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[Cross-posted at News Hounds]

Bob Costas visited The O’Reilly Factor last night to discuss those gun comments he made a few days ago in the wake of the Jovan Belcher suicide/murder tragedy. It seemed that the two guys had a prior friendly relationship and if they didn’t before, they do now. Costas stood by his comments and added on to them, with minor challenges from O’Reilly. In fact, O’Reilly’s biggest concern seemed to be that Costas “call a Christmas tree a ‘Christmas tree.’”

Costas emphasized that he is “not looking to repeal the Second Amendment… I didn’t call for any specific prohibition on guns, never used the words ‘gun control.’ But he had a powerful message that O’Reilly let him deliver almost completely uninterrupted.

Since I made these comments, I have heard from players past and present, from coaches, from executives in the NFL saying they have long been alarmed and concerned by the number of players who cavalierly believe that you have to have a gun.

… I am not the least bit afraid to talk about the gun culture, to talk about domestic violence. I thought it was self-evident that this was a domestic violence case, self evident. To talk about the effects that football and the culture of football have on many of the people who play it. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. I will look for places where there’s more time to do it.

In retrospect, I don’t back up on anything I said, but I think it might have been more effective if I said, ‘Look, if we’re looking for perspective on this, we’re gonna have to have a serious discussion within sports, an ongoing discussion, not five minutes of faux tears about it, but a serious discussion about domestic violence, about the culture of the game itself, about the easy access to guns, about steroids, drugs and alcohol and in the future, we will soon do that… I think that would have… led to less misunderstanding of where I was coming from.

…I can not think of a single instance involving a professional athlete whereby that athlete having a gun averted or diminished a dangerous situation but I can give you a long list of tragedies that came about because guys were packing.

O’Reilly, ever grandiose, concluded by telling Costas, “Anytime you get in trouble, you come right here, we’ll get you out of it.”

Costas said, “Merry Christmas.”

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Nothing smokes out the wingnut crazy quite like suggesting, as Bob Costas did the other day, that it might be a wee bit too easy to get a hold on the all the guns floating around this country. Take Lars Larson on Fox News.

LARSON: Well, I don't say this lightly Megyn, but Bob Costas, based on the standards of our society today and the standards of our industry...deserves to be fired for these remarks. He's done the equivalent of suggesting that 300M Americans be stripped of a right so important that the Founders of our country put it in the Constitution.

Costas did nothing of the sort. Also, I love it when right-wing propagandists talk about their "standards" on Fox News. Snort.

LARSON: If he had suggested stripping Civil Rights from any other group large or small in this country, for instance, Megyn, if today you said black Americans shouldn't be able to vote, you'd probably either be disciplined or fired tomorrow or later on this afternoon.

Follow that? Somehow "our gun culture is destructive" became "blacks shouldn't be able to vote."

Anyway, there's plenty more crazy in this segment. Love when they compare Costas' criticism of our gun culture to Hank Williams Jr.'s "Obama's like Hitler!" remarks.

Charming.

The right-wing's daily Two Minutes of Hate is being directed on Twitter today at Bob Costas. Why? Because he dared to say on national television that, contrary to what wingers and glibertarians been saying for decades, guns actually do kill people.

This has predictably led gun fetishists like Ted Nugent to tweet a great deal of stupidity. As far as I can tell, around half of these SRWTs are just calling Costas names -- and the other half (including Nugent's) are of the A NAIL FILE CAN KILL YOU SO SHOULD WE OUTLAW THOSE TOO COSTAS?! variety.

What isn't in dispute is the following:

A) Countries with lots of guns have lots of gun-related deaths.
B) Countries without lots of guns don't.

But...but...freedom!

I don't know a lot about football, but I know a fair amount about abuse and abusers. Abusers take away the lives and innocence of their helpless victims and do it with no remorse. You cannot listen to this interview with Jerry Sandusky without knowing in the pit of your stomach that his answers do nothing but strengthen his victims' case against him.

Bob Costas did a great job of confronting Sandusky with the accusations brought forward in his accusers' Grand Jury testimony, but Sandusky didn't do an especially great job of defending himself. This is because there is no defense for the kind of allegations he faces. Honestly, there were points in this interview that made me ill, because Sandusky's responses were typical dodges.

Take, for example, his answer to the direct question about the incident in the shower with the 10-year old boy. Costas spared nothing, reading straight from the grand jury testimony, including the "rhythmic slapping" description. It was graphic and horrible. This is Sandusky's response:

"We were showering and horsing around and he [the boy] actually turned all the showers on and was actually sliding across the floor and we were, as I recall, possibly like snapping a towel," Sandusky said. McQueary's allegations were never reported to the police.

Mediaite has more:

In one of the more sickening parts of the interview, Sandusky gave his account of the event witnessed by assistant coach Mike McQueary, who says he saw Sandusky raping a 10 year-old boy in the shower at Penn State. Unable to explain why McQueary would lie about such a thing, Costas asked Sandusky what did happen when McQueary encountered him and the boy. Just in case anyone doubts the veracity of Sandusky’s version, he helpfully uses the term “actually” twice, just to underscore the actualness of what actually happened. Sandusky told Costas, “Okay. We were showering and horsing around, and he actually turned all the showers on and was actually sliding across the floor and we were, as I recall, possibly like snapping a towel, horseplay.”

The term "horsing around" is one with some pretty strong sexual connotations. While it's often used as a substitute for the term "horseplay", meaning rough-and-tumble behavior, it's also used as a euphemism for play with sexual connotations, due in part to the actual biology of horses and their sexual behavior. Sandusky uses it more than once, particularly when discussing his showers with those young boys. But to Sandusky's lawyer, Joseph Amendola, it's all just "jock behavior."

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Bob Costas presses George Bush on the rise of China and the leverage (or lack thereof) of the United States in helping shape our relationship with them. What does it say about the state of political journalism in this country when a sportscaster -- alebit a well-informed and politically-engaged one -- shows them up in an interview with the President of the United States?

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Q But given China's growing strength and America's own problems, realistically how much leverage and influence does the U.S. have here?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I don't see America having problems. I see America as a nation that is a world leader, that has got great values.

I appreciate the optimism -- especially given the light-hearted atmosphere of the Olympic games -- but let's get realistic here. I don't expect the president to go into a policy speech about the collapsing housing market or unemployment (not to mention our adventures in the middle East) but don't talk to us like we're children who can't handle the reality of our nation's problems.

Full transcript available at WhiteHouse.gov.

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American speed skater Joey Cheek has done a great deal to bring global attention to the immense suffering of the people of Darfur, forming Team Darfur and even going so far as donating his $40k Olympic bonus to the cause in 2006. Unfortunately, the gold and silver medalist was punished for his activism by the Chinese government -- who has contributed to the genocide in Darfur by fueling and supporting Sudan's murderous military government -- when they revoked his visa this week, preventing him from attending this year's Olympics in Beijing.

During the opening ceremony NBC's Bob Costas discussed the controversy surrounding Cheek and the Chinese government, noting that he made it clear he would not protest the Chinese government during the Olympics:

Costas: "Joey Cheek had planned to invoke the Olympic truce, the time-honored concept of an Olympic truce, to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. He did not intend to directly protest the Chinese government. The fact that they pulled his visa is so contrary to the Olympic ideal it is simply outrageous."

I wondered if NBC was going to cave on this or take a stand and defend Cheek against the reprehensible actions of the Chinese government. I applaud Costas for choosing the latter.

While some cable TV hosts are making their living off the Natalee Holloway case this summer, Bob Costas is having none of it. Costas, hired by CNN as an occasional fill-in on “Larry King Live,” refused to anchor Thursday’s show because it was primarily about the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba. Chris Pixley filled in at the last minute....read on

Is there any angle that anyone has missed yet? It is a tragedy for her and her family, but aren't there many other pressing stories that might find it's way onto one of the highest rated CNN programs? What would Cafferty say?