Culture Warrior (12 page)

A few days later Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman in charge of addressing controversies at the National Public Radio network, issued this stinging rebuke to Terry Gross:

“I believe the listeners were not well served by this interview. It may have illustrated the ‘cultural wars' that seem to be flaring in this country. Unfortunately, the interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal bias. It left the impression that there was something not quite right about the reasons behind this program…”

Terry Gross sandbagged me on her NPR show
Fresh Air.

So another win for the good guys, right? S-P sympathizer Terry Gross was dressed down by her own ombudsman, who exposed her for the left-wing ideologue she is. But if you read on, you will see, unfortunately, how the great culture warrior O'Reilly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

About a year after my first confrontation with Ms. Gross, she brought her own book to market. Titled
All I Did Was Ask,
it chronicled her interviews with famous people…like me. I invited Ms. Gross on
The Factor,
knowing in advance that she would be in a bad place if she did agree to appear because
she did not even mention the ombudsman's scolding in her book!

Truthfully, I was surprised when Terry Gross agreed to come on
The Factor.
How could she defend such a blatant omission? All I had to do was ask my questions without rancor. I do that, she's toast. Terry Gross would be exposed on national TV as either a woman trying to hide something or a first-rate weaselette.

The segment began and, after a brief setup, I immediately cut to the chase:

         

O'Reilly: “Why wouldn't you put in your book that you were scolded by your own ombudsman? You left that out? Why did you leave it out?”

         

Gross: “I don't know why I left it out.”

         

O'Reilly: “You don't
know
?”

         

Gross: “The point, Bill, is that I think the interview was very fair…”

         

O'Reilly: “Those were ‘do you beat your wife' questions, Terry.”

         

Gross: “No, they weren't.”

         

O'Reilly: “Well, the ombudsman says they were.”

         

Gross: “I disagree. That's not exactly what he said.”

         

O'Reilly: “You want me to quote it? It's pretty bad.”

         

Gross: “Go ahead.”

         

O'Reilly: “All right. [I read the ombudsman's quote.] ‘Halfway through the interview, it felt as though Terry Gross was indeed carrying Al Franken's water.' That's pretty embarrassing, Terry.”

         

Gross: “I'm not embarrassed, because I disagree with him.”

         

Now,
reading
that interview, most people would agree that Terry Gross was smoked. The problem was that on TV, I was mean to her. I snarled at the woman. I let her have it.

I lost.

In fact, thanks to me, even some who dislike Ms. Gross felt sorry for her. She's about five feet tall, wears glasses, and looks like a librarian. And there's this six-foot-four-inch, 200-pound O'Reilly guy banging her over the head. Dumb. A guy like Franken you can impale. Nobody's gonna feel sorry for an individual of that low caliber. But you can't browbeat a tiny female radio announcer. Even though the woman had no case, my strident tone transformed her into a sympathetic figure. Many casual viewers would remember one thing above all in that segment: O'Reilly was mean to a woman. Mean, mean, mean.

So you see that fighting this culture war is complicated, fraught with danger, and exhausting. The warrior in defense of tradition needs to be sharp, well informed, and aware of not only the facts but also of tone and demeanor during the debate. Anything the culture warrior says can—and
will—
be used against him or her.

But we have no choice as far as culture war is concerned. It desperately needs to be fought, because today the stakes are as high as they get. Especially when dealing with a far more brutal conflict: the war on terror.

George W. Bush is the greatest terrorist in the world.

—HARRY BELAFONTE

Who do you think Osama bin Laden supports in the American culture war: the traditionalists or the secular-progressives?

Not so fast…. This may be a trick question.

On the one hand, the Saudi-born terrorist despises just about everything the S-Ps fervently espouse: a de-emphasis of religion, a libertine social landscape, no judgments on most private behavior, and an acceptance of human weakness.

For those of you not currently up to date on their policies, al-Qaeda would decapitate gays who wanted to marry, cut off the hands of drug abusers, stone to death anyone who suggested Allah not be included in the public arena, and blind anyone who looked at pornography. If Osama was calling the shots in the United States, the ACLU would be, in theory, very, very busy. In reality, they'd be dead.

But think about what I am about to put forth: From his hideout somewhere in the Muslim world, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts have got to be cheering on the S-P movement, because its most fanatical adherents are opposed to the bedrock strengths of traditional America. The S-P worldview is much softer than that of the traditional forces, as I'll demonstrate shortly. For now, it is important to understand that the S-P vanguard, the ACLU, has actively opposed just about every anti-terror strategy the U.S. government has introduced. In my view, that opposition greatly helps al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits.

The secular-progressive movement opposes coerced interrogation—not torture, but harsh treatment—of captured terror suspects. They object to detention of them at U.S. military prisons like Guantánamo Bay. In addition, the ACLU opposes military tribunals (rather than civilian trials) to determine the guilt or innocence of suspected terrorists, rendition programs where terror suspects are held in foreign countries, floating wiretaps (already in use in U.S. criminal investigations), telephone surveillance of overseas calls by U.S. spy agencies, airport profiling, the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, and random bag searches on subway or mass-transit systems.

In short, the ACLU opposes making life more difficult for terrorists but proposes absolutely nothing to make Americans safer. Osama has got to love it.

On the positive side (sarcasm intended), the ACLU supports: Constitutional protections for noncitizen terror suspects captured overseas, Geneva Convention protections for terror suspects captured wearing civilian clothing (which, of course, eliminates them from the Geneva Convention treaties), civilian lawyers and criminal due process instead of military justice, and the exposure of top-secret U.S. antiterror programs in the press.

There's more. According to the ACLU, government officials should be prosecuted for the alleged exposure of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, but at the same time no government official should be investigated for leaking information about the top-secret National Security Agency's overseas listening activities, approved by President Bush under the seal of an Executive Order.

Add it all up and you can see exactly what I meant earlier: When it comes to the war on terror, Osama bin Laden has got to be thrilled that he has unwitting allies in the ACLU and, indeed, the entire S-P movement. In my assessment, the S-Ps fail to see the danger clearly. They constantly harp on America's mistakes while confronting violent terrorism, but they do not put forth viable solutions to neutralize the threats. They create a fog that damages our counterterrorism efforts. If all Americans bought into the ACLU's terror platform, instead of hiding in a Pakistani cave someplace, Osama might be sitting at a negotiating table in Paris, patiently awaiting an interview with
Le Monde.

I know I'll be harshly criticized for writing that last paragraph, but as I asked, think about it. How could any sane person adopt the stance the ACLU takes toward the war on terror? Don't those people get 9/11? Doesn't the S-P movement understand the danger America faces from terrorist fanatics who would use nuclear weapons, should they acquire them, against us?

The answer to that question is a bit complicated, but it is rooted in the one thing that the secular-progressive movement and Al Qaeda have in common: Both outfits believe that the United States of America is fundamentally a bad place.

Again, I'll be criticized for writing that, so let's back it up and return to our pal George Lakoff, the premier S-P philosopher and guru. Like most S-P true believers, Lakoff believes that the United States is at least partially responsible for the buildup of worldwide terrorism; therefore, by that reasoning, it was some of America's own doing that it was attacked on 9/11. That point of view is obviously a tough sell to the American public, so the ACLU and others do not bring the hypothesis up very often.

But Lakoff makes the S-P position crystal clear on page 66 of his
Elephant
book:

         

The idealistic claim of the Bush administration is that they intend to wipe out all terrorism. What is not mentioned is that the United States has systematically promoted a terrorism of its own and has trained terrorists, from the contras to the mujahideen, the Honduran death squads, and the Indonesian military. Will the U.S. government stop training terrorists? Of course not. It will deny that it does so…if the United States wants terror to end, the United States must end its own contribution to terror.

         

So the war on terror is largely America's fault, according to Lakoff, who conveniently avoids mentioning America's fight against the expansion of worldwide communism. As any intelligent person knows, the brutal cold war against the Soviet Union and Red China was the primary reason the United States armed opponents of communism like the contras in Nicaragua and the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

This is so typical of Lakoff and other S-P “thinkers”: They ignore all perspective in their analysis. When was the last time you heard any S-P fanatic mention that almost 3 million people were slaughtered by communist forces in Southeast Asia after the United States withdrew from Vietnam? I've never heard Jane Fonda, a duchess of the S-P realm, mention that, have you?

The bedrock belief that America is, and has been, an evil country is crucial to understanding the secular-progressive point of view when it comes to the war on terror. Here's their bankrupt reasoning: The S-Ps cannot support any antiterror measures until the United States stops being a terrorist country itself. Get it? Yes, they're serious. If you don't believe me, travel to Berkeley, California, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, and ask.

I first came across this thinking when I interviewed a man named Jeremy Glick on
The Factor
shortly after the attack on 9/11. Mr. Glick's father had been murdered in the collapse of the World Trade Center. Despite that tragedy, however, Jeremy had signed his name to an advertisement paid for by a radical S-P group called Not in Our Name. Part of that ad suggested an outrageous equivalency: “We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11th. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead in Baghdad, Panama City, and a generation ago, Vietnam.”

Wow. Comparing the 9/11 attack, which resulted in the murders of about three thousand innocent civilians, to the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War (remember, he invaded Kuwait and brutalized the people there), to the removal of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (who had turned his country into an international narcotics shipping center), and to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (a war that was fought to prevent the spread of totalitarianism and communism). I just couldn't believe a young man like Jeremy Glick was nutty enough to sign his name to that kind of a display. There must have been some sort of misunderstanding; maybe it was part of his grieving process.

Wrong, again, culture warrior.

In what has become a famous TV verbal shoot-out, Glick came on
The Factor
and told me my criticism of the ad was dead wrong. Moreover, he opined, my surprise at his participation was naïve:

“I'm actually surprised that you're surprised,” Glick told me. “If you think about it, our current president, who I feel and many feel is in this position illegitimately by neglecting the voices of African Americans in the Florida coup…our current president now inherited a legacy from his father and inherited a political legacy that's responsible for training militarily, economically, and situating geopolitically the parties involved in the alleged assassination and murder of my father and countless of others.”

The
alleged
assassination of his father? Glick was asserting that not only was the Bush administration partially responsible for the murderous actions of al-Qaeda, they also might even have had something
directly
to do with them, by supporting groups like the mujahideen in the past.

Now, when you get a misguided individual like Jeremy Glick on television, you simply cannot allow him to spout unproved accusations and downright slander. If you do that, your audience will turn on you. Add in the suffering Glick's words could bring to others who lost loved ones on 9/11, and you have to pull the plug. Which I did. Glick got the boot after this exchange:

         

Glick: “You evoke 9/11 to rationalize everything from domestic plunder to imperialistic aggression worldwide. You evoke sympathy with the 9/11 families.”

         

O'Reilly: “That's a bunch of crap. I've done more for the 9/11 families, by their own admission, than you will ever hope to do.”

         

Glick: “Okay.”

         

O'Reilly: “So keep your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people.”

         

Glick: “Well, you're not representing me.”

         

O'Reilly: “I'd never represent you.”

         

Glick: “Why?”

         

O'Reilly: “Because you have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country.”

         

Glick: “Well, explain that.”

         

O'Reilly: “All right. You didn't support the action against Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. You were against it, okay?”

         

Glick: “Why would I want to brutalize and further punish the people in Afghanistan?”

         

Why, indeed, when the whole thing was America's fault from the get-go? That's Glick-think taken directly from the George Lakoff playbook. It was pathetic.

Subsequently, thanks to me, Jeremy Glick became an icon of the S-P movement, which celebrated his “bravery” in standing up to the barbarian O'Reilly.

A few years later, the S-Ps tried the same trick with Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey, a dedicated professional American soldier, was killed in the Iraq war. Ms. Sheehan, you may remember, demanded a meeting with President Bush even though she had already had one. But Ms. Sheehan wanted another chat after being tutored by antiwar zealots. Of course, Mr. Bush saw the trap a mile away. He rightly assumed Cindy Sheehan wanted to embarrass him and ignored the woman. Thereupon some in the media castigated the President for his “insensitivity” and made Cindy into a heroine.

The pro-Sheehan media blitz worked for a few weeks until I, convinced that the whole deal was a calculated S-P attack, played an audio clip of Ms. Sheehan telling Mark Knoller of CBS Radio that the terrorists in Iraq were “freedom fighters.” She also said Israel was a terrorist nation. After that exposition, Ms. Sheehan's star dimmed as many rational folks who had sympathized with her, because of Casey, turned away.

The important point here is that the secular-progressive movement really believes Jeremy Glick and Cindy Sheehan are heroes. Worse, the S-Ps absolutely think the world's foremost problem is the evil superpower America, not Islamic fascist terror cells. If you take one thing away from this book, ladies and gentlemen, let it be that. The S-P brigades are not capable of understanding true evil. Their world perspective is so warped, it might even be downright dangerous.