One of the strangest and most upsetting accounts of media insanity I’ve ever heard. What will it take to reign in Fox news and keep Bill O’Reilly and his colleagues from ruining lives?
(And yes, I am still not blogging. I’m just giving links. You’ll know I’m blogging again when you see the next insufferably long post that’s become my signature.)
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A peculiar hybrid of personal journal, dilettantish punditry, pseudo-philosophy and much more, from an Accidental Expat who has made his way from Hong Kong to Beijing to Taipei and finally back to Beijing for reasons that are still not entirely clear to him…
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1
By ACB
What shocks me more than all of the junk that was printed in the papers
and was said on the talk shows, is that people actually threatened to
rape the guys daughters, whether he said it or not, this kind of public
reactio is far beyond the pale.
This isn’t an inditement of the press under Bush, this is an inditement
of American society. The people who made the threats and sent the hate
mail should be subjected to something as harsh themselves, and nobody
ca blame the Bush admistration for their reactions. Most, if not all of
them are products of American society and have known many
administrations.
America might be the land of the free but it is also sick, and violent,
and has a vigilanty culture that doesn’t like to listen to both sides
of the argument. It just attacks merclessly when somebody is down.
Who could blame another contry for seeing America as dangerous, if this
is what it does to its own.
December 15, 2004 @ 6:59 am | Comment
2
By richard
There are definitely sick people in the US, and in every country. Maybe there’s more sickness now than there usually is, because the climate in America is so nasty and devoid of critical thought. But I still think the country is okay, and that plenty of people like me read a story like this with a sense of revulsion and dismay.
December 15, 2004 @ 7:01 am | Comment
3
By Ann
I’m new to this blog, so maybe I missed something. Why does this mean that we have to reign in Bill O’Reilly, and how is he ruining lives? Did this judge contact O’Reilly to give his side? Did the O’Reilly show try to contact him? Even if the judge didn’t want to go on, did he give Fox News (or the reporter that’s really behind all of this) his side?
And it’s a huge leap to take the actions of a few sick people as evidence of systemic problems with either the Bush administration or the entire US society. Can you name even one country, in one time period, that didn’t have a few sick people out there? Mobs, riots, lynchings – are those unique to the US in recent times? In fact, isn’t the US today probably below average in such things, relative to other times and places?
For people to threaten this judge or talk about his daughters being raped, because they thought that he wasn’t sufficiently against rape or violence, is twisted and disgusting. But let’s not read too much into one example.
December 18, 2004 @ 12:47 pm | Comment