When elements of the Republican noise machine decided to call Sandra Fluke a slutty naughty sex fiend for suggesting–in public, no less–that all health-insurance plans ought to cover hormonal birth control… so that women wouldn’t suffer from ovarian cysts, here’s what I thought: “this is such a bunch of obviously crazystupidinsanemisogynistselfimmolating craziness that it has got to go away soon.”

But left-ish groups smell a fundraising winner. And we can always count on some members of the American right to double down on the stupid. Which means that we’re stuck with this for a while. So then I thinks to myself all “‘I’m a Georgetown University employee. dangnabbit. Heck, I’m like a professor and stuff. Maybe that means I should comment!”

(Did I mention the crazy crazy, crazy stupidness? Seriously, take a look at this. But don’t say that I didn’t warn you that it makes this look tame. And the second “this” is a big heaping plate of offensive.)

So, while I probably shouldn’t comment, I guess I will.

1. The President’s office at Georgetown is all kinds of awesome for producing such a magisterial letter in defense of one of our own. Yeah, I know everyone has already seen it. But its just way cool.

2. This controversy is all kind of weird for me, because I am pretty darn sure that at least one of Georgetown’s employee health-insurance plans covers hormonal birth control; our bill for it looks an awful like a copayment rather than a full-blown out-of-pocket expense. Of course, Georgetown also has domestic-partner coverage provisions for faculty and staff. This sort of stuff makes us, if I understand contemporary Church doctrine, very bad Catholics. Apparently at Notre Dame they point to us as examples of what happens when you let Jesuits build a top-ranked school. Of course, I have it on good authority that Catholic University looks at Notre Dame as a bunch of apostates, so perchance Notre Dame should lay off with the holier-than-thou stuff. And that’s holier-than-thou in the literal, not figurative, sense. Which is kind of neat.

3. I’ve been reading comment threads that involve both conservatives and liberals, and I’m starting to notice a pattern. A lot of the comments I see are all about the evil hypocrisy of the American left for being upset with Limbaugh but putting up with nasty personal attacks from the likes of Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Al Franken, etc. etc. Most of the liberal commentators–myself included–don’t even know what attacks our right-wing brethren are talking about (Maher apparently has said some disgusting things about Palin, but who knew?). I must say that this makes it pretty hard to feel hypocritical.

Anyway, as I was getting to, I’ve started to figure something out (I think). I used to believe that conservative handwaving about MSNBC commentators and similar types amounted to a cynical attempt at false equivalency. After all, Maddow gets about half the viewers that O’Reilly does in their respective peak slots, and the rest of Fox’s conservatainment lineup basically trounces MSNBC.

Yes, this wasn’t very charitable of me, but I couldn’t think of another explanation.

Now, however, I realize that many conservatives aren’t being at all cynical and misleading: they just assume that politically engaged liberals relate to their commentariat the same way that politically engaged conservatives do. But many of us simply find our blowhards irritating. I just don’t think we have the kind of close tribal affiliation with our self-appointed spokespeople that many conservatives have with their own (recall that Air America failed). It simply wouldn’t occur to me to aggressively defend idiocy from any of “my side’s” media personalities the way that the aforementioned commentators range far and wide to support Limbaugh–albeit largely by attacking left-wing hypocrisy.

The closest thing for liberals, I believe, is the relationship many of us have with Jon Stewart. But Stewart’s sort of odd to compare to O’Reilly or Hannity insofar as the core of his show involves making fun of “news” media. Really, most of the liberals I hang with smugly listen to NPR. We congratulate ourselves on our “intellectualness,” still act like “This American Life” is pretty fresh, and think we’re staying hip because we occasionally buy music reviewed on “All Things Considered” or promoted on “All Songs Considered.”

(Keep in mind that I’m talking about liberals, not the American left, those who still spend lots of time on DailyKos, and/or people who call themselves “progressives” because they don’t realize Teddy Roosevelt irreparably tarnished that label back in the nineteen-teens. I don’t really understand most of these people either.)

Well, I hope I’ve made my case that I probably shouldn’t comment. So I’ll stop.