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"  Recently, Rush Limbaugh took to his radio show to weigh in on the relatively mild controversy over Beyonc\u00E9&amp;#039;s new song, &amp;quot;Bow Down / I Been On.&amp;quot; Rap Genius, the Internet&amp;#039;s most intelligence repository of hip-hop lyrics and notes, took the opportunity to compare Limbaugh&amp;#039;s claims with the facts and reasonable human thought. They found them wanting. We&amp;#039;ve published a condensed version of the analysis of Limbaugh&amp;#039;s rant below. Consider it public service. \u2014The Editors You heard about Beyonc\u00E9? Who hasn&amp;#039;t? She&amp;#039;s not only one of the most influential musicians, but also one of the most influential people on this planet. And with good reason, too, as she has accomplished a whole lot. Her Accomplishments: \u2022 Female artist who has spent the most weeks at No. 1 this decade. \u2022 Only artist in history to have all her studio albums debut at the number-one spot on the Billboard 200. \u2022 She has a numerous amount of awards. \u2022 More recently, she gave one hell of a performance at the Superbowl Halftime Show. \u2022 And the list goes on and on\u2026 You heard what Beyonc\u00E9... Beyonc\u00E9, let me give you a little history on Beyonc\u00E9. Beyonc\u00E9 used to be the lead for, it was a three-girl group called Destiny&amp;#039;s Child. About the only fact Limbaugh gets right in this rant is that Beyonce was the leader of the three-girl group Destiny&amp;#039;s Child. And even that&amp;#039;s only a half-truth, since the group had four girls for quite a while. And their songs were attempts to inspire young women not to take any grief from men. Is that right, Mr. Snerdly? Notice how Limbaugh asks the black guy about Destiny&amp;#039;s Child.   Essentially, don&amp;#039;t take any grief. Don&amp;#039;t let these guys walk all over you, don&amp;#039;t do this, don&amp;#039;t do that. Just walk away \u2014 you don&amp;#039;t need to put up with that. She&amp;#039;s done a 180. False. If anything, she&amp;#039;s done a super-fierce 360.   Beyonc\u00E9, now having been married, having been impregnated and given birth to Blue Ivy, she&amp;#039;s going out on a new tour, and they may as well call it the &amp;quot;Bow Down B-I-itch&amp;quot; tour. Maybe Rush has been listening to Yeezy. She&amp;#039;s got a new song \u2014 can I say it? It&amp;#039;s in the popular... \u2014 &amp;quot;Bow Down, Bitches&amp;quot; is the new tune. A total 180. Beyonc\u00E9&amp;#039;s now saying, go ahead and put up with it. Larry Womack of HuffPo on Rush&amp;#039;s misunderstanding of the word &amp;quot;bitch&amp;quot; here: &amp;quot;It takes a certain level of sexism (or total cultural ignorance,) to think that &amp;#039;bitches&amp;#039; in this context means &amp;#039;all women,&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;married women,&amp;#039; rather than &amp;#039;performers I am superior to.&amp;#039; I certainly understand that people find the word problematic and anti-feminist and as such could be harmful to all women, as the Telegraph piece indicated. There&amp;#039;s just no denying that it has traditionally been used to attack women. But I don&amp;#039;t think anyone out there \u2014 save Rush Limbaugh \u2014 thinks that the &amp;#039;bitches&amp;#039; instructed to &amp;#039;Bow Down&amp;#039; are all women or all married women.&amp;quot; And you know why? I&amp;#039;ll tell you why. Because she got married, she&amp;#039;s married to a rich guy. Jay-Z may be richer than Beyonc\u00E9, but with a net worth of $300 million Beyonc\u00E9 can hardly be considered a gold digger in this relationship. She&amp;#039;s even calling herself &amp;quot;Mrs. Carter&amp;quot; on the tour. Limbaugh saying that Bey changing her name is subservient is particularly rich, given that her husband changed his name, too. Dawn? Dawn, look at me. Limbaugh teases his crew&amp;#039;s sole woman about Bey&amp;#039;s supposed abandonment of her gender. She has shelved Beyonc\u00E9. She&amp;#039;s no longer being called...she&amp;#039;s gonna call herself &amp;quot;Mrs. Carter&amp;quot; on the &amp;quot;Bow Down, Bitches&amp;quot; tour. And that song, that&amp;#039;s the title of the single that&amp;#039;s fronting the tour. And the advice is to these women, go ahead and put up with it. Put up with it now. Bow down, B-I-itches. This is Rush&amp;#039;s crucial mistake. Had he actually listened to the song (or looked it up on Rap Genius), he would have seen that the &amp;quot;bow down&amp;quot; command was to acknowledge her own royal-like control of the music game and that she EXPLICITLY tells fans (and haters), &amp;quot;I took some time to live my life/But don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;m just his little wife.&amp;quot; Because why? She got married. She married a rich guy. She now understands. She now understands it&amp;#039;s worth it to bow down. And so now, she&amp;#039;s passing on this advice. A typical bigoted remark toward women. Rush once again demonstrates his lack of intellect, by insinuating that men are somehow superior to women, and women should acknowledge such bowing down, as &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s worth it.&amp;quot; People like this are what perpetuates this patriarchy. Am a feminist and very offended! (Not even a girl doe.) And there&amp;#039;s a big story about this in the UK Telegraph. A MAJOR story about this in the UK... Not Obama&amp;#039;s trip to Israel. A major story about Beyonc\u00E9&amp;#039;s tour and what it&amp;#039;s called and she&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Mrs. Carter&amp;quot; and how she&amp;#039;s now advising women to put up with whatever. You find the right guy, you put up with it. Bow down. Had Limbaugh bothered to actually READ the story in question, he would have seen that this is not at all what it is about. The writer is indeed upset at the &amp;quot;Mrs. Carter&amp;quot; tour, but her primary concern is that Bey refers to other women as &amp;quot;bitches&amp;quot; \u2014 a far cry from Limbaugh&amp;#039;s reading. Limbaugh also assumes that Barack Obama&amp;#039;s 2013 trip to Israel is of as great a concern to the UK as it is to the U.S. This assumption is wrong. The U.S. is far more concerned about Israel than all of western Europe. You&amp;#039;d think a nationalist like Limbaugh would understand why a foreign leader&amp;#039;s trip didn&amp;#039;t make the front pages this week and a deceased young British soldier receiving the military&amp;#039;s highest honour is. And the story in the UK Telegraph is written by an angry woman who feels betrayed by Beyonc\u00E9. This woman not gon&amp;#039; bow down.  Note Rush&amp;#039;s lapse here into an awful, racist, demeaning &amp;quot;black&amp;quot; dialect, complete with bad grammar, when talking about a presumably independent woman. This is Felicity Capon:   The woman who wrote this piece is not... Let&amp;#039;s see if I&amp;#039;ve got... I&amp;#039;ve got so many stacks of stuff, you can&amp;#039;t... If I get everything in this program, this is gonna be one for the ages. If I find... I&amp;#039;ve got fifteen stacks here. I don&amp;#039;t know where I put it. Right here \u2014 ah! Here it is! &amp;quot;Bow Down, Bitches.&amp;quot; Felicity Capen, or Cah-pone. C-A-P-O-N. Seriously, Rush? If you&amp;#039;re gonna completely misquote someone&amp;#039;s article, you might as well practice her last name in the mirror a few times first. &amp;quot;Beyonc\u00E9&amp;#039;s new single marks a change in direction for the &amp;#039;independent woman&amp;#039; the U.S. President hand-picks to play at his party.&amp;quot; Bey sang the &amp;quot;Star-Spangled Banner&amp;quot; for President Barack Obama&amp;#039;s 2013 Inauguration.   And Felicity Capon explains why the lyrics leave a bitter taste. It&amp;#039;s a HUGE story.  Ahh so that&amp;#039;s what this is about\u2026 Rush opens this ill-advised rant as if he has taken up issue with the (misperceived) change in B&amp;#039;s lyrical message of empowerment over the years. This probably seemed odd to anyone familiar with Mr. Limbaugh and his track record for misogyny: \u2022 Referred to Hillary Clinton as a &amp;quot;testicle lockbox&amp;quot; \u2022 The whole Sandra Fluke situation \u2022 Insinuated that menstrual cycle had something to do with the accusers of Herman Cain coming forward \u2022 Alienated women everywhere when he claimed we shouldn&amp;#039;t expect much from Danica Patrick since she is a female after all\u2026 And many more\u2026 But here, we see that Rush doesn&amp;#039;t care what Beyonce is saying. His main concern is that an independent woman is making headlines instead of a man. The thing that&amp;#039;s gonna shake this country up is gonna be Obama on an open mic I think Rush is trying to subtly reference the time Obama got caught on an &amp;quot;open&amp;quot; or turned-on microphone calling Kanye West a &amp;quot;jackass&amp;quot; after the Taylor Swift VMA incident (which, incidentally, also involved Beyonc\u00E9 \u2014 but let&amp;#039;s not give Rush too much credit here). Again, I think. But after three minutes of this rant, I&amp;#039;m not really sure what he&amp;#039;s getting at\u2026 dissing Timberlake&amp;#039;s latest CD or his latest fashion line, or maybe saying something negative about Beyonc\u00E9. Quick, you, intern, over there. Log on to The Google and fetch me a popular hippidy-hop album that was released this week for me to reference and sound hip.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a20910/rap-genius-rush-limbaugh-beyonce-15253289/>