Author:
Mike Barnicle wannabe
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Date Posted: 00:55:26 08/24/05 Wed
In reply to:
Mike Barnicle wannabe
's message, ""O'Reilly Factor" whacks Union-Leader for refusing to defend its editorial stance on sex offenders on TV" on 21:30:50 08/22/05 Mon
(published in, New Hampshire Union-Leader, 8/23/05)
Oh, really, O'Reilly?
Blustering Bill misstates our position
NEVER GET into a battle of wits with an unarmed man, goes an old saying. It's good advice, except when the unarmed man picks the fight — before an audience of millions. Then you're stuck. We found ourselves in that position on Monday.
Notorious rhetorical ruffian Bill O'Reilly of Fox News went on both his radio show and his television show on Monday and mischaracterized the editorial position of this newspaper — even after he was informed three times of our real position.
O'Reilly expressed outrage that we editorialized on Aug. 17 in favor of Gov. John Lynch's decision to study Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act. He and a paid commentator on his TV show characterized the editorial as opposing the Florida law and tougher punishments for child rapists. The editorial did neither.
Our position on the Lunsford Act was perfectly clear. It is, simply, that the attorney general should study it before anyone decides that this specific law is the one New Hampshire should adopt. O'Reilly took that position and twisted it into something wholly unrecognizable, as a baboon would demolish a lump of Play-Doh.
His and his legal expert Wendy Murphy's suggestions that we oppose getting tough on child rapists, after we told O'Reilly's staff multiple times that we were concerned the Lunsford Act might be too lenient on them, is incomprehensible and in no way supported by the editorial or the statements we gave him after he began his Cro-Magnon ravings.
Most curiously, O'Reilly apparently began reading from our statement on the air, then stopped after two words. Instead of reading our statement or the original editorial, he just called us cowards. Nice. Way to face the facts and engage in an honest debate, there, Bill.
O'Reilly has not responded to our attempts to correct the misstatements. Must be a coward.
O'Reilly is trumpeting the Lunsford Act as the only possible way to get tough on sexual predators who prey on children, which of course is nonsense. He loves to mention the act's mandatory 25-year minimum sentence for anyone convicted of child rape. While we are all for mandatory minimums for sexually abusing a child (which O'Reilly knows), the Lunsford Act, at more than 80 pages long, contains a lot more than those mandatory minimums. O'Reilly's simplistic attempt to portray us as against tough punishments for sex offenders just because we want to see everything that is in the bill is childish and contemptible. But then, one could say the same of Bill O'Reilly himself.
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Union-Leader's respone to Bill O'Reilly