Crush the infamous thing was Voltaire's motto. The infamous thing he desired to see crushed was superstition. It's now my motto; the infamous thing I desire to see crushed is the conservative movement. If I write a post towards that end, I may include that tagline. Hence the explanation.
Now before the Michelle Malkin's of the world throw theirselves into a fit of indignant rage at my suggesting the need to "crush" the movement I will point out that I mean that in the same sense that Voltaire did: not in the sense of oppressing believers but in the sense of changing people's minds (via the pen) so that belief seems absurd.
With that out of the way, onto some infamous thing crushing.
Lately, Bill O'Reilly has been saying that Arianna Huffington isn't "a respectable" woman because he says that there are hateful comments on her website. The HuffingtonPost is a vile far left hate site and what not.
The comments O'Reilly is speaking of were indeed hateful comments about Nancy Reagan. But they were COMMENTS - and a handful out of thousands at that. Criticizing a website that receives hundreds of thousands of comments on the grounds that it hasn't sufficiently policed commenter feedback for mean-spirited or hateful comments is asinine. It could be the case that the comments slipped through or it could be the case that the site believes that allowing feedback regardless of it being negative is in the best interest of open discussion.
Personally, I have a very high threshold for what I'll allow to be said here. A white supremacist posted a death threat against me and I didn't delete it ... does that mean I'm transitively a hater who wants to see myself killed by a white supremacist? On the other hand, when someone posted the home address of a conservative commentator I deleted it immediately.
Now, if O'Reilly simply wanted to criticize the hateful comments or argue that the HuffingtonPost should be stricter about the comments it allows I would not have an issue. But that's not all he's doing.
"I don't see a difference between (Arianna) Huffington and the Nazis."
"What's the difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Arianna Huffington?"
"There's no difference between what Huffington and Nazis do."
The difference between Arianna Huffington and the KKK/Nazis is that she isn't a white supremacist who advocates for authoritarian rule and believes it acceptable to kill people. Just a minor difference in O'Reilly World, I suppose.
This is a bit of insanity that's difficult to understand unless you realize the real reason O'Reilly can't tell the difference between Arianna Huffington and the KKK or Nazis: remember, when it comes to O'Reilly, all roads lead to his ego.
O'Reilly hates HuffingtonPost because it allows commenters (and writers) to say critical things about O'Reilly. And it's a well known fact that it is Bill O'Reilly's greatest fear that someone, somewhere will say something critical about him. He will not rest until there is no spot in the entire universe where ever a word is said that might hurt his delicate feelings. Demonizing Arianna Huffington is part of that campaign.
Because if Arrianna Huffington is no different than a Nazi because of those comments, what does it make O'Reilly when he works for a network that continues to promote and defend the bigoted/racist attacks on Barack Obama from radio host Bill Cunningham? For that matter, there are racist remarks from commenters* about "B. Hussein Obama" in the O'Reilly Townhall column I linked to earlier in the post. But, as always, nothing tops O'Reilly continuing to have Ann Coulter on as a guest despite her career long history of hate-mongering.
And while O'Reilly continues to call HuffingtonPost and Daily Kos hate sites no different from the KKK or Nazis because of the mean things some of the commenters say, World Net Daily - a site which features O'Reilly's columns - has commenters talking about how Jared Taylor isn't a racist and about how it's unGodly for races to mix.
As always, hypocrisy and double standard follows in the wake of O'Reilly's ego.
And regarding Ham's tired assertion that hateful comments are typical of "left-wing" blogs but not "right-wing" ones, Steve Young points out that in the same thread O'Reilly is using to say that Huffington is no different than the Nazis and KKK there was this comment:
You sick fuck liberal wing nuts always shame yourselves when someone is in crisis. I hope you all die screaming. ..you sick fuck you wouldn't know class if it bit you on the ass, class you mean like the most cheated on former 1st lady. Class you mean like president blow job, democrats can't have class it comes with the D tagUpdate: Here's a link for Ham that I just remembered from a previous post.
Update 2: Another link and another for Ham.
*Edited March 1, 2008. Originally, that read "racist remarks in the O'Reilly Townhall column ..." which I realized might create the impression that I was referring to the the actual content of O'Reilly's column rather than the comments to it.
3 comments:
It is obvious that O'Reilly is taking advantage of some peoples ignorance of the blogosphere to score cheap points.
Very interesting exchange between Billo and Katherine Ham. I believe she is actually the editor at Townhall.com. She probably knows full well that it is pretty difficult to police the comments on these high traffic blogs.
In fact, they must have a very strict "naughty word" filters on the comments posted at Townhall.com. Once I got into a comment exchange with someone. The topic was the Catholic church and aids in Africa. My opponenet commenter came right out and called Africans monkeys. A completely racist comment, but with no "naughty words". In my comment I critized the Catholic Church for preaching that people would go to hell for using condoms. My comment with the use of the "naughty word" hell was filtered/rejected even though I used it in a completely innocous manner.
She is an editor of Townhall. Although she disagrees with O'Reilly on the Nazi/KKK comparison she does believe that "Left blogs" are too hateful in the comments.
Myself, I'm more concerned with, gee, you know, the actual columnists like Michael Reagan at Townhall who wants to have Howard Dean hanged to death or put in prison.
Thats the funny thing about it. Although she disagreed with O'reilly to a certain extent, she still felt obligated to say that the "left blogs" are the worst on this.
Are they blind?! Look, I am far more to the left than what these people routinely label "far left", yet I can identify trashy rhetoric on my side of the spectrum, and can condemn it. Yet they hardly see the same kind of trash rhetoric from their own side. Either their ideological blinders are that much more dense, or they are completely dishonest. Or maybe both.
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