RUSH: Battle Creek, Michigan. We go to the phones, to Amy, one of my all-time top ten favorite female names. Hi, Amy.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: Fine. Thank you.
CALLER: I had a general comment and then a question about TIME. I find myself to be hated by both liberals and feminists because I am, I think, a pretty attractive mother. I’m married. My husband and I equally make less than $19,000 a year. And I am going to law school in the fall. We’ve never taken handouts —
RUSH: Okay, wait just a second. You’re speaking very quickly, and I —
CALLER: Sorry.
RUSH: No, I just need to keep up with you. You said that you find yourself to be hated by both liberals and feminists because you’re an attractive mother?
CALLER: That’s one of the reasons, yep.
RUSH: Why do you think that?
CALLER: You know, I breastfeed and this TIME Magazine thing has really touched me. I’m a breastfeeding mom and especially at school —
RUSH: No, but I mean — whoa, whoa — we’ll get there in just a second. We all love breastfeeding here. But why is it that you think that the libs hate you because you’re pretty?
CALLER: No, not because. I’m talking about the TIME Magazine, how everyone says, “Oh, she’s so pretty, she’s so pretty.” I bust my butt. We don’t make a lot of money but I work hard and I get really criticized for being, you know, both married and with a child and breastfeeding and trying to attain a —
RUSH: Okay, who criticizes you for that?
CALLER: Girls at school.
RUSH: The girls at school. Why is it any of their business?
CALLER: I don’t know, but they make it.
RUSH: Well, do you breastfeed in public?
CALLER: Well, you know, I was more self-conscious so I didn’t breastfeed in public. But there was a couple of times when I’d run out to the car and do it. But at school I pumped in the stall because there’s not a place for breastfeeding moms to pump because it’s a college, so I’d go to the bathroom and pump.
RUSH: Oh okay, so you pumped.
CALLER: Yes, I did. Yeah, and I breastfed him as well.
RUSH: Okay. So obviously it’s the TIME Magazine cover that’s got you perturbed a little. You don’t know what the big hullabaloo is about that?
CALLER: Well, from my aspect people are saying it was trying to attract feminists. For me I found it great, you know, I think it’s great that they’re trying to encourage more women. For me, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, you know. As soon as I got pregnant I wanted to breastfeed my baby, and people criticized me. So it was nice to see a woman who’s attractive and young with her boy breastfeeding, so I appreciated the article.
RUSH: The article wasn’t even about that. Did you read the article?
CALLER: I did, yes.
RUSH: Yeah. The article wasn’t even about that.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: TIME Magazine is sucking, since we’re talking about breastfeeding. They’re in bad shape. That cover was simply to — and it worked. It was to attract attention. It worked. Now, we’ve played a sound bite today from a Washington feminist who is upset at that cover because the woman on it is pretty.
CALLER: Right, I heard that segment, too.
RUSH: Yeah. She’s upset because the woman is pretty and the story’s not even about that. She’s a journalist. She’s calling TIME Magazine on I guess fake journalism. They put that picture on the cover. The story is not even about that.
CALLER: Yeah, the story wasn’t completely about that. I know it wasn’t about that but, you know, the doctor in there encourages women to breastfeed. He encourages them to breastfeed for a long time. He encourages them to co-sleep and things like that. So while it wasn’t about that, there was context for it, and, right, it brought attention. It got people to pay attention to breastfeeding.
RUSH: Well, we do. We always pay attention to that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Sonia in West Orange, New Jersey. Hi, great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello. Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to speak to you. First of all, I am a Rush Baby raising two second-generation Rush Babies myself. I am 24 years old, and I’m a breastfeeding mom. And amongst all of my friends who are both breast and bottle feeding, we just admire the woman on the TIME Magazine cover. We think she’s fantastic for being as devoted to her child as she is and looking as great as she does doing it.
RUSH: Okay. Again, I have no problem whatsoever, just a question: do you plan on breastfeeding your child through age six? ‘Cause that’s what the guy about whom the story was written advocates. In fact, he preaches attachment parenthood, which means never let go of your child.
CALLER: I don’t plan on breastfeeding my child ’til six, but I certainly don’t think that it’s necessary to cut off breastfeeding at six months or 12 months or whatever is popular now.
RUSH: I think it is. I think we need a “Breastfeeders for Rush” page on Facebook.
CALLER: That would be fantastic.
RUSH: The first two calls today have been from women who want to make it a point to defend the woman on the cover of TIME Magazine. We got Rush Babes for America. We need to have a subset page called “Breastfeeders for Rush” page. We might work on that.
CALLER: I would join.
RUSH: Now, the woman on the TIME cover breastfed until the child was three.
CALLER: That’s a long time.
RUSH: That is. It is a very, very long time. But clearly, we’re out front on breastfeeding here. These things just happen. Look, we’ve had two calls today. They are both from women, young women, who don’t like the fact that this woman on TIME Magazine’s being criticized for it. I’ll tell you what, it’s the cutting edge. You’re on the cutting edge of societal evolution if you listen to this program. Well, yeah. Both sides of the breastfeeding issue. We got it from the baby’s side. We got it from the mother’s side. You’ve heard the old joke, I forget the comedian who first told this. He said he had a nightmare one night. He dreamed that he was Dolly Parton’s baby and she put him on formula. Such an old joke.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m serious about this “Breastfeeders for Rush” page. You know, in the old days — now, wait a minute. You’re all laughing in there. In the old days, the feminazis did not like breastfeeding at all. They were dead set against it. I’m going back to the early seventies, mid-seventies, they were dead set against that. It was the essence of motherhood. And I’m not exaggerating. I know some of you who were not paying attention then or too young then to remember. Don’t doubt me on this. It was radical back then. And the articles of feminism, if you will, were all about how motherhood was punitive, motherhood was total domination by the culture and by husbands and by men. And anything that reeked of motherhood — stay-at-home moms, breastfeeding — was a no, no.
That kid was supposed to be in day care, and you were supposed to be out in the corporate world climbing the ladder and having it all if you were a young twenties and thirties feminist back in that day. And it’s an interesting cycle now where a breastfeeding mom in the midst of the War on Women shows up on the cover of TIME Magazine and we are inundated with calls from young mothers totally supportive of her. This is not a good day for NOW. They’re not happy here. Don’t doubt me on this.
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