Free speech.
Unless the caller threatened O’Reilly (or Fox or someone somewhere) I cannot see how there is a damn thing anyone can do about it.
I suppose O’Reilly could file a civil suit for slander in some cases but even that is a stretch not least due to if Fox bleeps the “offending” remark then I doubt you could claim slander.
Sending the Fox cops after the guy? Truly laughable.
A better threat would be sending the Fox attorneys…that might scare me.
From Haloscan at http://www.haloscan.com/comments.php?user=crooks&comment=7384
From Crooks and Liars at
http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Is anyone (well, besides John) surprised at this? It’s entirely consistent with Bill’s track record as a bullying blowhard – all talk, no courage.
No, I always thought O’Reilly was a scumbag anyway.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall where O’Reilly is telling the head of Fox security that he needs them to send a team of Fox Ninjas to Assboink, Idaho and put a scare into Joe Shmoe for mentioned the forbidden name.
Now there’s a reality show I’d watch.
No one has yet determined what the guy said, though. I agree that O’Reilly acted like a complete ass and a bully, but I’m still not buying that he cut the guy off just because he mentioned Olbermann’s name unless we have a transcript. Would it even have been O’Reilly who’s finger was on the switch?
Hopefully the next prankster has enough wisdom to tape the conversation from their end as well.
I’m sorry, John, but you really need evidence if you’re pulling a supposed obscenity out of nowhere. O’Reilly is known for odd behavior, and for hanging up on people for little or no reason.
You may be right, but O’Reilly trying to convince Fox security to send operatives to “pay a visit” to a caller for dropping the f-bomb is still quite an amusing picture.
And if the caller actually threatened O’Reilly, shouldn’t he have contacted the police? When the average guy gets a threatening phone call, he calls the cops, he doesn’t put in a call to the guard covering the door at Smith’s Aquarium Gravel, even if that’s where he works.
I agree. In fact, if I were the caller and Fox security “paid me a visit”, I’d talk to my lawyer about filing harassment charges.
E-Sabbath: I haven’t made any claims about what the caller said. I’m just saying that we don’t know what is in the deleted part of the phone call. Do we? I always thought it was incumbent on the poster who makes a specific claim to back that up with evidence. Until we have that evidence, I’m skeptical. You should be, too.
I’m sure even if he contacted Fox security about them paying somebody a “visit” somewhere, they’d laugh in his face. I imagine they’re set up to protect the lot, and wouldn’t even have personnel for goon squads to travel the country harrassing O’Reilly’s hate callers.
I imagine that any member of Fox security that laughed in O’Reilly’s face would soon be looking for another job.
Maybe they won’t laugh in front of him, but I bet they also won’t round up personnel for a mission to Assboink, Idaho to harrass the caller, either.
Absurd as this is, to be fair TFA doesn’t claim that he said the actual Fox security ninjas will visit the guy, but that Fox security will contact the caller’s local authorities:
The implication is presumably that the local authorities would be the ones to “pay a visit”.
Over at Wingnutters, Daily Kos etc, the folks are trying to convince the O’Reilly callers to start recording the conversations. We’ll see if they do it or not, because it looks like they will continue to rattle Bill’s cage. It’s a no-go on a full transcript or recording on what’s already happened, only diaries. So, it’s he said vs he said. It depends on which group you believe, and / or who you want to root for. Still it’s fun to watch, even from this vantage point. I’d call Bill myself, but he isn’t worth the price of a phone call. That, and I remember in the past, Bill says something, gets called on it, and then pretends he never did it - meaning his personal word is worthless to me 
But you do seem to be assuming that the caller must have said an obscenity to have been hung up on. Given O’Reilly’s proven track record as a bully and a liar, why do you assume that? Why do you not assume that he simply hung up on someone who mentioned Olbermann?
You’re the one making the claim here, John. With no evidence, you are claiming that O’Reilly must have had a good reason to hang up on the caller. The evidence is that he did not. The evidence is that he hung up, and threatened, a caller who did nothing more than say he watched Olbermann.
Fox security? When did Rupert Murdoch become a Bond villain?
Keith Olberman is Voldemort?
:eek:
This is almost as funny as the recent Hugh Hewitt diatribe in which he accused pollster Zogby of not releasing the demographics of a recent survey. Zogby insisted that he had. Hewitt said he hadn’t, and after an already fairly nasty interview, Zogby hung up on Hewitt over it.
Did Zogby release the demographics? Of course. Hewitt’s excuse: he released them in a format requiring the latest version of Adobe reader (which Hewitt’s staff didn’t have and had to, get this, DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL!!!). Apparently, in wingnuttia, that’s tantamount to “withholding” the demographics, as Hewitt still refuses to apologize for being wrong, giving this excuse as cover to simply pass over the admission that Zogby was right.
Much fun was had at Hewitt’s expense.
True. You’d think that after Bill made Fox legal look like total morons in the Franken case they’d ignore him, but ratings are a powerful influence on the weak of morals.
I do hope every other caller says Olbermann.