Bill O'Reilly and the tragic fate of pigs
A brief history of demonization and deniability: What the Fox News talker has in common with Kathy Boudin, Bernadine Dohrn, and the radical left
Francis Wilkinson
I wonder how many times Kathy Boudin said and heard the word "pig" before she and her rebel cohorts offed a pair of them in 1981. My guess is quite a few. Among '70s radicals like Boudin, and even among less violent leftists, "pig" was a common term for police officers—especially after the street battles outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, during which Chicago police beat up a slew of protesters. Of course, the expression wasn’t limited to cops; it encompassed vast numbers of people and professions. Capitalist pigs. Fascist pigs. Unfortunate pigs. Former Weather Underground leader Bernadine Dohrn famously expressed delight in 1969 over the mutilations of the Hollywood "pigs" killed by Charles Manson and his followers.
Many left-wing zealots considered pigs, however defined, an undesirable class. Some police officers and others died as a result of their antipathy. A Brink's security guard was shot dead by Boudin’s gang minutes before it killed two police officers in a hail of bullets. Bystanders were sacrificed to the war on pigs, as well. Robert Fassnacht, a postdoctoral student, was killed when radicals bombed the University of Wisconsin in 1970. Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four, was reduced to collateral damage in a bank heist by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Of course, it’s possible to claim that language that defines certain people as subhuman, or that marks the lives of others as blunt obstructions to the attainment of justice, or of a grand and noble cause, has no real-world significance. You can claim that the self-styled revolutionaries who shrieked "Kill the pigs!" at rallies in the early '70s were merely employing a bit of hyperbole. You can contend that not even the most deluded campus narcissists, those with the most romantic attachment to radical violence, and not even the most manipulative thugs, those for whom the revolution was an opportunity to steal some cake and eat it too—that none of them took such language seriously.
Similarly, there is no provable link between the hysterical right-wing rhetoric of the 1990s and right-wing terrorism. One could call federal agents "jackbooted thugs" intent on crushing the people’s liberty, as former National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre did in 1995, and still deny that there’s any link between the nation’s most prominent gun lobbyist demonizing federal employees and an obscure gun nut blowing them up, as Timothy McVeigh did that year in Oklahoma City.
In fact, you can deny a connection between rhetoric and action every time. Just as Bill O’Reilly is doing now.
O’Reilly came out guns blazing at his critics in the wake of the murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller. The doctor’s murder was not, in O’Reilly’s view, a net positive. But blaming O’Reilly for contributing to it was the greater outrage. It was—as it is ever and always with O’Reilly—a slander by elite liberals, amoral liberals, and the liberals’ very liberal enablers in the liberal press.
O’Reilly himself had nothing to apologize for.
Not the 29 episodes of his show on which he specifically targeted "Tiller the Baby Killer" as indifferent to human life and a menace to society.
Not his accusation that Tiller "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
Not his contention that Tiller’s legal abortion practice was "the kind of stuff" associated with "Hitler’s Germany."
Not his characterization of Tiller’s practice as a "death mill."
Not his claim that "anybody" who allowed Tiller’s practice to continue "has blood on their hands."
Why should O’Reilly apologize? It was just talk, which is what he does for a living. And every one of his verbal assaults on Tiller was constitutionally protected talk at that. So O’Reilly has committed no crime. He can’t be blamed for Tiller’s death. He can’t be blamed for anything. It’s just the unpredictable nature of the world. Pigs die.
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13 Comments
Posted by on2u, Friday, June 5, 2009, 8:10 am This article cut threw the BS. One of the few writers who articulate succinctly on what the liberal media do to target their victim.
Posted by Bob Dole, Friday, June 5, 2009, 11:39 am Wait, on2u, did you just refer to Bill O'Reilly as part of the 'liberal media'? or are you saying that this 'liberal' article unfairly 'targets' him for his harmless actions? Either way, you're reading a different article than I am.
Posted by Norton, Friday, June 5, 2009, 12:43 pm And so it goes on............... yet another liberal writer attacking with a swift boat full of nonesense. The abortion doctor was killed because some people didn't like what he did, not because Bill O'Reilly said anything against the doctors unethical work. The taking of Tllers life was unfortunate but it was also taken 60,000 lives too late. The writer does an admirable service to O'Reilly he suggest that O'Reilly's commentries have substance. Can the same be said about this trivial artical? I say hogwash to you, Wilkinson, dry up.
Posted by 26F, Friday, June 5, 2009, 4:11 pm It has been predicted that Right Wing terrorism will be on the rise in the coming year. Here is our first sad example. Propagandaand the flat out lies O'Reilly told is nothing morehas terrifying consequences.
Posted by Michael J. Gorman, Friday, June 5, 2009, 5:02 pm What O'Reilly the draftavoider but selfproclaimed hero leaves out of his defense of his free speech attacks on Dr. Tiller and others is that it is predictable and foreseeable as Judge Benjamin Cardozo would say that a number of homicidal crazies would be motivated to kill Dr. Tiller by the verbal poison of Bill O'Reilly, Bernard Goldberg and others on the nasty right wing. If you call someone a murderer of thousands of helpless babies and compare that person to Adolf Hitler, you are encouraging the unstable fanatics to kill.
Posted by Nem0.n00ne, Friday, June 5, 2009, 11:34 pm So Mr. Wilkinson, I guess that means that the Beatles are responsible for the Sharon Tate murders, Al Gore is responsible for the Unabomber, Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid etc are responsible for the death of the Marine Cpl Long killed by the muslim fanatic WRONG. These people are NOT responsible because one deranged nutcase goes off the deep end. Three hundred million people heard the same thing and didn't go off and shoot someone.
Posted by Greg Lang , Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:55 am Speaking of the Symbionese Liberation Army SLA before the SLA murdered Myrna Opsahl the SLA assassinated the first black superintendent of a major American School system Marcus Albert Foster. ... After 1970 the Berkeley/Bay area far left lad little luck with activism so they often demonised Foster. The SLA read theis and decided to assassinate Foster on election day. ... The mainstream media silence was and still is defening. ..... You can read Marcus Fosters book online at MakingSchoolsWork.com Alex Haley of Roots forward.
Posted by Greg Lang , Saturday, June 6, 2009, 12:08 pm Far left groups frequently post highly personal information that can endanger people and their family on the internet. The silence is defening from writers like this one. ....... After the 1999 arrest of SLA associate Kathleen Ann Soliah/Sara Jane Olson her defense group had a website that published personal information on people, including ones the SLA had tried to kill. ...... Probably more ineptness than intent but the information was online from Thursday afternoon to Monday afternoon.
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