The Short Answer Is No

TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro asks:

Does Obama Have A Bill Maher Problem?

Yeah, see, I like Evan, I follow him on Twitter, I've cited his articles, but...this?  This is just silly.  To whit:

Faced with what appears to be a losing fight over Rush Limbaugh, Republicans are trying to turn the tables in the condemnation game by urging President Obama to repudiate comedian Bill Maher, who donated $1 million to Obama’s super PAC and has said some nasty things about Sarah Palin and other Republican women.

Republicans think they’re really on to something here. And some observers agree.

If Obama wants to have credibility on the Limbaugh attacks, says Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, president of the Women’s Campaign Fund and a former Democratic House candidate, he’s going to have to show he’ll step up to all sexism when he sees it, even the sexism that comes from huge donors.

“They’re absolutely identical,” Bennett said. “It’s completely unacceptable when Maher said sexist things about Bachmann and Palin. It’s completely unacceptable when Rush called Sandra Fluke a ‘slut.’”

“If you attack one woman, you attack all women, period,” she added. “If it goes uncalled against, we’re saying it’s OK. It’s not.”

This zero tolerance/false equivalence nonsense stuff is exactly how the right gets out of headlocks like this, and McMorris-Santoro goes right for it.  Siobhan Bennett is on FOX News all the time as the "official" voice of "liberals are the misogynists" anyway.  Of course BECAUSE BILL MAHER is going to be the new argument to allow Rush to continue to call women "sluts" and "whores" for the rest of his career.

There is such a thing as intent and amount.  Rush's attacks have been constant and consistent for 20 years now.  Maher has stuck his foot in his mouth of course and he should apologize, but equating the two is like taking a pitchfork to do something about the enemy battalion occupying your town and then being told your pitchfork usage makes you equally morally bankrupt.  Maher has not the political or financial power or the social outreach of Limbaugh.  Nor do Maher's crimes stack up to his either.

It's pointless, and the acceptance of the false equivalence that what Maher did and what Rush did are congruent is nonsense of the highest order.

Evan, you should know better.