Her conclusion:

David Frum sinks his teeth in:

The cases that conservatives cite as somehow equivalent to Limbaugh’s tirade against Fluke by and large did bring consequences for their authors.

After David Letterman for example made an ugly joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter, he delivered an abject seven-minute apology on air. (To which Palin responded by refusing the apology and insinuating that David Letterman was a child molester.)

When liberal talker Ed Schultz nastily called my dear friend Laura Ingraham a “slut” on his radio show, MSNBC responded by suspending Schultz for a week without pay from his TV show. Schultz likewise apologized in person on air. (Ingraham accepted the apology with grace and humor.)

The exception to the general rule is Bill Maher, who never apologized for calling Palin by a demeaning sexual epithet. But…Limbaugh’s place in American public life is in no way comparable to that of David Letterman, Bill Maher or Ed Schultz.

Letterman is not a political figure at all; and while Maher and Schultz strongly identify as liberals, neither qualifies as anything like a powerbroker in the Democratic Party. I’m sure the Barack Obama re-election effort is happy to have Maher’s million-dollar gift, but I sincerely doubt there is a Democratic congressman who worries much whether Maher criticizes him. A word of criticism from Limbaugh, by contrast, will reduce almost any member of the Republican caucus to abject groveling.

There’s even more to it than that though: To the extent that liberal male commentators are getting a pass for misogyny, it’s probably because they otherwise advocate for policies that are beneficial for women.  Ed Schultz has been a staunch supporter of Women’s reproductive rights.  Bill Maher has satirized Republican attempts to mandate medically unnecessary sonograms before seeking an abortion.  Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, has a long and rich history of opposing the “projects” of women’s rights organizations, and trivializing their political struggles with rank condescension and cavalier sexism.

The reason why Rush Limbaugh’s latest comments were so poisonous is because he wasn’t just insulting women: his comments potentially caused real harm.  Limbaugh’s comments were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of reproductive health issues that is extremely detrimental to women; namely, the fact that birth control is not only prescribed for contraceptive purposes. 

Birth control is frequently prescribed to treat medical symptoms unrelated to sexual activity.  And in the case of the link above, it involves a 16-year old girl who was bleeding profusely due to an irregular menstrual cycle, which was accompanied by psychological distress and crippling pain.  This is who Limbaugh was calling a slut.  This is who Limbaugh was implicitly asking to make a sex tape so he could masturbate to it.  These are the kind of issues that Rush Limbaugh fundamentally does not get.  And by extension, his listeners don’t get it either.

Unlike Ed Schultz, Letterman, or Maher, Limbaugh was not simply taking a cheap shot at an ideological adversary by exploiting a gendered pejorative.  He was denigrating the very real human suffering of women and girls who are in no position to defend themselves from his bilous remarks.  Laura Ingraham cannot claim that Ed Schultz made her life more difficult to live when he called her a slut.  As bad as it may have been, Schultz simply does not have enough influence on the left to make an impact on the thinking of large groups of people.  And Schultz’ remarks immediately offended a large portion of his audience.  The same cannot be said of Rush Limbaugh.

That’s why this time was different.  That’s why there’s no equivocation between Rush’s vile assault on reproductive rights, and the alleged double standard that gets applied to liberal commentators.  There was much more at stake, from a public policy standpoint, in Rush’s comments than there was in the counter-examples from left-leaning commentators.  That’s why it was a big deal this time around.