I don’t care whether someone is a traditional American or a nontraditional Pakistani. I care (in the case of a public figure) whether his or her actions promote justice, mercy, and truth.
That’s as silly as the left-wing claim that conservative Christians want to institute a theocracy and stone non-christians.
I understand that you’re talking about his celebrity status. But I wish we would stop speaking as if being on a big TV network gives someone “stature.” It doesn’t seem to me that most of these pundits have earned their position. They just happen to be effective communicators (usually this means that they’re good at being rude and punchy) who say things that people like to hear. And in the case of Fox that they advance Fox’s twisted version of a right-wing agenda (twisted because it’s primarily about promoting money, power, and nationalism, with nods to Christian morality thrown in to keep religious conservatives in line).
So who do you favor, those on the left that worship abortion rights? Just wondering. Tony Snow was my personal favorite when he had his own radio show. I think Laura Ingraham is a class act also.
Fox News Channell is attacked only because it leans right. To the secular progressives that is the unforgivable sin of politics, leaning right! O’Reilly therefore is attacked as being uncharitable, but have you read the vitriol coming from S.P’s? How about the S-P Human Rights Commissions who prosecute Christians for holding Christian views on sexuality and forcing them to renounce their faith, such as Steven Boisson an evangelical pastor from Alberta? Even a Bishop is gagged and forced to spent thousands to defend himself for quoting the Catechism on homosexuality (Bishop Fred Henry of Alberta). These are the ones O’Reilly wants to hold accountable. He has no problem with conservatives or liberals…it’s the radical LEFT he takes issue with because they get all the media attention and viciously attack ad hominem anyone who would dare lean right in their presence.
Strange how people see things so differently. I saw him offering a possible defense for the boy because people were “questioning” why he didn’t seem to try to get away or contact his parents which was really rather unfair not know the whole story. Btw, Stockholm syndrome is legitimate. You see him offering up a possible reason as a “bad thing”. I didn’t.
There didn’t seem to be much room for misunderstanding (don’t know if you saw the first night or his subsequent response to the criticism). He basically was implying that this whole Stockholm syndrome was a load of garbage and that the video games and freedoms offered by his captor influenced the boy’s decision to remain rather than escape. I was stunned and have never quite been able to see him in the same light since.Strange how people see things so differently. I saw him offering a possible defense for the boy because people were “questioning” why he didn’t seem to try to get away or contact his parents which was really rather unfair not know the whole story. Btw, Stockholm syndrome is legitimate. You see him offering up a possible reason as a “bad thing”. I didn’t.
Why would objecting to O’Reilly’s lack of charity meant I supported people who worship abortion? I am sorry but that is the sort of partisan thinking that is dividing your country.
Tony Snow was the type of conservative America needs. Not the Becks, O’Reillys and Coulters of this world. Even though he sadly lost his battle with cancer, the shock jocks and hacks could surelt still learn from his example of reserve, wit and dignity and above all a sense of fair play.
I saw quite a bit of it as I watch him all the time. I certainly don’t remember getting that slant AT ALL on it but its been so long that feel I would have to see it again to speak further on it.
I really don’t like or understand this attitude that it has to be one or the other. Why is dislike of Bill O’Reilly automatically assumed to equal “favors abortion rights”? That’s an extremely uncharitable assumption, IMO.
Not by me. I attack it because of its sleaze, lack of balance, and intellectual dishonesty. CNN is far from perfect, but it makes a much better effort to be fair and balanced. Even NPR, which has a fairly strong liberal bias, is far superior to Fox. (I rarely watch the traditional “big three” TV networks, so perhaps this is skewing my assessment, but I often hear conservatives claim that CNN is left-wing, and they certainly say this about NPR, so I think I can make a fair judgment based on comparison of these three. If you want an example of a respectable news source that generally “leans right”–though like Fox, it does so less on moral issues than on economic and power-oriented ones–I’d give you U.S. News and World Report.)
I’m not a secular progressive (I’m certainly not secular and I consider the concept of “progress” to be a silly superstition except in the context of Catholic Christianity), so this is really irrelevant.
The fair comparison is between O’Reilly and other people with high profiles in “major news networks,” not between O’Reilly and some wacko liberal blogger out there. Lou Dobbs is an example of a vitriolic secular commentator, but he is sometimes vitriolic in “liberal” ways and more often in “conservative” ones (for instance, his most anti-Catholic comments have been directed against Archbishop Mahoney and his stance on immigration).
I’m aware that the Canadian context (and the European context) is very different. In the U.S., claims of “persecution of Christians” are usually overblown and taken completely out of context. Conservative Christians have a great deal of power in the U.S. (though probably still not proportional to their numbers), and it’s time they recognized the fact instead of playing the “perpetual victim” card. Christians ought to listen to Wiccans or atheists, for instance, and their stories of what it’s like to be open about one’s beliefs in an average American public high school. The perception of secularists and neo-pagans is that most American schools (like American society in general) are dominated by Christians, and that if you are up front about being anything else you face very serious social consequences. (Just go look at the threads on this forum posted by Catholics who think that they should break off friendships with Wiccans. Then imagine what it would be like to be a Wiccan surrounded by people who thought they shouldn’t be your friends because of your religious beliefs. How many Christians actually face this?) No doubt these claims too are overblown. But Christians need to be fair instead of assuming privilege and wailing whenever we don’t get it.
Definitions like “radical left” or “radical right” are relative. Everyone wants to define their opponents as “radicals” and themselves as centrists. These labels are meaningless. The absolutes are truth and justice and goodness, not “right” and “left.”
Very well said! How does one shake hands across cyberspace?
The only thing I would dispute here is that Atheism and other fringe belief systems have been widely accepted. I’ve never heard of any such group being taken to account by a Human Rights Tribunal, but I have witnessed the powers that be in Canada, maime and gag a protestant minister for offending a gay rights activist and a Bishop in Alberta being forced to defend himself for being Catholic. There is a double standard in the far-left precincts and as I understand such quasi judicial tribunals exist in the U.S such as the 1) *ACLU which defends groups like NAMBLA for 1st Amendment rights and then 2) *attacks the Boy Scouts for the organization being limited to Theists.