Flush Rush: A Waking Dream

In my waking dream, a little bald man, something like the Wizard of Oz, has the microphone and is broadcasting the most insane bullshit about a Georgetown University law student, Susan Fluke, who testified before congress about the importance of insurance assistance for obtaining safe birth control for a college/graduate school woman student. This man behind the curtain suggested that this student should have to submit sex tapes of herself so that taxpayers like himself can watch and get something out of the exchange.

Knowing how to handle icky dreams:

First, I throw up, preferably on his shoes, because it’s such a visceral shock to my system that a media figure with his outreach should advocate this criminal intent toward a young woman; (remember, our nation is currently watching the results of such an awful invasion of privacy, something that was intended as a joke, in the Rutgers students’ trial).

Second, I ask, what will women say about this stupid ass comment? Will they say, "Enough! Who are you to legislate my sexuality?" While Viagra and Cialis are constantly promoted, religious farts are arguing about my right to use birth control, let alone have a safe and legal abortion? Who died and left them in charge? What century is this?

In my waking dream, women don’t allow such idiocy, such harmful idiocy, to go unaddressed. Like the backlash incurred when the Komen Foundation cut financial support of Planned Parenthood, there’s a tidal wave of response from women and men who value mutual respect, partnership and equal rights for women. Everyone is saying; “Enough. I will not support a party politically who calls this entertainment nor will I endorse this entertainer. His slander affects not only Ms. Fluke, but also my daughter, my niece, my friend’s daughters.

Ms.Fluke is an accomplished law student willing to make an intelligent public statement on this important issue, the right of any woman to have safe, affordable access to birth control. I can’t believe this is still an issue! Limbaugh's base approach to this young woman, to this issue and to his women listeners is so unacceptable to the majority of Americans, in my waking dream, that he loses his show and has to move to Afghanistan and join the Taliban where he once again can feel appreciated for his views on women.

Measured against this young woman’s commitment, vision and intelligence, Rush Limbaugh sounds like a seismic jerk. He obviously owes her an apology, but he also owes every woman an apology. I hope he doesn’t have daughters, or is he the kind of patriarchal guy Lot was when he said to the angry mob outside his house, “No don’t harm these male guests; harm my daughters instead”.

In my dream, American women and American men get up and say to the presumptuous males who hold a hearing on contraception and do not allow Fluke or any other woman’s input, “Here’s your pink slip”.

In my dream, every time I and every other woman or girl using toilets flush, we say: Flush, Rush. Now I don’t mean him personally; I mean what he represents: The old back room boy, the in-with-the-big-boy boys, and the patriarchal women haters. I flush that ideology. I reject that behavior. And I am speaking out against it.

Pretty soon, we can get rid of crap like this. I suppose we just need to give a shit.

Remember what Yeats predicted:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It doesn’t have to be like this, that’s my waking dream.