Catalogues nicely by John Cole:
1.) Lie #1- She was testifying about her sex life: This is a blatant lie. As we have noted repeatedly, nowhere in her testimony did Miss Fluke discuss her sex life, sexual preferences, or sexual activity. She discusses the need for contraceptives for a variety of reasons, most prominently discussing her friend’s disease, but never once does she discuss her sex life. Ed Morrissey and all the other predictable right-wing hacks jumped on this boat as soon as Rush went there. If you will remember, Rush wasn’t the first, but he was the most forceful.
2.) Lie #2- She Was Having So Much Sex She Could Not Afford All the Birth Control: This is the illegitimate spawn of Lie #1, that she was testifying about her sex life. As we have linked repeatedly, she did no such thing. This is just more made-up nonsense so Rush and others can continue their panty-sniffing. Additionally, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding about how birth control works. For the pill, you don’t need to take more of it the more sex you are having- you take the same amount if you are a virgin with menorrhagia and dysmenorrhea as you do if you are having sex 15 times a day. From this lie, we got wingnuts and Rush Limbaugh doing mental calculations on how many condoms Miss Fluke must use every year to satisfyher voracious appetite for sex. All of this is based on a lie they started.
3.) Lie #3- Fluke Spends $3k a Year on Birth Control– This is based on wingnut math. In her testimony, Fluke stated the following:
Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy.
That’s $3,000 over the course of law school, which is three years. Here on earth, that amounts to a very reasonable $1k a year for reproductive health spending.
4.) Lie #4- She Wants Taxpayers to Pay for Her Birth Control– This is flat out absurd, but so is almost everything else about this debate. This is about personal health insurance programs provided to individuals as part of their employee compensation. There is not one taxpayer dollar at issue here. This has NOTHING to do with taxpayers. Period.
5.) Lie #5- Sandra Fluke wants to be paid to have sex:– This is the ugliest of all the lies, and you can see how the lies just build upon each other. Sandra Fluke doesn’t want to be paid to have sex, she wants her health insurance to cover her reproductive health needs. End of story. But this lie was necessary, as each lie built upon the last, because without this lie, Limbaugh couldn’t spend the next few days calling her a slut and a prostitute and demand she post videos of herself having sex online so Rush could watch.
6.) Lie #6- This is just about bad word choice-: As blatant a lie as it gets. Had Rush merely called her a slut and prostitute and then apologized, this might have have ended. But that is not what happened. He lied about everything she said, he targeted a young woman for a multi-day barrage of insults and venom, called her a slut, accused her of all the previous lies we have listed, called her a prostitute, spent days berating her, mocking her, creepily referencing her sex life, and finally, in the end, built to a crescendo in which he demanded she post movies of herself having sex so he and others could watch if she wanted him to pay for her birth control. And remember, that, in and of itself is a lie, because she only wanted her health insurance to cover her birth control. This wasn’t about poor word choice, this was about an all out vicious, factually empty, sustained assault on a young woman.