October 2, 2006 - Mark Foley and Bill O'Reilly: Culture Warriors
On Friday's Factor, Bill waited until late in the program to discuss the unfolding Mark Foley
scandal. That quintessential O'Reilly outrage had somehow faded into the night and we were
left with a rather subdued Bill:
"In the Impact Segment tonight, a very disturbing story. Republican Congressman Mark
Foley of Florida has resigned for sending a series of e-mails to a 16-year-old former
congressional page.
Foley was a strong advocate of Jessica's Law and protecting children from predators,
now finds himself having to explain his relationship with a young boy.
O'Reilly later explained that, "Mark Foley is the co-chairman of the House Missing and
Exploited Children Caucus. He's been on this program many times on FOX News Channel,
often talking about protecting the kids."
We were still waiting for O'Reilly to go ballistic. After all, how would he have reacted if Howard
Dean had been caught up in such a thing? O'Reilly spelled it out to Fox News' Major Garrett.
"Yes. You know, a real tragedy here, Major. I know you're just reporting and you don't
comment as a reporter. But the real tragedy is that Foley did some good work, you know,
getting the database up, the federal database to track child predators."
Sadly, Bill feels the real tragedy is that he has had Foley on the program multiple times and
has propped him up as a fine example of a child protector, and now it turns out his fellow
culture warrior may very well be whacking off to Garanimals ads. As for Foley's database, it’s
a fine idea, but you’re not supposed to treat it like your own personal eHarmony.com.
"And now it's all gone. And there's deep suspicion on the part of a lot of people about
politicians in Washington, even when they try to help the kids. I mean, that's the tragedy of
this whole thing."
He concluded, "Yes. It is a depressing situation."
What the hell is O'Reilly talking about? We've never seen O’Reilly go this easy on a
newspaper publisher who declines to censure an editorial writer who defends a judge who
gives a child predator less than 40 years breaking rocks in Guantanamo Bay. But now the
best he can muster is, “It is a depressing situation.” Could it be that Bill so effortlessly groups
people into insipid categories such as "culture warrior" and "secular-progressive," he simply
doesn't know how to process it when one of his own falls from grace?
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