There have been times when Mike Stark has spoken for me. I loved what he did with the whole "macaca" thing. I was proud, then, that Mike Stark was a fellow Virginian. I love the fact that Mike Stark will do things that more timid folks like me only dream of doing, that he will fight back and fight hard. Certainly, nobody can accuse Mike of lacking chutzpah. But I believe Mike has taken it too far this time.
And no, it's not that I support O'Reilly. I loathe that bastard. I think he's a waste of skin cells. I abhor his wrong-headed shrillness and the hate that fans out from him like a halo from hell. I think he's a nauseating example of men, and of humanity, and I would, personally, be happier if he had never been born. I find it stunning that he has had, for lo these many years, had a platform on Fox News to spew his special brand of "truth." So no, it isn't that I support him in the least.
Nor do I find in-your-face tactics against an opponent inherently bad. It was Mike Stark's in-your-face "Calling All Wingnuts" that first captured my attention and imagination. I thought it was brilliant.
But there is something in Mike's latest stunt that rubs me the wrong way. Like others, I fully support his right to try to snag an interview with O'Reilly, even if – shudder – that interview is conducted with O'Reilly in his skivvies. But the signs went too far. Involving O'Reilly's neighbors, who didn't ask to be part of this stunt, went too far.
God knows, I'm not anti-signage. Before I got bogged down with babies and pregnancies and a dying mother, I was pretty heavily into posting great big "IMPEACH" signs around Northern Virginia. It was fun, but even better, it was fun with a positive purpose. Maybe it didn't garner the response I would have liked to have seen, but it was good clean fun, and there was purpose behind it. There was purpose behind Mike's signs about O'Reilly, too, I suppose, but to put them in O'Reilly's neighborhood, on what was, quite likely, private property, reeks of harassment to me.
Maybe technically, everything Mike did was completely legal. I don't know – I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not interested enough to look up case law to support or revoke support of what Mike did. But the feel of it is... sleazy. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I understand and appreciate the arguments that you have to fight fire with fire. If O'Reilly is doing this same kind of shit, why should Mike – or anyone else – do any differently? My answer to that is that we are better than crap-ass Bill O'Reilly. In my opinion, we lose the moral high ground and lose our right to bitch about O'Reilly's wretched tactics if we are, ourselves, engaging in them.
Besides, anyone who's going to care one way or another about Bill O'Reilly has already chosen a side. He has elevated himself to public consciousness through sheer force of ego and ratings-grabbing with his ridiculous posturing and even more ludicrous opinions – anyone who cares to know anything about Bill O'Reilly, for good or for bad, already does.
I've actually found myself really glazing whenever I've seen something here about O'Reilly and the big feud. I'm tired of Olbermann's endless thing with O'Reilly. I find myself more interested in the other, non-O'Reilly-related entries and new pieces here and on Olbermann. Yeah, I know, O'Reilly sucks something fierce. And for a while, poking the crazy with a stick was kind of amusing. But it's reached such a fever pitch that I find I can't avoid hearing about O'Reilly no matter how much I want to forget he exists. And the poking-stick has become a beating stick, only it's not really whomping his richly deserving ass, it's just beating a dead horse.
Yeah, I find O'Reilly as repugnant as pretty much anyone else here does, whether I hunt him down to put signs up in his neighborhood or not, but god damn, give it a rest. I'd rather, quite frankly, focus my limited online time on matters of how health care is dealt with in this country, or the fact that climate change is on the rise and still nobody is really trying to do something meaningful about it, or any of the other myriad big-picture issues that we are faced with today and that are infinitely more important than the fact that some mean little man with an overfed ego has started a feud with us lefties that – and this is the big point - will not matter in twenty years. The loss of habeus corpus will matter in twenty years. The loss of glaciers will matter in twenty years. Bill O'Reilly, on the other hand, will not matter in twenty years.
While, in this instance, Mike Stark does not speak for me, I fully support his right to say and do whatever he wants to say and do within a lawful context. If he wants to have a truckload of loofah gloves delivered to O'Reilly, fine. Be my guest! Wants to purchase billboards surrounding O'Reilly's neighborhood calling O'Reilly a little-dicked pervert? I find it questionable, but within Mike's rights as an individual according to the First Amendment, which I hold quite dear. I don't agree with those tactics, or with continuing to give O'Reilly attention that he is craving but so doesn't deserve, but if it's legal, then have at the free speech regardless of how I feel about what is being said or how it's being said.
I do, however, most strenuously object to two things: anything like this being done in my name, without my approval; and my disliking these tactics being conflated with my supporting O'Reilly or being a concern troll. Look, I don't really give a shit about O'Reilly's welfare. I don't really care about O'Reilly one way or another. He's a gnat. Annoying and something I wish I could take out with a well-meaning swat, but not something I'm going to hunt down because it just. isn't. worth. it. He isn't worth it. But by god, when you're lumping me in with all the other dKos users, and you're using dKos as a launching point and veil of legitimacy for your antics, you're overstepping your bounds when you assume that you are speaking on my behalf. And you are overstepping your bounds when you call my disagreement with your tactics, undertaken tacitly in my name, "concern trolling."