Bill O'Reilly Blames Child Kidnap Victim
In further proof that Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly is what's wrong with our country, the bloviated "conservative" suggested a few days ago that Missouri kidnap victim Shawn Hornbeck was to blame for his four-year confinement by 41-year-old pederast Michael Devlin.
O'Reilly, speaking as usual without regard to any facts or expertise, stated that 15-year-old Hornbeck, who was kidnapped when he was 11, didn't attempt to escape Devlin because he was able to have "a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents."
Since Hornbeck "didn't have to go to school" and "could run around and do whatever he wanted," O'Reilly concluded the kid voluntarily stayed with his captor. (For more detail on O'Reilly's lunatic statements about Hornbeck, see this piece on Media Matters.)
This just shows that O'Reilly, who pretends to be an advocate for children, is an idiot--as if we needed more proof of that. He certainly doesn't know much about kids.
The Curmudgeon coaches a couple dozen 11-year-olds in soccer, and we can't imagine that any of them would have the maturity and mental fortitude to resist an angry, manipulative physically imposing man such as Michael Devlin, who no doubt terrorized young Shawn with threats and backed it up with actions. Indeed, press reports suggest that Devlin's adult neighbors were intimidated by him as well, based on his volatile outbursts.
Presumably, Devlin told Hornbeck that if he tried to escape, Devlin would track him down and kill him, maybe kill his family as well. That's a pretty real threat to a young boy swiped off the street in broad daylight.
No doubt Hornbeck was also abused by Devlin. Was that something Shawn liked--something "more fun than he had with his old parents?" We don't think so.
And as for the psychological power of a bully, all we have to do is look at O'Reilly himself: millions of people remain captivated by him.
Letting Big Oil Edit Government Global Warming Reports
The story has become so commonplace that we're no longer shocked or surprised: a political hack in the Bush White House interferes with the legitimate work of government employees, to the detriment of the country.
In this case, it was Phil Cooney, a former lobbyist for the petroleum industry who was put in charge of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. It turns out Cooney regularly interfered with government scientists writing reports on global warming issues. Cooney went so far as to line edit reports to the point of altering their meaning. We think that's like letting a tobacco lobbyist edit the Surgeon General's annual report on smoking.
"There were a very large number of edits that came at the 12th hour after all the earlier science people had signed off," said Rick Piltz, a former senior associate at the US Climate Change Science Programme. Piltz, who eventually resigned from his job because of such pressure, stated that in one instance Cooney demanded 400 last-minute changes that significantly changed the meaning and tone of the report. (For more, see Bush Administration Accused of Doctoring Scientists' Reports on Climate Change.)
Cooney has now left the White House and gone to, of all places, ExxonMobil, which is attempting to paint itself green these days, just like the White House. We have to doubt the sincerity of both. We liked it better when they simply denied global warming, since the public could better judge their credibility at that point.
No comments:
Post a Comment