It’s Like Al Franken has Gone to Heaven, and We’re Forced to Watch

I made conservatives mad when I gave up on Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent, and if anyone had known about it, they probably would have been mad when I said I didn’t support Milo Yiannopoulos. I guess I’ll continue doing what I do best: Bill O’Reilly is not helping us.

Leftists are digging up dirt on O’Reilly, pointing out that he has been accused of sexual harassment on a number of occasions. He has been sued for it, successfully. Fox has paid out eight figures in hush money. O’Reilly doesn’t admit fault. At all.

Conservatives are saying it’s a witch hunt (like the Bork hearings or ridiculous attacks on Trump over Russia, which were and are bona fide witch hunts). They’re saying O’Reilly is the victim here. Come on. Be serious.

To anyone who says leftists don’t care about harassment, and that the O’Reilly siege is only about silencing a prominent conservative, I say, “I agree.” Leftists don’t care about the many women Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, and the rest of the Clinton Gang destroyed or at least soiled. They don’t care about them any more than they care about the millions of women who have been pressured into abortions they didn’t want. That’s true. Doesn’t matter. If O’Reilly is guilty of the things of which he has been accused, he should be released.

Is it really that big a deal if the office horndog makes advances toward disgusted women? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not. It depends on the facts. Merely asking someone out is not harassment. But O’Reilly is accused of far worse things. He is accused of extremely gross, persistent advances, and of coupling them with threats and attacks. His accusers say he followed through on his threats. He is accused of using his power to make and break careers to push women into the sack with him.

That’s a whole lot worse than a few inappropriate come-ons.

No sane person would want his mother or sister to have her career wrecked by a creep who sees other people as disposable receptacles, and seeing them give in and allow themselves to be violated would be even worse.

As for the advances themselves, at least in the case of former producer Andrea Mackris, they were pretty bad. In her complaint, she said she had recorded him, and the transcribed portions are extremely graphic, prolonged descriptions of the sex acts he wanted to perform. The recordings must have existed, because no lawyer on earth would willingly make up transcriptions and submit them to a court, knowing he would be forced to come up with actual recordings later. Disbarment would only be the beginning of his problems.

If the recordings hadn’t existed, Fox would have forced Mackris’s lawyer to admit it, and Fox wouldn’t shell out $13 million to settle frivolous suits it expected to win. It seems likely that O’Reilly told his counsel the recordings existed, and Fox buckled and paid the plaintiff off.

I am tempted to remind everyone that O’Reilly is not indispensable. He can be replaced easily. He’s not really that good at what he does. But to talk about his value to conservatism would be to take the position that a highly successful ally should be permitted to profit from egregious, malicious wrongdoing simply because of his value to a cause. That’s wrong. If a lowly copywriter would be fired for what O’Reilly did, then O’Reilly should be whacked with the same axe.

If we’re going to talk sympathy and patience, where is the sympathy for the women? Losing your career is a whole lot worse than losing one gig.

To argue that O’Reilly’s supposed value to the right justifies letting him ruin women’s careers is to commit the sin of the O.J. jurors, who would literally have permitted Simpson to cut his ex-wife’s throat in the courtroom without repercussion. “I’m on your side, and I’m successful” is not a good excuse for destroying people in the name of base, lower-brain drives.

If I’m against O’Reilly, why am I not against Trump? Mainly because Trump has not been accused of harassment. He has been accused of adultery (consensual) and putting his hands on willing women (also consensual). Leftist propagandists have accused him of sexual assault, but they based their claims on a video in which he described consensual contact. Also, Trump has not been accused of linking women’s careers to their pliability. O’Reilly and Trump and very different.

I’m not thrilled that a serial adulterer is in the White House, but I don’t go around crusading for adulterers and fornicators to be fired. That standard wouldn’t leave many people standing. That would be a very personal standard based on my religious views. My stand on O’Reilly is pretty much the same standard the vast majority of Americans would observe.

I can be a good Christian and not insist every person who commits gross sexual sin be fired, but I can’t see myself pleasing God AND insisting a persistent destroyer of weaker people should keep his job.

If the poop on O’Reilly is true, and it looks like much of it is, then he may a very bad guy. It’s easy to excuse inappropriate flirting, but ruining people who turn you down is sick and cruel. It goes beyond lust, which is something everyone has to fight with, and into the realm of viciousness. It is also blatant corruption.

What if he decided to come clean and change his ways? What if he apologized on the air and said he intended to turn over a new leaf? Would that justify keeping him? I don’t know. There has to be some punishment for what he has done already, and merely losing a job is not a penalty commensurate with the offenses in question.

I say let him go. He has had plenty of chances to turn this around, and it hasn’t happened.

That’s the memo for today. Name and town, if you wish to opine.