Sure, Todd "The Asshole" Akin is a lunatic and a monster, but not for the reason a lot of people seem to think

"[F]rom what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

-- MO Rep. Todd "The Asshole" Akin

by Ken

Even by the time you read this it's quite possible that the Missouri U.S. Senate campaign of newly minted national celebrity Rep. Todd Akin may be at an end. All day there was heavy pressure on the galoot -- not just from in-state but no doubt from Republicans nationally, to get out of the race to unseat highly vulnerable Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. And see, for example, CBS News's "Pressure builds on Akin to leave Mo. Senate race" (from 6:54pm ET), or the WSJ's "Crucial Senate Race in Uproar" (from 8:36pm ET).

And the clock is ticking. Tomorrow at 5pm is the deadline for The Asshole to withdraw while allowing the state party to substitute some Missouri Republican life form less toxic, or less publicly toxic, than Representative Akin. And everyone understands how important the Missouri contest is to Republican hopes of wresting control of the Senate from Democrats. I'm not saying that Akin is now unelectable statewide, just that if he isn't, then Missouri ought to be formally redesignated from a state to a booby hatch. . It's not hard to understand that national R's, with control of the Senate so close they can feel it, this isn't the kind of candidate you'd want to be betting on -- one who has been plastered across the country's front pages as someone too ignorant or too crazy even for the Party of Ignorance and Craziness.

Just the same, it seems to me important to understand what The Asshole actually said about rape, and what he didn't, because what he actually meant is far sicker and more disturbing than the widespread assumption that what he said is that there is such a thing as "legitimate" rapes.

Naturally Noah got it right, writing about here this "knuckle-dragging fool" earlier today ("The Republican Party's Latest Entrant In Their Endless Parade Of Freaks"). But from what I'm hearing, an awful lot of people seem to think that what our Todd said was that there's a category of rapes that he considers "legitimate." But really, this is only possible for people who are too lazy, stupid, and/or uncaring about the truth to miss the clear sense of what he was saying when he, er, said, "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Beyond the fact that The Asshole used the phrase "legitimate rape," I don't see how it's possible for anyone to imagine that he was arguing that the kind of rapes he was referring to are legal or acceptable.

It's inescapably obvious, in fact, he meant the exact opposite. The kind of rape he was referring to here is the kind he's against, which is to say what he considers real or actual rapes -- i.e., where a woman is the victim of violent sexual assault by a stranger -- almost certainly, though he of course didn't actually say this, a stranger of the "big black man" persuasion, the kind now invariably fingered to authorities by white men and women who are found to have had one or more of their family members butchered. (All over the country, authorities have slowly come to the realization that these "big black men" are imaginary, existing nowhere outside the debased imaginations of the persons trying to lie their way out of responsibility for the family murders they've committed.)

So no, clearly Akin wasn't suggesting that these rapes are "legitimate" in he sense of "OK." He was just distinguishing them from all the other rapes alleged by women, the kinds that are basically "illegitimate" in the sense that they're merely allegations by filthy bitches who were probably, you know, really asking for it -- including, notably, the kinds so often committed by friends, acquaintances, and even family members of the lying sluts who try to mask their sluttitude by crying "rape!"

So while it might be a bit of a stretch to say that Akin is in favor of some kinds of rape, I don't think it's much of a stretch at all to say that he doesn't believe any of those other kinds are rape, at least not of the, er, legitimate kind. And just for that the man should be reviled and shunned by every man and woman with even the slightest concern for human decency. Just that makes him a lunatic and a monster. Anyone who would contemplate voting for him for anything or any purpose has self-judged him/herself (my God, could any woman actually imagine voting for him?) an enemy of decency.

But that's only part of what Akin told us about himself. The other part is the pseudo-scientific blather, claiming that in the case of these traumatic "real" rapes the female body itself fights off pregnancy. Now I don't have any familiarity with the actual scientific literature, and I can't rule out the possibility that some actual scientific observation has been wrenched out of some mostly unrelated context and tortured into a meaning that suits the biases and bigotries of people whose entire brain function is governed by biases and bigotries, and whose hatred for science is an obvious offshoot of their hatred, from the very depths of their beings, for truth.

My guess is that actual medical researchers will be able to demonstrate that the right-wing passion for anti-science is once again at work here. What I didn't know until now is that this crap pseudo-science has become an article of faith for the faith-based cretins of the Religious Right. Here's the start of a post today by Right Wing Watch's Brian Tashman (links onsite):

Todd Akin Wasn't 'Misspeaking' but Speaking for a Movement

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Mon, 08/20/2012 - 11:45am

Missouri Republican senate candidate and congressman Todd Akin is trying to run away from his claims that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy, insisting that he “misspoke” while making “off-the-cuff remarks,” even though they were in an interview with a local reporter. Akin made a similar half-apology following his claim that “at the heart of liberalism really is the hatred for God,” with his spokesman arguing that his claim during a radio interview were “off-the-cuff.”

Akin is a beloved figure of the Religious Right, and his campaign advertises endorsements from Concerned Women for America activists and activists like Mike Huckabee, Phyllis Schlafly, Michele Bachmann and David Barton. Barton, who recorded campaign ads calling Akin a “true Christian leader,” has compared Akin to John Witherspoon and other founding fathers. American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, who hosted Akin on his radio show the day after the congressman’s primary victory, said people need to “lighten up” about his rape comments:

Previously, Akin said he wants to ban the morning after pill, worried marital rape laws will be used as “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” and sought to narrow the definition of “rape” in legislation. Akin also prominently advertises his endorsement from Schlafly, who has said women cannot be raped by their husbands.

Sarah Posner in Religion Dispatches notes that Akin, who has a masters in divinity, received his degree at a denomination which teaches that rape seldom leads to pregnancy and should not be relevant to laws on abortion rights, and as Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones pointed out, anti-choice luminary John Willke asserts that hormones make pregnancies resulting from rape “extremely rare” and Physicians for Life believes “the rate of pregnancy is actually very rare” because the stress from the rape “alter[s] bodily functions, the menstrual cycle included.”

Those opinions are commonplace among anti-choice activists. . . .

So no, Bryan, while I understand perfectly well that The Asshole wasn't saying there's such a thing as "legitimate rape," I don't plan to lighten up. I don't know whether you're too stupid or too dishonest to understand what he was saying, but you know, just now I don't care.


UPDATE: I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THAT THE
THUGS AT THE FRC "FULLY SUPPORT" THE ASSHOLE

Noah in fact had passed along a link to our colleague David Badash's post at the New Civil Rights Movement, "Family Research Council: 'We Support Todd Akin Fully And Completely.' "

You know, it's possible that those "asswipes" (Noah's handy designation for the FRC crowd) really are really so stupid, or so insane, that they don't understand how their cretinous, lying, incendiary ravings earned them recognition from the Southern Poverty Law Center as the hate group they are. As I pointed out last night, though ("This crazy notion that the Family Research Council is NOT a hate group -- it's some kind of nutty joke, right?"), given the extent and pattern of the FRC's monumental fabrications over the whole course of its existence, which have been pointed out repeatedly, as documented most recently in John Aravosis's important America Blog post, "Why the Family Research Council is a hate group"), it's kind of hard to believe that they could be functioning in good faith.

Again, though, I'm not sure it matters. The blatant reality is that there really isn't any point at which the FRC goons are in contact with reality or truth.

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