Well, not exactly. But if you didn't read too carefully what the lefty blogsites had to say about the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller, you might have drawn that conclusion. Within hours of the murder in his Wichita church Sunday morning, the partial-birth abortion specialist became a martyr to the left, and Bill O'Reilly was his proxy executioner.
The far left is always looking for those elusive "root causes" for everything from war to foot-and-mouth disease. What is the root cause for the murder of Dr. Tiller, they asked. And the answer came to them immediately. It was not the loathsome practice of delivering full-term babies until only the head remains inside the mother before thrusting the scissors into its brain to insure that the baby will not be born alive (Tiller was one of the few remaining doctors in America who will openly perform barbaric "late term abortions."). It was not Tiller's open advocacy of abortion at every stage of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, including inconvenience to the prospective mother. It was not his defiance of plain scientific fact which shows that partial-birth abortion is a more dangerous procedure than simply allowing the birth to take place. It was not even that a mentally-unstable murderer, obsessed with a messianic desire to kill an abortionist finally succeeded in his mad mission.
And the answer is? Fundamentalist Christians, and their mouthpieces, the evil right wing pundits who dare to question both the morality and efficacy of abortion, led by Satan himself in the person of Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly. Of course the left doesn't really believe in Satan (or God either, most of the time), but it sounds good.
The Huffington Post got there first. On May 31, the day of the murder, Shannyn Moore led off with a piece entitled "Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism." In it she says "Bill O'Reilly's hit piece on Dr. Tiller is a training tape for Christian Fundamentalist Terrorists (note: I'm sure the words "hit piece" were carefully chosen). Never did he ask a woman interviewed how she, as a 13-year old, got pregnant, who was the father, or where her parents were when she underwent an abortion at Dr. Tiller's clinic." Knowing how little this had to do with the murder issue, she went on to say "I'm sure O'Reilly's drivel will insist on personal accountability for the murderer. I'm sure he won't be in line for any 'accountability' for calling the doctor 'Tiller the baby-killer' or his clinic a 'death mill'." That's an old lawyer's trick. Take your opponent's valid and logical argument, state it before he can, then mock it. The HuffPo's Michelle Kraus was not far behind with "Domestic terrorism strikes in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller."
Running a little late, the Daily Kos couldn't get a hit piece written fast enough, so their first "O"Reilly did it" article didn't appear until the wee hours of Monday morning, June 1. Arianna scoops Markos. Jed Lewison of Daily Kos TV said "Bill O'Reilly has waged jihad (an interesting use of that word) against Dr. George Tiller, dedicating 29 segments of his show to demonizing and dehumanizing Tiller, who he has invariably called 'Tiller the baby-killer.' On Sunday, Dr. Tiller was murdered while at church in Wichita, Kansas." Although he doesn't outright accuse O'Reilly of being behind the murder, the sentence order doesn't leave much room for alternative conclusions about the relationship of O'Reilly's commentaries to Tiller's murder.
Neither blogsite was much concerned with Tiller's nefarious activities, nor the fact that the murderer was not exactly mainstream in his views on what should be done to abortionists. This is the time to stick it to abortion opponents, Christians, and the influential Bill O'Reilly. The insane view of the murderer must be quickly attributed to everyone who thinks that partial-birth abortion is a moral failure of the highest order, but who also believe that murder of any kind is equally immoral. Thinking that partial-birth abortion is murder is the same as thinking that murder to stop it is acceptable (get your mind around that leap of logic).
Salon Online also got into the act on May 31 when it reported "29 counts of O'Reilly fomenting hate against Dr. Hiller who was murdered in church by an anti-abortion activist." 29 counts! The indictment has already been handed up and the trial should begin shortly.
So where did the mainstream media stand on this? In general, most stated the facts, leaned a little heavily on the murderer's anti-abortion stand without implying that anti-abortionists are murderers, and did a relatively good job of reporting the facts. So why mention the MSM at all in this column? There really is method to my madness. The MSM, particularly the print media, are losing ground to the bloggers at a rather astounding rate. They frequently get scooped by the blogs, and the very influential leftist blogs such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post have taken to setting the agenda for the liberal press, intentionally or not.
Today, June 2, the print MSM dam began to show its first signs of cracking on its previous basically fair reporting on the murder. Fearing that the lefty blogs will entirely steal their thunder, a couple of the biggies have started to take the same tone as the KosPo. Clay Waters at Times Watch noted that New York Times stringer Brian Stelter "provided a platform for vitriolic left-wing accusations that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was somehow responsible for Tiller's killing." The Tuesday Stelter headline starts to lead its readers down the same path as the two big blogs. "Doctor's Killer, Some Say (note: I wonder who "some" are), Is Not Alone in the Blame." Waters remarks that it would have been far more accurate for Stelter to say "Leftist Bloggers Say," but that would be too much to ask.
Stetler then goes on to say "Dr. George R. Tiller had many critics, but arguably the one with the highest profile was Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News Channel host. Mr. O'Reilly, a vocal opponent of abortion, often called him "Tiller the baby killer" for performing late-term abortions and said repeatedly that Tiller had blood on his hands." And then comes the part where the reader gets to conclude that there is a clear nexus with O'Reilly's views and the murder. "Within hours of the shooting that left Dr. Tiller dead on Sunday, Mr. O'Reilly found himself under attack from liberal journalists and bloggers who accused him of inciting violence. By early Monday, some Web sites were asking, as a newsletter from the Air America radio network did, 'Is Bill O'Reilly to Blame for Murder of Kansas Doctor'?" Get it? Stelter is saying: " 'Some people' are accusing him of it, but not me. I'm just reporting it, carefully, in detail, with many capital letters and no counter arguments exept O'Reilly's own stated defense, which the Daily Kos and the Huff Po had already mocked two days ago, in advance." One could look at his article and sum it up as "I may be slow, but I'm stupid." The Los Angeles Times was not far behind with a similar piece which stated that Tiller was "O'Reilly's Target." Again, a reading of the article says that the good doctor was O'Reilly's metaphorical target, but the word "target" was carefully chosen.
And so the New York Times again continues to decline, having to admit it got scooped by a couple of large blogs. More than that, the Times has been pushed into admitting that it no longer has the lead in setting liberal opinion, but must rely on Arianna and Markos to do their dirty work for them. I don't know which is sadder. That the New York Times has to follow the lead of a couple of leftwing websites, or that those websites have that kind of influence in the first place.
I should add that I am not defending Bill O'Reilly on the issue. I have probably not watched five of his TV shows in the entire time he has been on Fox News Channel, and I find him to be more a populist than a conservative. This is also not a discussion of the very complicated abortion issue. It is about the murder of one "late-term" abortionist, one mentally-deranged murderer, and how the left views the necessity of deflecting the genuine abortion debate by finding conservative and Christian demons to blame for what would otherwise be simply another senseless murder.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Bill O'Reilly Murders Pro-Choice Doctor
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18 comments:
Lawhawk,
People always talk about media bias, and I think only a fool would argue that there is no left wing bias in the MSM.
Generally, however, I don't think that media bias helps the left. However, on issues like this the bias has a very strong effect.
Indeed, when left wing wacco's kill someone or blow something up, the media never mentions their politics (or their religion). Instead, they treat them as lone nut-jobs, acting without the knowledge, consent, or support of anyone on the left.
But when you get a nutjob like this one, who is ostensibly on the right, the MSM treats him like he's an agent of the right.
I believe this difference in treatment gives gullible people the idea that the political right is a bunch of extremist nut-job murderers/terrorists, whereas there are no such people on the left. That's a problem that must be rectified.
Finally, let's be clear. There are many on the right who oppose abortion and there are many who support abortion to one degree or another. But NO ONE on the right supports the idea of murdering abortion doctors, and it is slanderous for the left wing freaks at Hufpo, DailyKos and the NYT to suggest otherwise. Indeed, their self-righteous glee in making such claims is despicable.
Contrast the coverage of the Tiller murder with the murder of a soldier outside a recruitment office. You've heard the story right? It happened one day after the Tiller shooting and has received the same media coverage as Tiller's... hasn't it? Hasn't the media been condemning this as a "jihad" against our military by the radical left?
No?
As for O'Reilly, like him or hate him, he cleans up in the ratings and the left would looooove to shut him down by whatever means possible.
Andrew and SQT: Thanks for your comments and insight. I've lived long enough to see this game from the beginning. On the day John Kennedy was assassinated, the MSM had its spin in place. The assassination took place in Dallas, a "right-wing city, a hate city, populated by crazy right-wingers who encouraged one of their own to murder a young, liberal President." But slowly the truth came out. The assassin was a communist and a vocal supporter of Castro, whom Kennedy had decided was the scourge of the western hemisphere.
So, quickly Lee Harvey Oswald became a liberal myth. He was a misguided nutcase. He was not really a communist, but rather a confused, sexually-frustrated whack job. He even proved that he was not really a communist because he defected to the Soviet Union, didn't much care for the accommodations, and returned to the United States, with a Russian wife. He moved to New Orleans, and what self-respecting communist would live in New Orleans? Etc., etc., etc. ad nauseam. When all else might fail, the CIA and the Mafia had conspired together to make this otherwise innocuous simpleton into a dupe for their need to get rid of the President. He defined himself near the end as "a patsy," and the MSM ate it up.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As someone who grew up in Dallas under the spector of the Kennedy assassination I can tell you first hand, how we were known as "The City That Assassinated Kennedy". I can't tell you how many times I have had to defend that the City kill Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald did. At least that's what my parents have told me to say...;-)
I just happened to go to Huffpo after learning of Tiller's murder and it made me sick to read some of the posts. They wouldn't dare condemn all Muslims as terrorist because of the act of a few fanatics, but ALL Christians are condemned as terrorist for the same reason. It's sick. All a fanatic needs is a cause, any cause. A fanatic is a fanatic is a fanatic.
So anyways, I was looking at my profile and I saw all these people following me and I thought, gee I wonder if Andrew is trying to tell me something. :-)
How do I go about getting a permanent log in name?
That hits the nail firmly on the head, the left will take anyone that does anything wrong if they happen to be on the "right" (as defined as such by liberals, which of course means anyone not a liberal) as some sort of "proof" that everyone on the supposed right is a lunatic. Yet when the roles are reversed, you could hear a pin drop.
What can you expect really, these are the same liberal types that believe that there is such a thing as a "moderate" Taliban, that Hamas and Hezbollah are "political parties that do much charity work" and that the Chinese are our "allies." Someone hand me a barf bag, please.
As for Tiller himself, he shouldn't have been murdered. That's just common logic, you don't go around murdering people. At the same time, like you said you don't go around blaming an entire segment of society for the actions of one crazy guy either. Isn't that what the left says about terrorists, you can't blame Islam because of a "few" lunatics? Well there are about a half dozen certifiable "right wing nuts" on record as having done despicable acts, while there are are many, many more hundreds of thousands of hardcore Islamist terrorists in the world. So which is it, the Truth or profiling? Liberals will never give me a straight answer on that one.
Oh and hey SgtTank, good to see you here! (Golani from BH here, all incognito-ish) To register you need to go to the blogger.com site and set yourself up there. At least I think that's how it worked, I know next to nothing about computers and blogs and things of that nature.
Bev: I've always wondered why, in modern times, D.C. has never been the city that tried to kill Clinton (twice), or Los Angeles the city that killed Robert Kennedy, or San Francisco sharing joint honors with Sacramento as the cities that tried to kill Gerald Ford. All of these cities are heavily Democrat and liberal, with substantial minority and foreign-born ethnic populations. Oh, never mind, I just answered my own question.
Keep up that line of thinking Lawhawk and a liberal would point out that with Clinton and Ford the awesome and effective gun laws foiled the nefarious plots. Kennedy in LA was just one of those statistical anomalies afterall.
That's just how their minds work it seems.
SgtTank,
Welcome! Glad you found us. Please feel free to drop by anytime.
To get an account, go here:
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and sign up.
What if? And this is only a theoretical question. What if some organization on the right took ownership of the killers actions, what would the fall out be? If we could map all the possible consequences and there would be many, is there any possibility of a productive outcome? We are always playing defense because of the MSM, is there a way to turn this or something like this into, dare I say, a positive. I know I am playing with fire, so please check my disclaimer.
StlDan,
The history of terrorism has been that terroristic acts have almost always turned people off the cause they are meant to advance.
Good read Lawhawk! This doctor was indeed a ghoul, but should not have been murdered, but stopped legally. As far as left wing blogs go and their nexus with the MSM it’s a natural, birds of a feather.
I agree with you Andrew, and I know I am out out a limb here, so bear with me. If we had allowed the English crown to define the Boston tea party in their terms, it would have been seen as terrorism by the colonist, in today's lexicon. But, the founders of this country controlled the language and termed it Patriotism, because they had taken all they were going to take, So if we allow the "Crown" to control the language in this case, is it self defeating to admit this is terrorism. I am not exactly sure where I am trying to go with this, just looking for new avenues to approach old problems. The current leadership of the Conservatives do not seem to have any ideas and maybe I am finally tired of what is going on, consequences be damned.
StlDan
I think you have to carefully pick your battles on that one. Cold-blooded murder isn't something that can be owned by a cause because there just isn't any justification for it. Same goes for pretty much anything that causes harm to people and/or property.
The Boston Tea party, IMHO, was a whole different matter than the petty acts of terrorism we see perpetrated by groups like ELF, who are just a bunch of fanatics in search of a cause. Political dissent is something that we can own but it has to be carefully managed. You can't manage murder into something meaningful.
SQT, again I agree with you. For the sake of argument and to advance the discussion, what if this was not murder but, justifiable homicide? I would again like to invoke my disclaimer.
And if this discussion makes anyone uncomfortable, I will cease.
Well, I think you'd have to go to our resident legal experts, but I don't think you can fit "justifiable homicide" into a situation in which you're preemptively stopping someone from doing something-- especially if it's legal.
Bottom line, for me anyway, is that murder for any reason is too repugnant to support for any reason.
StlDan,
Suggesting that in some way, a cold-blooded murder is justified or trying to re-name the killing as something other than murder or terrorism, is the same thing as endorsing that behavior.
History has been very clear that associating your movement with acts of terror only leads to a dramatic loss of public support.
You mention the Boston Tea Party, but keep in mind that the BTP was a classic example of non-violent civil disobedience. The violence came later, when the British fired upon protestors -- and it cost the British the moral high ground and much support.
Non-violent civil disobedience has a long and successful history. Violence does not, except in the case of pure revolutions. But even then, it only works because you actually take over the government, not because people suddenly see believe your cause.
Without stating my position on abortion, let me just say that if I was opposed to abortion, I would be very nervous about anyone trying to pull this "extremist" into my ranks, just as environmentalists should be upset by anyone trying the same thing with ELF, or Muslims should be upset by anyone endorsing the acts of Al Queda and the rest.
sqt,
There is no way in a legal sense that this can be considered justifiable homicide. Justifiable homicide only occurs in self-defense or in very, very rare instances where you act to defend others.
Before any claim of self defense or defense of others can be made, it must be shown that there was an immediate danger of loss of life. Thus, with this guy sitting in church, that defense is precluded.
But even if he was in the middle of performing an abortion, you have the legal problem that abortion is legal. Thus, the law has already determined that this procedure does not cause a loss of life -- therefore, you again cannot claim self-defense.
Moreover, you cannot use deadly force in self-defense when lesser force will work (with rare exceptions -- like defense of a home). As this doctor could have easily been restrained while the authorities were called, this defense is again precluded.
There is no defense here.
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