(Clip by way of ThinkProgress--they are like, a poliblogger's best friend for the Youtube clips.)
I am not going to blame Bill O'Reilly for the murder of Dr. Tiller, or rant about how Fox News personalities use over-the-top rhetoric and one-sided presentations of hot-button conservative causes in a way that borders on the irresponsible, because frankly, I don't watch enough Fox News, and I am not a regular O'Reilly viewer. And even if Bill O'Reilly regularly, over the course of the last few years, made it an especial point to not only call the doctor "Tiller the Killer" and call the clinic where he worked a "death mill", or even speculated out loud what he might do to Dr. Tiller if he ever saw him, well, that's not the same thing as pulling the trigger.
That conflation would be hyperbole. Enough of hyperbole.
In fact, I, as a dedicated member of the rabid left, am going to say something about the 60,000 aborted fetuses. That's right. Because I'm sooooooooo compassionate, as Mr. O'Reilly might put it.
Every one of these aborted fetuses who never become American citizens--as Mr. O'Reilly points out, had mothers. Yes, indeed. They gestated in the womb of a physically mature human female. They were conceived, if I recall high school biology correctly, by that female and a male. They were conceived under many different circumstances. In wedlock and outside of wedlock. From rape or consensual sex. In joy and the expectation of pregnancy. In a loveless relationship where nothing was going to work out, ever. Those mothers could have been any woman imaginable--out of 60,000, each with her own story. Teenagers. Mature women who already had started a family.
I will bet not one of those women wanted an abortion when her baby was conceived. And some of the women actually might have wanted a baby. But for those that did not--are they killers, too? Because my compassionate ear hasn't heard what Mr. O'Reilly has to say about the mothers of these 60,000 fetuses. That would be a stickier argument, and maybe he's right to keep away from it. All those individual, private stories about real people, their bodies, their lives. It suddenly stops being about one large number--60,000, and starts looking like--what?
The doctor's patients, who approached him for help, which he provided. (And let's just really not even discuss the salary. I'm sure Mr. O'Reilly is too classy a human being to have meant to insinuate that Dr. Tiller was like a mob hit man collecting a contract on a small, defenseless target. I believe one quote I read was "$5000 up-front". His phrasing then and here was merely--unfortunate?)
Mr. O'Reilly points out that medical technology today catches a lot of medical problems early--
Was that true thirty years ago? Twenty years ago? Was that true when Dr. Tiller took over the practice of his father, who had performed the same procedures? And just because a medical need has become rarer--does that mean it has suddenly become less moral that it ever be done? Does that mean that those few women who do require a late-term d/x should be denied that procedure? Because as Booman points out here, there are several truly horrible conditions that a fetus may have that would make it painful and life-threatening to mother and child for that baby to be carried to term. And expecting them to do so where there is a merciful alternative is, in my opinion, barbaric.
If Bill O'Reilly is guilty of anything, let's call it "spin" and "unbalanced reporting". I doubt he took the time to see what the other side of the argument looked like. That isn't murder. Sure, he used inflammatory language that equated this doctor with Nazis, and Red China and all manner of sin and mayhem.
It's just not very professional, within a very limited expectation of what his alleged profession (I think he considers himself a journalist) is supposed to be. It means that he has some deeply held, but not necessarily fully-scoped-out opinions. And it means he uses language that reinforces a given impression upon the minds of his listeners.
No, not a murderer. Just a propagandist for a murderous position. Big difference, see?
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