Supplemental: The tragedy, and the scourge, of Salon!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Sorbonne scholar cons liberal readers:
Last night, we watched part of Bill O’Reilly’s segment about the spanking debate.

(As the segment continued, we clicked back to Chris Hayes’ two-segment interview with Naomi Klein.)

Just now, we read Salon’s account of O’Reilly’s segment. We’re not sure when we’ve seen a clearer example of the ongoing tragedy, and the scourge, of the new, dishonest Salon.

The author of Salon’s piece on the segment is the brilliant young scholar, Joanna Rothkopf. By every standard reckoning, she has had all the advantages.

After prepping at Georgetown Day, she got her B.A. (in literary studies) at Middlebury, class of 2012. She spent her junior year at the Sorbonne, studying “cinema” (“movies,” or film).

She got a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia. This very year!

Today, Rothkopf deceives you within an inch of your life at the new and pathetic Salon. You can hear the liberal brain cells dying as this highly privileged person teams with a grotesquerie of a headline editor to produce this pile of “merde” (offal, ordure):
ROTHKOPF (9/18/14): Bill O’Reilly’s shameful parenting advice: Giving kids a “little whack” can be effective/
Fox News host Martha MacCalllum valiantly argues with the least reasonable man on television


On Wednesday evening’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly turned his attention to the public debate surrounding corporal punishment and children, following Adrian Peterson’s indictment for child abuse.

O’Reilly’s guest, Fox co-host Martha MacCallum presented a poll that found that the majority of Americans believe that spanking children is okay, however MacCallum did well to point out that child abuse and spanking are very different things in terms of public opinion. Even so, she continues, spanking doesn’t work: “You end up producing a child who treats their child the same way,” she says.

The entire segment, O’Reilly tries to get MacCallum to admit that sometimes, just a little bit of smacking is a good thing, at the very least just to get the kid’s attention.
Having watched the start of O’Reilly’s segment, we were puzzled by that account.

(Sacre bleu! The punctuation in paragraph 2 is just the way we found it.)

What actually happened last night? The segment started with MacCallum stating the results of a nationwide poll about spanking. Quickly, the least reasonable man on television could be seen saying this:
O'REILLY (9/17/14): You can't beat a child in this country or you will be charged with a crime. Taking a stick, which is akin to a whip, off a tree and whipping it like this, that's going to leave— A four-year old!

MACCALLUM: That's abuse.

O'REILLY: All right. So the topic of spanking, all right? But like in the Northeast, I don't know anybody who really spanks their children anymore. I don't. I never spanked.

MACCALLUM: When I'm saying—it's about 65 percent think that you should be allowed to reprimand by spanking.

O’REILLY: Allowed to.

MACCALLUM: But it doesn't mean that many people are doing it.
It was fairly clear that O’Reilly disapproved of what was done to that 4-year-old with that stick, which was akin to a whip. He said he never spanked his child. He said he doesn’t know anyone who spanks their kids.

MacCallum then gave the numbers on spanking from different parts of the country. Quickly, though, she returned to this:
MACCALLUM: I think what we need to clarify is what we're talking about here. And I think the studies that have been done...prove that children who have been subjected to this kind of behavior, it doesn't work. If you're trying to discipline your child—and we've heard people all week who are convinced this is an appropriate way to discipline a child—but what we're learning is, it's not. You end up producing a child who treats their child the same way, and aggressive behavior and abusive behavior stems from that kind of discipline.

O'REILLY: I agree. I think parents should be skilled enough to be able to find a way to stop the child from doing misbehavior—

MCCALLUM: Of course they should!

O’REILLY: And the same thing in school.
“It’s child abuse all over the place,” O’Reilly said a bit later. “It's a horrible plague. Same thing with domestic violence. The difference is, if you inflict pain on the child, that should be a crime.”

Referring to Adrian Peterson, O’Reilly sounded a great deal less than sympathetic. “Peterson is going to be—they'll take care of Peterson,” he gloweringly said.

Because we saw these parts of the segment, we were surprised when we went to Salon today and found the brilliant young pseudo-liberal telling the nation—in English, no less!—that the least reasonable man on television had spent “the entire segment” trying “to get MacCallum to admit that sometimes, just a little bit of smacking is a good thing.”

Let’s review:

O’Reilly said he doesn’t spank his child. He said he has never spanked his child, and that he barely knows anyone who does.

He said parents shouldn’t need to spank their children. He said if parents inflict pain on their child when they spank, that should be a crime. He called the mistreatment of children “a horrible plague.”

But so what? In the best Olbermann tradition, a privileged youngster at Salon went out and sold you a big pile of con about what O’Reilly had said.

Good lord, but we love our cartoons! And if you deeply love cartoons, there will always be a group of suits at some site who will sell them to you.

You can watch the entire O’Reilly segment at Salon. If you do, you will also see the later part of the segment, in which O’Reilly seems to be saying that it’s OK if parents lightly tap their kids to keep them from running out in the street or burning themselves on the stove.

You can decide for yourself what O’Reilly meant at that point. (Rather clearly, MacCallum says you should let them burn their hands.) But Rothkopf’s post is grossly inaccurate. And as is routine at the new Salon, the headline editor made things much, much worse.

At some point in the past few years, the suits at Salon decided to reinvent the site this way. It’s stunning to see the effect they’re willing to have on young “writers” like Rothkopf.

We’ve been warning about this progression for years—about the way the emerging liberal world has been learning to ape the behavior of Rush and Sean. Rothkopf’s piece is a sad example of what we’ve been talking about.

You can hear liberal brain cells dying as you read the latest example from the suits at the new Salon. Straight outta Columbia J-School, the brilliant young star of the famous Sorbonne played her liberal readers for fools as she played along.

17 comments:

  1. And the one cable TV news host that Bob will rush to his blog to defend?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is that what matters to you: *who* gets defended?

      Was Salon's reporting inaccurate? Doesn't matter because of who they slammed?

      Delete
    2. Check the link to the story that Somerby provides and compare that to the link he provides specifically about Rothkopf. Can't tell whether Salon's reporting is accurate or not from this.

      Delete
    3. 336: check the O'Reilly link he provides.

      Delete
    4. No, 3:25, it doesn't really matter to me what O'Reilly said or what Rothkopf wrote about it.

      But you go ahead and lie awake at night worrying about such things. Or perhaps you sleep tight knowing that the ever vigilant Somerby is on the job!

      Delete
    5. What matters to me is *which* word gets an asterik frame.

      Delete
  2. Did I just blink or did Bob say Joanna Rothkopf should have checked her privilege?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As one of her most famous presidents, Ben Franklin, said: better to be over-stated than not stated at all.

      Delete



  3. In the best tradition of the new Howler, this report completely overstates what needs to be said about this brief Salon piece.


    ReplyDelete
  4. Cable news is spiritual poison. Most everything on the boob tube is. Lunch with Bokara is worth checking out though.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Couldn't have put it any better.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Excellent placement of it as well.

    ReplyDelete
  7. There are two things a parent should never hear. The cries of a child they have injured and the sounds of liberal brain cells dying. Both yield many a sleepless dark and stormy night.

    ReplyDelete
  8. There is a difference between injury and pain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. There is the minor injury to common sense sometimes caused by O'Reilly. Then there is the major pain inflicted to BOB in the ongoing tragedy that is the new Salon.

      He cried out in such pain that he actually protested in the Salon comment box ( 2nd of 18 to comment). then he thoroughly researched the author's bio. Then he wrote a post four times longer than the Salon offal in question.

      Clearly there is a difference between minor injury and real pain.

      Delete
    2. I'm glad Bob's doing it.

      Any of you guys want to stick to the point and actually REFUTE what he has to say?

      Delete


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