Female Police = Political Correctness?

One of the images that commonly accompanies the story of Brian Nichols, charged with murdering several people in an Atlanta courtroom, is that of a female police office escorting him. A number of conservatives have taken this image and used it to attack the very idea of having women in the police.

Media Matters quotes from the March 14 broadcast of Rush Limbaugh's show:

Of course, a 5-foot woman could not play in the NFL; a 5-foot woman could not play in the NBA, but somehow she can be a police officer, a deputy, or a cop, and a lot of people think that this is a little crazy.

People who think that's crazy don't seem to realize that there is a lot more to police work than the sorts of physical exertions that characterize playing football. They denigrate policewomen everywhere by suggesting that if they can't play football, then they also can't make it in law enforcement.

And, of course, I know there's a lot of sensitivity to this in police departments around the country because political correctness has reared its head in a number of places. So, when I saw Brian Nichols turn himself in and be escorted to the SUV by a blonde female FBI agent, I said, "Somebody here is trying to ram PC down our throats," because they're already sensitive to what had happened in the jail, and they're saying it had nothing to do with it, blah, blah, blah. And we're not afraid of having women in close contact with this prisoner, who had already committed all these murders and heinous acts.

Because, I suppose, Rush Limbaugh interprets everything through his assumptions about how the Evil Liberal Establishment is trying to deprive white Christian men of their just privileges and power. No other explanations occur to him and he certainly doesn't start placing phone calls or do any investigation (you know, the sort of activity that characterizes journalists as opposed to parasitic hacks) about what might have really been going on.

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