Beer, birth control, baby-making - oh my! Rachel Maddow tore into Governor Mitt Romney last night and took her criticism of the GOP candidate (and, really, all men in politics who have debated issues relating to uteri) to new heights on her Thursday show.
Maddow took issue with what she saw as Romney's failure to accurately answer a young woman who questioned the Governor's stance on birth control at an Iowa town hall. Romney—a favorite target of Maddow's— assumed the woman was referring to his stance on abortion, which he said he was against. But the woman was actually referring to what Romney has previously said he supports: a so-called "personhood amendment" that codifies life as beginning at conception. Many fear that the language of such amendments, which are currently on the ballot in some states, could lead to a ban on birth control.
After she played the clip of the exchange, Maddow said, "Romney apparently does not understand that this is what he supports." She said that the exchange reminded her about the male domination of politics and the media, and of the fact that those men often find themselves talking about women's bodies. "Sometimes, I'm not sure they really get it!" she almost shouted.
She then had her producers change her usual blue background to a room with a bar, large TV screen and big leather sofa. Maddow turned what she called her "man cave" into a special Romney-themed cave, so her producers included a graphic of a Harvard flag and the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics logo. She popped open a beer and told the ladies to leave so she could talk "just to the fellas."
"It's very simple," Maddow said. "This-is-how-a-baby-is-made." She then launched into a full description of the baby-making process and even put up a diagram of the female reproductive system titled the "man cave's not-too-upsetting guide to down-there parts." She mockingly went through three beers in the process of explaining to men how babies were made, how birth control worked, and that sometimes people engaged in sexual acts that could lead to pregnancy even though they don't want it to. "This is how the birth control works that Mitt Romney told Mike Huckabee he would like to make illegal!" she cried, criticizing government involvement in "litigating the second-by-second legal status of what is happening in some guy's girlfriend's uterus on a Friday night."
"I know it's awkward to talk about these things sometimes," Maddow concluded. She also said that she knew this was "very upsetting" but felt it was warranted to talk sense into men. "Criticize away," she told her viewers.
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