During the Monica Lewinsky “scandal”, the Right made a career out of attempting to emasculate Bill Clinton. Interesting, isn’t it, that now the shoe is on the other…uh, foot…and the silence is deafening?
Bill O’Reilly’s behavior is every bit as egregious (depending on your point of view, perhaps even more so…) as Bill Clinton’s, and yet all you hear from the right is…well, nothing. Yes, kids, that is the sound of hypocrisy in full flower, and it ought to provide a clue as to how “important” family values (whatever the hell THAT means) are to the Right.
If someone on the Left were guilty of this sort of behavior, the Right would be smelling blood and the Huns would be attacking in full forsce. The roar of self-righteous indignation would be heard far and wide. Apparently, hypocrisy really is a “family value” to the Right.
The sex in the O’Reilly case, like everyone’s, is somewhat risible — replace thong in the Oval Office with loofah in the Caribbean to get an idea. The long verbatim quotes in the complaint suggest that Andrea Mackris, the woman bringing the lawsuit, has audiotapes. Add a nice dollop of hypocrisy on the part of a family-values proponent in an ostensibly happy marriage and you’ve got yourself a good month’s worth of shows featuring lawyers, counselors and clergy chewing the whole thing over.
But the O’Reilly scandal lacks one critical factor to drive it forward: constant coverage on The O’Reilly Factor. There’s no bigger scold or sterner values enforcer on TV than O’Reilly — he feasted on Bill Clinton like no other — and ordinarily he’d be on top of such a story. But this time he is the one sitting in the eye of the storm.
To be fair, right after he filed a pre-emptive extortion claim against Mackris and her lawyer, he briefly mentioned his predicament on his show, without denying the charges or pressing himself on whether they were true.
Otherwise, a hush has fallen over the Fox News commentariat, and its brothers and sisters in arms. Apparently, there are no morals police to police the morals police. I like to scold as much as the next person, but when the shocker about virtues-czar Bill Bennett gambling away hundreds of thousands of dollars came out, I didn’t demand he stop gambling, just that he stop scolding the rest of us for the vices we try but sometimes fail to overcome. Ditto for Rush Limbaugh, who needed treatment for his addiction, not prison.
Right-wingers, of course, were late to the cause of sexual harassment. (Remember how they were convinced that Anita Hill was just trying to lynch Clarence Thomas?) They didn’t embrace it until Paula Jones did, and then they worked it to nearly lynch a Democratic president.
Truth be told, the Right really cares nothing about “family values”- beyond what it can do to help insure their continued political primacy. The reason that you hear the steady drone of silence emanating from the Right is that they know that trumpeting this issue at this time will do nothing to further their political agenda- which, pure and simple, is all and only about political power.
Of course, no one with half a brain would expect O’Reilly to be asking himself the tough questions on air: “What did I know and when did I know it?? And just what WAS it I was going to do with that falafel, anyway??” He’s facing a legal battle that could end his career (if there’s any justice). That aside, there are many other Right-wing blowhards who should be asking questions, but have fallen strangely mute on this topic. Just as the Right shielded Rush Limbaugh from the tough questions during his drug controversy (How much OxyContin does one man REALLY need?), they are extending the same courtesy to Bill O’Reilly.
As far as O’Reilly’s exploits go, I could care less if he had been caught buggering goats with a sand wedge. What does upset me is the clear double standard that applies here. If you happen to be a Conservative, you get a free pass regardless of how offensive or egregious your personal trespass happens to be. Heaven help you, though, if you happen to lean to the Left and are guilty of the same offensive/immoral/illegal behavior. If you get caught doing something that offends the sensibilities of someone on the Right, prepare to be pilloried and held up to prolonged and intense public ridicule.
Yep, when you occupy the Right side of the political spectrum, it would appear that hypocrisy never takes a holiday.
