'He is Todd Akin': Will the media run with Bernie Sanders' expert scientific take on cervical cancer?

Brett T. | 4:31 PM on July 06, 2015

So, it turns out that Salon can recognize a “smiling, condescending hit job” when it sees one — at least when someone else has published it. Salon is not happy with the New York Times’ fourth of July profile of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, which included tidbits like Sanders’ one-time belief that cervical cancer could be caused by “psychological factors such as unresolved hostility toward one’s mother, a tendency to bury aggression beneath a ‘facade of pleasantness’ and having too few orgasms.”

Bernie Sanders wrote that cervical cancer is caused by lack of sex. He is Todd Akin. But since he's a Dem, whatever.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 6, 2015

Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who lost the 2012 Senate race against Claire McCaskill after making comments about the connection between pregnancy and “legitimate rape” on a local TV station, inspired groans and outrage on both the Left and Right, with many Republicans begging him to drop out of the race.

Salon, though, is ready and willing to defend Sanders’ comment. Sanders, it turns out, was quoting a published study: “if he quoted it, he didn’t write it,” Salon reasons. No, but he felt it deserved repeating, didn’t he? Akin, though making a terrible mistake doing it, was also paraphrasing the ’70s-era “science” that he was taught.

Anyone else want to give it a shot?

.@benshapiro @seanmdav Bernie wrote that in the 70s. Akin used "legit rape" line *while campaigning* in 2012. But, no, totally the same.

— Eric Berlin (@puzzlereric) July 6, 2015

True, and the GOP urged Akin to drop out for the sake of the party. But if there is some expiration date on campaign smears, tell that to the New York Times and its investigation into Marco Rubio’s traffic citations in 1997 or the Washington Post’s research into “troubling incidents” from Mitt Romney’s prep school days in 1965. But let’s get back to Sanders.

@benshapiro Party of science!

— HRH Princess of Whales (@FranklinsRule) July 6, 2015

@benshapiro If true he seems somewhat overly focused on vaginas. Given his delusional concept of female fantasy

— Buddy the Cat (@RonRgs) July 6, 2015

https://twitter.com/EmailMagician/status/618128075826573316

@benshapiro leftist media is like: pic.twitter.com/cSqB0l1lkJ

— Frank S. (@FrankBOTL) July 6, 2015

https://twitter.com/MeganLorraineG/status/618126586290831360

@benshapiro what's the big deal I've told my wife this and at 100 other ailments may be caused lack of sex?

— Mark McConnell (@MarkMSD1981) July 6, 2015

https://twitter.com/RealJLord/status/618126832337068032

Agreed. There is plenty of fresh material that makes socialist Sanders a terrible choice for president. We wholly encourage the New York Times to quit digging around in ’90s traffic records and concentrate on what the candidates say (or which reporters they tie off with rope) today.

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‘Pretend Todd Akin said this’: Where’s media outrage over Bernie Sanders’ pervy old essay?