Matt Ortega

Bill O’Reilly made an appearance on Your World with Cavuto on November 30 and he credit his “reporting and that of others” to the lowering gas prices, and claimed that people are “offended” that Christmas is a federal holiday. That is classic O’Reilly, and FOX News for that matter, to create phony straw men to fit their arguments.

NEIL CAVUTO: You don’t buy the take that they’re trying to be inclusive or the companies that have that position are?

BILL O’REILLY: This is insulting to Christian America. It’s insulting. This is driven by secular progressives –

NEIL CAVUTO: The Jews and Muslims say it’s insulting to keep the “Christmas.”

BILL O’REILLY: I say that Muslims are less than 1 percent of the population, and Jews are less than 3 percent of the population. They’re entitled to their opinion, they’re entitled to their opinion and they are entitled not to shop in places that say “Merry Christmas,” just as I’m entitled not to shop in places that don’t. That’s what I say. But the bottom line on this is this: Secular progressives which are driving this movement, OK, don’t want Christmas. They don’t want it as a federal holiday, they don’t want any message of spirituality or Judeo-Christian tradition because that stands in the way of gay marriage, legalized drugs, euthanasia, all of the greatest hits on the secular progressive play card…”

Media Matters has extensively documented O’Reilly theory of the “secular progressive movement” and broke it down into three elements.

In the transcript provided by Media Matters from The Radio Factor on November 28, O’Reilly said:

… I mean, the ACLU and George Soros and these websites don’t operate day to day without a plan. There is a plan… There’s a very secret plan.

A secret plan? You mean like a conspiracy? A conspiracy by “secular progressives” in an effort to rid the United States of religion and Christmas?

But wait, as David Neiwert points out in his five-part series, Michelle Malkin explains in her book Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild that she absurdly argues that “the right polices and oversees its own.” He cites two very telling quotes:

“[T]he truth is that it’s conservatives themselves who blow the whistle on their bad boys and go after the real extremism on their side of the aisle.” [p. 9]

“And while conservatives zealously police their own ranks to exclude extremists and conspiracy theories, extremism and conspiracy theories have become the driving force of the Democrat Party.” [p. 169]

So where are the whistles? Perhaps they are the kind only dogs can hear because Malkin was mum on this conspiracy theory today, with no mention of Bill’s ongoing “secular progressive” conspiracy theory. Nor has she “blown the whistle” - ever.

A simple search of “O’Reilly” on her blog warrants a number of returns, but try “O’Reilly Soros” and returns only one post in which she discusses the Ground Zero memorial in June 2005. A recent blog of hers from November 25 undoubtedly aligns her next to O’Reilly and the “war on Christmas.” She writes:

Well, now that Thanksgiving’s over, the anti-Christmas season has begun… John Gibson’s book is chockful of similar examples of secularists gone wild.

In fact, many other right-wingers agree with O’Reilly that there is a left-wing push to eliminate Christmas, and/or a larger left wing conspiracy in general.

Former House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) claimed that he had “very good evidence” of a conspiracy including “Ronnie Earle, Nancy Pelosi and other liberals.”

Michael J. Gaynor wrote in The Conservative Voice in support of John Gibson’s book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought. Citing book reviews from Amazon.com, he dismisses not-so-favorable reviews as “utter nonsense” and the reviewer as “an ignoramus in need of instruction on American history, or worse.”

Does the “war on Christmas” does not qualify as a conspiracy theory?