..WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A high-profile attorney is calling for Rush Limbaugh to be prosecuted on a defamation charge, saying an obscure Florida law can be used to punish him for calling a college student a "slut" and a "prostitute" on the air.
Gloria Allred, the famed celebrity lawyer, sent a letter to the Palm Beach County Attorney's Office on Thursday saying prosecutors should consider a charge under an 1883 law making it a misdemeanor to question a woman's chastity.
"He has personally targeted her and vilified her, and he should have to bear the consequences of his extremely outrageous, tasteless and damaging conduct," Allred said in a phone interview Friday.
Limbaugh had no immediate comment on the letter and didn't address it in his radio show Friday. Rachel Nelson, a spokeswoman for Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks Inc., said the network had nothing further to add.
Denise Nieman, the county attorney, said she forwarded the letter to the state attorney's office, which handles criminal matters. The state attorney's office had no immediate comment.
Allred focused her efforts on Palm Beach because Limbaugh both lives and broadcasts his show from the county. She cited a state law that says, "Whoever speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree."
Allred has a long history of taking on high-profile cases, most recently representing a woman who claimed to have been sexually harassed by former presidential candidate Herman Cain, and a woman who received lewd messages from former Rep. Anthony Weiner.
Whether prosecutors will take the request seriously and whether such a case could pose First Amendment issues remained to be seen. But the law should be used because it's still on the books, Allred said.
"I'm sure he has an army of highly paid attorneys in his entourage to advise him about how he should defend himself," she said. "I'm concerned about the impact that he has had and that he wished to have had on women who choose to speak out and exercise their free speech."
The tumult began last week when Limbaugh discounted the appearance of a Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, on Capitol Hill. Fluke testified to congressional Democrats in support of their national health care policy that would compel her Catholic college's health plan to cover her birth control, a comment Limbaugh seized on.
He said last Wednesday: "What does it say about the college coed ... who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex."
After an outcry — and the decision by numerous businesses to pull their ads from his show — he apologized, saying "I should not have used the language I did, and it was wrong."
Allred called that apology "meaningless."
Well, since Rush has a lawyer for a brother, perhaps he can get inexpensive representation.
And let's not forgot that he was making a comparison, an analogy, not specifically calling Fluke a slut or prostitute.
Don't get me wrong - it was a stupid comment for Rush to make, and worse, since he has so many listeners. But again, has Fluke been materially damaged by this? I've heard no news yet that she's been offered a book deal, but you know that's in the works too!
Rush may settle out of court (if it goes that far), but if Allred really does bring the suit, perhaps Rush should fight it tooth and nail, and bring up all the things said against Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin that were equally crude, but for which no one on the left has lost their job or been sued by their victim, as well as point out - not necessarily freedom of speech, but just that what he said was a poor joke and an analogy...
(Similar to follks like Brian Griese, who got suspended for a game or two because he dared to suggest that a Latino football player might be eating a taco. Or Mark Cuban who apparently made a gay joke - about a guy he must have known was married - and people are all up in arms about that, yet it was so innocuous.... or Fuzzy Zoeller making his comment about hoping Tiger wouldn't choose fried chicken for his Master's dinner, which got him castigated when it was just a simple joke...
Obviously as a woman I don't think any woman deserves to be called a slut or a prostitute - unless she is one, and Rush had no reason to suppose she was, which is why he was making an analogy, not a charge - and that's a bit more serious than someone joking about a taco...but the precedent has been set for these sorts of lawsuits.
Rush should of apologized and he did apologize. But as Allred said, when the person doing the apologizing has big pockets, an apology isn't enough. Money must be taken. That's the world we live in these days.
(Having said that, I'm not sure why Allred wants to sue Limbaugh based on a law that has been on the books since 1883. Rush called a woman, who wasn't a prostitute, a prostitute, on air. (Well, he made the analogy - whether that's the same as actually calling her a prostitute...) I would say that that is slander and no obscure law need apply!
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