I haven’t watched O’Reilly in years. He’s just an arrogant windbag. It’s annoying to watch a person lecture someone with greater knowledge and understanding than themselves.
“I haven’t watched O’Reilly in years. He’s just an arrogant windbag. It’s annoying to watch a person lecture someone with greater knowledge and understanding than themselves.”
Excellent point about his ability to lecture his intellectual superiors. Many pundits fall into that trap, and O’Reilly is certainly among that number.
I want to make a few points here. O’Reilly, if you find this thread, please pay attention...I don’t want my words distorted. Some of these points are somewhat nuanced, so do engage your gray matter.
First of all, my “most ridiculous item of the day” - someone who claims to be for “the American way” (perhaps I’m being generous to Mr. O’Reilly here) advocating censorship.
It is literally impossible (and in my mind wrongheaded regardless) to censor the Internet. The Internet is an international medium - who’s standards are we going to impose? I suppose one could try national filtering - that’s the equivalent of the Great Firewall of China. Is that where our “free” society is headed? I hope not. Perhaps someday even a “pithy” O’Reilly comment might cross the line...
That said, FR does moderate content in an effort to be a family-friendly site. That’s actually a dangerous thing to do, since by moderating FR becomes responsible for ‘indecent’ content that slips through. The Usenet newsgroups (for instance) have historically relied on a ‘common carrier’ status that assumes no responsibility for content since there is no editorial filtering. It seems disingenuous at best to go after FR for allowing objectionable content when it goes the extra mile at some risk to provide a ‘decent’ site. Wait, can I have two “Most Ridiculous Items of the Day”?!?
I would go on, but I’m wasting time on a topic that really doesn’t interest me much. I’ve tuned my last O’Reilly show on purpose.