Well it seems that Fox News nutcase Bill O’Reilly now has Jewish groups pissed of at him for suggesting that American Jews who don’t want to be prosyltized by Christians should go back to Israel
In response to a Jewish caller to his radio show who said that he resented the celebration of Christmas in schools as a child because he always felt like Christians were trying to convert him. After a couple of ignorant statements about Hannukah (which the caller tries to correct but is cut off by O’Reilly) Old Bildo comes out with this:
Not too surprising from this clown, I guess, and I’m not sure it’s so much antisemitic as just thunderingly arrogant, ignorant and religiously bigoted (as opposed to racially).
But still. Bill hasn’t been pitted for a couple of months, so fuck you, Bill. It’s not a “Christian country” and you’re still just a low life, heavy breather with a microphone.
This isn’t a Bill O’Reilly thing. It is just another version of the same old debate about whether there should be public displays of Christmas or if they should be made completely generic so know one gets offended.
We can’t read the caller’s dialoge but from your description, he “felt like Christians were trying to convert him” during the Christmas season. How do we know that he really encountered any of that? I doubt he did unless he was just talking about peer pressure from fellow students.
He could have been completely unreasonable and nutty. Some people, Jew included, have been known to be this way about this issue.
O’Reilly sounds like he was being saracastic to a caller that seemed to have some kind of Christmas phobia when he told him to go to Israel if it was that big of issue for him.
Sorry, I just read the whole transcript and the caller does sound as nutty as I suspected. Christmas was only a small part of it. The caller was also apparently traumatized that some Jehova’s Witnesses came to his door and people invited him to a Bible study group in college.
It really does sound like the caller has some serious paranoia issues going on and O’Reilly was suggesting that he could go to Israel simply for his own mental protection.
O’Reilly was the one who was talking about JW’s. The caller said nothing irrational or unfair. O’Reilly’s just an asshole, and an ignorant one at that. This is not a Christian country.
Yeah, the caller sounds knee-jerky. Exchanging gifts is an attempt to “convert”? Please.
That’s nutty. That’s what people do at Christmas. Gifts are gifts, and unless the gift itself is Christian-related (is a Gameboy an attempt to “convert”?) then this caller has no case. And while some Christmas cards have religious messages, they are very brief and general in most cases. (A picture of the Nativity, Three Wise Men, etc.) Many Christmas cards are completely secular. And I’m sorry, just casting your eyes on a picture of the Three Wise Men isn’t going to be enough to start to “convert” someone, not in anyone’s book.
This caller is over the top. Not that O’Reilly isn’t a blowhard twit at times, but he was obviously exasperated with this loon.
For some reason I read “Christmas carols” as “Christmas cards.” Well, that was odd.
But my case still remains. Many Christmas carols are secular. The more religious ones are telling the story of Christ’s birth, but it would still be quite a stretch to say that they would be enough to convert, or that they are an attempt to convert. People just like 'em, and aren’t really thinking about how some people might be left out.
Feeling “left out” is a different matter, and one I can feel sympathy about. But to say that people exchange gifts as an attempt to “convert”? Lunacy. Atheists, I daresay, exchange Christmas gifts. Are they trying to “convert” people to Christianity when they do that? Are they trying to convert people to Christianity when they sing “Frosty the Snowman”?
You are right out that being O’Reilly talking about Jehova’s Witnesses. However, I can replace it with the even nuttier comment from the caller:
CALLER: Yeah, when I got to college I found out – that’s true. A lot of people were. I found that millions of dollars were spent trying to convert –
O’REILLY: I mean that you really believe that people were trying to convert – you personally – were trying to make you change from being Jewish to Christian?
CALLER: Absolutely.
Believing that millions of dollars and lots of human resources to convert him personally is not the beliefs of a sane person.
My main point is I can’t figure out what the caller wanted to get out of that call. It sounds as he is mainly paranoid about individual Christians trying to “convert him”. There is nothing that can be done to fix that problem other than an outright ban on religion in the U.S.
Bill O’Reilly is an asshole but that is his job. A less assholish person wouldn’t pull in the ratings. That doesn’t mean that a caller can be more off then he is however.
Regardless of how you feela about the caller, it’s still incredibly stupid to tell Jews to go to Israel if they don’t want to be proselytized by Christians.
I would also like to point out that Bill O’Reilly is a bullying pervert who makes obscene phone calls to employees while rogering himself with a vibrator. That has nothing to do with the topic but i just never tire of bringing it up.
I am pretty sure that O’Reilly wasn’t telling all Jews to go to Israel, just this one. From his comments, I think that may not be a bad idea for his own mental health.
Millions of dollars are spent by Christians to try to convert Jews in colleges.
That’s off the topic, though. The point of this pitting is that Bill O’Reilly effectively told Jews that they don’t have a right to live in America without being harrassed by Christians.
You know, I was really trying to scrub that from my mind. I will never forget reading those transcripts, and when I catch O’Reilly’s show (as I occasionally do), I still think of it, but it had become sort of, less . . . graphic in my mind. But there you go, having to describe it again. Gee thanks.
This caller is an adult. These things presumably happened years ago if they ever happened at all. It is not at all common for public schools to sing religious songs these days (although I am sure that you could find an isolated example if you really digged).
If he told a black caller to go back to Africa would you think he was only talking to that caller or all Africans?
Everything the caller said was completely legitimate and O’Reiily is just a bigoted scumbag. If public schools started engaging in massive celebrations of Ramadan or Kwaanza, he would totally lose his mind.
Right. That garbage used to happen commonly not so long ago and O’Reilly wants it to happen again. The caller was trying to explain how shitty it makes Jewish kids feel and got told that he wasn’t really an American, which totally proved the caller’s point.
Like I said, feeling “left out” is one matter. I have no desire to shove religion down kids’ throats. However, I am not sure how far you want to go with the not teaching religious songs in schools. Lots of Classical music is religous-themed (even if it’s in another language or all instrumental). I should hope that a music student would still be allowed to play music that had religious roots, since some of it is quite good.
But that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that this caller was a loon. O’Reilly handled them poorly, but when you see things in context, it’s clear that O’Reilly was getting impatient with a loon, which is a far cry from him picking on someone who was being rational (not that he hasn’t done plenty of that also . . . ).