As part of what Bill O’Reilly surely feels is his jihad to smear Muslims fight terrorism via semantics, he brought on his regular Thursday night psychologists to smear the Tsarnaevs, the parents of the Boston bombing suspects O’Reilly mocked at the opening of show last night, even further. But O’Reilly got an extra bang (pardon the expression) for his buck when Dr. Wendy Walsh fingered public schools as enabling the kind of upbringing Boston bomb suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev theoretically received.
It’s hard to think of a single legitimate journalistic reason for the discussion in the first place. Even if the parents are deluded in thinking their sons are innocent, as O’Reilly was arguing (in the meanest of mean spirits), what possible bearing does that have on the bombing case or American culture? Even if you can’t come up with the smallest shred of human decency for a couple that must be suffering beyond what most of us can comprehend, why smear people who, as far as we know, had nothing to do with the bombs? Something tells me that O’Reilly’s pile-on is not what Jesus would have had in mind as the appropriate treatment for those folks.
Nevertheless, O’Reilly thought it worthwhile to spend the next several minutes thinking of the parents as "enablers" considering whether the parents are “enablers” of terrorism and wondering what parallels could be found in everyday American society. He began by “asking” how common the kind of denial exhibited by the Tsarnaevs is today.
Not surprisingly both psychologists said it’s common – as if the Tsarnaev situation was a regular occurrence for parents in the U.S. However, Dr. Bonny Forrest did acknowledge “this was an extreme case.”
O’Reilly then all but pushed his guests through the door he was holding open by asking, “Have things changed in society” since the days when he got punished in school for misdeeds?
Dr. Wendy Walsh took the bait. Saying that she’s a mother of a child of children in public school, she made the sweeping generalization that, “parents haven’t even learned to self-regulate themselves. How can they teach their kids?”
Forrest took it a step further. She said, “What I’ve found is, that you find a little bit different attitude in the religious schools. People... go to Catholic schools or Jewish schools (I notice she didn’t say ‘Muslim schools’) in part for the values. If you’re dealing with the public school system, I think you have a different set of values in play and it’s a broader gambit.”
Ding, ding, ding, prize for Forrest: she hit Fox’s “public education” target with her verbal beanbag.
O’Reilly stepped in to say that he found similar denial when he taught in Catholic school. But once again, he conveniently played the reasonable adult after all but holding up a cue card directing his guests to find equivalencies between the Tsarnaevs and everyday (non-conservative) Americans.
W.W. – Yup!
B.O. – The public system has been with us a long time. Why haven’t we seen more home-grown terrorism?
W.W. – It’s the advent of Vampire & Zombie fantasies! That’s what’s driving it to the boiling point!
B.O. – Anything else?
W.W. Harry Potter.
B.O. – Are parents in denial?
W.W. – Worse! They enable these fantasies!!!
B.O. – It’s a shame all right! I asked Professor Dawkins last year what makes the tides go in and out and he refused to admit it is Gods’ work!!
W.W. – We’ve got our work cut out for us!
B.O. – Fux’ll be there!
And we should start asking if Christianity is responsible for serial killers.
And why conservatives have such a penchant for John Walker type treason.
Oh, wait… that goes against Murdoch’s agenda.