The Crap Factor - Week 4: 100%

O'Reilly came up with a pretty easy one this week, about the movie "Brokeback Mountain," and his statements are both comically ironic and deeply disturbing.

First, before moving on to the more important issue of O'Reilly's advocating of violence toward homosexuals, I will deal with the central issue of his column.

O'Reilly is very fond of trying to categorize large, extremely diverse groups of people as a single entity. He refers to "Hollywood" much in the same way that an ignorant, angst filled teenager refers to "the man." "Hollywood" is advocating tolerance toward homosexuals, and that since "Hollywood" is now in the "culture shaping business" (which he argues is demonstrated by the movie's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture) then "it should admit it."

How exactly does "Hollywood" go about admitting it? How does a large, politically diverse industry, which produced such liberal gems as "The Passion of the Christ" and "Annapolis," go about admitting that their ultimate goal is the undermining of O'Reilly's hateful, intolerant society? Well, I guess that the secret Hollywood cabal of ultra-liberals could just hold a press conference to admit their goals. You know who I am referring to - the handful of conspirators who actually make all decisions about what movies will be released, what movies will win awards, and what social trends are to be advocated for.

"Hollywood" is an industry, and like all industries, it follows the trends of society. The movie "Brokeback Mountain" would never be made, much less receive the adulation is has, unless it reflected society. Society is increasingly realizing that homosexuals are an oppressed minority that deserve equal rights, in the same way that African Americans, Latinos, and women deserve equal rights.

Now, on to the good-old-fashioned violent intolerance.

He starts off his column by saying that his favorite western movie ever is "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and praises the "macho" heros of the film. Then two paragraphs later, he mentions that there would undoubtedly be gunfire involved if his heros were to come upon the two leads in "Brokeback Mountain" in the tent where they first had sex.

I don't know how the advocating of violence in this way could possibly be considered acceptable. Had O'Reilly seen "Brokeback Mountain" he would know that the central tragedy of the film involves precisely the bigoted, violent, anti-homosexual attitudes that O'Reilly is advocating. This is what makes it worthy of an Academy Award for Best Picture, unlike movies like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," which were O'Reilly's suggestions for movies that actually deserve the best picture nomination, based entirely on the amount of money they made at the box office.

Alas, advocating violence toward homosexuals is not quite enough to deserve a 100% crap rating. Being a violent bigot is certainly enough to disqualify his opinions from possessing any merit, however, the focus of this blog is not O'Reilly's hateful, closed-minded opinions, but rather the lies and contradictions in his arguments. To deserve this week's 100% crap rating, he had to contradict himself in the way that only a true conservative can: by going on to say that it is wrong for gays to suffer, and that every American should be able to pursue happiness, including gays. He just finished essentially advocating the shooting of homosexuals, then four paragraphs later goes on to say that homosexuals deserve equal rights. This is 100% crap.

The Crap Factor - Week 3: 50% Crap

This week, O'Reilly is outraged by the New York Times refusing to print the Danish cartoon which has enraged Muslims throughout the world, but printing a picture of a work of art with the Virgin Mary covered in feces. He also references some other similar works of art which were reported on by the New York Times and others.

Once again, O'Reilly is comparing apples and oranges. In all of his examples, the "secular-progressive press" was the originator of the anti-Christian stories. They were reporting on local works of art. In the case of the Danish cartoon, the New York Times and others were not the originators, but were rather reporting on other newspapers.

Essentially, O'Reilly doesn't want there to be any religiously offensive material ever printed anywhere. The example he uses of the play "Corpus Christi," which, according to O'Reilly, "featured a gay Jesus who had sex with some Apostles," is clearly an artistic statement about the destructive views toward homosexuality by many Christians. While this may be offensive to some Christians, the Christian views toward homosexuality are much more offensive.

Clearly an editorial decision was made that the result of printing the cartoon would furthur contribute to the worldwide violence. If the cartoon were not so readily available, like for example, if if were a local work of art that had not already been printed by hundreds of newspapers throughout the world, I believe that the NYT would be more inclined to print it.

In a supposedly free press, newspapers have the right to print material which is likely to offend someone. I would even go so far as to say that it is a responsibility. It is equally a right for people to protest to show their opposition to it. Unfortunately, many of these protests have taken place in areas of the world that are not terribly familiar with the concept of peaceful demonstration, and have led to violence.

In summary, perhaps it was somewhat inconsistent for the New York Times to reprint photos of the Virgin Mary painting, while refusing to show the offending cartoon they were comparing it to. That is not an argument in favor of censorship of all offensive material, as O'Reilly suggests. O'Reilly's statements are very offensive to me, yet I don't argue that he shouldn't be able to print them. What would he propose? He says that the majority of the US is Christian, and these works of art are offensive to Christians, so newspapers should not be allowed to print them. I would be willing to bet that the majority of those Christians would not be infavor of the type of censorship that he suggests.

Crap Factor: 50% - is was a little hypocritial for the NY Times to print the offending anti-Christian piece, but not the offending anti-Muslim piece, but this is not an argument in favor of increased censorship.

The Crap Factor - Week 2: 85% Crap

This week, Bill O'Reilly's column deals pretty much with a single issue, a response to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who was critical of O'Reilly for his "War on Christmas" fiasco. According to O'Reilly, Kristof accused him of "ignoring 'real' stories like the suffering in Sudan." O'Reilly says that he wishes that he could go to Sudan to report on the suffering, but he doesn't have the time, since he has to produce "three hours of daily news analysis on TV and radio." He then goes on to criticize Kristof for not covering the 60 day prison sentence given to a child molestor in Vermont.

Does O'Reilly have any idea what is going on in Darfur? He is spending all of his time focusing on a bad decision by a judge that has already been overturned. While he is wasting time on self-congratulation, hundreds of women and girls are being raped, often in public, by the Janjawid militia as an intimidation tactic, without any punishment at all for the perpetrators [link]. Even if his coverage had something to do with the 60 day sentence being overturned, does he really think that three hours a day of patting himself on the back about this one rape case is more important to cover than hundreds of rapes, and a system of government which allows them to go completely unpunished?

The only part of his column this week that is not crap is that his criticisms of the media could possibly be justified, except that he is 100 times worse for exactly the same reasons. As I have been saying for a while now, the media will only cover stories which they think are popular enough to generate ratings and therefore increase advertising revenue. Maybe the other national news stations didn't cover the story because it didn't look to be profitable, but profitability is precisely the reason O'Reilly is covering it. If he had any interest at all in bringing to light the lack of justice in rape cases, then of course hundreds of rapes with absolutely no justice for the perpetrators would rank much higher than a single case, but suffering in Darfur is not something that attracts a lot of viewers.

Rating:
85% crap - I would rate his Crap Factor this week considerably lower if his central point, an essentially valid criticism of the news media, didn't apply to him a hundred times more than to those he criticises.