Sunday, June 03, 2007

Bill O'Reilly and the ruckus that wasn't

A high school dared to host a forum that, among other things, criticized aspects of the War on Drugs. Somehow, the event got tagged as a hotbed of treachery by everyone's favorite pitbull, Bill O'Reilly. Dave Kopel of Rocky Mountain News explains:
Caplis insists that teachers should have driven the students out of the auditorium because "within five minutes" the panel was promoting drug use and sex. In fact, the opening 10 minutes consisted of introductions and a presentation by Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, who simply critiqued counterproductive programs, such as DARE, which loses credibility because of its reckless exaggerations....

Appearing on Bill O'Reilly's Fox TV show, The O'Reilly Factor, Caplis did not even know the name of the school's good-hearted and excellent principal Bud Jenkins, but was sure that Jenkins and every administrator should be fired. Heedless of First Amendment case law, O'Reilly proclaimed that the panel's speech constituted a crime. The only crime was perpetrated by the O'Reilly producer who, attempting to ambush interview school board President Helayne Jones, criminally trespassed into her garage.

As a Boulder High parent, I have discovered that the school is a much more tolerant place than the average large high school. Respect for freedom of speech is part of what makes Boulder High special.

O'Reilly tells the world that Bud Jenkins is "the villain." As Boulder High students are learning, media scandal-makers sometimes tell you much less than the full story.
[via Instapundit]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bill O'Reilly needs to come clean on the fact that he has said some of the same things in his book for kids that he is railing against here.

Go to www.newshounds.us for the real story. Bill criticizes Joel Becker for saying "I'm going to encourage you to have sex, and I'm going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately. In his Book Bill O'Reilly for Kids, Bill says "As for me, I'm not going to tell you to avoid sex, because in the end you will do what you want anyway."

There are many more racey quotes and quotes that promote pot that Bill is hiding from.

Indeed, when he knew that he was going to be confronted with them from high school students, he refused to have all of them on the show. What a coward.