So Uncle Sam (who is supposed to represent the country as a whole, not just Washington, as I assume is implied here) raped the economy? Yeah, that makes sense.

And the title of the cartoon is ‘Do we really want to keep talking about Akin?’

Yes, we really do want to keep talking about Akin. Because despite what conservatives are trying to do with him, despite what they try to do with almost every jackass who says something unbelievably offensive and ignorant (that is, turn him into a pariah, a ‘one bad apple’ who doesn’t speak for the rest of the Right), Todd Akin’s comments did not just appear ex nihilo. He said what he believes, and what he believes did not come out of nowhere. They came from the Republican mindset that a woman’s body is a political football. That politicians (mostly men) can decide what can be done with pregnancies, and that decision is ‘Force the pregnancy to be carried to term, regardless of any and all circumstances.’ Romney and Ryan are paying lip service now to a rape exception in abortion bans, but it’s just flip-flopping on their part in light of the Akin controversy.

Todd Akin is not alone in his thinking. Maybe the specific idea of women’s bodies ‘shutting down’ “illegitimate” pregnancies wasn’t shared by other Republicans (oops, maybe it was), but the result of that rationale (no exceptions for abortion are permissible) and the basis of that rationalization (abortion is so bad it’s up to other people to tell women what to do with their bodies) are rooted deep in the Republican philosophy that says “Women do not deserve autonomy.”

In other words, Akin just let slip what so many Republicans are really thinking. That’s what has upset conservatives about this, and that is the real story here. Yes, we should be talking about Todd Akin, but only as a starting point in a larger discussion about the Republican party’s War on Women and the pervasive ignorance among the Right.