Just asking

Why, when explaining his position against legal representation for detainees at Guantanamo, was it okay for Bill O'Reilly to say this last week about the Los Angeles Times editorial board?

They'll never get it until they grab [editorial page editor] Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off. And maybe when the blade sinks in, he'll go, "Perhaps O'Reilly was right."

Just asking. And while I'm on the subject, why was it also okay for him to advocate "whacking" and "slapping" the ABC reporter who challenged Scott McClellan on the Newsweek story? I didn't hear a lot of complaints and he still seems to be on Fox News, so I guess it was okay.

How about that radio host who advocated killing filmmaker Michael Moore? His name is Glenn Beck, he's a Clear Channel syndicated host with an audience of 6 million listeners, and on May 17 he said this:

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out - is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus - band - Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, "Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore," and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, "Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death." And you know, well, I'm not sure.

What do you think? Is that okay? Or how about the entire oeuvre of Ann Coulter? You know, blowing up the New York Times building, assassinating Clinton, threatening liberals with baseball bats, and so on. Is that okay? Beck still has his show and Time did a friendly cover story on Coulter recently, so I guess they're in the clear.

Let's try another. Michael Savage had this to say to a caller on his cable talk show in July 2003:

Oh, you're one of the sodomites… You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it.

MSNBC fired him for that. Guess it wasn't entirely okay. But he still has a job, a syndicated radio show, and an audience. And that's not okay.