Limbaugh Takes On Tracie McMillan, Author of “The American Way of Eating”

Lindsay Beyerstein

What is it with all of these young, single white women? Overeducated doesn’t mean intelligent,” harumphs Rush Limbaugh. This time, his target is Tracie McMillan, a reporter in her early thirties who went undercover as a farmworker, a shelf-stocker and produce worker at Wal-Mart, and an expediter at Applebee’s for her book, The American Way of Eating.

Predictably, instead of engaging with McMillan’s ideas, Rush pokes fun at the idea that a young women could know anything about the U.S. agro-industrial complex, or how to fix it. 

Limbaugh is obsessed with women who seem to be rising above their station. First it was Sandra Fluke, who dared to testify before Congress about a survey she conducted on the birth control needs of her fellow students.

Now, Tracie McMillan is in Rush’s crosshairs for being an overeducated” white woman, i.e., someone who went out and did her own exhaustive investigation of a major social problem instead of listening to Limbaugh bloviate, or waiting for a husband to distill Rush’s wisdom for her.

The book is outstanding. I’m working on a review.

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Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and In These Times staff writer who writes the blog Duly Noted. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. Her photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ City Room. She also blogs at The Hillman Blog (http://​www​.hill​man​foun​da​tion​.org/​h​i​l​l​m​a​nblog), a publication of the Sidney Hillman Foundation, a non-profit that honors journalism in the public interest.
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