Open Letter to Bill O'Reilly: It's Bill of Rights, Not Bill's Rights!
Larisa Alexandrovna
Dear Mr. O?Reilly:
We all know that you make a living selling the ?victimization of hate?
concept, a not entirely new genre in scapegoating. Germany in the 1930?s,
for example, already had a horrifically successful run at it. So while not
original, somehow you still manage to make a fortune spewing the kind of
filth that would even make the Soviets blush.
Everyone is quite aware of your penchant for lying, in frequency only
second, perhaps, to Ann Coulter?s proclivity for self-hate, pathetically
heaved up and served like poison in hopes of making everyone as bitter as
she is.
Your hate bravado, however, is something that requires a whole new
category, and Fox News selling this filth only illustrates what I have
always believed to be true about corruption and greed: Namely, both matter
more than Christian values and both have no nationality.
(Perhaps when the Lincoln and Rendon Group contracts are up, someone might
consider taking a closer look at Fox News and what, if any, type of
contract they may have with the military industrial complex. Sure, it is
easy to write this garbage off as a bid for ratings, but given the
extremism, anti-American sentiments, and real and absolute contempt for all
things truly American that are regularly displayed on your show, it is
doubtful you are merely churning up the numbers. Even hate consumers
apparently have a limit.).
But I digress.
In truth, Mr. O?Reilly, for all your ravings about who is a traitor and who
is not, you forget the most basic definition of treason, and you also seem
to forget where that definition is located. I suggest you turn to the
actual document that this nation is built on, the Constitution (not the
Bible), which starts with something called the Bill of Rights.
Now, while you have managed to make racial slurs against anyone who simply
prefers to use one word over another to refer to a specific holiday, you
may have missed something key in this particular document, the
Constitution, that is. You may have missed that allegiance to and defense
of the Constitution is the first responsibility of a patriot, followed by
allegiance to and defense of the nation. Note: The country as a whole is
second to the Constitution on the loyalty scale. Against this backdrop, the
real stage of history, you, Mr. O?Reilly, would fall very much on the wrong
side of the good fight.
Consider your incessant rage against the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), for example, an organization that you call ?traitors? on a regular
basis. You call so many people and organizations traitors that it is hard
to choose just one, but the ACLU does provide the easiest of arguments.
Do you know what the ACLU really is or what it is for? I suspect that you
must have spent oodles of hours researching this particular organization to
be able to so thoroughly and consistently refer to them as traitors, right?
Bill Learns Reality, 101
The ACLU has one and only one client, a non-partisan, wholly American
client: The Bill of Rights.
Now, given that patriotism must first demand the defense of the
Constitution before anything else (see my column on being an American), one
could argue quite easily that the ACLU is the patriot in this argument and
you, Mr. O?Reilly, are the traitor. No?
After all, they are simply doing what every American is tasked with and
should be doing, defending the reason and foundation for this country,
while you are demanding an all out assault on that very same reason and
foundation.
The same ACLU that you decry as traitors is made up, astonishingly enough,
of Republicans (read: real Republicans, not theocrats or neo-fascists),
Democrats, Independents, and every shade of political thought in between a
Democracy and a Republic.
The ACLU?s membership numbers in the millions and is made up of Christians
as well as Jews, Muslims, and so forth.
In case you should require additional proof that the evil, liberal,
ever-plotting ACLU is anything but, consider that one of their clients is
none other than Rush Limbaugh. Now it can hardly be said that old Rush is
part of some grand left wing conspiracy - right wing probably, left wing,
not hardly.
The waters are a bit muddied here, so perhaps I can better help you clarify
your real objection to the Bill of Rights - and extended to all actual
Americans - by asking you a series of questions.
For brevity, I will only cover the First Amendment:
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is
that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in
politics, nationalism, religion, or force citizens to confess by word or
act their faith therein," Justice Robert Jackson (West Virginia v.
Barnette).
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
On Free Speech: While you seem to enjoy the benefits of free speech,
clearly you are unwilling to share that right with others. Is this the
correct interpretation of why you are waging a war against the Bill of
Rights?
On Religion: While you seem to respect the pomp more than the actual
substance of religion, you still would rather see only your religion
practiced and only with your narrow practice, is this correct? Is this the
correct interpretation of why you are waging a war against the Bill of
Rights?
On a Free Press: Your own position on a so-called news channel should prove
without doubt that freedom of the press has extended even to the bowels of
payola, confusion, misinformation, and a general brothel of crap floating
on the outer banks of decency and anything remotely resembling human
reason. Is it correct to say that you want to secure the right of a free
press so long as it is made of the type of sewage that flows out of Mr.
Murdoch?s toilet? Is this the correct interpretation of why you are waging
a war against the Bill of Rights?
On Peaceable Assembly: While you and your backers meet at every nanosecond
to determine the most cost-effective way to keep hate prettily packaged,
you find it repugnant that others would meet for non-profit-related
reasons. You seem to find it horrific that Americans (Christians and Jews
and Muslims alike) should stand peacefully against an illegal war, yet you
take no issue with working for a corporation willing to sell those same
Americans into death for profit. You even attack grieving mothers who gave
their sons and daughters for this country as traitors. Are you afraid of
your own cowardice in the face of such courage? Is this the correct
interpretation of why you are waging a war against the Bill of Rights?
On Redressing Grievances: So your position then, given your absolute
loathing of the First Amendment, is that the government (the people?s
government), should ignore its constituents, deprive them of a right to be
heard, and in general run largely disinterested in or unaccountable to the
citizenry? Let me remind you what our founding fathers thought of King
George, that other George, who was just as arrogant and indifferent as the
current one:
"In every state of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in
the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by
repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
The above is from still another important American, real American, wholly
American document: the Declaration of Independence
But really, let?s get down to the marrow of it: What is your problem with
this particular section of the First Amendment? Are you opposed to the
right to redress grievances because such a right might compel a company
such as the one you work for to be accountable for its own abuses? Is this
the correct interpretation of why you are waging a war against the Bill of
Rights?
I do not expect that you will answer these questions, because in doing so
you would either expose yourself as an utter and complete buffoon (to your
fans that is) who can barely keep his loofah afloat every morning or you
would expose yourself as an opportunist of the worst kind (to your fans
that is). Whatever the reality of your embedded psyche and moral compass
may be, you can trust that the majority of the public is smarter and more
honest than you are. Your fans will get a grip on reality eventually
because even the most inane of us has some ability to eventually think.
So feel free to channel and express your inner Joe McCarthy. I suspect that
you will be nothing more than a footnote to the national embarrassment that
we now see McCarthyism as. Imagine that, your entire life nothing more than
a footnote to a national disgrace and the epitome of un-American.
http://tinyurl.com/bvgh2
