Glen Beck is REAAAALLY trying it!

[Ben]

O'Reilly's shameful campaign

Nation sportswriter Dave Zirin reports on an ugly campaign led by hated Fox News blowhard Bill O'Reilly against the author of a study on military recruiters.

December 17, 2010
Bill O'Reilly

IN MY mind, when the Fox News star Bill O'Reilly decides to make you a target, it's a badge of honor. This is a man who politically is a proud Islamaphobe, declaring, "We have a Muslim problem, not a Muslim extremist problem." And personally? Anyone who likes to tell people how his "happy ending" masseuse thinks he's well endowed clearly has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality.
That's why his latest attacks on University of Washington Assistant Professor Amy Hagopian tells far more about the twisted mind of O'Reilly than the serious study the professor authored.
Hagopian wrote an academic paper for the American Journal of Public Health making the case that military recruiters in high schools were in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a threat to the public health of adolescents, and even suggesting military recruiting behaviors were akin to--as she put it--"predatory grooming." It's a serious, data-packed analysis of the way recruiters have manipulated information and targeted the most economically disadvantaged students to fill the ranks of those fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The overarching thesis of the study is hardly shocking or groundbreaking. After all, we know that in 2005, the Army ordered its recruiters to "stand down" for a day of retraining because of habitual mendacity. We know the intense pressures on military recruiters to meet quotas has led to a series of high-profile ethical violations.
I know from my work at D.C.-area high schools that the recruitment booths aren't set up at elite institutions like St. Alban's or Georgetown Prep. They're at public high schools like Ballou and Bell. In other words, recruiters fish in places where young people have fewer options. Hagopian's academic study simply backed up what has been over the last five years a very public scandal. This is what I thought when I read her paper.
When O'Reilly read her paper...all right, let's stop there. I will contend there is no way Bill O'Reilly actually read her piece. None. He doesn't reckon with any of Hagopian's sobering data. He doesn't reckon with the suicide rates among troops, the effects of exposure to depleted uranium or any of the ways that the realities of war are fudged by recruiters to fill their quotas.
There is just O'Reilly doing his neo-McCarthyite best to chill free speech. All O'Reilly needed was Hagopian's use of the word "predatory" when describing recruiters. Next thing you know, he was hitting the airwaves attacking Hagopian for calling recruiters "child molesters."
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THIS IS sick. Why this is where O'Reilly and his producers' minds go is honestly between them and their Internet browsers. But tragically, when he sends his shock troops into battle, they can damage a person's life.
Now, Amy Hagopian, for the unholy crime of conducting academic inquiry into a public scandal, has been harassed by O'Reilly's loyal listeners. They have sent threatening letters and e-mails to the school offices. They have made a series of profane phone calls to her colleagues. They have contacted her university and demanded that she should be fired for writing a peer-reviewed publication in the primary journal of public health in America.
Please take a moment and imagine if that was you. Imagine if you created a contribution to public discourse to provoke discussion and debate. Imagine if you were ready to defend your findings against others who would surely disagree. And then imagine if instead you found yourself a personal target for a reactionary media giant using his outsized pulpit to make your life a living hell.
That's not journalism, and it's not punditry. It's the actions of an obscene, indecent bully. If there is one object lesson I've learned about O'Reilly's character from these attacks, it's that he clearly despises women who tell sobering truths. I suppose he just wants them to administer happy endings.

First published at Huffington Post.

[Ben]

[onmyknees]

Ben...Please accept this Christmas Card in the spirit it was intended by the Cable News Network that has 300% more viewers than it's nearest competitor in all time slots between 7-11 pm. LOL
And btw..I wasn't even aware that the uber left mag "The Nation" had sportswriters. I know they don't have any readers, maybe they're covering sports now? Or maybe thier sportswriters are covering politics now? LOL

[Ben]

Sadly, this beats Fox:

[Billy mays here]

Ben , when you use media matters as a reference, you look just as stupid as FOX news and MSNBC . Its ok because your whole agenda just took the biggest loss in the last 70 years of congress. You can label racist this , and racist that , but ultamitley its REAL AMERICANS , black ones , white ones , purple ones that SAID NO TO YOUR PRESIDENT and his party ( and the counrty club republicans as well) at the poles where it matters . Not on a forum about GIRL COCK duder .

[Ben]

Ben , when you use media matters as a reference, you look just as stupid as FOX news and MSNBC . Its ok because your whole agenda just took the biggest loss in the last 70 years of congress. You can label racist this , and racist that , but ultamitley its REAL AMERICANS , black ones , white ones , purple ones that SAID NO TO YOUR PRESIDENT and his party ( and the counrty club republicans as well) at the poles where it matters . Not on a forum about GIRL COCK duder .

Ha! ha! ha! I'm not a fan of President Obama.... Nor was I a fan of President Bush. (I like Ron Paul. He's principled. You can disagree with him. But at least he's principled. He's very good on foreign policy, civil liberties and on the fruitless and pointless drug war.)
And - I - am - NOT - a - liberal. I don't like the Democratic Party. (Both parties represent and serve strictly business interests. And not the interests of the population. That's understood.
It's about money -- and money in politics. Obama received most of his campaign money from the financial sector. Thus he serves their interests.
A lot of corporations are inextricably tied to government. And it's great for them. Think: Halliburton. Because they don't have to compete in the so-called free market. Ya just get your money from the government. Think: Blackwater/Xe, too.)

[Ben]

[Ben]

[yodajazz]

Ben , when you use media matters as a reference, you look just as stupid as FOX news and MSNBC . Its ok because your whole agenda just took the biggest loss in the last 70 years of congress. You can label racist this , and racist that , but ultamitley its REAL AMERICANS , black ones , white ones , purple ones that SAID NO TO YOUR PRESIDENT and his party ( and the counrty club republicans as well) at the poles where it matters . Not on a forum about GIRL COCK duder .

Can you admit that there is now more hatred from Americans (US cititzens) towards other Americans than at any time since the civil war? I tie this hatred, to professional hate mongerers such as Beck. The party winning the presidential election has lost seats in the mid term elections almost everytime in the past 40? years. The public is being brainwashed being thrown terms like "socialism" without even discussing the merits or complexities of a particular situation. "Socialism" is a branded word, that has been invested with negative meanings for 50+ years. Simply using that word, tends to stop public discourse, and goes directly the embedded negative meanings of the past. Americans are no longer thinking, but reacting to code terms. So you think you can invalidate any information from MSNBC, because of its so called 'liberal' bias. As if they could never be right. Were talking never. It's people like Beck, who have worked hard to make people immune to empirical evidence. Another word for that is ignorance.

I definitely did not like Bush and would have voted for any Democratic candidate. I really respect lots of Ron Pauls view. However, I dont agree with his views that 'small government' is a solution. This is because I see corporations becoming bigger and more powerful than ever. And I feel that government's responsibility is to the people, so that is our main hope of balancing the rule of money.

[russtafa]

Well these Americans can join the club because most of the world has contempt for the US of A