One Nation Under Walkie Talkies
If you were too busy celebrating drug use and the Spanish language to catch The O'Reilly Factor last night, you missed a humdinger of a discussion between O'Reilly and the guy he brings in to make him look sane, Geraldo Rivera. Mouthing off about the Amish killings in Pennsylvania, O'Reilly and Rivera agreed it's time to militarize the schools.
O'REILLY: All I'm saying is that the crime becomes more horrifying and disturbing because there's no signal. You know, if you can be married for 20 years and raised three children in a small community like that and nobody thinks that you're a danger, you don't do anything strange. And then one day you show up and execute five little girls and wound eight others. I mean, that's horrifying in the sense that it's so sudden. And there's no protection against it.
RIVERA: There's no protection except one. No uninvolved adult males walk on that school property, wherever the school is.
O'REILLY: You can set up armed camps. You've got to set up armed camps.
RIVERA: At least give the seniors walkie-talkies and cell phones.
It doesn't get much better than Gen. O'Reilly's call to redeploy the National Guard to Amish country. But the whole wonderful conversation is below the fold.
O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly.
In the "Personal Story" segment, last Friday on the "Factor", Geraldo Rivera said this after a 53-year-old Colorado man took six high school girls hostage, killing one of them before killing himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GERALDO RIVERA, HOST, "AT LARGE": What I fear is the starting of the brand new genre in terms of these maniacs acting out on our children and other innocent victims, where they can now fulfill the fantasy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: A couple of days later, the Amish thing.
Here he is, star of "Geraldo at Large", Mr. Rivera, who's now a certified oracle.
You know, you don't want these things to come true, but that was eerie. That was an eerie prediction. What was it, less than 48 hours later?
RIVERA: I take no pleasure, obviously, in being right in the prediction. Let me caution that I don't believe this first wave of copycat awareness is over yet. I think there will be, you know -- there's an immediacy and urgency now, a need to protect schools, particularly school girls, sororities, day care centers.
For the immediate future in an emergency way, with police, with parent patrols, with a coed situation, the older boys having walkie-talkies and cell phones. I think we have to treat schoolgirls for the immediate future as the most vulnerable and innocent victims for these predators.
I think in the longer range, you know, Bush has -- President Bush has the school safety summit next week. We can conceive of long-term ways to increase safety in schools, but for now I want every parent to know that the danger is real and raw.
O'REILLY: Yes, it is. And I think everybody gets the message that we live in a great country, and most Americans are good people, but there's a segment of us that are evil. And that's what this is all about. It's about evil. And we need to recognize the evil.
But Bailey, Colorado, and Bart Township, Pennsylvania, you do not get more peaceful, more rural, more traditional, more family values than these places.
RIVERA: Or lower security. This was the perfect storm. This is the perfect stage for a psycho, sicko deviant to act out their own self destructive fantasies while still fulfilling his sexual obsession.
This is the reason I predicted it would happen again is it's just like suicide bombing. It's a great idea. Having covered crime for 35 years, you know when the criminal, the diabolical criminal masterminds come up with something new under the sun.
This suicide sex predator business was something new under the sun. And it's really scary because it gets their -- they get to get their rocks off. They get to have the notoriety that they crave. They fulfill their obsession. They murder and maim and rape and torture and torment. And then they're going to die anyway. Suicide by cop, ultimately, anyways. That's why I fear the danger is immediate, raw and it needs immediate action.
O'REILLY: Now the guy in Colorado was a loser. I mean, he had that written all over him. This guy was bad news. You saw him lurking around. Look, you can tell. There is his picture. You see this guy, you go the other way.
Not the guy in Pennsylvania. This is a guy who's married, had three kids. He's a milkman. He -- I mean, we've investigated him. I guess your show has investigated him, as well. There's nothing. Nothing.
RIVERA: But you know, as Congressman Mark Foley is making clear, sex criminals don't always look like that guy Morrison from Colorado. They look like anybody. And that's the danger. I mean, Robertson now is saying, he said in the suicide note how he had molested these two young relatives of his.
O'REILLY: But they can't…
RIVERA: They have. They have located. They announced just before I came on the stage that they have located the children. They haven't had a chance yet to interview them. But the kids are real. Now they're -- you know, it's 20 years later, but they recognized that Roberts had…
O'REILLY: We don't know whether he did it, but he certainly was fantasizing.
RIVERA: He says he did it, and he says he was fantasizing about doing it again. He goes in there to stick the place up with KY jelly. I'm telling you, you're not going to grease the wheels or something. There's only one reason.
O'REILLY: No. Now, look, I'm not saying -- all I'm saying is that the crime becomes more horrifying and disturbing because there's no signal. You know, if you can be married for 20 years and raised three children in a small community like that and nobody thinks that you're a danger, you don't do anything strange. And then one day you show up and execute five little girls and wound eight others. I mean, that's horrifying in the sense that it's so sudden. And there's no protection against it.
RIVERA: There's no protection except one. No uninvolved adult males walk on that school property, wherever the school is.
O'REILLY: You can set up armed camps. You've got to set up armed camps.
RIVERA: At least give the seniors walkie-talkies and cell phones. In Paradise Township, in the Amish situation, in this massacre, if the 911 call had been placed earlier and the cops had come.
And let me tell you something else, Bill. With the first responders have to do in this is very important. Negotiation, which is the way they do it now, does not work with these psycho predators. Because they have no goal. They take hostages, but the taking of the hostages is the goal. They don't want an airplane to fly to Iran. They don't want the million dollars. The negotiation only prolongs the suffering of the children.
O'REILLY: They think they can talk them out of it. They cannot.
RIVERA: That's my point. They have to recognize that the suicide sex predator is not a traditional hostage taker. His goal is to get to those children and, just like Roberts said, leave me alone. That was his only order. Morrison said that in Colorado. Roberts didn't even respond to the -- to the phone call.
All they wanted was the time to do what they had sickly planned in their mind. First responders go, they're in there with those schoolgirls. The key is as soon as they send the little boys out, you know what he's going to do in there. He's there for one reason. He's there to rape.
O'REILLY: You've got to go in.
RIVERA: You've got to go through that window right now. Somebody is going to get hurt. Kids are going to get hurt, as they were in Colorado. One of the six, remember, in that situation. But you've got to go in all the way, full speed, smash it up.
He was disorganized and lost track of his plan when the state trooper went on the P.A. system, not on the phone.
O'REILLY: Yes, they distracted him.
RIVERA: They've got to go now. Go now. Stun guns, smoke bombs, in the window. Where is he? He's the only big guy in there, shoot him down, take them down now. You can't wait. I'm telling you. What you'll do is you'll come to regret it. You'll have that…
O'REILLY: You're a good, old-fashioned liberal from many years.
RIVERA: Radical.
O'REILLY: Radical leftist, you know, Bobby Seal Rivera (ph). Do you believe in the concept of good and evil in this world?
RIVERA: I do indeed. And I also believe in karma. I think that evil will come back to bite you in the end.
O'REILLY: But, you know, this cases, these two guys, it killed them, but they did so much damage.
RIVERA: They committed…
O'REILLY: So you do believe in the concept of evil?
RIVERA: Oh, yes.
O'REILLY: Because A lot of secular progressives don't.
RIVERA: Hitler was evil. Hitler was fundamentally, organically evil. There's -- there's a trick gene, I think, that makes -- distinguishes the criminal who is out for personal gain, reward, gratification, or whatever and someone who wants to inflict that kind of misery.
There's something that's organically DNA different, I think. I really do believe that there is -- there is a good and there is an evil. God is a different question. You and debate that all day and night. But good and evil, I have no doubt.
O'REILLY: All right. Geraldo Rivera, thank you very much, as always. We appreciate it.
Directly ahead, a 3-week-old baby girl caught in a legal fight involving her mother, unfortunately, Anna Nicole Smith. The man who says he's the father. Legal battle over the baby, in a moment.
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"Below the fold," indeed. The fold of my taint, that is.
Oh, I just love when they talk like that!!
For me, the key insight gained from this exchange is how O'Reilly and Rivera approach solving problems. They recognize that no one can tell who is a suspect and who isn't, so everyone is a suspect, and no step is too extreme to protect people surrounded by a sea of suspects.
Two questions I have...
Are there any coincidences anymore, or is everything always part of some larger plot?
Can anyone really picture an Amish school using walkie talkies?
Universal gun ownership:
It's For The Children!!
No, no, this solves the whole base-closings issue. Close the big bases and distribute Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marine personnel to public schools. With all of their weapons. Terms of engagement? Shoot to kill, of course.
Enjoy. Tell me how it works out, because my kids will be attending private school.
the crime becomes more horrifying and disturbing because there's no signal.
Bullshit. I do not believe for a second that this guy did not send out any signals. Sociopaths are not that hard to spot, especially over a period of time. The problem is that the people in his environment are too oblivious or afraid to do anything about him.
Geraldo did say one smart thing when he stated that when there's a gunnman in a school, the cops need to stop trying to negotiate and bum rush the asshole and blow his brains out.
O'REILLY: Yes, it is. And I think everybody gets the message that we live in a great country, and most Americans are good people, but there's a segment of us that are evil. And that's what this is all about. It's about evil. And we need to recognize the evil.
So, we're either GOOD, or we're EVIL. No in-between?
Two shitbirds on opposite sides of the political fence...yet somehow both manage to betray every single convention of both conservative and liberal ideologies in one 5-minute conversation.
The world is becoming scarier with each passing day.
Why don't we just arm everyone with phasers set on stun?
the cops need to stop trying to negotiate and bum rush the asshole and blow his brains out
Sounds like a great way to get more people killed if you ask me. This is the same attitude that leads to SWAT teams barging in, shooting first and asking questions later.
The fact is, most hostage situations are defused through negotiation. Yes, sometimes the negotiation fails, but it's hard to tell ahead of time whether that is going to happen. Defaulting to negotiation saves many, many lives in the aggregate.
Hummmm, you could build a big fence, put guards on the inside and outside, and require an ID card on everyone including "visitors". Wait am I talking about a school or our borders, I forget.
It's as if saying we are never safe is politically incorrect. As terrible as it is, s*** happens. Rivera and O'Reilly can never change that.
Of course the more fun question is what do they have to do to keep talk show hosts from sexually harrassing women.
Hummmm, you could build a big fence, put guards on the inside and outside, and require an ID card on everyone including "visitors". Wait am I talking about a school or our borders, I forget. Maybe put a couple of Amish guys with shotguns at the school.
It's as if saying we are never safe is politically incorrect. As terrible as it is, s*** happens. Rivera and O'Reilly can never change that.
Of course the more fun question is what do they have to do to keep talk show hosts from sexually harrassing women.
I didnt see the show (not unusual since I dont normally watch it) but I read the transcript as Oreilly saying you cant just set up armed camps at schools.
Jesus, not a sparking synapse between the pair of them.
Wow, yeah, those stupid progressive liberal bogeymen don't believe in "evil". Oh, for FUCK'S sake, you jerkass, would you just shut the hell up! For ONCE!? Is nothing below your sorry ass? Do you have nothing better to do than to drag this tragedy down to the level of how stupid you think liberals are? Between this, and the whole Hannity thing where he brought up some Democrat congressman having sex with a page in 1983, and how FNC has been listing Foley as a democrat, it's a true parody of itself.
Here you go, Bill, here is a complex answer to your oversimplified "good vs. evil" explanations:
It's not that "progressives" (read: anyone who doesn't subscribe to Bill's populist jerkoff mantra) don't believe in evil, it's that they're not as willing to just throw up that label as an explanation, a reason behind things. Look, that guy just killed 5 schoolgirls. Now, what is the better subsequent discussion...just saying "he's evil, and we need to stop evil", or instead, delving into the reasons behind why he did what he did? Just declaring that something or someone is "evil" prematurely aborts the intellectual exercise that is required to solve these problems.
It's like the "intelligent design" of the morality debate. Why discuss what this man was thinking and how we might discover/solve these problems in the future, just declare him as "evil", and then turn our elementary schools into military bases.
All in all, the fact is this: just reverting to the old "he is evil" explanation is intellectually LAZY, just like ID. Instead of investigating the facts, they just throw out a catch-all explanation that doesn't help anyone or anything. Calling this guy evil doesn't help anything. No shit he's evil, but what does that do for any of us? Not a damn thing.
Should we expect anything more from O'Really? Fuck naw. He's established himself firmly as an intellectually lazy populist cuntbag. But the problem is, I think, is that this kind of laziness is spreading quickly, and its what has ultimately come from this whole "war on terror" ideology, wherein the enemy is simply defined as "the evildoer".
Jesus, could you imagine the implications if O'Really? was a legislator, a lawmaker, a law enforcer? "But officer, what did I do!?" "You were over there, doin some evil! I saw ya!"
I'm trying to decide which is creepier--George Clooney's floating, disembodied head or Geraldo's thousand-yard stare.
I'm trying to decide which is creepier--George Clooney's floating, disembodied head or Geraldo's thousand-yard stare.
That was AWESOME
O'Rielly/Rivera in 2008!
- Real and Raw!
- The Perfect Storm Candidacy!
- Hitler was Evil!
Wow.
They certainly covered all the bases.
When I had read about halfway through that, I was overcome by an extremely disturbing mental image of twin nine year old girls speaking synchronously and finishing each other's sentences. And now you have, too.
Don't wait. Kill and be safe.
"No uninvolved adult males walk on that school property, wherever the school is."
Let's just lock up all men... they're just all (potential) deviants anyway. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Oh, Jeez. My parents are visiting this weekend and they're big Faux News consumers, especially the parts that discuss how lunatics are hiding under all our beds and we need to put machine gun pillboxes on every street corner. I am totally going to have lots of appointments and errands for the next three days.
If O'Reilly and Horrendo wanted to assist the public in determining the risk posed by Scary Lunatics with Weapons, they would have provided information on the following: 1. how many hostage-takings happen each year; and 2. how many of them end without violence? Also: 1. how many elementary schools, both public and private, are there in this country? 2. how many people murders occurred in said schools last year? 3. how many of those incidents were related to gangs or domestic disputes, like custody or divorce proceedings? and, finally, 3. is there any scientific agreement on how to diagnose who's going to flip out like this? Of course, I'm presuming the two gentlemen in question have any motivations beyond selling more ads by providing a large audience of grumpy and anxious senior citizens.
Wow. That Fox news "Dumb and Dumberer" segment was hilarious! Actually funnier than the World of Warcraft episode of South Park!
"""I didnt see the show (not unusual since I dont normally watch it) but I read the transcript as Oreilly saying you cant just set up armed camps at schools."""
O'REILLY: You can set up armed camps. You've got to set up armed camps
Todd, maybe you wrote can't when you meant can. Clearly O'Reilly did say, not only "can", but "got to" also.
Evan, I agree, and you can add that O'Reilly probably thinks that "evil" made him sexually harass that lady a few years ago.
I think O'Reilly's and Rivera's reactions are symptomatic of the fear that many people live in now. It's the feeling that "we", or, worse yet, "our children" can be raped, tortured, and killed at any moment, and this horror will be shown to millions of viewers on television and the Internet -- and there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that can be done to stop it.
I understand it. I, too, feel fear, and I think it's caused by the media that I see. If the Amish (the most peaceful, non-violent, and most disconnected from our fearful, violent media culutre) aren't safe, then who is? Who cares if it only happens to one out of 10,000,000. It's what we see, so it becomes our reality. It's human nature.
The invective against O'Reilly is no more intelligent than his calls for "armed camps". It is all noise and little signal.
...bzzzzzz....
I understand it. I, too, feel fear, and I think it's caused by the media that I see. If the Amish (the most peaceful, non-violent, and most disconnected from our fearful, violent media culutre) aren't safe, then who is? Who cares if it only happens to one out of 10,000,000. It's what we see, so it becomes our reality. It's human nature.
Spoken like a true sniveling coward.
Um, how is the O'Reilly-Rivera plan substantially different from the 'let's arm all teachers' plan I've seen floated on H&R? And if those two jerk-offs are motivated hysterical anxiety about shadowy threats, what has convinced everyone here that an armed society is so necessary? As far as I can tell, O'Reilly world and the armed 'polite society' are (ironically) both founded on trying to ensure everyone walks around in terror of being shot - so that they don't even THINK about shooting someone themselves. Just like the old DDR, except instead of pre-emptive informing, we can just shoot our neighbors before they get the drop on us.
RIVERA: There's no protection except one. No uninvolved adult males walk on that school property, wherever the school is.
And when the next shooter backs a truck up to the door and gets out with a gun or three, the principal can say, "We have this school policy about men on campus."
Another "school security policy" that will keep law-abiding people in line.
As far as I can tell, O'Reilly world and the armed 'polite society' are (ironically) both founded on trying to ensure everyone walks around in terror of being shot - so that they don't even THINK about shooting someone themselves.
Actually the "An armed society is a polite society" philosophy comes from Robert Heinlein. His point is that when people take control of their own lives, in particular their own safety, the people carrying the guns tend to be polite.
Thinking back on the thousands of people I've trained to shoot over the last couple of decades, I'd have to agree. A very typical concealed handgun licensee reaction to a loudmouth is, "I'd have gotten into it with him, but I was carrying and I didn't want to let things go that far." I've had the experience myself.
Besides, a firearm is the least violent way to defend yourself. No other method, including surrender, martial arts, improvised weapons, or knives, has the deterrence level of a suddenly displayed handgun. No other method is more likely to result in no injuries to either party. (DOJ statistics back that up.)
Anti-gunners instinctively know this. They may say they're afraid, but several times now I've had gun control advocates who suspected I was carrying deliberately approach me in public and say things they knew might make me angry. Obviously they believe, on some level, that an armed society is a polite society.
I mean, think about it. If we gunowners were the knuckle-dragging neanderthals we're pictured as being, the gun control movement would have died out when we blew away its last advocate.
BTW, IMO multiple murderers aren't afraid of being shot. Many of them seem to prefer that end. What they don't want is to be interrupted before they kill enough people to make the news. And particularly they don't want the news story to be about the CHL that stopped them instead of focussing on them.
That's why almost all such murders take place in venues where concealed carry is prohibited. See John Lott's paper at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=161637.
Akira MacKenzie wrote:
"Spoken like a true sniveling coward."
And that was spoken like a pompous moron. Cowardice is not feeling fear. Feelings are beyond our control. Cowardice is choosing to act out of fear in a way that runs from or appeases that which threatens you.
Bravery is choosing to act in steadfastness and self-defense in spite of one's fears. There is no human who doesn't feel fear about something at one time or another. The brave ones are the ones who choose to do the right thing instead of choosing to be a pussy.
Once again, the battle between choice and feelings plays out. To hell with feelings! Bravery is a matter of choice.