Tonight Bill O'Reilly totally jumped over the line from ridiculous to pathetic. Please read the below for my request to step up any efforts to boycott him, his shows, and the Faux News Channel.
From blaming Americans for the events at Malmedy during World War II, to threatening to arrest people who called his radio show to exercise their First Amendment rights, to stating that a kidnapping victim in Missouri stayed because he liked it, to his general false statements there have been many things we could have called to boycott Bill O’Reilly and Faux News over it was his actions and statements on tonight’s show where I believe he has totally crossed the line from inappropriate to personally disgusting and truly as Keith Olbermann put it tonight "the worse person in the world".
As many of you have surely heard about there was a terrible and tragic house fire in the Bronx last Wednesday where ten people including nine children passed away. This house fire was most likely caused by a faulty space heater and destroyed the residences that the fire occurred in resulting in not only these deaths but also the immediate displacement of several families and loss of all of their possessions. The Mayor of New York as well as the Fire Commissioner and Buildings Department declared that there was nothing illegal about these residences as the families were related, the building was being used for the use as described in the building code, and that no violations were found. While fire alarms were deemed to be faulty there is nothing illegal about this as the residence was a private home and not used as a multi-family dwelling.
While thousands of people showed up today to the funeral and thousands more across the city mourned for these families what does Bill O’Reilly do? He goes on the air and makes statements that this fire and the deaths it caused were due to illegal and improper use of the building and that since he could not confirm that the people who lived there were not illegal immigrants (although he had no proof either that they were) the compassion and sympathy for these families was misguided. He further stated that we should instead be discussing immigration, amnesty, and citizenship issues and that this would be the proper thing to do.
We can get into all the reasons why Bill O’Reilly should not be anyone’s morality police but the fact that he stated that we should not have compassion or sympathy for the dead children, that we should be discussing issues that have nothing to do with the fire, and made statements about how these people were living that are totally false are all reasons that we should step up any efforts to boycott his program, the station that carries it, any advertisers who support him, and his show. I think that doing what he did tonight is far and above what Ann Coutler recently did in regard to John Edwards and the gay community.
In my personal opinion the best way to honor these families and those who passed away would be to ensure that Bill O’Reilly loses his avenues to continue to spew the venom that he did this evening.