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Bring Castration to NY

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 06•12

Two 5-year-olds, an August afternoon and a lemonade stand.

It’s the stuff of Norman Rockwell — marred by that fear every parent knows.

Whose car is that slowing? They know not to get in — right? Could I sprint the 40 yards from here to there before . . . ?

“Hey, girls. Time to close the stand.”

In my case, the anxiety is brought on by a 2006 documentary on Netflix I watched the night before, “Deliver Us From Evil.” It’s about a Catholic priest named Oliver O’Grady who raped possibly dozens of children in California beginning in the 1970s. The youngest known was 9 months old.

O’Grady was shuffled from parish to parish after each incident. The local bishop testified in the film that he knew O’Grady was a recidivist pedophile, yet he ignored it.

It’s not just the Catholic Church. Orthodox Jewish communities has covered it up, too, as have other denominations. In some ways, we all have; we don’t want to know about these things. We don’t want to use the words that accurately describe the acts committed. We say “molest” as a catchall, when we mean something more specific.

Jerry Sandusky raped young boys in shower stalls and in his basement. Coach Joe Paterno, a man who did more good than most in life, learned of it and cast it from his mind. Penn State Universityofficials knew it. But they let Sandusky walk free, day after day. It was easier to ignore him than to face what he is. No thought of the next victims.

Every time there is a high-profile story about prepubescent sex abuse we wring our hands — and, ultimately, do nothing. Is it because prolonged thought of such acts would cause us to tear out our hair in grief? Is it because we can’t bear to believe such cruelty is possible? We deem pedophilia “unthinkable” because it is. It is too horrifying to think about for longer than a few moments. So we don’t.

Oliver O’Grady readily admits his crimes in “Deliver Us From Evil.” He speaks almost cheerfully of his inclination to rape little boys and girls. O’Grady — I refuse to call him “Father” — was interviewed for the documentary in Ireland, where he had been living as a free man. Then last January, after he was caught with pornography featuring children as young as 2, he was sentenced to three years in an Irish prison. But when he gets out, it is impossible to believe he’ll do anything other than what he has always done — pose a threat to little kids.

http://iccpaix.org/divorcedseparated-group/ The rest of this column is available at Newsday Westchester. 

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Nikki Haley, the Right Pick for VP

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 03•12

It’s getting toward betting time on who Mitt Romney will choose to be his presidential running mate.

The clear favorites for veep: Ohio Sen. Rob Portman; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio;Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal; formerMinnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

Any one of them would make perfect sense — so I’m going to call it for South CarolinaGov. Nikki Haley. My reasoning may be obscured by two personal weaknesses: I’m a long-shot bettor and I have an irreversible crush on the South Carolinian. Who wouldn’t? She’s lovely — and she gives me hope for the future of my political party.

Three things weigh against Haley being the choice: 1.) The governor has removed her name from consideration; 2.) she isn’t from a swing state; and 3.) Haley would have to readdress an old, unfounded charge by an aesthetically challenged former press secretary of Gov. Mark Sanford that she once had a steamy liaison with him. The general consensus among South Carolina voters? He wishes.

All that aside, Gov. Haley would be a smart VP pick, and here’s why:

The rest of this column is available at Newsday or Newsday Westchester.  Thanks for reading!

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Video: Deficit Madness

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 01•12

Good stuff from George Washington University.

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Elton John, Statesman

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 01•12

Sir Elton John did an extraordinary thing last week. He praised President George W. Bush in an interview with the ABC News/Yahoo! Power Players series, reminding us in the process that there are still statesmen in the world. Cross-ideological kindnesses are so rare these days that John’s remarks were downright jolting.

John is a political progressive. Bush is a social conservative. They aren’t supposed to like each other. John is an outspoken gay rights activist; Bush is the U.S. president who proposed a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. Yet when asked about the former American president’s commitment in the Oval Office to combating AIDS around the world, here’s what the legendary British pop star said:

“I didn’t like his policies, but I have to say when I met him, I found him charming. I found him well-informed and I found him determined to do something about the AIDS situation, so I changed my opinion of him. . . . I learned a lesson.”

The “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” singer, who once called Bush “the worst thing that ever happened to America,” could have said “W” wasn’t quite as awful as he first thought and still sounded magnanimous. But he went farther, volunteering that he had been wrong about the conservative Texan. He confessed to having forgotten “one of the old adages in life, [which] is never judge someone until you meet them.”

John’s words in no way make him a political ally of Bush’s. They come from radically different viewpoints and presumably will remain there. But the singer took pains in his interview to highlight something flattering about Bush, publicly challenging the well-worn negative narrative about the former American decider.

The rest of this column is available Newsday and Newsday Westchester. Thanks for reading.

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Quote of the Opening Ceremonies, Bob Costas

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 28•12

On the North Koreans marching into Olympic Stadium (paraphrasing): “Of course the greatest athlete ever in North Korea is none other than the former Dear Leader Kim Jong Il who, according to his official bio, hit eleven holes in one in golf — not over the course of his career, mind you, but in his very first round of golf. At least two of those came off the windmill and the clown’s nose.” — Bob Costas at opening Olympic ceremonies, July 27, 2012

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Olympic Insults

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 27•12

How many Irishmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

I’d tell you, but I still harbor Olympic ambitions. (I don’t care what anyone says; competitive grilled-cheese eating is a sport.)

Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou should have shown similar restraint. She should have known that you can’t say anything out of the political mainstream in sports today without paying a steep price. The athletic beauty tweeted a bad joke — if you can call it that — and it was curtains for her 2012 Olympic career before it began.

Papachristou, 23, was expelled from the Greek team days before she was scheduled to march into London’s Olympic Stadium. Her fatal quip, made in response to an outbreak of the West Nile virus in Athens: “With so many Africans in Greece, the West Nile mosquitoes will be getting home food!!!”
Apparently some people found that funny, which made it decidedly unfunny to the ears of Greece’s humorless Olympic Committee. And that, as they say, was that. No quantity or quality of apologies from Papachristou were enough to save her. Amazing how badly you can screw up your life plans in 140 characters.

Papachristou spent years preparing for Olympic glory in London. She passed every physical test the Greek Olympic Committee could throw at her, but it was a philosophical one that tripped her up in the end. Papachristou stumbled on the political correctness exam, and there are no make-up tests for that one. We can all be different, as long as we all think the same way about one another’s differences.

Papachristou crossed the line, the Greeks said. But what line? Where is it drawn? Whom exactly can you lampoon in today’s world and whom can you not? Could the fair-haired Greek have ribbed her fellow countrymen for their fabled pecuniary fastidiousness? Would a blonde joke have done her in?

The rest of this column is at Newsday Westchester.  Thanks for reading!

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Satan Shows His Face Again

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 24•12

On a frigid Valentine’s Day morning in 1977, when I was an eighth-grade student at Pelham Memorial High School, a man named Fred Cowan walked into the Neptune Moving Co. warehouse in neighboring New Rochelle and began shooting up the place.

He was armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle, two .45-caliber pistols, two 9 mm automatics, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in bandoleers that formed an X across his chest. Strapped to his leg was a large hunting knife in case the ammo ran out. Cowan donned a cap bearing a Nazi SS insignia as he fired at Neptune employees, and, later, police officers.

The incident happened out of the blue, just as all mass shootings seem to do. When it was over, almost seven hours after it began, 10 victims had been shot; six died — five on scene and one weeks later in a hospital bed. Cowan, who had worked at Neptune and at a local service station where my parents often bought gas, was the seventh casualty. He put a bullet in his head to end the standoff.

The rumor at school, where classmates had fathers on the scene as police officers, was that the shooter had booby trapped his body with hand grenades before dispatching himself to hell. I can find no record today of that actually occurring, but it’s an integral part of the narrative I recall. For eighth-grade boys it served to punctuate the rage a single man had just inexplicably unleashed.

The Neptune building is gone today. A Home Depot stands on the site, in and out of which hundreds of shoppers pass each day with no knowledge of the massacre that once occurred there, or that a self-described neo-Nazi named Fred Cowan ever — existed at all, for that matter. Whatever fame Cowan achieved was short-lived. I had to Google the incident to recall his name. And the name didn’t ring a bell when I reread it all these years later.

Another shooter has now stepped forward seeking infamy.

The rest of this column is available at Newsday Westchester.  Thanks for reading!

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86 Saturday Mail for Crissake

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 20•12

The human instinct to preserve life — to protect the next generation from harm — is one of mankind’s most redeeming qualities. We have seen instances of it throughout history, where one generation sacrifices so that another can flourish, sometimes in the starkest terms.

In the mid 1990s, during a famine that became known as the Arduous March, North Korean senior citizens reportedly starved themselves to death so that their grandchildren and great grandchildren could live on what little sustenance was available. None of us knows if he or she would have the strength to do that under such circumstances, but I’m sure every man and woman in America would like to think that he or she is capable of demonstrating such love. As much as I like to tease my daughters that they’d be on my dinner plate by noon, you can count me among them.

So it is perplexing to watch the dynamic playing out in America today where one generation is unabashedly stealing from the next. Parents who would never take from a child directly are seemingly content to do so as long as there is a governmental middleman to do the dirty work.

None of us can feign ignorance. Stories on the national debt are ubiquitous. Yet we turn our faces away from the facts while dressing our children for school. We don’t want to know how badly we are hurting them.

Now we learn that the U.S. Postal Service will be defaulting on $5.5 billion in guaranteed pension benefit payments on Aug. 1. It will default on another $5.6 billion on Sept. 30. But postal officials assure us this will not affect our mail delivery. Those Saturday circulars will show up — and be instantly discarded — right on schedule.

The rest of this column is available at Newsday Westchester.  Thanks for reading!

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Three Cheers for Ralph Lauren

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 17•12

Three cheers for Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Olympic Committee. They just gave the country a potent dose of reality.

When ordering this year’s national team uniforms for the July 27 opening ceremonies in London , they did what every smart athletic organization and clothing designer would do — they ordered them from China. Why? Because things made in China cost less than things made in America. Public relations aside, can we blameLauren for the decision? Why would any rational organization pay more for something than it has to?

Sure, the team uniform revelation is humiliating. But maybe it’s just the sour medicine the doctor prescribed for us. Because face it, we’re all guilty of doing the same thing. Who among us can cast a stone in a kitchen or bathroom without striking something manufactured in the Middle Kingdom? I can’t even bang out these words without committing a transgression against my countrymen. (Are any computer keyboards still made in the United States?) Yet I, too, took preposterous umbrage at this Olympic sartorial slight.

That’s the thing with us Americans. We want it all, and for a while we had it. We want inexpensive consumer goods — and high wages. We want cheap gas, but as little domestic drilling as possible. Our social programs should be robust and our tax rates low. We hate ourCongress, yet, nine times out of 10, we re-elect our congressman. Literally.

The rest of this column is available at Newsday Westchester.  Thanks for reading. 

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Snake Oil PR (Update from Author)

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Jul• 17•12

Fascinating read in the New York Post today about a PR executive gone bad, gone tell-all author. 

The tactics this guy used to gain publicity for his projects would get him instantly fired from any PR firm in which I have ever worked.  I refuse to believe that this is becoming the norm in the communications industry, where your word and credibility are everything. Fast moving sharks like this often spring onto the scene in politics and corporate PR — you can smell them — but they never last.  They get cuter and cuter with their tricks until they are outed, which never takes long.

Fact checking, no doubt, has gone the way of the typewriter in many circles, but human nature remains. Burn a reporter in this business and you’re done with him or her.  Lie and you’re history with all of them. 

In that spirit, I can assure readers of these pages that my opinions here are 100% accurate. 

UPDATE: The book’s author, Ryan Holiday, is certainly on the ball. He posted these comments within moments of this item being posted. Perhaps he is right.  Perhaps shady PR practices are generational. I can only hope not. 

From Mr. Holiday: 

“That’s fundamentally just not the case–particularly online. Not when the economics are such that bloggers face no consequences for burning their readers. It’s a system where everyone is lining their own pockets. Bloggers are in the same racket as publicists and marketers: getting and monetizing attention. That’s what I decided to expose in this book. I’m not bragging, I’m pulling back the curtain.”

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