In at least some quarters of Wingnuttia, they appear to have seen the error of Rush Limbaugh’s ways, learning the lesson he taught that you can’t just come out and say what you think, you have to use dog whistles and code phrases. Jed Babbin of the American Spectator goes old school and declares her a “welfare queen” — just like the commies, you know.
Sandra Fluke is a welfare queen. Remember, back in the 1980s, the image of the welfare queen? It was a caricature of a woman on welfare who had borne many children for men who she knew little or not at all. The welfare queen made an industry of producing children because she knew the state would pay her to do so, and pay for her children’s needs from food to clothes to medical care.
Sandra Fluke is the model Welfare Queen for the 21st Century. Upper middle class to start, going to a very expensive (and very liberal law) school on scholarship, and now (as we know from news reports) a tool of the White House media shop. She won’t have kids like the old-style welfare queens. Instead, she will first absorb all the government benefits she can while in school, and then work for a liberal law firm or political organization as a political activist. Or she may become another trusted lieutenant of Eric Holder at Justice. She is a product of the American version of the cradle-through-career indoctrination and career of the old Soviet Komsomol.
Welfare Queen Fluke will never produce anything of value to society. She will fit easily into the industry of regulation, bigger government, and reduced personal freedoms. She believes everything she wants — birth control, abortion, whatever — is an entitlement for which the government must pay. The welfare queens of the 1980s were small-timers. Welfare Queen Fluke and her ilk are an existential threat to fiscal responsibility. Just think about how many thousands of them are graduating this year to enter government jobs or political campaigns. They will be spreading their ideas to all within hearing.
I remember the 80s image of the welfare queen. It was used to denigrate everyone who got any kind of public assistance (except corporate executives who make millions or billions from government subsidies and contracts, of course, since most of them aren’t black), just like this new attack is being used to denigrate women — especially educated women like Fluke. The target changes; the tactics never do.
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Chiroptera
March 15, 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Remember, back in the 1980s, the image of the welfare queen? It was a caricature of a woman on welfare who had borne many children for men who she knew little or not at all.
Is he admitting that so-called “welfare queen” was merely a caricature used for propaganda purposes? Or does he not know what “caricature” means?
Chiroptera
March 15, 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…going to a very expensive (and very liberal law) school on scholarship….
It’s funny that these clowns have to denigrate places like Harvard or Yale as “liberal” when it suits their propaganda purposes. When they would go to Harvard in a heartbeat if they could. When they would do whatever it takes to send their own kids to Harvard if they could.
For the majority of these people, the main reason they send their kids to small regional, less liberal, state schools or to Bible colleges is mostly because their kids can’t get admitted to the top schools.
Wes
March 15, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, her “very liberal” law school at Georgetown which won’t cover contraceptives since it’s Catholic. Right…
Chiroptera
March 15, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Or Georgetown. Somehow that got edited out of my previous post.
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
March 15, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In other words, she’ll end up doing exactly what all those Regent U. law grads did during the Bush Administration. Remember Monica Goodling? The horror!
numenaster
March 15, 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wait, how can Sandra Fluke be a welfare queen if she’s white?
a miasma of incandescent plasma
March 15, 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So, we’re supposed to take this guy’s advice on fiscal responsibility and what strategies the US should take in a global economy.
But he can’t figure out that if a kid costs more than what the state provides in welfare, than it’s not really an “industry”.
And he can’t figure out that if the state pays a small amount for contraception now to prevent pregnancy it’s actually cheaper in the long run than adding another child to the welfare rolls?
That’s where I go wrong, with long-term thinking, cause we aint gotta think long-term cause ya know Jesus is a’comin’ back a’real soon! Whee!
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
March 15, 2012 at 1:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Because women don’t bear children for themselves, y’know. Our uteri and their products belong to teh menz.
Fixed it for him.
julial
March 15, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly, white is the new black.
Blueaussi
March 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Do they still think that Sandra Fluke was asking the government to pay for birth control? Are they equating the government with insurers?
janine
March 15, 2012 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So the old style welfare queen was black, from the ghetto and had as many children as she could so that she can afford a Cadillac. The new style welfare queen is white, upper middle class and do not have children.
About the only connection between the old and new definition is that the target is female.
Mr Ed
March 15, 2012 at 1:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This reminds me of the kindergarten game of telephone. One child would start by whispering the phrase “I like bunnies” to the child next to her. As the phrase passes from child to child it slowly transforms into “Ronald Reagan smells funny.” Here Sandra Fluke said there are reasons other than sex to take the pill. Rush only heard the word sex and filled in the gaps with his preconceived notions. The next wingnut heard Rush say sex and bad and just assumed that meant someone was getting something from the government they weren’t so it was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Now Jed Babbin hears sex, taxpayer and bad and decides too project it onto an old stereotype. I’m just glad that the five year olds I played the game with were smarter and more honest than these demagogues.
typecaster
March 15, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
She’s white, but a white woman. Gender trumps ethnicity in these cases, in a hierarchy of undesirables that ranges from brown to female to non-Christian, and many other categories, until you break through into desirable territory at White Anglo-Saxon Teabag Evangelical DontKnowNuthin’.
It’s complicated, but the rules do become apparent with a little study.
DaveL
March 15, 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So the old trope about welfare queens was supposed to be women who had a lot of children, didn’t work, and collected welfare.
Now Babbin expects Fluke to have no kids, work for a living, and no collect welfare, but still considers her a “welfare queen” based solely on the hypothetical of her paycheck being paid with taxpayers’ money.
I would love to see ol’ Jed try that argument with a U.S. Marine.
walton
March 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ugh. The anti-woman movement in this country is incredibly frightening. Women’s basic human rights have become political footballs.
Babbin’s misogynist rant seems to be par for the course for the Republican right, these days. Apparently the Republicans won’t stop at forcing women to have unnecessary and painful medical procedures against their will, denying women access to birth control and medical care, and slandering and silencing women as “sluts” and “welfare queens” if they dare speak out. Now they’re explicitly defending domestic abuse: just look at the Republicans in the Senate opposing the reauthorization of VAWA, because they object to the idea of giving visas to undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic violence. The Republicans apparently harbour so much hate and fear that they’re willing to inflict more suffering on those who have already been victimized. And, meanwhile, a Republican state representative in Wisconsin also doesn’t believe in divorce even for victims of domestic violence.
I think what this also shows is that all the forms of bigotry are deeply interconnected. “Welfare queen” was originally a racist as well as a sexist slur, during the Reagan era. Today, Babbin uses the slur again in the service of the present Republican War on Women. Similarly, the Republicans’ anti-woman policies are deeply interconnected with their anti-immigrant policies – the refusal to reauthorize VAWA, for instance.
Larry
March 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Have you ever noticed that, as their unrequited rage and hatred for Fluke escalates, the wingnut’s arguments become progressively less intelligible and less coherent and proceed further and further away from what she actually said?
A. R
March 15, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
walton! We miss you at Pharyngula!
Area Man
March 15, 2012 at 2:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes. Though I was too young to know it at the time, I’ve since discovered that it was a complete fabrication.
Except that the average welfare recipient has an average of 0.2 more kids per lifetime than the average non-welfare recipient. So they’re really not trying too hard.
holytape
March 15, 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Why can’t they just write, “I do not like people with vaginas that think and talk. I am still scared of black people.” It would save time, and clear up more space for Viagra ads.
tommykey
March 15, 2012 at 2:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Funny, because wingnut welfare recipients like Babbin never seem to produce anything of value.
noastronomer
March 15, 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man #18:
“Except that the average welfare recipient has an average of 0.2 more kids per lifetime than the average non-welfare recipient. So they’re really not trying too hard.”
Lazy bastards.
jeremydiamond
March 15, 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Georgetown Law is liberal? That will be news to my friend there who is in a class being taught by Professors Paul Clement and Viet Dinh.
D. C. Sessions
March 15, 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And that’s a good thing. Not that women are being treated as pawns — that’s been going on for a long, long time. It certainly needs to end. Somewhere around 1865 would have been a reasonable compromise on that.
No, simply because they’re at last coming out in the open about it.
ohioobserver
March 15, 2012 at 4:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
American Spectator? Seriously? Ed, I didn’t think anyone even paid attention to American Spectator. I stopped even looking –for amusement, mind you, and in a sort of “know your enemy” kind of way — when some loon a few years ago posted an essay in which she lambasted the atomic theory of matter as “anti-god” and false. I can tolerate a lot of wingnut effluvium, but when they get that insane — enough. I can’t believe that anybody, even the right, cares what this asshole says about Ms. Fluke.
democommie
March 15, 2012 at 4:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would love to meet this misogynistic asshole at the local Home Depot or Lowe’s, in the lumber department. A little bit of 2×4 attention focusing is in order.
slc1
March 15, 2012 at 4:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Wes @ #3
Well, what can one expect from a Catholic school, 20% of whose law school faculty is of the Jewish persuasion.
helenaconstantine
March 15, 2012 at 4:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Now we know Brayton isn’t a Flashman reader.
dan4
March 16, 2012 at 2:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@25: I don’t agree with what Babbit wrote about Fluke, either…but I don’t want to physically assault the guy, either. Take some anger management classes, or visit a mental health expert, or something.
Budbear
March 16, 2012 at 10:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@dan4: As long as democommie doesn’t act out on his emotions, I’d say he’s managing his anger pretty well. I also think expressing one’s emotions in fantasy is quite mentally healthy and one is not at all in need of expert intervention. I mean, I’d like to be the king of France but I’m very sure that the chances of me marching down the aisle at Rheims anytime soon are pretty slim indeed. But, one can dream. N’est ce pas?
MikeMa
March 17, 2012 at 7:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@helenaconstantine
I LOVE the Flashman tales. Not quite sure of the reference to this post though. Certainly Flash never did an honest day’s work but he certainly paid for it. I learned a lot more British history from George M. Fraser than I ever did in school.
helenaconstantine
March 18, 2012 at 6:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@MikeMa
Since the original story compared Fluke to Ranavalona (Flashman’s Lady), Brayton could hardly have failed to mention Flashman if he were a fan.