Deeper Into Slut Territory

Meghan Daum tries to get deeper into why Rush's use of the term was so much more offensive than anything Bill Maher did, or indeed, any public figure has recently done. One point she does not make, however, is that the use of slurs by powerful people against powerless people in public is inherently offensive: the mismatch in resources is staggering:

What a lot of people missed, including liberals whose focus on the word "slut" opened the door for conservatives to fight back by invoking Maher's epithets, is that it wasn't Limbaugh's language that was so offensive, it was his logic.

If Limbaugh had called Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" and then continued on his merry way with a generic rant about "Obamacare," the controversy would have followed the usual Rush pattern: a day or two of indignation, then yesterday's news. But this time, he didn't just insult a particular group. He insulted human logic itself. He didn't just traffic in hyperbole; he dressed up fiction as news commentary and assumed his listeners would swallow it out of sheer habit.

And it's that assumption, more than the nasty words, that got him in so much trouble. By not crediting his listeners with the ability to discern valid argument from mind-blowing lies, he sent a message that they were less than rational beings.