20
Aug
Ambushed
After Jenna Kern, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to
write an Op-Ed piece for Newsday questioning whether shock jocks and hate speech contributed to the recent murderous shooting spree in a U-U church in Tennessee, the haters started to come after her as well. The attacks started first in the comments section of Newsday. (”Hi Rory. Guess what?” Ms. Kern emailed. “Newsday has received 3,000 emails against my piece. The online forum comments at newsday.com have been 99% hateful… I actually had someone sitting in a car outside my house for a half hour. I got so freaked I called the cops!”)
The attacks then continued on the Newsbusters site — a project of the Media Research Center, “the leader in documenting, exposing
and neutralizing liberal media bias.” (Kern reports, “Wow, the blogs have gone crazy about the story I did. How did you handle all the nasty things! I don’t have the stomach for it, I’m afraid.”)
Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell sent a letter to Newsday Publisher Tim Knight demanding an apology for Kern’s opinion piece, and insisted that she “never again appear on the pages of Newsday,” stating that her article “was absolutely despicable ” and the newspaper “should be ashamed and embarrassed for having printed it…” since it was “nothing more than an in-print character assassination of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, a foray into absurd Leftist delusions of links between them and the vile murderer in a Tennessee church this past July 27.”
“This is not a freedom of speech issue,” Bozell concluded. “This is Newsday giving this woman a license to assault these fine men in print, accusing them of complicity in murder. Newsday should immediately publish a full retraction, and an abject and absolute apology to those defamed by this woman’s wretched words.”
Finally, Kern was confronted in her own driveway, as her most recent email explains: “Bill O’Reilly’s people ambushed me in my driveway today. With camera and microphone. I guess I’ll be on the show tonight or tomorrow. This is not what I had wanted. Yikes. Wish me luck. I don’t feel bad about anything I said, but he’ll probably edit it to make me look like an idiot.”
But before Billo had a chance to air his ambush, his cable nemesis Keith Olbermann scooped him on it on his MSBNC program…and declared O’Reilly again to be the “Worst Person in the World.” I couldn’t agree more!
O’Reilly attacking Kern the way he did only helps prove her comments as true.
Only a fool would not realize that the people who listen to O’Reilly, Limbuagh and Hannity are bigots that need someone to tell them that its “OK” to hate the way they do.
Unfortunately, there are always going to be kooks that get riled up listening to them declare that liberals are the cause of all their problems, not their own closed small minds.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pmWho died and made these guys the normal police? Do you think any of them has ever read and taken seriously the words of, say, Thomas Jefferson on freedom of religion? They just think they have the majority on their side and they can bully when they want to. Their behavior should be labeled for what it is: traitorous and un-American.
August 20th, 2008 at 5:23 pmO’Reilly is great. He will be on the air long after these upstarts are forgotten.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:25 pmBravo for Jenna Kern who had the courage to speak the truth.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:23 pmO’Reilly is a know-nothing, loud-mouthed, narrow-minded idiot and bigot who can dish it out, but can’t take it. Yet he apparently is the epitome of right-wing thinking at its finest. That tells me everything I need to know about the right-wingers. I can’t think of one good thing that has come about since their fearless leader took over what used to be a democracy — not one thing! Bush will be leaving the rest of us with a nation in an endless quagmire in Iraq (and trying to start another endless quagmire in Iran and elsewhere), an economy in shambles, a middle-class that is about to collapse from the burden of out-of-control inflation and an actual decrease in income in the last 8 years, property values that have declined for the first time in modern history, a crumbling infrastructure, a political system that can barely function from the weight of partisanship, a government that continually finds new ways to spy on us in the name of fighting terrorism while at the same time ignoring real threats to our security, a country that is gradually becoming a police state, a voting system we can no longer trust, a world that disrespects us, and a dysfunctional media with unfair and imbalanced news from people like Bill O’Reilly. I’d say we pretty much have gone to hell in a hand basket. Yet “Roy” thinks O’Reilly is great!
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:01 pmO’Rielly can’t handle the pressure it sounds like.That was a good article that Jenna Kern wrote. Has shebeen on the factor yet? It’s about time someone stood up to these hateful shock jocks. I hope the heat stays on.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 pmJohn Mancini and Jenna Kern are stupid pieces of shit. And Oreilly is great.
August 25th, 2008 at 7:48 pmOligarchyNot your an asshole too!
August 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pmO’Reilley, Limbaugh and the other converatwit pundits either merrily ignore their role in fomenting a hateful
August 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pmdialogue in this country which does indeed contribute to hateful (i.e. violent) actions, or they are thoughtless and stupid - unable to follow the logical social course of human interaction. Talk hatred, do hatred.