Well, I have a new career goal: Get publicly mocked by Rush Limbaugh for winning too many awards. Food justice writer and occasional Grist contributor Tracie McMillan achieved that honor yesterday, and I’m sure she’s feeling duly chastened for having the temerity to write successful books while being a lady and unmarried and in various other ways not Rush Limbaugh. (Rush fans: “Temerity” is “balls.”)
Here’s what Rush, the man everyone goes to for advice on how to succeed with integrity, had to say about McMillan’s career path:
What is it with all of these young single white women, overeducated — doesn’t mean intelligent. For example, Tracie McMillan, the author of this book, seems to be just out of college and already she has been showered with awards, including the 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Social justice journalism. This woman who wrote the book on food inequality, food justice, got an award for social justice journalism.
So, I literally only recognize this as mockery because Mother Jones told me it was. If you just read the words, Rush is giving McMillan well-deserved props for achieving so much recognition at such a young age and for such a valuable cause. But that interpretation hinges on being a person who thinks “single woman,” “social justice,” and “college” are something other than hideous insults.
Limbaugh’s misogyny has finally been losing him sponsors, after he called a young woman a prostitute and demanded that she shoot a porn video for him because she thought insurance should have paid for the pills that would have saved her friend’s ovary. It’s nice to see Rush’s hatred of women costing him money, although it does make me wonder where those guys were when he was being xenophobic, racist, homophobic, and ablist. But the uproar over his recent comments hasn’t centered on advancing awareness of contraception issues — it’s mostly been advancing awareness of Rush Limbaugh being a giant tool. So it remains to be seen whether Rush turning his sewage cannons on McMillan is going to do much for the food justice movement per se. That said, you’re reading this, so here is a giant picture of her book!
