Dylan Byers at Politico reports that in an effort to reignite their cartoonish “war on women” narrative, the Democratic National Committee has sent an email to supporters asking them to push Republicans to stop appearing on the Rush Limbaugh show – which is a little strange, since Limbaugh rarely has guests.
Limbaugh made a crack about a man saying "Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?" Don't try that at the company Christmas party, but DNC deputy communications director Lily Adams broke out the consciousness-raising narrative, but at no time did the Politico media reporter wonder if Adams and the DNC ever sent an e-mail insisting Democrats should avoid appearing on the Martin Bashir show after his despicable suggestion that Sarah Palin deserved for someone to urinate and defecate in her mouth:
"There’s a line between casual but unacceptable sexism and justifying sexual harassment. When someone as prominent as Rush Limbaugh crosses that line, everyone — Democrats and Republicans alike — needs to stop the precedent from becoming habit," wrote Lily Adams, the DNC's Deputy Communications Director.
The statements in question: Limbaugh's remark that men shouldn't be criticized for staring at women's breasts, but should instead tell women, “Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?”
"[T]he DNC's now fundraising off of this, claiming that this is a new chapter in the War on Women," Limbaugh said on his radio program. "They are gonna get money off this. Do you understand, this is the whole point of the story. There are people on the left, these wacko nutcase oddballs, this is all over the leftist blogosphere as genuine sexism."
Limbaugh said the liberals wanted to kill his show again: "I've done it again. They think they can get me now. This is it. I have stepped in it again, and they can finally get me. They think this is one of the most offensive things that's ever been said in public, and they want advertisers to know it, and they want everybody know it, and they want everybody in the RNC to boycott me. They think this is absolutely horrible."
Meanwhile, why can’t reporters challenge the Democrats to compare this contrast to Martin Bashir? Try reading through the Lily Adams Twitter feed full of DNC talking points, and see if you can find a single mention of Martin Bashir’s Palin-deserves-a-poop-in-her-mouth remarks. I can’t find a single tweet.
Adams did retweet praise for the Democrats creating a site called YourRepublicanUncle.com to put spice in the Thanskgiving table repartee: “The DNC's canned responses are smart, and at times funny: multiple of the suggested replies involve telling your uncle that he should stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.”
Here’s some context for the original Limbaugh joke, from Monday, December 9:
It is said that men looking at women automatically "objectifies" them, which means puts them down. It means sees them as less than human beings, that men "ogle" women means that they are not seeing their brains. Remember when we used to laugh? We used to laugh and make jokes about the thought police, and here they are. You're laughing in there, and I know it sounds funny, but these people are serious.
"Researchers have offered a definitive report into the science of the male 'objectifying gaze,' in the December 2013 volume of 'Sex Roles: A Journal of Research.' (Volume 69, Issue 11-12, pp 557-570)." I kid you not. "'Although objectification theory suggests that women frequently experience the objectifying gaze with many adverse consequences, there is scant research examining the nature and causes of the objectifying gaze for perceivers.
"The main purpose of this work was to examine the objectifying gaze toward women via eye tracking technology,' according to the abstract of 'My Eyes Are Up Here: The Nature of the Objectifying Gaze Toward Women' by Sarah J. Gervais, Arianne M. Holland, and Michael D. Dodd. 'Consistent with our main hypothesis, we found that participants focused on women's chests and waists more and faces less when they were appearance-focused (vs. personality-focused). Moreover, we found that this effect was particularly pronounced for women with high (vs. average and low) ideal body shapes in line with hypotheses,' according to the report."
Now, for a DNC refresher, here's the November 15 Martin Bashir commentary for comparison, taking off on how Palin said an overwhelming national debt would "feel like slavery" to our debtors:
One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years. Thistlewood was the son of a tenant farmer who arrived on the island of Jamaica in April 1750, and assumed the position of overseer at a major plantation. What is most shocking about Thistlewood's diary is not simply the fact that he assumes the right to own and possess other human beings, but is the sheer cruelty and brutality of his regime.
In 1756, he records that “A slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.” This became known as Darby’s dose, a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners savagery and inhumanity.
And he mentions a similar incident again in 1756, this time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch. “Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper; made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.” I could go on, but you get the point.
When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.
