I don't know if Bill O'Reilly demanded that Irish American Catholics condemn the actions of IRA terrorists. I do know that when Scott Roeder, a Christian whose "pro-life" views coincided with O'Reilly's, O'Reilly didn't demand that "pro-life" Christians condemn his actions. Yet, O'Reilly feels that the American Muslim community should publicly condemn the actions of Islamic terrorists which is why he sent his paid stalker, Jesse "Dirty" Watters to ambush Islamic convention goers in order to mock them and ask "gotcha" questions about American Islams aren't scolding their terrorist co-religionists. Funny, I suspect that if Michael Moore went into a Catholic Knights of Columbus convention and harassed the knights about the Catholic clergy pedophile scandal, O'Reilly wouldn't be happy about it.
Bill started off his September 11th, "Back of the Book" segment, by reporting that Muslims had gathered in WashingtonDC, that week-end, for the Islamic Society of North America convention. He noted that September 11th is the anniversary of 9-11 "so this edition of Watters World is "especially appropriate."
Video was shown in which Watters asked Muslims why they were attending the convention. Answers were straightforward, such as gaining knowledge of their religion and being with "fellow Americans who are Muslims." When Watters tried to drum up negative commentary about President Obama, he asked about Gitmo and actually smiled when a woman said that the prisoners are still being tortured by forced feeding. He mocked burkhas. When he asked "if Muslims are getting a fair shake," his subjects answered in the negative. One woman summed up Fox News' take when she said that "after 9-11, we're looked upon as terrorists." He asked if "Islamic terror has given Islam a bad rap." When a woman (accurately) said "if it's a Christian, they would never say it's a Christian terrorist," Watters asked sarcastically if there have been "a lot of Christian terrorists recently." He smirked when she couldn't identify any.
He told two women that "the president doesn't call Islamic terror, Islamic terror." One of them, accurately, pointed out that there are terrorists in every religion. In attempting to defend our drone policy, he asked a man if he thought that America deliberately targets civilians. After the man asserted that drone strikes and foreign occupation will increase terrorism, Watters snarked, "if the US withdrew from the Middle East Al Queada will throw down their arms?" While Watters never asked Christians if they should protest more about abortion clinic violence, he asked if Muslims "should protest more" about the jihadists.
During the Watters/O'Reilly wrap up session, Watters smiled as he noted that the woman who told O'Reilly to "step up his game" couldn't come up with an example of an Christian attack. Bill *lied when he said "there haven't been any." Watters acknowledged that the people were polite and their main "beef" is that when there is a terrorist attack, the media blames Muslims. O'Reilly said that it's not always Muslims but "recently it's always been the jihadists." In responding to the Muslims' complaint that the media wouldn't describe a terrorist, who is a Christian, as a Christian terrorist, O'Reilly snarked that the "liberal press would be all over it." Watters opined that "real Christians would say "it's not Christians who kill people."In response to one of the interviewees statement that Hitler was a Christian, O'Reilly said that Hitler (a Catholic who was never excommunicated) tried to get Christianity out of Germany which isn't exactly true. (See "Hitler's Willing Executioners")
Once again we see that in O'Reilly's black and white world, Islam is bad, and Christianity is very, very good... Not for nothing is Fox News the place where you can bash Islam with impunity!
*Wisconsin Sikh Temple Massacre, Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting (the shooter had a copy of Sean Hannity's book), the murder of abortion providers Drs. Tiller, Slepian, Britton, the Olympic Park bombing, and Planned Parenthood bombing among other acts of American terror committed by non-Muslim "patriot" types. Also, a devout Catholic, Ralph Lang was recently convicted of plotting to murder abortion doctors and staff.
Check out Cenk Uygur's take on this:
A few samples to use on Intern Jesse:
1. “Answer this question Jesse. Why does Bill O’Reilly shy away from exposing pedophilia in the Catholic church?”
2. “Bill O’Reilly says he’s looking out for us, but he is silent about protecting innocent children who are molested by priests in the Catholic church.”
3. "Most of Fox “News” hosts are Catholic, yet they rarely bring up the crisis of pedophilia in the Catholic church. Why the cover-up? Why are they protecting these priests?"
Tell that to Intern Jesse if he confronts you. We guarantee that segment would never air.
Taking the words right out of my mouth again I see!
Granted, the above was written with a great deal of snark but, unfortunately, it does seem to fit the right-wing (and FoxNoise, especially) viewpoint when it comes to Islam. These overprivileged asshats don’t recognize what really constitutes terrorism: When put in its most simple form, Almost ANYTHING can be effectively described as “terrorism.” As Wiki’s article on “terrorism” states, in the opening paragraph,
“Terrorism is the systematic use of violent terror as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no legally binding, criminal law definition. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).”
However, there are cases where there’s no real “religious, political or ideological goal” and certain actions can be said to “terrorize” communities.
If he wanted to know about recent Christian terror attacks, he could have looked up the 2011 Norway bombing and shootings by Anders Breivik. He could have done a two minute google search to see that Adam Lanza and his mother were Catholic churchgoers before Lanza shot up Sandy Hook Elementary. Or he could have asked about John Zawahri, who shot up Santa Monica in June this year. And how about James Holmes, who shot up the movie theater in Aurora last summer – he was Lutheran. As a sidenote, there’s Jared Loughner, who shot up Gabrielle Giffords and a crowd of people in Tuscon. He identified as Jewish, so that’s not the same thing, but he’s not a Muslim either.
The point being that Watters’ entire premise is wrong-headed. The fact is that everyday people of every religion condemn the acts of terrorists. There are extremists in pretty much every group, and the sad fact is that it is not that hard for these people to get their hands on guns or explosives and do a heck of a lot of damage and killing before they are stopped. And before Watters or his supporters try to play the card that all the Muslim terror attacks are prompted by their religion, I note that Breivik was most certainly prompted by hatred of other races and religions, and that the killings by both Loughner and the Boston Marathon brothers were prompted by politics more than religion.
O’Reilly’s blanket approach to these matters, and Watter’s smarmy way of discussing them, are unfortunately more indicative of Fox News’ bias than the guys may have intended.
