Friday, August 03, 2007

A clue for the clueless

I rewatched the episode of The O'Reilly Factor in which O'Reilly reiterates that Daily Kos is the same as the KKK or Nazis and in which he and his two guests agree about the need to supress free speech. In addition to Coulter and Soros, O'Reilly cites as reason to believe that Daily Kos is going to end up getting someone murdered David Horowitz and Bill Kristol getting pies thrown at them.

I'm going to throw a name at Bill O'Reilly.

Alan Berg.

Ever heard of him? See, Alan Berg - a liberal Jewish radio shock jock personality - actually was (most likely) killed by a neo-Nazi hate group named The Order. The group took its inspiration from The Turner Diaries by William Pierce.

It just so happens that Pierce was also an inspiration for Timothy McVeigh, who thought by bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City he could spark a violent revolution.

Another inspiration for McVeigh was his belief in New World Order conspiracy. And, gee whiz, guess who happened to be one of the most prominent New World Order conspiracists in the '90s. That's right, Pat Robertson - a fellow whom Bill O'Reilly categorized as a "traditional" American.

Someone might also point out to Bill O'Reilly that some fans of his go-to guest host and regular guest Michelle Malkin sent death threats to students at UC Santa Cruz after Malkin posted their contact information and asked her readers to make sure that the students were "held accountable."

Let's not forget Michelle Malkin fan/domestic terrorist Chad Castagna who sent fake antrax letters to various pundits that he and Michelle believe are "unhinged" "moonbats." Malkin bears no ultimate responsibility for Castagna, nor does she have any direct connection to him or has she said anything that would suggest to her audience that they should send fake (or real) anthrax letters to the "liberals" that she demonizes.

But she does encourage her audience to hate "liberals" and by O'Reilly's own standards he should be more concerned with Malkin than Daily Kos because even if we were to concede that the pie throwing incidents can be linked to the "hate" of Daily Kos, it is still quite a stretch to go from that to murder, while it's ludicrous to suggest that pie throwing is more worrisome than death threats and fake anthrax letters.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget that Bush invited several rightwing talk radio hosts -- including Neal Boortz and Glen Beck -- to the White House for a personal chat. I don't know specifically whether any of the group had dipped their toes into hate speech, but of all them I'd guess Beck comes the closest.