Selling Ratings as Entertainment

This had the "news" and talk shows all aflutter today...



But the whole thing is pretty phony. The women at The View had previously had Bill O'Reilly as a guest and they knew exactly the game he plays on Fox "news", i.e. right wing nut case. So getting excited and walking off the show looks like a ploy for a ratings boost. I believe it was all planned and staged.

Now, here are my views:

• O'Reilly says "moslems" were those who attacked and killed on 9/11. That makes as much sense as saying that the Republicans bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because Timothy McVeigh claimed membership in the Republican party. O'Reilly specializes in saying outrageous things and getting under people's skin. He knew exactly what he was doing. So when he got the expected bad reaction he toned this claim down to "extremist moslems".


• O'Reilly argue's that building the mosque in NYC is "too soon" and "too close means that no Christian churches should be built near any bombed-out abortion centre because it is clearly "too soon" and "too close" to let Christians build a "victory" house of worship near these bombed out sites. But I don't hear anybody making that argument.


• Behar & Goldberg pointed out that under the US Constitution religions have a right to build houses of worship without constraint. That's what "freedom of worship" means. O'Reilly says "yes, but". He claims that the Constitutional "right" holds, but it would be "inappropriate" to exercise that right. What? Who gets to decide? O'Reilly? Under the US Constitution they have an untrammeled right so long as they don't break city building codes. If you want to contest it, you can try to raise a Constitutional case with the Supreme Court but it won't win. A right is a right only if you get to exercise it.


• Under the US Constitution, no religion gets singled out. But under O'Reilly's "constitution" you can have all kinds of rights that you can't act on because somebody would be offended so there are "special circumstances" everywhere. He implies you get to act on a "right" only if nobody wants to complain about you acting on your right. What kind of rights are those? I do believe that King George III was "offended" by all that free speech about tea and taxes. He was so offended he sent troops to quell the disturbance. O'Reilly would have marched right along with those troops and taken pot shots at Lexington because he would agree that the king was "offended" and you had a right to "free speech" about tea and taxes up to the point where it offended the king, which in effect says that under O'Reilly you can't talk about tea and taxes because somebody would be "offended".


• O'Reilly demonstrates his nuttiness when he is unmoved by Goldberg's comment that 70 Muslims were victims of the attack along with everybody else. In short, the fanatics who killed weren't squeamish about who they killed. Religion didn't have much to do with that kind of killing. Al Qaeda's act was political and aimed at the US who they see as "the great Satan". These fanatics have been killing far more Moslims than Christians with their their bomb attacks and assassinations across the Middle East. They think nothing of planting a bomb in a mosque to kill fellow "Moslems" who they have decided don't live up to the "high standards" set by Al Qaeda. Sure there is a religious element to their fanaticism, but the fact that they kill their co-religionists says it isn't really religion driving them. They are political fanatics with a "vision" for a world set up under a structure that they approve. Their motive is fundamentally political.


• When O'Reilly says "70% of Americans don't want the mosque down there". Funny... I don't see where in the US Constitution it says that rights are relative to an "approval rating". You get freedom of speech if 80% agree with you or that you get "no establishment of a religion" if you can get 75% to agree with you, or you get a "free press" if you can get 60% to agree with you. Rights are rights. The law is meant to protect both the popular and the unpopular. Otherwise, you wouldn't need it. You don't need laws to protect "popular" activities. You need laws to protect minorities against the "popular" majorities.


• In short O'Reilly is a "sunshine patriot", i.e. somebody who waves the flag when it is something he likes. He's the kind of scumbag who would join the lynch mob and then when the next day arrives and the sheriff shows up with reinforcements, the lynchers suddenly disappear into the background. They know they broke the law. They were out screaming for blood when it was popular, but when the law shows up and their is a cost to screaming for blood, they suddenly disappear. Those aren't "rights". Those are the actions of sneaky, sleazy people who would poke the eye out a baby's eye if they thought they could sneak in the jab without anybody watching.


• If I were Goldberg & Behar, I would quit the show because Walters gave them a tongue lashing for storming off the stage. They showed their mercenary nature by slinking back. They should have stayed off the stage and resigned unless Walters had apologized for letting an idiot like O'Reilly use public airwaves to spew his hate-filled speech.


• Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a complete idiot. Notice that she made the idiotic claim at 3:20 that Obama "prevented people from using the word terrorist" and instead insisted that people talk about "radical Islam" and if this hadn't been done there would not have been a problem. What a completely nutty claim! Obama didn't do that. It makes no sense to claim that he did. Elizabeth is too stupid to realize that her claim makes no sense! Obama wouldn't have done that. And even if he had, changing the words wouldn't have dissipated the anti-Moslem hysteria. Why? Because this is all "manufactered".


• Isn't it odd that all this wild rhetoric is happening 9 years after the fact? Why now? Because of the upcoming Congressional election! This is the same "rally the nutcases" rhetoric that the Republicans have used for years to get their base to come out and vote. Normally it is over abortions or gay marriage or flag burning, but this year they decided the "hot button issue" would be "building a mosque near hallowed ground". It is completely manufactured. O'Reilly is using this to get ratings. Even Barbara Walters is using this to get ratings. These are all cynical people making money off stirring up misery.


• Oh... and just how far away does a mosque have to be to be OK? Obviously Murfreesburo Tennessee is "too close" to hallowed ground, that's why they burned down a mosque being built there!


• I blame Walters for cynically exploiting this issue to get ratings (and more money). She could have had an intelligent conversation. Nope, she went for the "Jerry Springer effect", i.e. get everybody riled up and shouting. She knew that would happen because she invited O'Reilly onto her show to sell his new book "Pinheads and Patriots". The very title gives you an idea of what to expect from O'Reilly. She only had to watch a bit of his idiotic Fox "news" show to see what kind of slimeball he is.