Rush Limbaugh, a blowhard who has been going too far, for far too long, has now made it abundantly clear that he hates women. America’s highest rated and highest paid radio broadcaster is a dangerous misogynist.

The venom he spewed at Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, a private citizen, is unprecedented.  An overweight, overpaid, hateful “little” man, who always plays the “big” man, has victimized her.  This young woman simply had the temerity to testify in support of a woman’s right to health insurance coverage for contraception.

For this Limbaugh calls her a “slut,” a “prostitute” who, he says, wants to be paid for having sex.  He even suggested that if she wants money for her sexual activity, he should at least be able to see it taking place.  How humiliating, how embarrassing.

I became a victim of his nasty talk on the radio, after I moderated the 1992 presidential debate featuring President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.  The day after the huge political event—watched by 91 million people here and abroad—Limbaugh called me a “femi-Nazi” who caused Bush to stumble so Clinton could outperform the President and win the debate.  (That was a lie.)  He said I was a liberal Democrat and never should have been chosen as moderator.  (Another lie.)  He ranted for 15 minutes about how awful I was.  The innuendo, that I was an unqualified and biased black woman.

Within hours of that radio show I started getting death threats by telephone and over the next few days hundreds of letters flooded my office from people who warned me I would be killed, wished I was dead, or planning to shoot me themselves.  For about a week armed bodyguards followed me everywhere to provide protection from any Limbaugh “ditto-heads” with guns and a violent streak.

Does he talk about women the way he does for ratings?  He surely couldn’t believe all his nonsense talk.  Or is he an evil man who wants to yank out from under our Easy Spirits, all the progress we have made.  To men like Limbaugh, the advances of women are threatening.  That’s why they are “little” men.  They can’t stand the fact that females can–not only do what men do–but can have babies, too.  And with contraception we hold the ultimate power over society’s growth or decline.  Maybe that’s why Neanderthals like Rush, want to force women to bear babies no matter what the circumstances.

Women will not go back.  We may be on the cusp of the third women’s rights struggle in US history—suffrage in the early 1900’s, equal rights in the 70’s and now, the new assault on reproductive rights, being given boisterous voice by Limbaugh.  Bring it on.

Four wives?  Rush can’t seem to get it right.  Sounds like he has a woman problem.  I met him and one of his wives at the ABC Washington Bureau in the early 90’s.  She was a tiny, curvaceous aerobics instructor.  Gee, I wonder who left whom?