Posts on Bill O'Reilly

Two years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other stretches of the Gulf Coast. At the time, the response by many on the Right was to blame the victims and/or social-service programs, and to take advantage of the “golden opportunity” to advance a far-right economic agenda. Remember Pat Buchanan, who criticized the “failure” of the “character and conduct” of the population of New Orleans, who “waited for the government to come save them” and “screamed into the cameras for help”? Then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called for “tougher penalties” for those who were stranded when the storm hit and the city was flooded. Bill O’Reilly saw video footage of the tragedy as an ideal object lesson for young people: “If you refuse to learn, if you refuse to work hard, if you become addicted, if you live a gangsta-life, you will be poor and powerless just like many of those in New Orleans.” (Watch the video.)

The idea that undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in the U.S.—while not supported by evidence—has been a mainstay of anti-immigrant activists for decades. For example, in instituting ordinances against hiring or renting to immigrants, Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta claimed that immigrants were “terroriz[ing]” the city. But defending the ordinances in court, Barletta could not back this claim up. “The people in my city don’t need numbers,” the frustrated mayor declared when confronted with the city’s own statistics showing the opposite.

Similarly, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist have been touting phony numbers on immigrants and crime.

But if statistics don’t back up their claims, anti-immigrant activists can always latch on to anecdotes. A recent multiple-homocide in Newark, New Jersey has implicated illegal immigrants, and national activists quickly descended upon the city, claiming that the crime was linked to local police not questioning suspects’ immigration status.

Blames “open border and blanket amnesty crowd.” Victim’s father on Fox host: “disrespectful.” Watch O’Reilly scream at Geraldo.

Had been at issue in former AG Kline’s defeat. Activists cite Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly.

Pat Robertson told his “700 Club” audience today that, while “the liberals laugh and say, ‘Oh, that’s not true’” about the “War on Christmas,” “We have been under assault.” In particular, Robertson said, “stores that have always said ‘Merry Christmas’ are now being forced to say ‘Happy Holidays.’”

Watch the video segment: Broadband or Dial-Up.

Robertson brought on a special guest to explain the meaning of the “War on Christmas”: Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly. According to O’Reilly, so-called “SPs,” or “secular progressives,” are waging a culture war against traditional Americans to “wipe out all spirituality in the marketplace … so that their agenda politically can get passed easier.”

Watch the video segment: Broadband or Dial-Up.

Fox News host in diatribe against “San Francisco values” (video).

Sandy Rios, formerly of Concerned Women for America and now with the Culture Campaign, appeared on Tuesday’s edition of ”The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss the ads Michael J. Fox has filmed in support of candidates who support stem-cell research.  

When was asked about Rush Limbaugh’s recent comments that Fox was “exaggerating the effects of [his Parkinson's] Disease” and that the movements he exhibits in the commercial are “purely an act,” Rios defended the comments by claiming that Fox has publicly admitted that he stops taking his medication in order to “exaggerate” his symptoms and that Limbaugh mentioned that fact in the course of his remarks. 

O’Reilly bought her explanation and suggested that it made Limbaugh’s remarks less offensive because Fox was doing it intentionally to make himself "look more pathetic" – but according to the original transcript provided by Media Matters, Rios was wrong because Limbaugh didn’t mention it until the following day.

RIOS: Yes. So Michael J. Fox has been public that he does exaggerate. He allows his.

O'REILLY: I don't know if it's exaggerating, but he uses drama.

RIOS: If you don't take your medication and you have Parkinson's, you begin to have these movements.

O'REILLY: Sure. And he uses drama. But if Limbaugh did, and you saw it, you heard it?

RIOS: I heard it, I read the transcript.

O'REILLY: OK. OK. So he did read the portion of Michael J. Fox's book that said when I want drama, and I testify, don't take my medicine so I look more pathetic.

Watch This Exchange: Broadband or Dial-Up –  Watch the Entire Segment:  Broadband or Dial-Up

It is hard to know which is worse: Rios insisting that by not taking his medication, Fox is somehow “exaggerating” the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease or O’Reilly claiming that Fox does so in an effort to “look more pathetic.” 

“Fanatical secular progressives,” he says, are behind brawl at Columbia University, aka “University of Havana, North.” Transcript. Video: Broadband or Dial-Up.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” and bonded with host Bill O’Reilly about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

O'REILLY: Are you going to do it? If you're the next president we’re gonna …

ROMNEY: This Congress is going to do it, too. We're going to build a wall. But that's not enough.

O'REILLY: The Mitt Romney memorial wall.

ROMNEY: It may be a fence. I will call it the Bill O'Reilly special.

O'REILLY: Then nobody will come.

ROMNEY: That's right.

O'REILLY: Nobody will come. They'll go, O'Reilly Wall, ain't coming.

Watch the video: Broadband or Dial-Up.

“We like your immigration stance. We think you are very good on that. Governor, you are welcome any time. Thanks for coming in,” added O’Reilly. Romney, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, had declared September 19 “Fox News Channel Day.”

Michelle Malkin, a frequent guest on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” told host Bill O’Reilly last night that Mexican-Americans and immigrants in the Los Angeles area were unlike Cuban-Americans and immigrants in the Miami area because they have “no appreciation for this country” and could not assimilate. Furthermore, Malkin asserted that millions of immigrants from Mexico, in addition to the Mexican government itself, are actively plotting a militant takeover of the American Southwest.

Watch the video: Broadband or Dial-Up.

O’REILLY: So I know that there's an undercurrent of militancy that says hey, this is our territory. You stole it from us in the Mexican-American War. We're going to take it back now by illegal immigration. But I think that's a fringe nutty group, not the mass of millions that we have.

MALKIN: Well, I guess I disagree with you there, Bill, because I mean, we saw in April and May of this year that supposed fringe come out into the mainstream. And it wasn't just a dozen folks who are ensconced in the ivory tower who believe that the southwest is “Aztlan” and it belongs to them. You had people from Wisconsin, to Phoenix, to California, to Seattle carrying those signs saying that by sheer demographic force, they have reclaimed Los Angeles. They reclaim Phoenix.

O'REILLY: So you agree with Buchanan, then. You think that this massive immigration to the United States, 15 million strong, is a part of a plan to bring back territory to Mexico?

MALKIN: Well, I take the Mexican government at its word when it says that is exactly its plan. If you look at the Mexican consulate that are active, political lobbyists who have entrenched themselves in the American mainstream, and who have succeeded in blurring the lines between illegal and legal immigration, yes, there's a plan.

Bill O’Reilly weighs in on the recent alleged terrorist plot to blow up several inter-continental flights and, as would be expected, he makes a typically erudite argument [watch the video: Broadband or Dial-Up]

Now it's long past time for the USA to stop the nonsense and institute profiling at airports. We're not at war with Granny Frickett. We're at war with Muslim fanatics.

So all young Muslims should be subjected to more scrutiny than Granny. And we should blend some Israeli screening procedures with our own.

For example, trained security people should receive the passenger list on every flight and interview those people most likely to be terrorists, folks who have traveled to Muslim countries, people who have criminal records. Passengers who are Muslims ages 16 to 45 all should be spoken with. And if the ACLU doesn't like it, tough. This isn't racial profiling. This is criminal profiling.

Well, President Bush has traveled to a Muslim country and has a criminal record, so he apparently qualifies for extra screening.  

In addition to the President, O’Reilly also wants all Muslims ages 16 to 45 to receive additional scrutiny and correctly notes that such scrutiny isn’t “racial profiling” – it’s “religious profiling.”  Of course, it’s not clear how screeners would identify passengers’ religion, though O’Reilly seems to presume that anyone who appears to be of Arab descent is Muslim and vice-versa.

Assuming that individuals of a specific race or religion are more likely to be criminals or terrorists, which is what O’Reilly is espousing, is - by definition – both racial and religious profiling.  

Calling it “criminal profiling” doesn’t change that fact.  

About white decline, writes Reason’s Weigel.

Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, host of the “O’Reilly Factor,” has incorporated the latest cultural product into his theory of American politics. He writes:

In the new film "Superman Returns," Daily Planet editor Perry White responds this way after being told the Man of Steel has come back after a five-year absence: "Does he still stand for truth, justice and all that stuff?"

And all that stuff?

The original line in the television series and movie, of course, was "truth, justice and the American way." But no way the "American way" gets in the film.

Rather than hearing a scriptwriter’s expression of the character’s skepticism, O’Reilly explains that it’s “because Warner Brothers, the studio distributing the movie, doesn't want to tee off any foreign viewers with pro-U.S. sentiment.” He goes on to cite surveys showing a lack of support for U.S. foreign policy, and he implicates “the anti-American press” and “the rise of a well-funded and well-organized secular-progressive (S-P) movement in America.”

The S-P philosophy would rattle even Superman. Led by moneymen George Soros and Peter Lewis, who have bought enormous Internet access, the secular-progressives are selling the theory that the USA needs radical change, a complete overhaul. …

That's not the American way Superman used to uphold. This is a brave new world that threatens even super heroes. The old ways of respect for the basic nobility of America, the capitalistic free enterprise system, and the Judeo-Christian philosophy of personal responsibility are all under siege by stealth forces more powerful than a locomotive.