Bill O’Reilly and the half hour I’ll never get back

OK. I spent a half hour last night watching the unwatchable, The O’Reilly Factor, a show so smarmy and contrived, so condescending and boorish that I was almost ashamed that I had it on in the den.

Why, you ask, would I subject myself to something like that?

The answer is that we had gotten word that the bloviator himself was going to spend some time talking about a fight that took place at South Brunswick High School that was video’d by a student and posted to YouTube.

Police said that two girls, one 14 and one 16, lured a 16-year-old girl to a secluded area of the building where she was attacked by the 16-year-old as the 14-year-old filmed the attack with her cell phone. (See story in today’s South Brunswick Post.)

The fight is an example of the growing aggressiveness of the culture — which is evident in everything from music and film to politics and our roadways. But what explains this harshness?

That’s where Bill O’Reilly comes in.

O’Reilly blames everything that is wrong on a liberal culture — what he calls the Secular-Progressive worldview. The SPs (of which I am a proud member) are responsible for gansta rap and violent movies, biased media coverage and just about everything that has gone wrong, will go wrong or should go wrong in the world today.

O’Reilly’s argument is curiously similar in nature to the harsh, controlling edicts made by the ayatollahs in Iran, but couched in a sense of victimhood that is bizarre for someone so close to those with the big wallets and access to the lever of power.

In any case, O’Reilly used the SBHS fight to address the issue of girls fighting (click on “Watch Bill’s Most Ridiculous Item” and then click on “Video Visens” to view his report), linking it to his warped view of the world — i.e., that the Hollywood elite is to blame, etc, etc, etc. The girls are more violent because they are being subjected to violence from the radio and TV and video games.

It is a circular argument that many buy, but that lacks hard evidence. Studies that purport to show causation between violent television or video-game content have been flawed, relying on a basic supposition that props up all of these arguments — the notion that violent content creates violence behavior.

My argument — equally as circular — always has been that art and culture follow behavior, are a reflection of what is happening and not the engine driving it. Or not necessarily.

I don’t know what has led to this perceived increase in girl fights (perceived because there is no way to actually quantify it). But I know that Bill O’Reilly is full of hot air.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Crime shouldn’t pay

The governor and state Legislature are making a huge mistake. Rather than taking a hardline stand against public corruption by forcing public employees who violate the public trust to forfeit their pensions, they are ready to place the entire issue on the contract negotiating table.

It’s a foolish move, as state Sen. John H. Adler (pictured), D-Camden, points out in an op-ed today in the Star-Ledger (unfortunately not available online).

Adler has sponsored to bills (here and here) that would strip pensions from public employees — elected and appointed — who violate the public trust. The bills would help curb rampant abuse by public officials — see Lynch, John, and others — helping to restore trust and eliminate what essentially is a corruption tax on New Jersey residents. In November, Adler offered the following statement:

“For too long, the abuse of power in New Jersey has been a factor in skyrocketing property taxes. Waste and fraud increase the cost of government to taxpayers who are looking for a break from soaring tax rates. We need to put strong penalties in place, to protect public dollars and the public trust in their elected representatives.”

Gov. Jon Corzine and the Legislature, however, have watered it down. A bill sponsored by state Senate President Richard Codey and Assemblywoman Nellie Pou would to remove many of the pension reforms proposed by the special Joint Legislative Session from the table, preferring to address most of them at the negotiating table.

Admittedly, negotiations could be the best way to handle some elements of the pension reform proposal — addressing the cost of health benefits, for instance — but the bulk of the changes proposed should be enacted through statute, including a ban on double-dipping (one official holding two offices, like Monroe Mayor Richard Pucci) and the Adler bills, which are designed to put an end to abuses like the ones that resulted in former state Senate President John Lynch getting 39 months in jail on Tuesday.

That’s the point that Sen. Adler, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, makes in his Ledger op-ed, criticizing the two-tiered approach being substituted.

It is abusurd to have different corruption penalties, including jail time and pension forfeiture, depending upon whether the corrupt official is or is not in a union.

He wants his bills past as a “clear and unequivocal statement that we are fed up with public corruption and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Penalties should be the same for all public officials. Public integrity should always be non-negotiable.

Wednesday’s Courier-News offered the same take:

(W)hat’s to negotiate about taking pensions away from crooks? That’s something legislators should require of everyone earning taxpayer money, officials and workers alike. And there’s no reason not to begin with the public officials right now in getting those mandates in place.

Yet the forfeiture requirement was taken out of the pension reform bill being considered by lawmakers last week. Instead we’re still left with a pension board that decides if a corrupt official should lose the pension. In other words, the board provides another layer of bureaucracy to protect the criminals.

This seems a logical critique — even to someone like me who is very pro-union. Double standards are never good for anyone and would only further the erosion of trust in our government that has helped the right in its push for extreme deregulation.

It’s an unacceptible situation. As Barretta used to say, if you can’t do the time then don’t do the crime. New Jersey needs to make sure that crime by public officials does not pay.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Delusional thinking

November seems so long ago. That was when Democrats retook both houses of Congress, riding a wave of discontent over Iraq back into power.

So where do we stand now? We have a president buried even deeper in the grip of his own delusions — he continues to believe we can “win” in Iraq, though how winning is defined seems amorphous, and he’s still blaming foreign radicals for the violence, even though it is pretty clear that much of it is homgrown.

But this is not unexpected.

What is so troubling is that the new Democratic majority seems to be pushing inexplicably for a troop increase — both for the general military and as a temporary measure in Iraq.

Thankfully, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has raised a red flag on the increase:

“The time for a troop increase,” he said, “was about 3 1/2 years ago, when we initially went into Iraq.”

I don’t buy that things would have been different, but I am glad to see him stand up so forcefully on this. Let’s get the troops home, bring in the United Nations and the neighboring nations and see if we can stem the violence. Of course, we’ll have to hand over the checkbook to pay for it — but Colin Powell did warn the president.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.