Introduction:

In a shocking and abominable act, late term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller of Kansas was shot to death in his church while serving as an usher. Both pro-lifers and pro-choicers came together to denounce the killing, with most affirming that it was one lone rotten apple in an otherwise nonviolent political agenda. However, not long after the murder of Dr. Tiller various media personalities refused to place blame solely on the perpetrator. For them, it was about more than a single extremist with a gun, it was a cancer within our society. Dr. Tiller’s murder was not an isolated incident, but something that showcased a greater problem within the gradually failing sphere of intellectual discourse. And these journalists and writers knew exactly the population to blame.

Joan Walsh of Salon.com does not believe Dr. Tiller’s murderer is alone in culpability. As she remarked on one news program,

“When Bill O‘Reilly goes on TV every night and calls Dr. Tiller a baby killer and a Nazi and a Mengele, and shows where he works, why do we put up with that? Why is that entertainment in our culture? It's demonizing a private citizen for doing a lawful job. Why are people doing that? Why is that acceptable? I would like to see a debate about that.”¹

Another Salon.com writer, Gabriel Winant, added to the allegation:

“This is where O'Reilly's campaign against George Tiller becomes dangerous. While he never advocated anything violent or illegal, the Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities…O'Reilly didn't tell anyone to do anything violent, but he did put Tiller in the public eye, and help make him the focus of a movement with a history of violence against exactly these kinds of targets”²

Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC news commentator deemed the whole of Fox News responsible for the actions of the murderer of Dr. Tiller and has demanded a “quarantine” of the news provider.³ As he dramatically put it,

”It is probably your experience, as it has been mine, that stores, bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don't write a letter, don’t make a threat, just get up and explain if they will not change the channel, leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere. If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism. Not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So, not so much as a boycott here as a quarantine because this has got to stop.”⁴

It’s all about responsibility or rather the abandonment of applying personal responsibility. These and other analysts of the Tiller murder see the blame as being on the shoulders not just of his murderer but also those who allegedly encouraged his murderer. Media, in essence, is blaming other media.

Tiller’s murder is not the only recent example used. The tragic shooting of Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum is also seen by commentators like Olbermann as evidence of a rise in “right-wing, religious-based domestic terrorism.”⁵ Walsh of Salon.com, the same one who believed O’Reilly to be the inspiration for Tiller’s murderer, wrote this in an online column:

“If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence? I don't know. I hope not, but I don't know.”⁶

So conservative media is a source of violence in America. It is not the exclusive personal responsibility of the perpetrators but also those who fall along their ideological continuum. Yet, is that not a little one-sided? As we shall see, this phenomenon, if true, is a two-way street whether Walsh knows it or not.

Keith Olbermann on Trial

If certain figures in media can be blamed for the violent actions of others then Keith Olbermann should be quarantined for inciting violence and domestic terrorism. This is the inevitable conclusion one must reach if one has decided that the words of media personalities are the root cause of political violence, even if these personalities did not advocate such. Take the following into consideration.

After the 2008 President Election was decided, Wasilla Bible Church, a major evangelical congregation located in Alaska, was firebombed during a service. Fortunately no one was injured, even though much damage was done to the facility.⁷

Two key things make this incident significant. First, Wasilla Bible is the home church of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who was the vice presidential candidate on the Senator John McCain Campaign ticket. Second, in the weeks leading up to the incident MSNBC commentator Olbermann devoted much of his air time to bashing the former vice presidential hopeful.

In late October 2008 Olbermann asked if Palin was “Smarter Than A Third Grader.” Olbermann continued on that program remarking “The Sarah Palin material, as Tina Fey might be able to say, just writes itself. As it does, it makes stupid mistakes, but it still writes itself.”⁸

One 2008 segment had Olbermann calling Palin “fanatically anti-abortion” and another during the Republican National Convention had him trying to discredit her by quoting conservatives.⁹ In early October 2008 Palin criticized future president Senator Barack Obama during a rally, bringing up Obama’s alleged associations with 1960s domestic terrorists. In response to this, Olbermann remarked, “the Governor of Alaska has got to be the sleaziest politician working the stage at the moment, there is the sheer blessed stupidity of letting herself become the bomb-thrower when her own life is full of domestic terrorists.”¹⁰

Even after the election, Olbermann continued to attack Palin on his program. In response to the controversy over comedian David Letterman’s remarks about Palin’s children, Olbermann called Palin “a delusional lunatic”¹¹ and heaped numerous insults when opening the segment, referring to Palin as,

”Sanctimonious, holier than thou, exploitative, undignified, pedantic, childish, self-inflicting, insipid, backwards, embarrassing, over-reactive, overreaching, or as Peggy Noonan summed it up, with the succinctness I have obviously long since abandoned—yammering.”¹²

A parallel can be found between the supposed obsession Olbermann had with Palin and the supposed obsession O’Reilly had with Tiller. Neither commentator demanded violence against these two people and yet if we forsake personal responsibility then O’Reilly should be brought to trial for murder and Olbermann for arson and attempted murder. Important: both commentators made factually-based arguments against the careers of the people they targeted. Although rhetoric could be harsh, the basic lamentations they had for their objects of disaffection were based in the actual statements and acts of the two public figures. Yet one could argue that the words of both men were the chief justifications for political violence. So maybe both O’Reilly and Olbermann should be brought to trial for inciting violence. Maybe we as a society should bring every pundit from television, newspaper, Internet, and radio, and put them on trial for violent acts committed by Americans who loosely identify with their opinions.

We as a society could do that, or maybe we as a society can conclude that the horrible actions of a few are dictated less by words of ideological debate and more by the individual extremist personalities of the perpetrators. Both O’Reilly and Olbermann have regular viewership measured in the millions. Think of the millions of people who heard the words of both men and have not resorted to political violence. This point should especially be stressed for those like Salon.com writer Winant, who concluded that the whole of the pro-life movement had “a history of violence.” He is apparently oblivious to the fact that the abortion procedure has killed more living beings than anti-choice fanatics times a million. This should also indicate to people that neither O’Reilly nor Olbermann are responsible for the actions of a few political extremists.

Underreported Extremism

This comparison between the two news analysts also notes an important fact: there was probably not a single story in mainstream media connecting the words of Olbermann to the church bombing, although it’s the same dubious logic connecting O’Reilly to Tiller’s death. Did any columnists or commentators who spoke words against Sarah Palin that could be interpreted as hateful, obsessive, or vitriolic get blamed for inciting violence against her church? Doubtful, since liberally biased media never blames itself for inciting violence against conservative targets.

On a Sunday in 2007 over a span of about 12 hours two conservative Christian churches in Colorado were targets for shootings that left five people dead, including the gunman. One of the religious facilities attacked was founded years ago by the disgraced conservative evangelical Rev. Ted Haggard. ¹³

In May 2002, B. Allen Ross, a homosexual political extremist, had a website that demanded the painful deaths of various religious and political figures who opposed the homosexual advocacy movement. Not content with merely wishing for harm upon his ideological opponents, Ross threatened a Southern Baptist minister with physical violence and pleaded guilty to the attempted kidnapping of said minister.¹⁴

Did Salon.com, Olbermann, or anyone else in mass media believe these episodes to be the product of rising secular left-wing extremism? Therein lays the contradictory reasoning of mainstream media: if the perpetrator is a right-wing extremist, then its proof the right has gone too far in its rhetoric; but if the victims are right-wing or the victimizer left wing, its just one lone lunatic probably uninfluenced by politics. In other words, forsake personal responsibility when convenient.

Sources:

1. Neiwert, David, “Joan Walsh upsets poor BillO, so Ingraham counters: Dr. Tiller is just like Jeff Gannon!”, Crooks and Liars, June 12th, AD 2009, found at http://crooksandliars.com/node/28883/print, accessed 06/12/2009.

2. Winant, Gabriel, “O'Reilly's campaign against murdered doctor”, Salon, May 31st, AD 2009, found at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/31/tiller/, on August 4th, AD 2009.

3. Bauder, David, “Stories by Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly draw attention after Tiller killing”, Associated Press, June 2nd, AD 2009. Found at http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=7739829, accessed August 4th, AD 2009.

4. http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/keith-olbermann-calls-indirect-boycott-fox, accessed August 4th, AD 2009.

5. “’Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ for Wednesday June 10th”, June 11th, AD 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31248871/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/, accessed August 4th, AD 2009.

6. Walsh, Joan, “Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?”, Salon, June 10th, AD 2009, found at http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/06/10/von_brunn/index.htm, accessed 06/12/2009.

7. D’Oro, Rachel, “Sarah Palin Church Fire: Palin’s Home Church Burned in Arson Incident”, Huffington Post, December 13th, AD 2008, found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/14/sarah-palin-church-fire-p_n_150825.html, accessed 06/13/2009.

8. Olbermann, Keith, “Strike Four for Palin on V.P. Description”, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, October 21st, AD 2008, found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27310526/, accessed 06/13/2009.

9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpwEcWeatnU&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuNavkt1-yM&feature=related, accessed 06/13/2009.

10. Olbermann, Keith, “It’s Palin doing the pallin’”, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, October 6th, AD 2008, found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27054958/page/2/, accessed 06/13/2009.

11. “’Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ for Friday, June 12th”, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31370697/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/, accessed August 4th, AD 2009.

12. Ibid.

13. Kohler, Judith, “5 Die in 2 Separate Sunday Church Attacks”, December 10th, AD 2007 http://cbs4denver.com/local/shooting.arvada.christian.2.607051.html, accessed 06/13/2009.

14. Westcott, Scott, "North East minister listed on Web site's death list", Erie Times News,May 13. 2002, http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID=73169665996044&Avis=GE&Dato=20011129