Article: EXPLOITING VA TECH TRAGEDY: THE O'REILLY M.O. AT WORK

How late did Bill O'Reilly stay up to prepare with something that would
spin another tragedy into a self-gratification issue?

My guess is that it didn't take long. To the guy who's looking out for
you, tragedies are only talking point opportunities in blood-soaked
clothing.

It's like quacking to a duck. He just opens his mouth and out it comes.

A couple weeks ago, in a "brawl" over a drunk-driving fatal accident
involving an illegal alien, Bill was roughed up by a momentarily
respectable Geraldo Rivera who called Bill on using someone else's misery
as a means to push his partisan agenda.

"Don't obscure a tragedy to make a cheap political point!" bellowed the
ghost of Geraldo past.

Well, it seems that Geraldo's admonition was forgotten as fast as Bill
seems to forget the definition of "hate" when he spews his hate-filled
diatribes against anything or anyone he disagrees with.

On his radio show the day after the Virginia Tech horror, he made sure
that the shooter's immigration status played a role in the story.

"No foreign national should ever be able to carry own a gun."

Certainly the legal status of the killer would be notable in the telling
of the story. To use it make a political point, as Geraldo pointed out,
is egregious. But just telling a duck not to quack won't shut him up,
especially when he thinks he's a songbird.

As we all know Bill is all about getting his cracked research team on the
story and getting it out to the Folks™.

"Lot of angles [to the Virginia Tech story] and we're all over it."

Thank God Bill is all over it because taking the guns out of the hands of
foreign nationals would certainly protect the Folks™...except if any of
the Folks happen to be serving in the same U.S. forces as some of the
40,000 foreign nationals who have volunteered to be part of our armed
forces. Maybe Bill just meant to pull guns from the hands of the foreign
nationals who have been awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor. Perhaps he was just talking about those who never served...like himself.

Yep, not only did Bill jump on the very real nightmare the families and
friends of the Virginia Tech victims, but he did so by besmirching every
single foreign national, including many of them now fighting in Iraq
where Bill supports sending them to fight for us Folks; where he trust
them with a gun. Just don't trust them when they return.

Oh, Bill will say that I took him out of context. That this is just
another smear site spewing George Soros-funded hatred. No need to bring
on David Brock of Mediamatters or any other of the smear sites
to see what they got. Not when Bill can bring on an e-mailer to the
Factor to prove that he is not a hater. But go to the tape yourselves.
There was no qualifier. Not even an "illegal" within a mile of his no
guns for foreign nationals admonition. Y'see, the only hate site is the
sight Bill sees in the mirror every morning. (Of course except
"SweetJesusIHateBillOeilly." But at least they're honest).

Bill wanted to advance his agenda and if he had to step over a few dead
bodies to do so, excuse me. If they didn't want to be used as grist for
his dogma mill, than maybe they shouldn't have decided to be targets for
some foreign national.

I wonder when Geraldo will grasp see that his friend's "cheap political
point" attacking those migrating to the U.S. - legal or otherwise - was
not a single shot against immigrants. Not when he has an entire massacre
available to spin.

em>Steve Young is the author of "Great Failures of the Extremely
Successful" (www.greatfailure.com) and his column appears in the LA
Daily News Sunday Opinion page...to the left of O'Reilly's...really.