I don’t read Newsweek often.

Truth be told, I don’t read Newsweek at all. That publication consists mostly of leftist propaganda disguised as news, and after the hit job the editorial staff did on Sarah Palin on their front cover earlier this month I’m actively rooting for its financial immolation.

So I don’t pretend to be a neutral observer where Newsweek is concerned.

That said, I did come across this gem from The Gaggle, a “press, politics and absurdity” blog hosted on Newsweek’s web site from last week. Written by Katie Connolly, it’s entitled “Senator Mary Landrieu Is Not A Prostitute,” and it is breathtaking in its asininity.

Connolly opens the piece by accusing Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh of making “deeply offensive comments on a near-daily basis,” and then calling their characterization of Mary Landrieu’s selling her vote on Harry Reid’s Deathcare bill as prostitution “completely unacceptable.” She would likely have said something similar about our characterization of Landrieu’s vote to open debate, as it was identical to that expressed by Beck, Limbaugh and millions of other conservative Americans tired of politicians selling their votes and constituents out for political payoffs, but that’s neither here nor there.

She goes on.

Landrieu’s vote, she says, came as a result of pressure by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to do something about the state’s inflated share of Medicaid funding from the Katrina recovery dollars, thereby making it Jindal’s fault that Landrieu had to sell out her vote. This is a ridiculous lie; while it is true that Jindal has been screaming about the Medicaid shortfall amid Louisiana’s billion-dollar budget gap, at no point did the governor favor any of the versions of Obamacare put forth by the House or the Senate. Connolly finds support for her contention that Landrieu was doing the Lord’s work in a quote by Jindals’ health and hospitals secretary Alan Levine, who was quoted in a Times-Picayune article as saying:

“Look,” said Levine, who has been lobbying the administration and Congress on the FMAP issue for eight months, “it’s good to have a senator in a position to be able to make demands like that.”

“While I don’t support the bill, she is doing the best she can to help the state, and she should be applauded,” he said.

Emphasis mine. The article clearly shows that Jindal and his people have been attempting to come up with a solution to the Medicaid/FMAP problem for a very long time, and Landrieu so far hasn’t accomplished anything on the state’s behalf. And while Landrieu may well have put Louisiana in a position to hold the Democrat leadership hostage on the Obamacare bill, it’s been eight months with the issue on the table – waiting until now to play the Medicaid fix card is suspect in and of itself.

Her dubious justification for Landrieu’s sold vote now on the table, Connolly adds this cherry: “Like it or not, it’s routine practice on Capitol Hill to trade your vote for something that helps your state.” That is without a doubt true, and it’s also one reason why better than 80 percent of the American people despise Washington politics with a vigor commonly reserved for a fat kid with a Twinkie. Most people find what Landrieu did disgusting, and that includes people in Louisiana on whose behalf this “routine practice” was executed. The public is tired of pork as a lubricant for bad policy in the nation’s capitol and wants it to end, and that’s why colorful rhetoric like accusing Landrieu of political prostitution finds purchase.

Then comes Connolly’s coup de grace. After a segue into the Louisiana Democrat Party’s stinkbomb aimed at Sen. David Vitter on the prostitution angle, she calls it regrettable since what’s really important is whining about how completely sexist it is to call Mary Landrieu a prostitute in the wake of that vote. After all, she says, nobody called Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) a prostitute for doing something similar to what Landrieu did regarding the same vote. And finally, we have this:

The whole episode leaves me wondering what the Beck/Limbaugh response would be if Keith Olbermann had called Sarah Palin a prostitute for bargaining with the Feds to get much needed dollars for her state.

That’s pretty rich coming from a publication which had this as its cover earlier this month. I’ve already used the word breathtaking once in this piece so I’ll attempt to refrain from using it again, but perhaps Connolly missed her employer’s own print version and/or the controversy it spawned not two weeks ago.

Or maybe the message is “sexism for me, but not for thee” to the “completely unacceptable” Limbaugh and Beck.