Transmission in progress

In Dave Neiwert's essay on Media Transmitters, one of the major media transmitters he identified was Bill O'Reilly, noting that he "has a penchant for conspiracy theories." What's notable about O'Reilly is that O'Reilly likes view himself as a hard-nosed independent who is equally tough on "the left" and "the right," yet he isn't - he's a conservative guy (independent minded, I'll give him that, but conservative) pretending he isn't. This is interesting because in his effort to distinguish himself as an independent O'Reilly has come up with his own spin on the traditional right-wing meme (see here and here) that Judeo-Christian America is under assault from atheists/communists/liberals and in the most hardline right - Jews - which is considered synonymous with the previous three.

In O'Reilly's version, there is a culture war being fought between "secular-progressives" and "traditional" Americans. And that's about it as far as it goes for there being a difference between O'Reilly's meme and the more traditional ones. But it still serves a purpose. O'Reilly, as a major pundit on Fox News and - despite his lack of understanding of what the term secular means - a secular figure he provides a version of the meme that is free of extremist or religious right overtones which are more transparently bigoted.

Yet O'Reilly's use of his "s-p"/"traditionals" designation is none the less pure bigotry. O'Reilly uses "S-P" as a pejorative label to identify anyone he disaproves of as unAmerican, a concept for him which is insuperable from conservative Christian America, and it need not matter whether the individual in question actually is religous or not, whether the individual is conservative or not. If you do something O'Reilly doesn't like - you're a S-P and at war with America and Christianity.

Case in point: Media Matters documents that O'Reilly stated on the June 1st edition of his show the following about Andrew Speaker traveling with TB

So what the story comes down to is philosophy of life. Traditional-values people put others on a par with themselves. That's a Judeo-Christian tenet. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Secular progressives put themselves above all others. That philosophy says, "Me first, then I'll worry about you." As a nation, the USA has been successful embracing the traditional point of view. But today, that's being challenged. And this TB case is a great example.

Notice here that the difference between O'Reilly's right-wing meme and traditional right-wing memes dissapper. What's even more disturbing to me is how easily this same sort of rhetoric would fit in with early 20th German anti-Semitic rhetoric about Jews assaulting traditional Christian values ... in Germany also the concept of "traditional" German and Christianity were insuperable. What O'Reilly is doing is creating a category of Americans - like the Germans did - who are by definition unAmerican.

Now one can object that by no means is O'Reilly as virulently prejudiced against "S-P"s as Germans were against Jews, that is true. But later in the show while discussing comments made to a group of students in Boulder, Colorado O'Reilly stated to James Dobson "Secular progressives are going to basically tell children to use drugs, to have indiscriminate sex, do what you want when you're 14 years old, never mind what your parents think."

James Dobson is a dominionist and he is virulently prejudiced against non-dominionists, which by his appearance on O'Reilly have been conflated with "S-P"s. And thus a transmission has taken place, O'Reilly has mingled his views with a representative of an anti-democratic totalitarian belief system, and the representative of the anti-democratic totalitarian belief system-has been able to transmit his message in a non-extremist package by having O'Reilly present him as a representative of "traditional" America.