While Fox whines about The View’s comments about Carly Fiorina’s face, I’ll bet nobody will utter a peep about Dennis Miller’s attack on a Missouri University professor involved in the protests there. While he was at it, Miller smeared Native Americans, too. Host Bill O’Reilly found the whole thing funny.
As you may know, MU faculty member Melissa Click was recently seen in a YouTube video, now viral, telling a student journalist to leave a protest site, on public property, and calling for “muscle” to get rid of him when he refused to leave. As the Missourian reported, Click has since apologized, she has resigned from one of her positions, as a courtesy appointment to the Missouri School of Journalism, and it looks like her position as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication may be in jeopardy as well. Click has also reportedly received death threats.
In my opinion, Click should resign or be fired from her faculty position, too. There’s simply no excuse for her behavior. However, there’s also no excuse for death threats.
There's no excuse for a news show to be demonizing her, either. Instead of holding an adult conversation about what happened, O’Reilly teamed up with "comedian" Miller to smear and malign her in just the kinds of ways Fox condemned when The View mocked Carly Fiorina’s “demented” smile.
MILLER: Look at that woman! That woman has somehow made it into the halls of academy, that horrid thug! That is the face – look at that! It’s like Carrot Top with a goiter!
As he spoke a still shot of Click, looking deranged, appeared on screen.
O’Reilly likened Click to the “Ward Churchill situation. Remember him and the University of Colorado?” O'Reilly asked.
Yes, we do. Churchill was a professor free-speech lover O'Reilly hounded out of a job because he didn’t like Churchill’s comments about 9/11.
Miller now smeared Churchill, who claims to be part Native American.
MILLER: Oh, sure, the tenured Tonto. He and Elizabeth Warren, Dances with Donors, both claiming Indian lineage. They’ve never been in a casino, those two idiots.
O’Reilly chuckled.
Meanwhile, what nobody mentioned is that there is an upside to the MU incident. The protest group has used it in just the way you’d hope.
From USA Today:
Activists were no longer confrontational with the media on Tuesday and removed yard signs warning the media to stay away from a grassy area of campus that has served as an impromptu campsite for the protesters in recent days, according to the Associated Press. Concerned Student 1950, a group which led the protests, put out fliers titled “Teachable Moment” that encouraged demonstrators to cooperate with the media, AP reported.
“The media is important to tell our story and experiences at Mizzou to the world,” the flier read, according to AP. “Let’s welcome and thank them.”
In other words, the students seem more mature than these two old guys.
Watch the nastiness that Miller and O’Reilly think is funny, below, from the November 11 The O’Reilly Factor.
I cannot remember the last time Dennis Miller was anything other than a sad shell of a former comedian. He really does belong on Fox"News".