O'Reilly doesn't know the difference between hate speech and hateful speech
By David Neiwert Friday May 08, 2009 3:00pm
There's an ambiguity in the rhetoric used by people who fight bigotry that people like Bill O'Reilly -- people who couldn't care less about fighting bigotry, and indeed do their best to undermine such efforts -- love to exploit. It involves the word "hate."
We use "hate" generically as a stand-in for "bigotry", in part because the word better conveys the sewer of hatefulness that is part and parcel of bigoted attitudes and behavior, and it wraps up the concepts of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and ethnic bigotry all into a neat bundle.
So what properly should be called "bias-motivated crimes" we call, more handily, "hate crimes". Deeply racist and/or bigoted organizations like the skinheads and neo-Nazis, we call "hate groups." What is more precisely labeled "violently bigoted speech" we call "hate speech."
However, "hate" is a much broader term that encompasses a great deal more than just violent bigotry. So what happens then is that people like Bill O'Reilly -- right-wingers who do their best to undermine the work of fighting such bigotry -- exploit the resulting ambiguity.
We've seen this regularly over the years as part of the debate over hate crimes. (One of right-wingers' favorite dumbass retorts: "I never heard of a love crime.") Andrew Sullivan once even devoted an entire, maundering 7,500-word piece in the New York Times Magazine devoted to the argument that we cannot hope to regulate hate.
And then there's Bill O'Reilly, who regularly calls the DailyKos, MoveOn and other liberal organizations that merely criticize him "hate groups" -- which, as I've pointed out, not only is a gross overestimation of what the liberal groups say and do, it even more grotesquely minimizes what real hate groups say and do.
So last night on The O'Reilly Factor, he was up to the same thing: Comparing the cases of the six Americans forbidden from entry in the U.K. because of their propensity for hate speech -- including Michael Savage. O'Reilly says that's fine -- but wonders why not the people who attacked Carrie Prejean, too?
Let me stipulate: Some of the ugliness uttered by Prejean's critics was appalling, disgusting, and every bit beyond the pale as the horrified right-wingers shrieking about it since have made it out to be. (It's worth noting, however, that none of the people uttering this crap were identifiable liberals in any serious sense.) Some of it was very hateful indeed. (OTOH, while I thought Janeane Garofalo's teabagging remarks were unwise, there was nothing particularly hateful about them. Harsh criticism is not hate.)
In any event, that's not hate speech. Here's the dictionary definition:
Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group.
That's why the British government is barring Savage and his far-right buddies: They routinely engage in the demonization of entire blocs of people, typically brown-skinned minorities, and ultimately argue for their suppression or elimination from society.
That's not what the hatefulness around Prejean was about. It was focused strictly on her and the words she spoke publicly. It wasn't about demonizing white people or Christians, it was about what a schmuck they thought Prejean was.
What O'Reilly's doing, of course, is intentionally muddying the waters -- twisting the meaning of the term "hate speech" to be used as a weapon against its opponents. There's a word for that, too: Newspeak.
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What? Miss California got attacked because she's a bigoted bimbo and a hypocrite to boot. Nice nudie pictures. I'll bet O'Reilly dreamed of serving her wine intravenously...
It must suck to be you, Miss Plastic Bimbo California.
I'm sure Billo plays with his little falafel thing when he looks at her pics.
The nude ones haven't been posted yet. But the tramp with all those family values of nudity will be posted. this is as funny as Joe the plumber being called a plumber. they'll each milk their 15 minutes but look like an absolute idiot doing so.
she did semi-nude or nude photos as an expression of her own sexuality, but when she tries to take away people's rights to their own love and sexuality, then it becomes an issue. And to do it on religious grounds is even worse, since she's violating standard evangelical teachings on modest dress.
(Full disclosure: I was an evangelical at one time, and I did try to dress modestly for a brief time, but eventually it was back to the short shorts and the cleavage...but then, I've never tried to ban the GLBT community from marrying, have I? ;) )
Got any pics? ;-)
really! :D
The thing about modest dress and Evangelicals, did not know that. So that makes her what? A bigoted hypocritical fake plastic tittie moron. Was that hate speech?
For some denominations and groups it just means don't expose a ton of cleavage (like my charismatic church I went to), some like the Apostolic they tend to wear denim skirts that at least fall well below the knee, and then you have women on the extreme side who look like the FLDS women in their 19th century Little House on the Prairie throwback dresses.
What all amounts to is you don't do the sorts of photos Miss California took.
She answered the question as truthfully as she could, even prefaced it with a disclaimer and didn't disparage anyone with her beliefs (her beliefs.....). She didn't go in to it asking for a fight.
That being said. What do you say we bring back the good old days and burn her at the stake...... Shades of Salem!!!!
... that people had a choice: "Same-sex marriage or opposite".
First: There was never such a choice for voting. It was always "Same-sex or no Same-sex".
And: Who ever contemplated whether they should marry someone of the same sex or opposite sex? Forget about the practice decades ago when some married because their social status required a spouse.
any answer she could have given would have been wrong to the eyes of many on the left, I think, the best answer would have been if she simply said she has the same view as the current President. Which of course most of you should know, he does not support it. I suppose that puts him in the same boat as Miss California then.....Obama says that he personally believes that "marriage is between a man and a woman"...hmm, sounds really familiar to something Miss California said.
Straw Man 'LIEly. Unreasonable objections to reasonable actions.
So according to both 'LIEly and his guest, we can keep 'LIEly 'out' of the country because he's a public safety problem? Wow! Cool!
All we have to do is prove an incitement to vilolence on his show and he can put his republicani turbin on and officially join the torture terror club.
I bet Bill O'Really doesn't see the connection. Bill should appear on the London watch list. That would make the London news and make me really proud of my Mother country.
I'd love to see him on the list. He'd freak and hold a boycott bringing England to it's knees. From laughter.
Yes, remember how he single-handedly destroyed the French economy?
Calling teabaggers and Miss Cali hypocrites is not hate speech. It's pointing out the obvious. Goating a mexican into a fight so you can kick him in the head and he ends up dying is hate speech. How do people like him make millions. I took the wrong career path. I could lie and distort with the best of them. My parents taught me wrong. They actually DID teach me morals.
O'Reilly's willful blindness to evil is telling. His world is a moral vacuum. He defends the indefensible, and prides himself in his corrupt campaign. He is the Man of laMancha for the forces of bigotry in America.
the guy has a bunch of vids on youtube....
i wouldnt call them "hateful"
he has a thing for cair, and confronts them whenever he can
i wouldnt put him in the same category as wiener
but again, britain has a right to ban whomever they want
and boy, is loofa boy and fox scared of the net or what?
could that have something to do with the fact that were it not for the bloggers on the net, he and fox would never get called on their bs?
Point well stated. The "net" is the only place where free speech still exists.
The exploited
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bZzM4s0Hgs
~S! Britons!
as a result of hateful political speech
israel banned norman finkelstein for a combination of political speech and hanging around with whom they percieve as terrorists
im sure there are others, but i dont recall anyone causing a big fuss over these two individuals
countries, just like a private biz, have the right to allow in anyone they want...and keep out, anyone they want
really dont even have to give a reason
I don't have a problem with them not accepting them, I just wish they would and not let them return, it's purely for self gratification.
lol
... that what was missed, was his rant about Janeane Garofalo on Countdown (4/16/09) when she accused the teabagging spectacle to have been nothing but racism and red-necks. I agree with her totally, since all the videos I examined revealed two black faces, and that in Atlanta, which is 61% black. The part of the Coundaown interview he did not show were signs displayed by protesters stating 'Obama bin Lyin'' and one showing an Arab (Saudi?) holding something (money?) towards a bent-forward Obama reaching out to receive the money?, with the verbiage "OBAMA was NOT bowing. He was SUCKING Saudi JEWELS".
This I thought was hateful from the protesters, not Janeane reporting it.
Not according to O'Reilly. He reports [4/20/09]: "When you think NBC News could not sink lower, it does. [...] As you know GE owns NBC which last week unleashed the most hateful attack on the tea-party demonstrators the TV business has ever seen in it's history." He then says the it was so vile he first thought of not showing it but then decided you [his viewers should hear it. He played pieces of the Countdown interview - not including the posters carried by tea-partiers - then proceeded to bash Immelt and Zucker.
when I refer to Miss California as
Little Miss Poly-Poonts?
Okay, how about Polythene Pam?
She's a c*nt!
a c**t is useful!
a W.A.S.P. He hates himself, really he does. How did W.A.S.P.s treat the Irish? Same as with Tancredo, how did they treat Italians? He also so aspires.
The English tried to enslave and exterminate the Irish and Scots Highlanders.
Now I see these right wing shits with names like O'Reilly, Hannity, Cheney etc and it makes me sick.
Then O'Reilly better put himself on that list.
In fact, employees of Fox news should be considered as willfully working for an organization that promotes hate speech AND violence.
Those people always say they don't give a fuck what the rest of the world (England in this case) thinks about America/Americans, but now suddenly they do.
Pfff, losers, chant some USA USA USA and cry yourself to sleep.
England gives you a two finger salute!
that the origin nation state of the W.A.S.P. is England, proper and now she is now more progressive than the wingnut fecal brains that aspire to be the very, very American W.A.S.P., Michale Weiner Savage, in particular!
But Liberal groups have indeed been known to get away with engaging in activities for which others have been arrested.
I had the experience of being stationed in the States with the USAF during the early 1970's. As far as I was concerned, there was little difference between the group that got on railway overpasses and dropped concrete blocks on the passing cars of military people and their families simply because we were in the "evil baby-killing" Air Force and the groups who throw bottles at the entrance to a gay bar hoping to hit "one of them folks."
When I was back in the same city, 30 years later, the gay-bashers were unchanged, but the Peace and Freedom people have given up on what they used to call "physical expressions". So things have improved.
that as a peace activist, I couldn't wait to attempt murder on military personnel!
Sorry I missed you...
It must really suck to be you.
You are either a liar or you are delusional.
any documented proof of your accusations
or is this another, "they spit on vets" urban myth
O'Reilly doesn't know the difference between his ass and the ever increasing hole he keeps digging for himself.
Shine on, you crazy diamond!
sorry? which group again?
references?
it is that the only documented cases of violence against military personnel/veterans during the Vietnam war, stateside, were against military personnel protesting the war.
falls into the category of what I've deemed "useful myths" (similar to welfare cadillacs & $70 per hour union workers).
These myths will continue in the minds of the believers because they verify beliefs they already hold. No amount of facts, evidence, statistics, personal accounts or other testimony will change their minds (in addition to the impossibility of proving a negative, i.e. proving that NO ONE spit on a returning GI).
I'm not saying that in a nation of 200+ million (at that time) absolutely no one did these things; I'm just saying it was extremely rare, and anecdotes are usually what Prof. of Urban Folklore Jan Brunvand calls a "FOAF" (friend of a friend). But repetition of this myth solidifies the image of the liberals as military-hating hippies.
Call me silly, but I can't think of too many of the "military hating hippies" I know that wouldn't also have condemned the notion of dropping concrete blocks on people.
The typical hippie was no more a violent left wing extremist than the typical church-goer is a radical right-wing hatemonger.
This is probably one of the best posts I've seen here at C&L.
this sack of shit is almost funny, if the subject wasn't so serious.
To be so out of touch with reality, and still be a successful hate monger is truly amazing. Yup, in his america any nut cake can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and preach hate and spew lies and bull shit for a living.
Congrats, you f*cking idiot!
Stupid, just stupid.
Dont speak for me or other millions of Garafalo Lovers.
...between hate speech and hateful speech is this...
Hate speech is when you hate someone not for what they say but for their gender, race, culture, etc, and encourage violence against them based solely on hatred for them.
Hateful speech is when you express hate for how an individual came to their conclusion, how they expressed it, for their opinion,for the merits of the person, etcetera. And hey I'm not saying that's a great way to behave either.
However, as people know, there is a big fluctuation and subtle spectrum between the two, leading to an element of confusion that the right is masterful at exploiting. Bill O'Reilly has no right to talk about hate from the left, he has been involved far too often in hate from his sector. Just ask Jeremy Glick...ask Al Franken, ask Barney Frank.
..and watches the Sun come up on his left.
Mr. O'Reilly is regularly laughed at for his hypocrisy. He projects that as "hate speech" and spews more hate as a result. No different than Coulter, Limpbaugh, Beck, Hanni....hey wait a minute, does anyone see a pattern emerging here? Hmmm?
I'm not a big fan of "hate crime" legislation. I wish we'd just concentrate on enforcing our laws fairly and not have to worry about the motivations for why some idiot commits a crime. A crime is a crime as far as I'm concerned...I don't particularly care if someone committed a crime did it because they hate blacks or gays.
Then again, we can't have real law enforcement until we end the ridiculous war on drugs. As Bill Hicks said, "If there's a war on drugs and we're losing...that means people on drugs are winning!"
Whoever listens to this lying idiot then Hates America as much as O'Lielly does.
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