Bill O'Reilly's down to his last strike. As noted here, on his radio and TV shows yesterday, Bill propounded the theory that the big-city newspapers have tread lightly in the current Middle East conflict for fear of alienating their liberal Jewish readers. As Bill put it, liberal Jews "are all the papers have left" when it comes to significant market niches.
While Bill singled out the NY Times as the paper most loath to offend its liberal Jewish readers, he also mentioned the Boston Globe by name on his radio show. As discussed here, the NY Times came out this morning guns ablazin', so to speak, for an immediate cease-fire.
Turns out the Boston Globe has done the same thing. Excerpts from its editorial of today, While Lebanon Burns:
- "After meeting yesterday in Beirut with Lebanon's prime minister and speaker of Parliament, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States is ``deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring." Not only does this profession of concern come exceedingly late, it may be perceived as a hypocritical contradiction of US policy."
- "Until now Rice has said the Bush administration wants to wait a while longer before intervening diplomatically to obtain a cease-fire. Even disregarding the callousness of this stance, Lebanese civilians and their sympathizers in the Arab world do not see how the displacing of 700,000 civilians and the shattering of a modern, cosmopolitan country can lead to Lebanon's delicately balanced government disarming the Shi'ite militia Hezbollah."
- "Many Lebanese who want Hezbollah to disarm, and resent Hezbollah's patrons in Iran and Syria, cannot understand why they are being attacked by Israel's army, and with weapons made in the United States."
- "By deliberately delaying diplomatic efforts to reach a cease-fire, however, Bush seems to be helping to tear down the independent Lebanese democracy he had taken credit for constructing."
- "Rice should call for an immediate cease-fire while she hammers out agreements on the countries that will supply troops, the mandate they must have to enforce peace, and the schedule for disarming Hezbollah in accordance with UN resolution 1559."
Conclusion: any concerns the big-city papers might have about offending liberal Jewish readers are trumped by their overriding inclination to bash the Bush administration at every opportunity. Back to the drawing Board, Bill!
Finkelstein lives in the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY, where he hosts the award-winning public-access TV show 'Right Angle.' Contact him at mark@gunhill.net
