We've come to expect some degree kind of classlessness, tastelessness and insensitivity from Bill O'Reilly, but his goon squad's latest escapade goes beyond the pale.
On Jennifer Moore, an 18-year old girl raped and murdered in July 2006, O'Reilly naturally blamed the victim:
O'REILLY: So anyway, these two girls come in from the suburbs and they get bombed, and their car is towed because they're moronic girls and, you know, they don't have a car. So they're standing there in the middle of the night with no car. And then they separate because they're drunk. They separate, which you never do. All right.
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk.
That's par for the course for this sick little man, and no longer raises too many hackles.
O'Reilly, however, still managed to finagle an invitation to speak at the Alexa Foundation, an organization for rape survivors. In light of this, ThinkProgress thought it appropriate to remind the blogosphere of O'Reilly's past views towards rape victims.
Here's how Team Billo responded.
This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.
Watters apparently followed the writer in question two full hours from her home, so as to ambush her on film while she was on vacation.
– The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.
– The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion’s name, nor did he say he was with The O’Reilly Factor.
Instead of calling Ms. Terkel and asking for an interview, or requesting that she come on the show to explain her post, O'Reilly sent his hitmen to follow her on vacation with the sole purpose of catching her off guard.
It's sick behavior, the kind of thuggish, obsessive, intimidation we've come to expect from O'Reilly and shouldn't accept from anyone.
But, you know, as Ms. Terkel puts it, since she's apparently a fairly petite woman herself, maybe she was just asking for it:
Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.