The Martyrdom of Bill O'Reilly

When will Bill join the ranks of the other saints?

Around my fourteenth birthday I purchased a book, I think it was called "Everything Women Know". The book cost $4.95 plus tax and it was filled with empty pages. My fourteen year old self, and my group of friends that was a typical boys only crew, had quite the laugh. My mother was not quite as amused as I was with the great joke book. She was first disappointed that I spent money on an idiotic thing with no lasting value, and she also did not want her fourteen year old to think sexism and misogyny were a good thing. I told her it was only a joke, there was no harm intended. She still took the book away, and to this day I have no idea when or where she disposed of my prized joke book.

Bill O'Reilly's career was a lot like the empty "Everything Women Know". He built a career on appealing to the lowest impulses in the white male mind. His ideas were empty, his contribution to America was non-existent, and his career will be remembered as a waste of time and money. He was  popular, to an extant, because of the backwards thinking he popularized. The only thing that motivated O'Reilly was money and a false sense of popularity. His absence from the airwaves will not cause any major changes. Years from now we will not even remember when or how Bill O'Reilly left the public conscious. His lack of substance makes his disposal not worth noting.

The end of Bill O"Reilly's career will be part of the ash heap of history, but his actual career paved the way for white christian male victimhood. People like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, the resurgent Tucker Carlson, whoever the half wits on Fox Friends are, and the current occupant of the White House owe Bill O'Reilly a debt for the fact that he made white christian male victimhood acceptable in our culture. The fact that in 2017 we still have a discussion on racism towards whites only exists because of Bill O'Reilly. Rush Limbaugh became a force because he turned politics into an us versus them struggle. Bill O'Reilly made the us white christian men, and the them were everyone else. The them wanted to make scary changes that would cause white men to lose power, O'Reilly was the self annointed "culture warrior" who would stand against those scary changes. The modern day men's rights movement, the social ideas of the GOP, and the acceptance of bullying minorities found it's genesis with Bill O'Reilly and his Fox News show. 

Bill O'Reilly spent over two decades at Fox News. His time at Rupert Murdoch's Republican State media channel mirrors the rise of the 21st Century GOP. Everything bad against the Republicans was made into a struggle that Bill O'Reilly would bravely fight. The idea of not allowing your opponent a voice was perfected by O'Reilly. When Al Franken correctly called out Bill O'Reilly on lying about a journalistic award, O'Reilly's response was to yell "shut up". By the way, Al Franken is an influential United States Senator and Bill O'Reilly is now unemployed. There was the time O'Reilly told the son of a 9-11 victim to "shut up", then cut his mic. There were the many times that O'Reilly cowardly sent out his producer to stalk and harass journalist that O'Reilly did not agree with. O'Reilly never apologized for falsely accusing the Americans for slaughtering surrendering German troops during World War II (it was the other way around, but O'Reilly was trying to justify the US for slaughtering innocents in Iraq). There are many other instances, but my favorite is the time he tried to prove the existence of God by claiming the ocean tides were some magical unexplained phenomena. His defense against the "pinheads" that corrected him is the best example of white christian victimhood ever. 

The last clip is everything that Bill O'Reilly represents distilled down to one and a half minutes. O'Reilly is never wrong, and when he is wrong it is some grand conspiracy against him and all white male christians. Bill O'Reilly does not just claim to be the victim, he urges all like minded people to ignore facts, and fight against the progress of society. His antics on Fox News led to the demise of intelligent debate in our government and society at large. 

The saddest part of all of this is that Bill O'Reilly got rich off of this garbage. Fox News saw the dollar signs that a useful idiot like O'Reilly could bring in, and they ignored everything bad about their main talent. No matter what O'Reilly did, be it sexual harassment or any other despicable act, Fox News did not care and neither did Bill O'Reilly. The only thing that mattered was money. Fox News and Bill O'Reilly sold out American credibility for a few extra dollars. America be damned.

The ironic part of this whole saga is that money was the thing that finally got Bill O'Reilly fired. The loss of valuable advertiser revenue made the lords of Fox News come to the easy decision to let their main guy go. Note to people like Glenn Beck, that is what we call the free market at work. The hate, the bad old school ideals, the lack of journalistic integrity, the lying, the bullying, none of that ended Bill O'Reilly's career. Good old capitalism succeeded where common human decency failed.

The end of Bill O'Reilly does not end the disgusting views he popularized. Tucker Carlson is the current placeholder for O'Reilly on Fox News, and Carlson has had a career resurgence by embracing the white christian male victimhood line popularized by his predecessor. Sean Hannity has skyrocketed to the top of the cable news ratings by blindly toeing the line of white men good, everyone else is bad. Glenn Beck has spent the last few days diminishing the sexual harassment claims that brought Bill O'Reilly down, and whining about the loss of an old school voice. Bill O'Reilly will not be on the airwaves for the foreseeable future, but his poisoned doctrine will live on in the GOP thought leaders who still infect our television and radio programs. Bill O'Reilly's sins will live on with the help of the zealots he created. 

No matter how happy liberals may be today, the firing of Bill O'Reilly will change nothing. The people who continue in his misguided path will be more emboldened by O'Reilly's dismissal. They will see this as another unfair ill brought down on the white christian male. His accusers will be labeled as the real monsters. O'Reilly will live on as a martyr of the white male power movement. He will continue his lies, his bullying, and his destruction of valuable discourse. He will fail again, and he will claim victimhood again. Then one day Bill O'Reilly will disappear, and we will all wonder why they hell we wasted our time and energy on such an empty mind. Like how we question our youthful purchase of a dumb book.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. His favorite jam comes from an epic O'Reilly meltdown (NSFW). Can you do it live?  Come tell us. 

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Terrorism Turns us into Monsters

The only way to defeat the terrorists

The tragedy in Paris is still raw. Many people have expressed their unfiltered opinions of the attacks. Some have been more careful in their reactions. The common chorus coming out of the political class, and the media, is that ISIS needs to be bombed into oblivion. Another horrible terrorist attack on an industrialized country, another call to level another nation. We see those like us being killed and maimed, we demand double retribution. The only way to end terrorism is to counter with our superior firepower. This is a trap. The terrorists need our aggression The way terrorism thrives is when we become the monsters.

The way we used to respond to terrorism was through strategic police action. The criminals would be identified, their locations would be found, and the terrorist activity would end via death or capture of the bad guys. Some of the time we would change policy to make terror activity more difficult, such as London removing trash bins from the tube and central downtown. That all changed after September 11th. President Bush days after the horrible attacks promised to do to the attackers what they did to us. Bush promised to level a nation for America's wounds. Bush was good to his word, he did level a nation, two nations. The American people cheered on our campaign of "shock and awe". We incorporated words into our culture like "collateral damage" in order to justify the death of Afghan and Iraqi innocents. The new way to respond to terrorism was to retaliate with our superior might and technology. We became angry when terrorism hit our shores, and the world did not like us when we are angry.

Terrorism caused America to turn into the Incredible Hulk. Extremely powerful, unable to control, and a danger to everyone around us. We were big, green, and willing to destroy anything that got in our path. The United States was so focused on the enemy, that any unfortunate thing between us and our prey was going to be caught in the crossfire. It did not matter how many weddings were bombed, we had to get the Al Qaeda number two. A few hospitals get destroyed, we must depose of Saddam. The US was angry, the US must smash.

In the safety of our shores we cheered on this destruction. The destroyed hospitals, weddings, and innocents was never shown on the news. The bodies of kids sent to die in war were not covered on the network news. When Saddam was executed via hanging, we celebrated the end of Iraqi unrest. We were wrong. When Osama Bin Laden was gunned down in a bedroom we celebrated the end of Al Qaeda. We were wrong. When Jihadi John was bombed off of earth, we celebrated the death of ISIS. We were wrong. 

Every time the United States used over the top crushing force to destroy the latest identified terror group, we create a new and more dangerous group. The Bush administration was built for starting wars. These hawks had no idea, and no intent, to end these wars. Bush's folly of endless wars created the unstable and overtly dangerous ISIS. The terrorists who use a warped incorrect version of Islam as their ideology need to have a clear cut enemy. These monsters need the western world to be overtly aggressive to Islam. Charlatans like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly are some of ISIS's greatest weapons. The need to define Islam as a central problem helps ISIS to recruit. Young, unemployed, and ostracized Muslims are more receptive to the idea of hating the west when the popular media of the west preaches hate towards Islam. When innocent Muslim families are destroyed in a drone strike intended for a few terrorists the idea of the west as the enemy starts to take hold. When the U.S. can justify the killing of innocents in the name of global security, ISIS will use the killing of innocents as an equal method of war. If ISIS was able to wipe an entire US city off the map because a military base was close by, the world would scream in horror. When we kill innocents because they unfortunately live close to terrorist bases, the monsters gain sympathy. Our fear and anger is delivering new, desperate, recruits to the terrorists. 

The monsters of ISIS caused over 400 casualties in Paris. So far 129 innocent people have died. The French government over the weekend bombed known ISIS strongholds in Syria. Innocent families were undoubtedly killed in these bombing runs. Here in the United States we continue to bang the drums of war. Hillary Clinton regrettably used the specter of terrorism to justify donations to her presidential campaign from Wall Street billionaires. Egoist Donald Trump ramped up his hate filled campaign for President of the United States by telling the nation he would consider shutting down mosques he deems dangerous. Failing republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is using the attacks to try and jump start his fading campaign. The rest of the republican field is falling all over each other to blame President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and anyone else their followers hate. Hours after the attacks, the US political class was screaming for more war. The media was demanding the current crop of presidential candidates to come up with a plan to destroy these terrorists. We were angry, we need to smash.

Smashing everything in our path is not a solution. Terrorism needs to end. Peace is the natural evolution of humanity, and terrorism is causing us to not evolve. To honor the innocents of terror, we should not create more terrorism. Killing Saddam, Bin Laden, Jihadi John, and a number of other monsters did not end terrorism. Killing children and families has increased the perception of the West wanting to destroy Islam. The media feeds the terrorists when they cheer on war. The political class emboldens the terrorists when they argue over what words we should use to describe the monsters. The need for the right wing to alienate all Muslims is making fighting terrorism much more difficult. Our past and current course of action feeds terrorism. We need a new plan. We need a global community to end terrorism. Paris should be the wake up call. Terrorism has turned us into a rampaging monster. Peace will bring us calm.

Stand with Paris, and with Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, anywhere else terrorism and war has touched. Stand proud and demand peace. Terrorism will end when we refuse to be the monster. Peace will prevail when we learn to not be the Hulk.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. His opinions are strong, but really needs your strength. Write for SeedSing.