Well, NOW we realize our error.
TMV was cruising around You Tube when he came across an intriguing video from Bill O’Reilly’s show where he showed a video of a young girl saying some politically blunt things, one of which was bleeped out. O’Reilly asked an expert if this qualified as child abuse.
Then TMV went out (he does leave his computer).
But now he realizes he was WRONG. Actually, the original video showed the girl blasting O’Reilly.
The O’Reilly’s show segment posted on You Tube omitted the fact the girl was blasting O’Reilly. It just showed other part of her clearly-scriped speech and and raised the issue of whether a young child talking controversial politics via words put in her mouth by an adult qualified as child abuse. Valid issue — but not a totally candid disclosure of the original context.
As we said earlier, we didn’t like it when a Republican candidate used his kids as political tools in an ad and we didn’t like this.
The fact the girl was shown in this O’Reilly segment as not mentioning O’Reilly make us think O’Reilly’s bit was a bit…incomplete…and misleading. He should have included the segments blasting him…then raised the issue in any segment where he discussed the issue of whether this was child abuse. NOTE: We still do NOT like kids used like this.
Watch both and judge for youself:
THE ORIGINAL (WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SOME VERY ADULT LANGUAGE):
NOW RE-WATCH THE O’REILLY SEGMENT WE RAN EARLIER. Note what’s left out. Would the issue of child abuse have been raised by O’Reilly if this video had not attacked him?
We regret the earlier posting of a segment that did not show this in the whole context. We don’t expect Mr. O’Reilly to do the same thing — but then he has a bigger audience that we have (or can ever hope to have).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.