RUSH LIMBAUGH AND JUDGE CEBULL ARE BASICALLY SAYING THE SAME THING

This is being reported as a story about racism. It's partly that, but it's much more:

HELENA -- Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers.

Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush....

The subject line of the email, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: "A MOM'S MEMORY."

The forwarded text reads as follow:

"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the email joke reads. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

This joke has been kicking around for a while, and the child doesn't always have a name (though when the joke has shown up at, say, Free Republic, the boy is, of course, named Barack). But the point, beyond the racism, is that if you're a white woman and you'll have a child with a black man, you'll screw anything that moves. The teller of the joke is saying: There are two levels of sexual discrimination -- mine, and a slut's. (The former category is pretty much limited to straight white men, although you might attain the status if you're an honorary straight white man -- say, the joke-teller's wife, or a non-white friend who agrees that it's funny.)

Declaring that any woman who has sex you don't approve of is a slut with no sexual discrimination at all is essentially what Rush Limbaugh was doing on the radio yesterday:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student whom House Republicans wouldn't let testify at a contraception hearing last week, a "slut" and a "prostitute" today, because, Limbaugh argued, she's having "so much sex" she needs other people to pay for it:

LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

...Later, he feigned a walk-back, saying "OK, she's not a slut, she’s round-heeled" ...

(And never mind the fact that Fluke's testimony concerned a friend who needs birth control for medical reasons unrelated to sex.)

The Limbaugh wisecrack and Cebull joke are Santorumism for the non-prissy. They're Santorumism without even the pretense of holding yourself to a moral standard. You just place yourself on the good side of the line and your declaration suffices. On the other side is the woman (although gay men and non-whites are also frequently portrayed as completely indiscriminate and insatiable). And hilarity ensues.