Kennedy vs. Limbaugh: Is the Left Being Hypocritical?

So, apparently Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tweeted the following message last night about one of the Senators of my state: "“Speaking of prostitutes, big oil’s top call girl Sen Inhofe wants to kill fuel economy backed by automakers, small biz, enviros, & consumers.” 

And at least one news source has linked this tweet to Limbaugh's recent verbal assault on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, an attack in which the terms "slut" and "prostitute" figured prominently. As Amy Bingham puts it in an ABC News report, "apparently this nationwide outcry over these 'insulting' words, as Limbaugh himself called them, was not enough to prevent another syndicated talk radio host, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from slinging the very same insult." 

This way of putting the point gestures towards a kind of challenge, even if it doesn't state the challenge outright. But the challenge is hovering out there, and so it needs to be considered. Let me start by stating the challenge outright: Shouldn't the country get as worked up about Kennedy's tweet as they did about Limbaugh's comments? Is the political left, which has led the charge against Limbaugh, being hypocritical if it doesn't take as strong a stand against a member of the political left's most iconic families as it took against one of the political right's most iconic personalities?

Having just finished writing a post on the Limbaugh case in which I describe Limbaugh's attacks on Fluke as "vicious" in Aristotle's sense, the challenge might well be directed towards me (a "political progressive" and hence someone more likely to be sympathetic to Kennedy's politics than to Limbaugh's):  Am I going to take as strong a stand against Kennedy as I took against Limbaugh?

No. No I'm not.

Because to do so would be to trivialize the severity of what Limbaugh did.

This is not a case of hypocrisy, because the two cases have virtually nothing in common. It's true that both Kennedy and Limbaugh used the term "prostitute." And I'm not saying I think it was a good idea for Kennedy to use this term, or that it was the sort of thing that contributes to civil political dialogue. In fact, I'm inclined to say that you shouldn't label your political opponents "call girls" no matter how metaphorical the label is meant to be. But that said, there are so many differences between the two cases that we would be minimizing the gravity of Limbaugh's actions were we to treat Kennedy's tweet as even in the same ballpark.

First, Limbaugh's on-air rants about  Fluke's sex life verged on obsessive. He elaborated in detail on the supposed enormity of her sex life. He called her a slut and a prostitute multiple times. This is much bigger than a single tweet. For purposes of comparison, consider sexual harassment law. A single questionable comment does not create a "hostile or offensive work environment." But a pattern of sexual comments does. And a single incident can be a case of "hostile environment" sexual harassment if it is sufficiently severe. One glib tweet that invokes the prostitute label wouldn't rise to the level of sexual harassment even if (as is not the case here) the label were meant in sexual terms rather than as a metaphor for being a political sell-out. But something like Limbaugh's sexual rants, targeting Fluke over consecutive days, would clearly constitute sexual harassment if it had occurred in the workplace.

Second, when Limbaugh called Fluke a slut and a prostitute, it was very literal: He slapped these labels on her because of her supposed sex life and her supposed desire (expressed by wanting her insurance plan to cover contraception) to be paid to have lots of sex. In short, Limbaugh was fixated on sexualizing a human being as a means of ridiculing, humiliating, and dismissing her. This is the service to which the term "slut" was being put, with all its explicit sexual meaning intact. Kennedy, by contrast, invoked the prostitute label as a metaphorical way to accuse a man of selling his political services to the oil industry. The term was not intended to make any claims about Inhofe's sex life. It was not meant to sexually objectify him. It was not meant to reduce him to a sex object. It was meant as a provocative (and admittedly questionable) way to challenge the integrity of Inhofe's political career.

Third, Limbaugh's attack on Fluke was part of a broader pattern of misogynistic abuse of women and consistent dismissal of women's concerns about social justice and equality (epitomized in his famed "feminazi" label). The abuse of Fluke was a particularly well-publicized example of deeply entrenched vicious habits of indecency towards women. What makes Limbaugh's behavior vicious is precisely this fact: it comes out of a deeply-seated character flaw in which intellectual honesty has been systematically subordinated to unconstrained impulses. Is Kennedy's tweet a similar expression of a deep-seated moral indecency? Well, I don't know enough about Kennedy's life and career to say for sure, but I have been to environmental conferences where he was the keynote speaker, and his rhetoric at those events was thoughtful, engaging, and guided by careful reasoning. There was no abusive language. No verbal assaults on individuals. From what I've seen of Limbaugh, his use of the "slut" label was completely characteristic. Kennedy's tweet, by contrast, is uncharacteristic.

Fourth, the target of Kennedy's jibe--Sen. Inhofe--is a man. And this matters a lot. It matters for the sake of understanding what kind of effect, and what kind of meaning, the invocation of the term is going to have. Compare the difference between a white man and a black man being called by the racist "n-word." The white man is likely to scratch his head in puzzlement, shrug, and go on with his day. But if the target is black, the word carries all the weight of a history of dehumanization (at least if the person delivering it is white and so a member of the group that was the historic source of that dehumanization).

Terms like "slut" have a long history of playing a central role in the misogynistic marginalization of women. It is women, not men, who were historically treated as the sexual property of men. It was women, not men, who didn't get the vote in the US until well into the 20th century. It is women, not men, who are the primary targets of rape and sexual assault. It is women, not men, who are the main victims of domestic violence.

This context is utterly crucial. When a man calls a woman a slut or a whore, he invokes this entire legacy of patriarchal oppression. He is feeding into and reinforcing a cultural pattern that has historically disempowered women, making them vulnerable to male exploitation and dependent on the good will of the men in their lives.

More insidiously, in a culture where it is women who are the primary victims of rape, Limbaugh's style of targeted rhetoric evokes rape in a way that can only be experienced by its target as a kind of deep violation: labeling a specific woman in sexual terms, making her sexuality a matter of public attention (a way of symbolically stripping her and presenting her naked before his leering audience), and then demanding that she perform sexually for everyone (specifically that she film and post sexual videos of herself online for all to see). I will say it again: What Limbaugh did to Fluke was a violation, and a sexual one.

Kennedy wasn't sexually violating Senator Inhofe. He may have used the word "prostitute," but it simply doesn't have the insidious meaning when used metaphorically to describe the political career of a powerful male politician that it has when it's used to dismiss the views of a female student by sexually objectifying her.

Had Kennedy used the very same metaphor to label a female politician, it would in my judgment have been a much more serious thing. The term would have resonated with a history of oppression in a way that, even had Kennedy not intended it to do so, would have invested the term with a sexually oppressive meaning. As it is, however, likening what Kennedy tweeted to what Limbaugh did is deeply inappropriate, because it powerfully diminishes the gravity of the latter.