It’s hard to believe that it was less than two weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh first apologized for calling Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” during his show. The timeline is a tough thing to wrap your head around, due in large part to the unending wave of minutiae-laden tirades that have resulted from it. Yes, Limbaugh apologized, and then we all remembered that Rush Limbaugh is Rush Limbaugh and we had a laugh at the absurd idea that any of us had cared what he thinks about women anyway.

But the story didn’t die.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made quite a knee-slapping wisecrack at Friday’s Women in the World 2012 conference in which she not-so-discreetly swiped at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has been all over the news the past few weeks for calling Georgetown University student a “slut” and a “prostitute.”

So here’s the thing: Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh was completely out of line to call Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” but news outlets everywhere aren’t doing viewers any favors by stumbling over themselves to cover this story to death. The media fixation on Fluke has allowed a comparatively less controversial statement from Limbaugh, who went after “The American Way of Eating” author Tracie McMillan for being “single, white [and over-educated],” to proliferate in the news to the detriment of other women.

It’s safe to say that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has more nerve than anyone else in the country.

Well, here’s an interesting piece of information. Apparently, media usage of the word “slut” has spiked in recent days.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh may have apologized for calling Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,”  but it doesn’t look like his advertisers are going to let him off the hook anytime soon.

Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers takes a fairly uncommon stance in a new Daily Beast column titled, “Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist” in which she argues that left-leaning media men experience less backlash for making sexist remarks than Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators.

After several days of backlash and losing advertisers for calling Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh has apologized for his remarks and chalked up his decision to use colorful language as a failed attempt at humor.

In a statement on his site today, Limbaugh says:

“For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.”

There are consequences to calling someone a “slut” and a “prostitute” on national radio.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has been making headlines all week for using those colorful words to describe Georgetown student Sandra Fluke, has lost several advertisers for shaming her publicly.

In school, did your teacher ever punish the entire class for the misbehavior of one student?