Let me preface my remarks by stating that I've never been an O'Reilly fan. I rarely watch his show and when I do it's never planned, it's only because I'm flipping channels and see that he has an interesting guest on. I don't consider O'Reilly a conservative. He's more of a populist and a self-promoter. There's nothing wrong with that and it's not the main reason I don't watch him. The real reason is because I find the man's belligerence off-putting in the extreme. His attitude that he is the arbiter of all that is right or wrong may make for popular television but it makes me boil. I find him nearly unwatchable for more than ten minutes at a time.
And I've never watched The View. I've seen plenty of clips of the show posted on conservative blogs and that is quite enough for me, thank you. Beyond that I won't comment on my opinion of the show (cop out!).
At any rate, I watched the clip of O'Reilly making his comment and a couple of the panelists walking off the set (including Whoopi Goldberg, who wins the award for the most unfunny comedian in history.) It seemed to me ridiculous.
What Bill O'Reilly said, "Because Muslims killed us on 9/11!” is true, factually. That the 19 men who flew the airplanes into our buildings and killed nearly 3000 people on American soil were Muslim is without doubt. Furthermore, they did it in the name of Islam. No one denies that. Could he have said what he meant more artfully? Sure, I suppose. But no one can argue with the factual basis of the statement. So why all the fuss? I dismissed the panelists walking off the set as a couple of loony leftists making a grandstanding gesture and the ensuing kerfuffle as nonsense.
Now, along comes Peter Wehner, a man for whom I have great respect and whom I've praised often on this blog, posting on Commentary's Contentions blog that O'Reilly was wrong. He explains why he thinks so by stating the following:
Assume that Sam Harris went on The O’Reilly Factor and, based on the child-abuse scandals that tarnished the reputation of the Catholic Church, made the sweeping claim that “Catholics are child molesters.” My guess is that O’Reilly would (rightly) respond, “No. Some priests molested children, and it was a horrific thing. But you can’t indict an entire faith based on the sins of a relatively few number of priests."
I disagree with Wehner because I think his analogy is wrong. To say, "Catholics are child molesters" is indeed a statement that indicts all Catholics. But O'Reilly did not indict all Muslims with his statement. He was plainly speaking of the 19 men who commandeered those airliners, not all Muslims. A more proper analogy to the O'Reilly statement would be, "Catholics molested those children." That is an inarguable fact, just as O'Reilly's statement is. So Wehner's analogy is incorrect.
I would add a few more things. The Catholic priests who molested those children did not do it in the name of Catholicism, as the 9/11 killers did in the name of Islam. The priests did it because they were weak, dishonorable men who could not control their vile impulses. You could argue that they got into the priesthood for the purposes of putting themselves into closer proximity to children and to better gain their trust, but that is a different thing than committing their outrages in the name of the Church.
Furthermore, the vast, vast, majority of other Catholics were as horrified as anyone else (perhaps more so) when the facts of the child molestations came to light, and they condemned it as much as anyone (again, perhaps more so.) I do not believe that the same percentage of Muslims throughout the world had similar reactions when learning of the 9/11 atrocities. I seem to remember dancing in the streets. Afterwards there were many Islamic extremists claiming support for the murderers. Even those prominent Muslims who condemned the actions of the 9/11 terrorists often did so in equivocated language, often hinting that our actions may have provoked and justified the attacks. While I am sure there are millions of Muslims who reacted with the same horror and disgust as the rest of us on 9/11, their voices are seldom heard. To me, and others, there seems to be many Muslims who, while they would never engage in terrorism themselves, give tacit approval to those who do. And that is a problem (about which I plan to post more about soon.)
So please spare me the outrage over O'Reilly's comment. What he said was true and those that are feigning outrage over it are frauds. They know what he meant.
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