Bill O’Reilly was invited to speak at a fund raiser for the It Happened to Alexa organization. It Happened to Alexa is an organization that provides support to rape survivors. The organization’s founder, Alexa Branchini, is herself, the survivor of a brutal rape.
Following the announcement of O’Reilly’s speaking engagement, a blogger at Think Progress, a George Soros funded organization, attacked O’Reilly and his support for Alexa’s organization saying that he believed rape victims were “to blame” for these comments on his radio show:
O’REILLY: So anyway, these two girls come in from the suburbs and they get bombed, and their car is towed because they’re moronic girls and, you know, they don’t have a car. So they’re standing there in the middle of the night with no car. And then they separate because they’re drunk. They separate, which you never do. All right.
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.
And the thug takes her over to New Jersey in the cab and kills her and rapes her and does all these terrible things to her. And the thug is so stupid, he uses her cell phone, and the cops trace it back to him and they — and they arrest him and charge him with murder. He had a prostitute girlfriend with him, and she’s charged as an accessory to murder. But Jennifer Moore is in the ground. She’s dead.
Before we go any further, let me be clear that I don’t believe rape victims ever “ask to be raped.” Rape is one of the cruelest crimes known and is committed by individuals who are cowards who have no other way ability to exert “power.” However, what O’Reilly is describing is not a woman “asking for rape” but rather an individual who made bad choices that put her in a position, not of “deserving”, “asking for” or even “inviting” rape but of creating a circumstance where the odds of an assault were greatly increased.
Think I’m trying to dance for O’Reilly? I’m not. I don’t see this tragic situation any differently than if Thing 1 and Thing 2 once old enough, decided to go to Mexico for spring break. After having too much to drink they decide to wander in town in search of a new drinking establishment. For whatever reason they separate and being inebriated, wander into seedy parts of town. Being young, caucasian, unable to speak Spanish and there during spring break, a time when folks are known to carry lots of cash, one of them is assaulted, robbed and tragically killed. Would I be angry, vengeful, hate filled at the person who did that? Absolutely! Would I also be screaming loudly in my mourning “how could you be so dumb?” You bet!
So anyway….
O’Reilly responded by sending Jesse Watters after the blog article to find out why she had a problem with O’Reilly helping Alexa’s foundation. You can see that exchange here.
Think Progress and the rest of the Soros funded left didn’t like O’Reilly showing Terkel how big time is played so they went after O’Reilly’s advertisers in an attempt to get them to drop the O’Reilly show.
Today, UPS announced that they were dropping their advertising on the O’Reilly show. According to this article and others, Think Progress is claiming that they caused UPS to drop their support. Maybe so.
In the original response to Think Progress, UPS said:
In response to our Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign, UPS told us yesterday that it was investigating whether to continue supporting O’Reilly’s show. “We are sensitive to the type of television programming where our messages and presence are associated and continually review choices to affect future decisions,” spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg told us.
UPS subsequently sent this message:
Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O’Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show. [emphasis in thinkprogress.org post]
Apparently UPS believes that O’Reilly is inappropriate for its advertising dollars. The ironic part is that there was a big UPS ad blinking across the Think Progress site tonight, as I was researching this post.
I don’t always like O’Reilly but in this case, I think he was right. Fedex will be getting my business from now on. The only thing I’ll be able to think about when I see another “Brown” commercial will be the similarity to the streaks I see in 10 year old boy’s underwear!
