Friday

NOT IN YOUR WILDEST, RUSH LIMBAUGH!

If there were an award for the most asinine remarks about l'Affair Edwards, it would have to go to radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh who blamed Elizabeth Edwards for her husband’s sexcapades commenting, on air:
"...if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go...It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk...my theory that I just explained to you about why — you know, what could have John Edwards’ motivations been to have the affair with Reille Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk…"

I know a little about talk radio. For 13 years, I had one of the top-rated radio talk shows on Southern New England’s flagship talk station. Rush was also syndicated on that station. I met him, and he was already a jackass then.


Rush enjoys taking potshots at people from the safety of his bunker in Florida. He never engages in debate—even with his callers. Anyone who dares to challenge one of his statements disappears quickly into the silence created by turning off the caller’s sound.


Limbaugh has three failed marriages under his belt. As TV commentator Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, Rush earns a reported $30 million but can’t find a woman to put up with him at any price.


Now, in a monologue more shallow and stupid than his usual lack-of-depth ravings, Limbaugh blames Elizabeth Edwards for he husband’s “straying” because, in the Rush World, intelligent, capable women apparently can’t also have sex appeal.


Such a distorted view may spring from the probability that no intelligent, capable woman would want to have sex with Limbaugh (especially without benefit of all those pain-killing drugs he’s so fond of.)


Rush Limbaugh isn’t a conservative, he’s a failed sportscaster who found a niche in talk radio and he’s milking it for everything he can. He spends most of his time, alone now, in a mansion in Florida, from whence he broadcasts his daily tirades.
For a few hours a day, Rush can beat up on the poor, the halt, the liberal, and even cancer-stricken women like Elizabeth Edwards from the solitude of his studio. Then, the red “On Air” lights go off, he gets into a limousine, and goes home again-- still alone.

No throngs of women scream at curbside or tear at his clothes as they might were he a sex object.

So if Rush, and men like him, want a woman to use her mouth for “something other than talk,” they will simply have to pay for it.
_______END________

Saturday

FATHERS KILLING DAUGHTERS -- FOR "HONOR"

New Year’s Day 2008, in Lewisville Texas, teenage sisters Sarah and Amina Said were shot to death in a taxi—allegedly by their Egyptian Muslim father, a taxi driver charged with the murders but still at large.

His motive? They had dated non-Muslim boys.

A month earlier, across the border in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death by her Pakistani father for refusing to wear the hijab or head scarf. She was also “guilty” of changing into Western clothes once she got to school.

On July 6, 2008 twenty-five year old Sandeela Kanwal was strangled to death, allegedly by her father, Chaudhry Rashid, 54 in Atlanta, GA. Two months ago Kamwal had fled her groom in an unhappy arranged marriage and wanted to divorce. Father and daughter had not spoken since.

These four women were victims of so-called “Honor Killings,” not sanctioned by Islam’s holy book, the Koran, but tolerated and criminally overlooked in many Muslim countries. The United Nations Populations Fund estimates 5000 such killings occur annually worldwide, though they are vastly underreported.

The horrific statement such crimes make about women as disposables in extremist Islam exposes a frightening and repulsive subtext of Americans apparently unwilling or unable to leave barbaric practices in the “old country.” While many American Muslims are working to build bridges with non-Muslim neighbors, “honor killings” feed a national distrust of Islam, still raging since 9/11.

Though Islamic religious law does not sanction the killing of women in cases such as these, it does breed a misogyny too extreme to respect logic, reason and compassion. Women cannot drive cars or speak to a male stranger without severe punishment. When such primitive patriarchal dominance subjects intelligent, educated and reasonable women to the whims of sometimes uneducated, unreasonable and fanatical males, the consequences will eventually reach criminal stages.

The women will rebel, at their peril, and the men will react in the extreme. Ironically, in fanatic Islamic circles, the murdered victim is disgraced as the one who brought shame to the family while the male murderer is defended as the injured party.

In all of the above cases, the fathers are said to have had a history of physically and/or sexually abusing the young women before murdering them. And though Mrs. Said did flee to another state with her daughters, her husband’s fixation that “Western culture was corrupting the chastity of his daughters, “ as the Dallas Morning News describes it, gave murder better odds than attempted escape. Generally mothers and siblings do not go to authorities, or file charges at any point.

American justice cannot tolerate misogynistic violence and death in the name of “honor” any more than it can allow parents to leave unwanted female children on a hillside to die, as the ancients did.

The embrace of “hungry masses yearning to breathe free…” is the promise of one famous Lady to all comers—male and female. Those who cannot accept equality under the law here must be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Mary Ann Sorrentino

Mary Ann Sorrentino
Italy Series of articles runs Aug./Sept/Oct 2015

Hope for the Future: Uruguay 2007

Hope for the Future: Uruguay 2007
Happy New Year!

About Me

Hillsboro Beach, FL/ Cranston, RI, United States

"JOACHIM" - Oct. '92-March '08

"JOACHIM"  - Oct. '92-March '08
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Castel Del Monte

Castel Del Monte