Bill O'Reilly In All His Glory

Two girls in Virginia Beach were reportedly killed by a drunk driver who happens to be an illegal immigrant. Rather than focusing on the drunk driving part, O'Reilly focused on the illegal immigrant part and just went loco:



Ah yes, Conservative Derangement Syndrome on full display. Bill O'Reilly has perfected it with spittle spewing histrionics aimed at strawman arguments. Unfortunately for him, Geraldo Rivera -- although as Digby pointed out, they're both clowns -- was having none of it. Money quote from Geraldo: Don't obscure tragedy to make a cheap political point. O'Reilly in a nutshell. Full video of the complete atrocity here if you care to watch.

Jeffrey Feldman sums it up well:

Violence as the organizing logic that gives shape to a full panoply of political rhetoric--an entire culture of political speech crafted from metaphors and body language evoking violence.

It is a force rapidly overtaking the right wing in this country and it is not slowing down, not pausing. More and more with each passing day, I am aware of an aggressively violent way of framing political ideas from the voices that speak for right.

It is a rhetoric of bursting veins and chopping heads, an idiom of killing, not talking, to the opposition.

Meanwhile, the city held a news conference to answer O'Reilly's wacky rantings:

The mayor and Tessa Tranchant's father both said that making an issue out of immigration loses the focus that the girls were killed by a man that police said was driving drunk.

Ray Tranchant said, "We need to heal, and to bring immigration, that's disrespectful to a family who's just mourning."

O'Reilly, in full hysterical mode, blamed the governor, the mayor and the judge when actually, immigration is handled at the federal level, where it should be.

Local law enforcement should not deal with illegal immigration. It will breed distrust in the community's immigrant population, which more than likely will not cooperate in solving crimes if cops are turned into immigration enforcers.

Then again, O'Reilly doesn't care about that. All he and wingnut rhetorical bomb throwers like him care about is manufacturing their pet outrage of the day, because it's all they've got.

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