QUIP

Rewind to 1996.

My daughters, two and three-years-old, are visiting a museum with me.  A dear friend has brought her sons along.

We stop for a bathroom break.

Big Sis and Lil Sis are drying their hands when their three-year-old buddy emerges from a stall. Buddy’s jeans - and big boy underwear - have dropped to his ankles.

Big Sis stares at her friend for a moment, then pulls on my sleeve and whispers, “What’s that, Mama?”

“That is the reason Buddy will always have more income, opportunity, and power than you!”

Big Sis grabbed Lil Sis and hid behind the stroller. Girlfriend and I laughed. Then laughed some more.

It was a silly, off-the-cuff comment. Ridiculous.

Imagine if I was the host of a nationally syndicated talk show, and I made that comment on the airwaves to millions listening to The World According to Me. My detractors could accuse me of male-bashing. Or spin my quip as spiteful, jealous, irrational femi-nazi rage.

But it was none of the above. It was a fact - laced with sarcasm, perhaps – but a fact, nonetheless. The gender-wage-gap still exists, decades later, though the recent recession has helped boost pay equality between the sexes. Women now hold more than one in ten board seats globally - for the first time in history – but one need only look to the US Senate and House to witness a stunning disparity of power between the sexes: 445 legislators are male, 93 are female (as of August 2011.)

This past weekend, Husband and I took the kids to a 25th anniversary production of Les Miserables. My kids have listened to the score for years, and were somewhat shocked to watch the story leading up to one of their favorite songs: I dreamed a dream in time gone by, when hope was high and life worth living..... but life has killed the dream I dream.

The haunting solo is sung by a woman who is left by her lover and forced to care for their child. Working in a factory to subsidize her daughter’s miserable life, she is taunted, bullied, and eventually dismissed from her job by a factory foreman whose advances she has rejected.  Desperate for money, the woman sells her possessions and her hair, before being forced into a life of prostitution. When she defends herself against an abusive customer, she is beaten and arrested, then taken to a hospital where she will eventually die.

Seated beside my daughters and sons, I watched this excruciating scene, wondering how my kids perceived such brutality and hopelessness. Les Miserables depicts life in France between 1815 and the eve of the 1832 Paris Uprising. Needless to say, not the best of times for women.

Fast forward to 2012. As our family left the theatre, the Rush Limbaugh vs. Sandra Fluke drama was heating up on radio, TV and social networks. Almost 200 years later, Limbaugh’s crass, offensive, and degrading attack on Fluke rendered him the perfect modern-day factory foreman and/or abusive customer; a man eager to watch Fluke’s imagined activities, if not participate in them personally.

And Fluke-to hear Limbaugh tell it- was the modern day prostitute.

Except that Fluke is actually a Georgetown law student and women's rights advocate.

The drama, a week old, now has the equally offensive commentator Bill Maher stepping up as Limbaugh’s unlikeliest supporter. Maher is defending Limbaugh from unforgiving liberals,even as (or because) unforgiving conservatives are lashing out at him for making even cruder comments about conservative female politicians and commentators. Maher actually snickers about Limbaugh’s fleeing sponsors, suggesting that he can continue to say anything he wants because, “I don’t have sponsors, I’m on HBO.”

If it wasn’t so disturbing, it might be funny.

Let’s face it. Limbaugh and Maher, and a myriad of shock jocks, commentators, and entertainers attack, objectify, and degrade women on a regular basis- slander disguised as humor.

Lots of regular guys do it, too, albeit without an audience of millions.

Those of us in ear shot of such comments just laugh. Roll our eyes. Dismiss them as childish.  

You know. The way Mitt Romney responded to Limbaugh’s verbal assault by saying, “I wouldn't have used those words."

Or Rick Santorum, who remarked, "He's being absurd. But ... an entertainer can be absurd." Santorum even argued that “he's not responsible for responding to -- or policing -- every comment made by conservative commentators.”

But Conservative, Liberal, Moderate, Disengaged and/or Uninterested - we are all responsible for responding to character assassinations and degrading attacks against women that the Limbaughs and Mahers of the world spew - with vitriol and hatred - to millions of listeners.

Their foul rants are supposed to be funny. Entertaining. Especially if we agree with their politics.

In fact, they are abusive. And powerful.

Such ‘free speech’ may be protected by our constitution, but it's nothing more than an abuse of power; words employed by men to degrade and control women.

Up in arms, women are reaching out via social networks to protest Limbaugh's tirade against Fluke. But we alone cannot lead the charge to expose and neutralize such aggression and aggressors.

Every father, brother, husband, boyfriend, and son must help.

Turn them off. Tune them out.

Because violent scenes of a life portrayed centuries ago, and a silly remark made decades ago, still ring true today.

Because Sandra Fluke may as well be our daughter, sister, wife, girlfriend, mom.

Because Sis and Lil Sis- now seventeen and eighteen -should never have to feel less respected, worthy, or significant than their brothers.  

They are young and unfraid. Hope is high and life worth living.

Words must not kill the dream they dream.


QUING Hereby Decrees:  Rephrasing Carville's famous rally cry: "It's the discourse. Stupid!"