Or Gloria Allred is a fascist moron

Just when you think the “professional left” got a hold of something they couldn’t possibly fuck up — that is, Rush Limbaugh doing, saying, imparting, intimating anything whatsoever — they do. Hard.

While this is not the case, overall, notorious “feminist” lawyer Gloria Allred has decided to do something incredibly stupid. She’s trying to get Rush Limbaugh prosecuted under an arcane Florida statute for calling Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.”

Apparently, Section 836.04 of the Florida Statutes reads that anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity” is guilty of a first degree misdemeanor. This is an antiquated, and astonishingly foolish, law which flies in the face of the very notion of freedom of speech.

Florida, you’re the worst.

Now, if Fluke wants to pursue a civil case against Limbaugh for impugning her character in the public sphere then that’s fine. She may even have a decent case to make. But offensive words should not be a crime. And if Allred thought about this for even a second, she’d have realized that subjecting people to criminal prosecution for using unpopular or “vulgar” speech is not in the interests of women — or anyone.

Allred has brought the right-wing’s & Bill Maher’s straw-person (ha, look at me being needlessly sensitive) argument to life. Their pitiful defense of Limbaugh has gone something like this: he’s allowed to say what he wants because we have freedom of speech. And, yes, this is true. But until Allred stepped, rather unwisely, into the fray, this argument was completely disingenuous because no one was suggesting otherwise. What people were suggesting, and acting upon, was their similar right to freely express their discontent by means of pressuring Limbaugh’s advertisers.

Bill Maher, you’re only slightly better than Florida — although Florida is much funnier.

What Allred has done here is to validate Limbaugh et al. That’s sad. Being an asshole should never be made a crime. And if feminism is to ever attain its goals, then women can never be given special dispensation under the law. It’s pretty simple. But Gloria Allred just doesn’t get it.

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