I know you have heard of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School student who recently testified to members of congress about the subject of birth control. She has been a prominent media fixture this week as a figure of public mockery and an example of the “sexism” of the Republican party. To be clear, I hate it when women are called sluts and whores. But I do think that the Fluke story is relevant because it highlights something far graver than sexism or her inability to pay for birth control. Through her testimony, Fluke proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Georgetown Law School is offering a substandard education and thus must be churning out some incredibly incompetent lawyers. Here are five obvious infarcts in the Georgetown Law School education curriculum as revealed by Sandra Fluke:
1. To be an effective lawyer, you need to be able to negotiate. If you are a woman, let alone a female law student, and you aren’t adept enough to negotiate with a man to get him to pay for the birth control for intercourse he will partake in, I don’t know what to tell you: guys are pretty much willing to do anything before they have sex with you. It’s really not a fair fight. If you can’t get the guy to pay for an expensive dinner with wine, three months worth of birth control pills, condoms, lubricant, a scented candle, bath salts and make him cuddle with you and listen to you for at least an hour as you spout your inane man-hating femino-statist ideas while making him apologize for his penis, don’t have sex with that guy let alone become a lawyer! You need to find a profession where you can constantly be a victim and whine about not getting enough: for example, why don’t you become a New York or Los Angeles public school teacher?
2. Good lawyers need to be able to lie effectively. Fluke’s testimonial exaggerations were what got her made fun of this week in the first place. Fluke had a whopper of an estimate that birth control costs her and her peers at Georgetown Law around 1,000/year. Anyone who is at all familiar with birth control knows that is a ridiculously high estimate. Fluke’s laugher that the price of birth control and the health effects on women who do not receive it seem more akin to the scare films of the 50’s like Reefer Madness than Johnny Cochran’s famous, “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”: which was a whopper but an effective whopper since the gloves with dried ex-wife and waiter blood sitting in police custody for a year getting crusty really didn’t fit. Fluke’s inability to prevaricate effectively is a shame to her aspired profession. Watch Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, any press conference with Gloria Allred or any speech by Bill Clinton or John Edwards if you need further proof about how necessary lying is as a skill-set for an attorney.
3. Lawyer knows how to manage their time effectively. A lawyer has to fit 26 hours of work into a 24 hour day. If Fluke and her peers are telling the truth about these figures, they are having sex around three times/day instead of doing something called studying. If they can stay in school and not study; that does not bode well for the demands put on them by their Georgetown Law School education.
4. A good lawyer has enough gumption to do research and work the system. In her testimony, Fluke presented a dire picture of what has happened to her and her peers because they can’t afford birth control: her peers at Georgetown law school are “losing ovaries” and “maybe even dying of cancer” due to their inability to pay for the pill: some of them have had to make the ultimate sacrifice and can no longer have sex (interestingly, none of them have gotten pregnant or contracted venereal diseases, the two reasons most people use contraception in the first place) because they are not able to afford the steep and punitive price of birth control pills. Ms. Fluke told of a peer from Georgetown law who is married and can no longer afford to have sex with her husband. With the barest research you will find that Target and Wal-Mart offer birth control to the uninsured for $15/month: they don’t want their customers reproducing any more than the rest of us do. I have been poor. I have been to many a free clinic in Sacramento and Los Angeles. I paid $10 /month for the pill and took the free condoms that were offered in overflowing glass fish bowls all around the clinics: I could thus afford the double protection of birth control pills and condoms for $10 /month. If you saw some of the guys I have had sex with, you would see why I would want double protection: I even sprung for the luxury of having some of the more dubious guys wear two condoms at the same time. Through the free clinics I have been to, I have had a cyst on one of my ovaries removed as well as gotten a biopsy on my breast: they even offered to remove the lump for practically free. I just had to find the clinics and fill out the proper paperwork to prove that I was poor. I am an actress and a graduate of a California state school: if I could figure the system out I would imagine that the intellectuals at Georgetown law could. On a different note, what kind of nut-less loser did Fluke’s friend marry that the guy can’t figure out how to come up with the $15 /month for his wife’s pills so he can have sex with her? He’s so impotent and feminized, he must be a Georgetown Law student too.
5. A good lawyer should know the law better than I do. In her testimony, Ms. Fluke referred to a peer from Georgetown who is a rape victim. The victim thought she had to pay for the rape kit if she reported the rape to the police. How are you a law student and not know the law well enough to know that rape kits are free?!!!!!!!! I know rape kits are free and my entire law education consists of watching the six episodes of Law and Order that TNT shows a day (I’m an Orbach girl but the Jeremy Sisto ones are growing on me: he’s really handsome when he has the beard and his round round face is camouflaged) OK: I doubted myself and did research just in case: yes, rape kits are free in Washington DC: because, I assume the police want to CATCH THE RAPIST!
Ms. Fluke has been accused of calling out her peers at Georgetown’s Law School as sluts for revealing that they are going broke because they are having so much sex that they can’t afford birth control. Again I disagree with that assessment. However, I do accuse her of calling out her peers at Georgetown Law as bad lawyers. The next time I need a lawyer, I will make sure not to get a lawyer who went to Georgetown: I would probably wind up getting the death penalty for a shoplifting charge. The women at Georgetown Law should be less angry about having to pay for birth control and moreangry that they are paying a ridiculous amount of money per year to get a substandard education: basic cable is around $40 /month. If you drop out of Georgetown and watch Law and Order on TNT six short hours a day, you will be able to afford all the birth control you want, have more time to use it and be a better lawyer more capable of doing the job and earning a living. I hope these tips have been helpful and will act as a useful supplement to the obviously lacking curriculum in the Georgetown University Department of Law.
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Good article. Fact is: This student is a product of Fabian Socialism permeating all of America’s Elite graduate educational system.
Convoluted testimony, reasoning beyond the pale of logic and a straight-faced ability to (under oath) utter a plethora of falsehoods…from specious income claims to expense calculations.
This students education, at one of America’s premier Ivy League schools, was on display for all the world to see. A sad reminder of how poorly america’s graduate education fares against similiar world graduate counterparts.
A sad reminder of why America’s educational system, once the world’s envy, is now a third world equivalent of socialist/marxist/leninista tripe (Fluke=OWS’ers, one and the same).
>>To be an effective lawyer, you need to be able to negotiate. If you are a woman, let alone a female law student, and you aren’t adept enough to negotiate with a man to get him to pay for the birth control for intercourse he will partake in, I don’t know what to tell you: guys are pretty much willing to do anything before they have sex with you.
Except lots of women take birth control when they aren’t necessarily seeing one guy, and plenty more take it for medical reasons that have nothing to do with sex. Plenty of men don’t know this, but you’re a woman, so what’s your excuse? Feigning ignorance for purposes of filling a page, or actual ignorance?
>>Fluke had a whopper of an estimate that birth control costs her and her peers at Georgetown Law around 1,000/year.
No, she didn’t. Her exact quote:
“Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.”
It CAN cost $3,000 a year over the course of the entirety of several years of law school. And that might be on the high end, but it’s hardly a lie, and the fact of the matter is that it’s not an insignificant amount for a student, and they shouldn’t have to pay it, because it’s HEALTH CARE.
>>If Fluke and her peers are telling the truth about these figures, they are having sex around three times/day instead of doing something called studying
There is seriously, absolutely no excuse for this kind of idiocy coming from a woman. You can’t possibly be unaware that the amount of sex you have has no relation to the amount of contraceptive pills you take or how much you spend on it. You take ONE PILL A DAY no matter what. It costs the same whether you have no sex or constant sex. Limbaugh’s excuse is that he’s male, and incredibly stupid. What’s yours?
>>Through the free clinics I have been to, I have had a cyst on one of my ovaries removed as well as gotten a biopsy on my breast: they even offered to remove the lump for practically free.
That you can say this and be anything but completely supportive of Sandra Fluke’s cause and outraged by the GOP war against Planned Parenthood and women’s health in general, that you don’t blow a gasket every time anyone says that this is just about women wanting sex and others to pay for the birth control, is just mind-boggling. Are you aware that there would have been no free clinic for you, and would be none for anyone else in your situation, if the GOP had their way?
>>How are you a law student and not know the law well enough to know that rape kits are free?!!!!!!!!
First off, no, they’re not always free. Hideous, I know, but true.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/05/13/making-rape-victims-pay
And second…I dunno, you don’t seem to know how birth control pills work, so you’re hardly one to talk.
>>OK: I doubted myself and did research just in case: yes, rape kits are free in Washington DC:
Okay, so you’re saying you had to research just to make sure that the rape kits are free in that city, but somehow this woman is a total idiot because she didn’t know rape kits were free. Makes loads of sense.
Seriously, what’s your excuse for this level of ignorance? I’m genuinely curious.
Sweetie, you’re the one who’s wrong.
I worked on the rape kit issue for twenty years. It’s one of those problems we solved through . . . you know, work. And it did take work, but the prevalence of charging for kits was always wildly exaggerated by activists.
I don’t like that kind of politically exploitative behavior, and I speak as more than just the owner of the hair club: I endured a really ugly rape kit examination in 1986, with an abusive doctor who loudly questioned whether I was really raped (by a serial-rapist torturer who broke into my house).
I am disgusted by fake feminists who exploit the rape-kit payment myth in order to advance other causes. While hiding behind fake names.
If you really cared about rape victims (rather than caring about scoring cheap political points on their backs) what you would do is work a little bit yourself and learn the facts before spouting off. No woman needs to pay for a rape kit in the country, and that’s what they need to be hearing, because there’s always some asshole somewhere in the system who might temporarily say otherwise, and some reporter willing to believe the claims of activists with have vested interests in polishing their halos, or just lying.
And put Sandra Fluke at the top of that list, along with every “feminist activist” who couldn’t be bothered to correct her ridiculous claims about a n alleged victim of rape who didn’t report the crime because it might cost too much to do so.
Ugly.
>>Convoluted testimony, reasoning beyond the pale of logic and a straight-faced ability to (under oath) utter a plethora of falsehoods…from specious income claims to expense calculations.
Stop pretending you even heard or read her testimony. It’s fucking sad.
>>I worked on the rape kit issue for twenty years. It’s one of those problems we solved through . . . you know, work. And it did take work, but the prevalence of charging for kits was always wildly exaggerated by activists.
Regardless, the writer’s point was that Fluke’s friend was an idiot for not knowing that rape kits are free, when the fact of the matter is that a) They’re NOT always free, and b) EVEN THE WRITER HERSELF was so uncertain about whether or not they’re free in DC that she had to look it up. It’s not a question of whether rape kits are free or not, it’s that clearly it’s not so idiotic to not KNOW whether they’re free or not.
And furthermore, looking at Fluke’s testimony, it turned out the writer didn’t even get it right. Fluke doesn’t mention rape kits or reporting the rape to the police AT ALL. NOT AT ALL. Here’s the exact quote:
“One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.”
So in fact, it’s MY mistake in the sense that what I should have taken the writer to task for is completely misquoting the testimony…AND being wrong about what she said about what she was wrongly saying was in it. My bad.
>>If you really cared about rape victims (rather than caring about scoring cheap political points on their backs) what you would do is work a little bit yourself and learn the facts before spouting off.
Ma’am, all I “spouted off” about rape kits was that they’re not always free (and that that’s hideous), so it’s not stupid to be unsure if they’re free or not. And you’ll forgive me if I take Factcheck.org’s word on the matter over yours:
http://factcheck.org/2008/09/palin-charging-victims-for-rape-kits/
>>And put Sandra Fluke at the top of that list, along with every “feminist activist” who couldn’t be bothered to correct her ridiculous claims about an alleged victim of rape who didn’t report the crime because it might cost too much to do so.
How is Sandra Fluke to blame? She TOLD A STORY ABOUT A RAPE VICTIM. Why? To illustrate how the female students at Georgetown get the impression that women’s health is not given the priority it deserves. What’s “ugly” about that?
Seriously, I mean, I get the ignorance so many men have about this stuff, but how in the world can so many WOMEN be so quick to take sides against this woman? All she did was testify on behalf of WOMEN’S HEALTH. That’s it! Really! What in the freakin’ universe is there to scorn her about that?
1. You don’t just take the pill before sex. If you are single for three years, you keep taking the pill. There is no man to pay for it.
2. Up to. UP to. And certainly.
3. Having sex doesn’t mean you need to pay for more pills. Gee, it looks like you’re the one who needs more education. Do you really think women have to buy a pill for each romp in the hay? Do you really? I’m glad I don’t live in your country – sex education is evidently terrible!
4. Two condoms at the same time? You…you complete moron. I repeat point 3.
5. Rape kits are not, actually, always free.
To write an effective critique, one must be of at least average intelligence. You have failed.