I was watching O’Reilly today and he had on Peter Beinart who was discussing terrorism. O’Reilly was talking about the ‘blame america left’ when Beinart tried to bring up the ‘blame america right’ which consists of people like Jerry Falwell who blame the US’s libertine sexual attitudes for terrorism and disease, claiming they are God’s wrath (as opposed to the blame america left who bring up the US’s human rights abuses as the reason for terrorism). O’Reilly cut him off saying it was wrong to use bad behavior to justify bad behavior, which is true, but I think Beinart’s real goal of bringing it up was to ensure that O’Reilly condemned the ‘blame america first’ mentality on both the right & the left instead of just the left.
And it got me thinking about Ward Churchhill, Ann Coulter and O’Reilly. When Churchhill condemned the 9/11 victims he was roundly insulted and pursued by O’Reilly. When Coulter did it Bill invited her on his show and had a calm discussion about her and basically told her that this wasn’t an effective way to win people over to her opinions. It seems that O’Reilly was making excuses for and allowances for Coulter for behavior he would become enraged over if a left winger like Churchill did it.
Did anyone else notice this, or am I just seeing things in a skewed way? I know O’Reilly is a conservative who claims to be (or at least tries to be) an independent, but the fact that he responded to a radical right wingers insults of terrorism victims by being polite & trying to explain better ways for her to explain her political opinions is a bit off putting, even for O’Reilly.
Am I missing something? I know I’ll get some ‘the sun also rises in the east, what’d you expect’ replies. But Churchills ‘little eichmann’ statement vs. coulters ‘they are enjoying their husbands deaths’ statement struck me as pretty much the same, but the response of O’Reilly was a 180 for them. For one example he called for Churchill to be fired and constantly demonized them, for Coulter he calmly tried to explain to her better ways to express her opinions. This strikes me as rank hypocracy, didn’t anyone else notice this?