Fringe

Bill O'Reilly is a great human.

Ok, well, maybe not a great human, but a human nonetheless. A human who has apparently become unmoored from characteristics typical of most humans, such as the capacity to identify facts and reason logically based on those facts.

Of course, he is also personally despicable, but many others have documented this fact far more cleverly than I am capable, so I will leave that aspect of Falafel Boy (as he is known) mostly to the side and focus rather on one of his most recent bizarre and fact-free diatribes.

Yes, Bill-O has moved on from his highly successful campaign to "destroy" dailykos.com. Now on his agenda is the destruction of a couple of other websites: moveon.org and mediamatters.com.

I have not spent a lot of time on either of these sites, but in my limited experience they are typical "liberal" sites that advocate typical liberal views. Media Matters, as its name suggests, focuses on debunking and correcting errors made by, or countering the biases of, more mainstream media outlets. Moveon is primarily concerned with organizing grass roots political activities that further the views and agendas of its members.

But O'Reilly describes these two sites as follows (all direct quotes): fringe elements, crazy, radical, vicious, far-left, fanatical, assassins, and the most vicious element in our society today.

He goes on to say that they are sliming, blackmailing, and extorting those who don't agree with their crazy, radical, fringe views.

And what, you may ask, are these radical fringe views? He's somewhat, uh, thin on specifics, but he does mention offhandedly that "they want open borders, they want one world government, they want legalized narcotics, they want -- you know, I mean, it's just crazy"

But, well, for those of us with a tenth grade education and access to a computer, it has, today, in these the aughts, become technologically possible for us to actually navigate to these sites, and, wonder of wonders, actually read the content on them, thereby actually discerning what their views actually are. In reality.

For those of us with these extraordinary capabilities, a quick surf through both sites reveals no references (literally, none) to open borders, drug legalization, or world government, but does turn up the following extremely radical platform: (1) invading Iraq was a bad idea, (2) occupying Iraq was a bad idea, (3) we need to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, (4) we should be concerned about what we are doing to the environment and try to do less of the things that are bad, (5) we should provide some minimum level of healthcare to sick people who can't pay for it, and (6) like-minded persons should be voicing the foregoing views to our elected representatives.

Now of course maybe it's me that is the mis-informed idiot, but these views seem rather mainstream to me. Let's take them one by one:

First, in the last presidential administration, the president of the United States attempted to implement a system of universal health care, similar to the systems in effect in most developed countries throughout the world. (He failed.) But, whether or not you agree with this idea, it is far from radical.

Second, our most recent ex-vice president, with the support of a sizable portion of the citizens of this country, has long been on a well-publicized (and well received) campaign to lessen the damage that we are doing to our environment. You may well disagree with some of the measures advocated by Mr. Gore or his many adherents, or you may well think the whole idea of sacrificing a single thing in contribution to this cause is worthless and stupid, but you will convince no reasonable person that the basic concept is radical or relegated to fringe elements.

And finally, in the last election, a solid 57% of voters in exit polling expressed disapproval of the war in Iraq, with 41% strongly disapproving. Radical indeed.

O'Reilly goes on to focus on Moveon's incipient campaign to lobby and/or oust congressman Brian Baird, Democrat of Oregon, as a result of his stated support for George W. Bush's failed and irredeemable Iraq war policies. This -- in contrast to just about every other statement made by O'Reilly -- is actually true: Moveon has posted Baird's office phone number and email address to facilitate messages from constituents who disagree with this position. They have also suggested that another Democrat, with views more in line with his district's constituency, run against him in the next primary, and that like-minded voters support this new candidate.

O'Reilly refers to this campaign variously as "sliming", "extortion", and "blackmail". But you might know these radical, fringe, vicious techniques by their more common appellations: free speech and representative democracy.