There’s an important lesson for conservatives in the news this week, if they’re willing to learn from it. Appeasement always fails. Always.
Throughout history people have been desperate to avoid conflict. Many are willing to do anything to stave off a fight. In politics it is no different.
Corporations have spent untold millions in “donations” to radical environmental groups or hustlers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the hope of buying some goodwill should any unexpected controversy arise. It’s never worked.
When something went wrong, as it always does, or some controversy (real or contrived) breaks, the very people they had cultivated were out in front of a bank of cameras demanding “justice,” which usually comes in the form of another, larger, check.
The same thing happens in the news business. Fox News let Bill O’Reilly go this week because people who never watch their network, who never would watch their network, pressured companies to pull their advertising from the top-rated show in cable news history.
That the companies caved isn’t a surprise -- caving to left-wing mobs is what companies do. But if Fox had not caved, advertisers would have come back to O’Reilly. It would be financial malpractice to avoid running ads to the largest audience possible, and companies don’t remain successful committing financial malpractice.
But bad publicity always trumps spine.
The mob that went after O’Reilly is the same mob that went after Glenn Beck and the same that always has gone after Fox. Letting Beck go, then Roger Ailes, did not appease them. Neither will O'Reilly.
To the fascistic left, Fox News can’t do right because its existence is wrong. As long as it exists, they will find something to be upset about and demand action on. And advertisers will cave.
I don’t know what Bill O’Reilly did or didn’t do, but I do know nothing was proven.
Companies pulled their ads not over proof, but over allegations. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but conservatives are simply guilty. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Bill Clinton, who were proven guilty, are still praised as if they were innocent.
I have to wonder how many of the companies who pulled their ads from O’Reilly’s show have donated to the Clinton Foundation? How many executives of those companies donated to Hillary’s campaign? Or paid for speeches from either of them?
It doesn’t matter. Liberals don’t hold other liberals to different standards; they hold them to no standards. Standards are reserved exclusively for conservatives, mostly because they know we have them and they mean something.
If the allegations against O’Reilly had been proven, that’s one thing. But they weren’t. And some of them were garbage anyway. One woman reportedly said he leered at her. Leered? Another said he got a guest’s name wrong and made a blonde joke about it. Seriously, get over yourself. And a third said he asked her to come back to his hotel room. After she refused, he stopped having her on his show.
Did it happen? Who knows? Was he otherwise obligated to have her on his show? No. If it happened, was it cool? No, it wasn’t. Was it something that should end his career? They weren’t even co-workers.
But when a lawyer like Gloria Allred gets involved, or in this case her daughter, Lisa Bloom, forgive me if I’m skeptical. They strike me as lawyers you go to when you want publicity, not justice. When you want to harm a conservative, not seek what is right.
Fox chose to go another route. Maybe its leaders know more than is public. Or maybe, as has been reported, the wife of one of Rupert Murdoch’s kids convinced him he had to do it because she’s liberal. Whatever the reason, it happened and it won’t unhappen.
But the fascistic left won’t take a day to savor this scalp -- the largest in its recent collection. Lefties already are back at it, on the hunt for more. Always more.
And they’ll get more because, unlike the right, they’re relentless. No fascist ever said, “Well, we showed those people who think differently from us. How about we call it a day?” No, they are relentless. They purge. They destroy. They still get visibly angry when someone speaks favorably about Ronald Reagan, and he’s been dead for more than a decade.
Conservatives will continue to add scalps to the collections of these thought-Brownshirts just as their ideological comrades, the Blackshirts, will continue to collect scalps on college campuses, keeping them “pure” from differing opinions.
Where are elected Republicans on this? I get remaining silent about Fox. It’s a private business, and what News Corp chooses to do is, ultimately, irrelevant to government.
But the Nazi march across publicly funded college campuses to prevent students from inviting conservative speakers is a government issue. It’s a direct, unambiguous violation of the First Amendment. Where’s the outrage? Where are the public statements of condemnation? More importantly, where is the legislation to defund these indoctrination centers?
God bless Ann Coulter. When her speech at UC Berkeley was cancelled, Ann had the guts to say she’s going anyway. She said she’s going to speak, and if the school wanted to stop her it could have her arrested. The school has (at least for the moment) un-canceled the event, though it tried to schedule it on a different day. That won’t work for Ann, and she’s still planning on showing up Thursday.
If elected Republicans had anything but air in their shorts, they’d recess Congress and the entire caucus would be out there to escort her onto campus. Democrats in California and Washington, D.C., don’t give a damn, and the state’s sniveling governor should send security but won't because he's rooting for the other side.
It’d also be helpful if President Trump spoke out against this and threatened action.
Is Ann Coulter the only person willing to stand up to the modern Gestapo?
A line must be drawn, because appeasement only leads to emboldening fascists. Don't look to the private sector -- its job is to profit, not ensure constitutional rights. Don't look to Democrats -- the mobs are their base, and although they'd be out in force if someone had to break stride to get into an abortion clinic, this is not their way.
It has to be Republicans. More specifically it has to be conservatives. A stand must be made because appeasement never works.