangerous condition… Read more »
“are useful as they are” (as useful as they are) was meant.
Mark. Whiney. Right. Anyway, your outrage regarding the Maher and Schultz lack of civility hasn’t yet appeared. Sometimes the net just is kind of slow. Hate when that happens.
The planted axiom is that if women, who have up to now, been paying for their own BC and racking up whatever birth rate they’ve shown, suddenly find they are paying for their own BC because the catholics won’t are going to start having babies at a much higher rate than before, when they had to pay for their own BC.
Amazing.
For the birth control advocates- What is your goal here?
1. Do you want to provide all women with some form of access to affordable birth control?
-OR-
2. Do you want to force the Catholic Church to include birth control in its institutions’ insurance plans?
These are 2 VERY different goals and speak to 2 VERY different agendas. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the first but I am in obdurate disagreement with the second.
Oh, yeah. And Greene’s outrage about namecalling and civility doesn’t extend to liberals doing it to conservative women. I bet he doesn’t think anybody’s noticed.
Watch your tone Aubrey, you’re starting to sound a little whiney. LOL
You seem to have all the answers Aubrey. You seem to know the system so well. What bothers me though, it’s your clear lack of respect for other people’s thought process. However it does not surprise me because you also seem to be very set on your ways of seeing the world. I’ve seen your posts all over this website and I’ve been trying to understand who you are because you very much embody -in my humble opinion- the old guard when it comes to men’s values. There are things I admire about your take on things and the most… Read more »
Adsum. I do better with shorter sentences. Among other things, the old guard of men’s ideas has to be demonstrated to be completely wrong instead of needing updating. WRT the church and war. As I said elsewhere, presuming the mods didn’t eat it, the RC is a Just War church–see Augustine and Aquinas–not a pacifist church. That said, the American bishops oppose any war not fronted by outrised, upraged peasants brandishing AKs. I’m defending the right of the church not to have to pay for BC in their insurance plans if they think it’s immoral and by extension the intrusion… Read more »
Greene still hasn’t figured out that money coming out of a health plan means money going into a health plan. IOW, paying for it. Increase the money coming out means increasing the money going in. IOW, paying for it.
Either he’s absolutely clueless, or he’s hoping his readers are.
Aubrey KNOWS that when a health insurer provides free birth control it reduces the overall cost of a health insurance by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. This means overall savings for the plan.
Read about it here: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/02/14/why-free-birth-control-will-not-hike-the-cost-of-your-insurance/
But he continues to state otherwise because he actually supports abstinence for all unmarried adults and feels a little silly admitting it publicly.
Dear Brandon, First and foremost, I want to thank you for the civility with which you have addressed your concerns about my article. The tone you have used in addressing my comments has dialed down the reactivity here. So thanks. Furthermore, I’m willing to cop to my tone as divisive. However, I made the conscious choice to go after Rush Limbaugh because I’m responding to a major voice in the media who I believe has had far too much influence on the kind of country I live in. Furthermore, its an election year. I freely admit that my comments reflect… Read more »
“Ms. Fluke does not want “somebody else to pay for her contraception” any more than I want “somebody else to pay for my allergy pills”. What we want is for the services we value to be part of our health coverage as we are paying into a risk pool and we would like for our preferred preventative care to be covered. By speaking out, Ms. Fluke wants to encourage all of us to arrive at a public consensus that says birth control is considered of value to enough people (NOT 100%) but enough people that it is included in the… Read more »
Hey Mark, Thanks for the reply. I especially like this paragraph: “It seems to me that there is a time for consensus building and a time to make your case. In many cases, I can see two sides of a political argument. But in this case, I do not. And when I do not, my course of action becomes clearer. Women who are advocating for access to birth control should not be shamed and called sluts for doing so.” From the points made here, I can understand where you’re coming from. But I will say there’s more to the opposition… Read more »
Thanks to you as well Brandon. I’m quickly gaining a healthy respect for civil discussions.
How is it not a reasonable request? If insurance covers other prescriptions, why should birth control be exempt?
I am disappointed in this article. I realize it is your opinion, but I don’t see how it adds anything to the discussion besides more confusion that have already been addressed in the comments section on the previous article.
Why should birth control be exempt indeed. The only reason I can see is that it’s related to women controlling their own bodies. And men wonder why there aren’t more BC options for men! Just you wait fellas! We’ll get a male pill on the market so that all the folks het up about needing to truly control their reproductive choices are finally getting what they want and then see how the Church reacts. You won’t be happy then when your decision to not procreate is challenged. either make oral bc over the counter and inexpensive or cover it just… Read more »
Artemis. The request is reasonable, if the BC were free and if the catholic institutions didn’t think it was morally wrong.
The issue is forcing catholic institutions to pay for it. Nothing more.
What the catholics actually think about the entire issue of BC is a separate issue. Right now, the issue is forcing the catholic institutions to pay for it. Nothing more.
What men, or a bunch of probably non-existent scaredy cat men, think about it is irrelevant. It’s about paying.
Period.
You say they are being forced to pay for it, yet Obama already offered a compromise in which the insurance companies would cover the cost if the Catholic companies were reluctant to pay.
And I don’t think it’s moral to deny certain people certain prescriptions just because you feel like it. What now? Conflicting morality, huh?
So if an employer is morally opposed to blood transfusion for religious reasons, they should be allowed to deny paying for insurance that covers treatment the may involve blood transfusion?
(yes, there are religions with that view. It’s not a theoretical example)
Brandon. There may be other reasons for the name calling. Like using her supposed sexual activity as a prop for making what some see as a change in the politics of health care. As it happens, Every Single One of the poster childs hauled out by dems as tear-jerker support, going back to Hillary’s first attempt, has been a fraud. Every. Single. One.
If unsupported accusations are de rigeur these days, or at least wrt this subject, do you think Greene is on retainer?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/02/peter-schweizer-big-pharma-s-role-in-the-contraception-debate.html
“But that depends. It’s not reasonable if it’s simply for birth control. Health plans don’t pay for condoms.” This is really where I want to focus my comment…cuz I have heard this mentioned a few times, and I’d like to highlight some differences between condoms and contraceptive pills. Birth control pills are not over-the-counter. I cannot walk into a drug store and pick up a box for £10. Birth control pills are not handed out at college functions for free, or sitting in a basket in a sex-toy shop. I am too old for free birth control from a teen… Read more »
Absolutely spot on. BC pills only work if you take them every day, consistently, month after month, and for that (or Nuva Ring, Norplant, IUD) you need a physical exam at least once a year and a prescription. Which insurance covers. You cannot buy BC pills the same way as condoms. They don’t work the same way as condoms. They are part of a prescription plan for prevention of pregnancy, and other various pre and post menopause symptoms, as well as endometriosis, and other issues pertaining to menstruation. If BC pills were as easily and cheaply available as say condoms… Read more »
Julie. Missed the point. This is not about protesting or prohibiting any use. It’s about the catholic institutions paying for it. Or not.
My understanding was that Obama created an out for the institutions yes? Why the hang up? That the money from the institution is going to a company that offers the service to begin with? I don’t like the idea of any religious entity controling a private agency. Or am I missing something in all of this. Serious question, Aubrey, not snark. I don’t have time for snark today.
Julie. When you purchase something–as in insurance–you get to choose what you want to purchase. That might be considered control. The catholics are trying not to be forced to purchase coverage for BC. They aren’t trying to force anything else on anybody else regarding this issue. Labeling something an “out” doesn’t make it an out. If the companies say they’ll provide the coverage at no cost to the catholic institutions, that’s not an out. What it means–one of my last names is CLU–is that they expect to be paying out incrementally more so they’ll have to charge more. The only… Read more »
I guess that if this was a perfect system, the Catholics would have their own insurance companies only for the institutions that are Catholic. And then they’d leave the rest of us out of it. It makes no sense to me how your (your meaning anyone upset by this) soul could be affected by some pennies that might be getting paid to a company that is servicing everyone on a number of levels. And no one ever answers the question…if the Catholic Church gets to do this (kick out a type of coverage based on moral issues), what about the… Read more »
CLU means he knows a heck of a lot about insurance and how it works…
Julie. They are leaving you out, unless you happen to be employed by a catholic institution. They aren’t insisting contracts for other employers not cover BC. Funny you mention other religions. There was a report about how the BBC treats various religions in its reporting. One of the Beeb’s shooters said they take letters seriously which begin, “I must protest in the strongest possible terms” but they take letters that start “I must protest in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47” even more seriously. So, yes, the BBC treats Islam more gently than it does other… Read more »
Julie makes a crucial point here. “Birth control” pills are also prescribed for other medical uses besides trying to prevent pregnancy. They are used as medicine to treat various uterine and ovarian problems, just as one might use medicine to treat an enlarged prostate. If insurers can refuse to cover prescription drugs just because the drugs have a negative effect on fertility, then that sets up a precedent for denying all sorts of medical coverage. An insurer could get out of covering ANY drug that might decrease fertility, for the same reason. Some things are exclusively for birth control, but… Read more »
Thanks, Heather. I was wrong to compare birth control pills to condoms for the reasons you gave.
ref. Fear. Two points. One is that it is a dishonest tactic to discredit a legitimate negative opinion by calling it “fear” and thus dismissing any actual argument. The other is where do you find these guys scared shitless of women’s sexuality? Or do we have a closet full of straw men to be hauled out as convenient? Now, I understand you may want to call one opinion or another with which you disagree “fear”, but, as Lincoln is supposed to have said, calling a cat a dog doesn’t make it one. In addition, the tactic is so transparent that… Read more »
“Greene is giddy here not because he hopes to see a better world but simply because he wants to see “Republicans” fall. When you seek to subtract, but not add or replace, the situation doesn’t improve.” This is the evidence that Greene leads with fear. He obviously fears them or wouldn’t be pleased with their demise–which he also jumps to in a radical conclusion. His fear of “the Republicans” leads to his irresponsible wish to see them all fall. And I’m discrediting his article by pointing this out. I’m also comfortable calling the comments made by the “scared” men the… Read more »