Theres something wrong with bill o'reilly

[ok so as hard as i tried, i couldn't figure out how to post this video on my blog. here is the URL, its a 4 min clip and its very interesting, basically bill o'rielly gets overly frustrated with a guest on his show and we see a bit of his TRUE side.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BAFb97L3KU its called "Jeremy Glick vs Bill O'Reilly" on you tube
______________________________________________________________________

more than most people, at least out of the ones that I've had the pleasure of meeting, i believe that i have an pretty open understanding that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. that is as long as its not someone else's opinion which they've obviously picked up and began wielding as their own. you can usually pick the latter out of the crowd, their the ones that voice their opinion on any particular subject and then have no logical way of explaining how or why they have come to that understanding. but before i begin ranting and repeating everything i said on my previous blog let me get to the point. bill o'rielly is a card carrying conservative, in fact i wouldnt be surprised if he has a matching bumper sticker to guarentee that his audiences know how republican he is. his intro music dances around little punctuations that gleem slogans such as "the most powerful name in news" and "enter the no spin zone". well, honestly, i dont watch much news; i never have. i usually spend my time with south park, family guy and worlds wildest police chases. i get my news from people day to day and online alerts. suffice it to say, when i first saw bill orielly i wasnt watching with any type of cynicism and i certainly had nothing against him or his show. what did it for me was this clip. if your reading this then i'll assume you've watched it. just in case here's the outline. his guest, Jeremy Glick, is the son of a victim of the 9/11 attacks and is on the O'Rielly factor to show that not ALL of the 9/11 victim familes agree with the war in iraq and afghanistan. he brings up some pretty valid points, and everytime it seems that he is going to finish a thought, bill cuts him off with a childish sort of ranting saying things like "i've done more for the 9/11 families than you'll ever hope to do". ok, first of all, thats completely uncalled for. second, this kid is part of the constiuency that bill is talking about so shouldnt he have some sort of say in whether or not bill has done anything for them? back to the point at hand...... bill o'rielly is a well known, highly distributed source of political news, he covers global and domestic issues with politicians, experts and people who are known to be the authority on their discipline but he looses it when a kid from new york disagrees with him? he didnt even have anything inteligent to say in responce so instead he interupted jeremy as he was speaking throughout the interview and said "i dont think your father would be proud of what your doing here", or something like that. the man's job description should be, graceful under fire, aware of opposing view points and able to carry a conversation on your own show! with someone who doesnt agree with your political beliefs and instead bill did what any unaware, uneducated and undiplomatic person would do and resorted to childish behavior before cutting the segment short and comming back to appolojise for his guests misbehavior.

now i dont know about the rest of the american public but whether you agree with him or not that was uncalled for. personally, i lean on the republican side of many issues, i dont choose a side because i think its a warped system to choose a side but personally if i were a full fledged republican, like many of my family members, i would be embarrased. i showed the clip to my parents and they felt the same way.

after watching this, i was inclined to investigate o'rielly to see if this was just a "bad day" for him or if this is his part of his standard debating tactics and i can sadly say the man has a problem. he is highly hostile to those who oppose his strongly right winged viewpoint and the worst part is that he cant defend himself in the least. its not even a politics thing, heres a link to another video where he speaks to world renouned athies scholar Richard Dawkins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FARDDcdFaQ

he doesnt competely loose it but he contradics himself several times and by the end of the interview i find myself feeling bad for christians after the way he defends his beliefs.

in the end, i just dont think that a man of this character deserves his own primetime news show and frankly i'd love to see how he got to the center ring in the first place because it surely wasnt due to his persuasive nature.


any thoughts? i'd love to hear them...

lets talk about politics

Who likes to talk about politics?... I'm not referring to politicians or news anchors, I’m talking about yall, anyone reading this, do you actually enjoy having controversial political conversations with friends and family? For me, it’s a yes and no type of answer. My problem comes up because it seems that every time that issue begins in conversation its usually following someone’s meaningless, undirected comment… "we're only in this damn war for oil!" and to top it off, these statements, at least in my "crowd", are often carried out along with excessive amounts of alcohol. I guess this could be another reason I’m prone to stay away. You see, I didn’t become a political science major because I want to go to law school or represent the great state of Georgia in congress, in fact I don’t really have any idea what I want to do once I leave this school. I choose this field of study because I am interested in being more educated about ongoing events and the issues affecting these global events so that I can understand how the worlds many different cultures work together, in some sort of way. So I guess it may be confusing why someone who voluntarily decided to study the subject without any goal in mind besides personal education wouldn’t like to talk about it in random circles. Well, the reason is this, it just amazes me how many people out there are absolutely and completely blind to some of the intricacies of politics, both domestic and internationally. To sum up one of the most controversial wars our country has ever been through in a statement which squeezes the multitude of obvious factors out of the equation and decidedly states that this entire war was simply a scheme to take the worlds eyes off of the truth, that we were going to Iraq for oil and nothing else, after oil prices have soared to new heights due to the effects of this conflict just astounds me to the point of silence. Instead of wanting to continue a conversation to help educate this poor, critical-thinking-deficient soul, I just want to turn and walk away looking for someone else to spend my brain cells on. (And by the way this isn’t a fictional example, I actually heard that statement and turned and walked away). I think what really pushes me out of those conversations is that I know that no matter what you do, 95% of the time any political argument isn’t going to solve anything, or change ANYONES point of view. No one wants to learn, they only want to throw out the last statistic they heard on CNN while they were in the kitchen cooking breakfast before heading out to the voting booths. I cant tell you how many times I have attempted to talk with friends about left v right, war v. peace or pro-life v. pro choice and ended up either in a debate that’s so heated that it ends up in a fury of very non-political talk or, even worse, that I end up hearing a plethora of complete non-sense in an attempt to back up my opponents side with facts and once again find myself astounded at the utter stupidity of the persons critical thinking skills, to the point where I have had to stop and ask them, “wait, please tell me you don’t actually think that what you just said is true, or even possible”.
Now please don’t think that I’m trying to say that I know it all, or that my views are always correct, I don’t and I have no problem admitting that. It’s the reason I want to learn more, but I am smart enough to see through the theoretical BS that people actually come up with, these conspiracy theories like: the bush family planned for years to attack the twin towers, to then start an unneeded war and get rich on the oil they are able to suck out of the ground while no one watches and then raise oil prices to cover it up… now they’re not all that crazy, but that is the type of logic I have encountered and it makes me wonder, it is the media what causes this overabundance of disconcerted views? Are there really that many people that have absolutely no idea what’s really going on in the world, and what’s most scary, was I ever one of them? I always hear that people from Europe despise the American people because of their narrow, hardheaded views and I don’t blame them. Now don’t get me wrong, I love this country, and I would go anywhere else but there is definitely something wrong when the majority of people who want to debate politics know nothing about the background of the issues their ranting about and believe 100% that they have the answer when experts, who get paid to solve issues haven’t been able to. Maybe it’s the oversimplification we get from media channels that like to sum up a 1000 year ethnic conflict that spans across 40% of the global mainland in a 15 second spot with a background picture of a guy in a turban holding a bomb, or maybe it’s the deep seeded bipartisan mantra which we have all learned to pick a side and sing for but something needs to be done to help spread the knowledge.
I read a bumper sticker that read “why do those with closed minds always open their mouths”, and another saying something along the lines of “I don’t trust people who decide their stance on an issue before they even know what it is”, obviously pointing to bipartisan mechanics where people simply put their heart and soul into whatever belief that’s been decided by party leaders and tweaked by late night crossfire debates. I think that together these two bumper stickers say it better than I have in this whole blog. Many of us pick a side and follow the decisions of that side without question, and proceed to debate it passionately without truly understanding anything about the issue and its embarrassing.
I may not have a full point here, maybe I’m just ranting and possibly showing my own faults through these words but, it was on my mind and I’d like to know what’s on yours so…. Type away.

terrorists and the media

last semester i read about terrorism in the media during a reading for international terrorism. Bruce Hoffman, author of one of our books, focused on the medias role in terrorist conflicts. the entire chapter was aimed at explaining the symbiotic relationship the two players have in the international information market. one example he used was the PLO in Palestine during the mid 20th century. This resistance group was the first to discover the use of the media to further their cause. during a hijacking, the PLO invited news cameras from around the world to film their crimes and show the world what they were doing. now it is obvious why this is good for the media, and good is an understatement. it was media gold. middle eastern hijackers armed with automatic weapons landing three jumbo jets in the desert and holding hostages for multiple days allowed for a 24 hour terrorist watch. i believe the statistic they came up with was that during the few days during the event some sort of new coverage was aired every 7 min, or so. my point is that it was unquestionably a media field day. what did surprise me however was that this turned out to be a monumental boost for the PLO. they were very careful to show that they were civil to the hostages and provided food and water during the ordeal, so instead of the world looking down on them as dogs (as would be expected), for the first time the PLO was able to broadcast their message to an international audience without ever being directly interviewed on camera, a feat which they had not accomplished in over twenty years of pleading to leaders around the world in different diplomatic arenas. another point made by Hoffman was that the medias involvement caused panic among the masses. updated coverage 24 hours a day left ample time to milk the story and media outlets took full advantage of it. when new updates were not available, they would air the heart touching interviews of family and friends of the hostages and day and night held live debates over what Washington should do. in the same situation without media involvement, decision makers in Washington would have been able to think critically about the situation and respond accordingly; however, the public demanded action and the safety of the hostages were of chief concern. now obviously that would have been taken into full consideration in any form of hostage taking but the push for swift action forced Washington into a quick decision to give into terrorist demands instead of buying time for negotiation. international prisoners were released worldwide, over 500 i believe and almost fully because of the swarming media attention to the event. not to long after, another , less successful take over was attempted by the PLO with the goal to up the media coverage even more. in 1972 the olympic games were held in munich germany and a hostage takeover occured incuding olympic athletes taken by PLO forces. their demands were the release of 234 prisoners, again worldwide. a rescue attempt failed and within 24 hours, 11 israeli olympians, five terrorists, and a German policeman were dead. the event was estimated to have been watched by over 1/4 of the worlds population and again landed the PLO on the front page.

the reason i wanted to talk about this was because, since then, terrorist takeovers, bombings and attacks have shown a disturbing trend; media notification close to or shortly prior to incidents. there are cases in which terrorists have been known to calmly take over a building and the wait for news crews to arrive before shooting their guns in the air and throwing people around. they have learned how the west responds to the media and the ammount of pressure cameras can put on governments to act prematurely and it is not a good system. i am not proposing an alternative because we are so set in our ways, im not sure if a simple once exists. i would simply like to put this out there and see how all of you feel about it. so... let me know.

thanks guys