Bill O'Reilly Wants Criticizing Fox News to Be Deemed a Hate Crime

Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone at 6:12 AM on January 14, 2008.

Bill O'Reilly is whining about how the Presidential campaign might get violent, forgetting that he started the shoving in NH against an Obama staffer. O'Reilly's real concern is that people hate him and FauxNews. Listen, Billy Boy, it won't get better until you recognize that the First Amendment demands you take responsibility for your speech.

Forget that FauxNews is so conservative that they do not agree that any people in this country should be treated as a special class, nor that "special rights" in the form of hate crime bills should be considered. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Bill O'Reilly is calling for special consideration for FauxNews reporters because of several incidents recently, incidents CAUSED BY FauxNews reporters. I'm thinking the First Amendment let's FauxNews talking heads say what they want, it is now their responsibility to live with how the people decide to react to them. From Bill O'Reilly's column (NSFL):

There is a chance that before this presidential election year is over, somebody is going to get hurt. Knowing that partisan hostility is boiling over in America, the Secret Service is tense because the candidates are exposed when they campaign in public. Hatred is definitely in the air, and the media is partially to blame.

The enormous success of the Fox News Channel has created a bitterness unprecedented in the American press. CNN has been dethroned as the cable news leader and NBC News, which runs two cable outlets, is far behind both Fox News and CNN in the ratings. Some estimates have Fox News making six times as much money as MSNBC. General Electric, which owns NBC, has seen its stock price remain stagnant for the past six years, a humbling fact for the corporate giant.

OK, the delusions here are a bit extreme. Let's parse for a minute. Bill O'Reilly is warning that there's going to be some violence in the election. He's not talking about red staters taking off after blue staters, or vice versa. He's not talking about an attempted assassination, though in the wake of Benazir Bhutto there's been talk out there, ergo the increase in Secret Service protection for Barack Obama. No, I suspect Bill O'Reilly has no problem with violence or ugliness, except when directed at FauxNews. Who's to blame? Why it's the media, of course. They're envious, according to Bill, of the FauxNews successes. Blame a jealous media for the impending violence, then. Bill O'Reilly seems to forgotten that HE'S A MEMBER OF THE MEDIA!

Look how Bill O'Reilly describes the incident where he pushed an Obama staffer last week, an incident impossible to interpret any other way when you watch the tape. Bill makes himself the victim, though I don't see those other media outlets to blame. Maybe if Bill whines a bit more?

Anyway, I saw the anti-Fox hatred firsthand when I traveled to New Hampshire last week. Fox News vehicles have been vandalized, FNC correspondents cursed, and all Fox News personnel are cautious. Although the far-left nuts are generally the problem, some supporters of Congressman Ron Paul are also out of control.

At a campaign rally for Barack Obama, one of his staffers attempted to block a Fox News camera from photographing the Senator. This was a blatant assault on press freedom, and I had to remove the man from in front of the camera. You may have seen the pictures on TV.

In the subsequent coverage of the story, not one media outlet criticized the Obama staffer--not one. Had he interfered with a CBS News crew, I believe the story would have been reported quite differently.

What's really funny is that Bill O'Reilly blames the media, but also those evil liberal bloggers. Markos and Atrios and Media Matters, OH MY! Gosh, he even works in moveon.org. Hey, you can just imagine Bill O"Reilly typing this up, spitting as he dictates to himself. He's whining about his own attack on a campaign staffer, about how ordinary citizens, evidently Ron Paul supporters (not liberals, Bill) shouted down O'Reilly's colleague Sean Hannity. Of course, both incidents were reported evenly and responsibly by the major press, and O'Reilly and Hannity come off looking pretty bad. There's video to back that reporting, and all Bill O'Reilly has is his delusions about FauxNews being persecuted.

I say let's make loofah-wielding talking heads a special class. Let's give them the front row at every Presidential event. No, no, then the public would hiss and boo and the coverage would suffer. Hey, how about we put O'Reilly on the stage at every campaign event, but in a glass cage. That way he could get his pictures without interference, and maybe he wouldn't whine anymore. But let's make that glass cage soundproofed, shall we? Let's at least force Americans to turn to FauxNews to hear O'Reilly's whining about how all sorts of people hate him.

Poor Bill O'Reilly.

Tagged as: o'reilly, obama, fox news, hannity

Steven Reynolds is a regular blogger for the All Spin Zone